Pentagon Announces 35,000 Troops to Deploy

iraqslogger

Units Supposed to Replace Others Coming Home, Not Add to Surge

The DoD on Tuesday announced the 10 brigade combat teams involving approximately 35,000 personnel who will deploy to Iraq by the end of the year.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the units, which will begin deploying in August, are replacements for others currently operating in Iraq, not any addition to the surge.

"This deployment announcement of the next 10 units that are in the queue has nothing to do with a decision to extend the surge," Whitman said.

"It would be inaccurate to look at this announcement today as some sort of decision with respect to the surge.... It is simply identifying units that will receive deployment orders," he said.

However, Whitman did indicate that the replacement troops would give US commanders the ability to maintain the higher troops numbers of the surge through the end of 2007.

The Pentagon statement said the "deployments will provide commanders in Iraq the flexibility to maintain the appropriate level of effort based on their assessment of the security situation on the ground."

The specific units affected include:

3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Hood, Texas.
1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.
3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.
2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.
4th Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Polk, La.
1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
4th Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.
2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
2nd Cavalry Regiment (Stryker), Vilseck, Germany.
2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Baumholder, Germany.

Stocks retreat as investors take profits in advance of Federal Reserve Wed. meet

ap
NEW YORK — Wall Street retreated Tuesday as investors, mindful of the Federal Reserve’s upcoming meeting on interest rates, decided to cash in some profits from the market’s extended rally.

The consolidation, which follows a similar move in overseas markets, comes a day ahead of the Fed meeting. Though central bankers are expected to leave rates unchanged, Wall Street could get further direction about whether a hoped-for rate cut is in the offing.

Fresh data released on Tuesday showed the economy continues to sputter. The Commerce Department reported wholesalers’ inventories grew at a slower rate in March, failing to meet projections. Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors lowered its forecast for the housing market this year because of stricter lending standards and subprime woes.

Data is expected to wield more influence on the direction of stocks as the pace of earnings announcements slows. But investors will be watching after the bell for reports from Walt Disney Co., one of the 30 companies that make up the Dow, and Cisco Systems Inc.

“There’s this wait-and-see pullback with regard to what the Fed might do on Wednesday,” said Janna Sampson, a portfolio manager for Oakbrook Investments. “Given the run we’ve had, and a pretty strong start of the year, this might be a case of investors positioning their portfolios a little sooner than usual before the summer doldrums.”

Stocks regained some ground from session lows in early afternoon trading, spurred by oil stocks as the price of crude rose above $62 per barrel. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 26.17, or 0.20 percent, to 13,286.80. The blue chip average had been up 24 of the last 27 sessions, and surpassed the 13,300 mark for the first time on Monday.

China and Russia 'arming' Sudan

Al Jazeera

The report contained photographs of Russian-made helicopters at Darfur's Nyala [Amnesty International]

Amnesty International has accused China and Russia of selling arms to Sudan that could be used against rebels and civilians in Darfur.

Both the countries have denied the London-based pressure group's accusations.

The countries were among several that were breaking an United Nations embargo aimed at stopping violence in Sudan's Darfur province, a report from Amnesty said on Tuesday.

Amnesty said it was "deeply dismayed" that China and Russia are continuing to send arms "that are diverted for the conflict in Darfur and used there and across the border in Chad to commit grave violations of international law."

Along with Britain, France and the United States, China and Russia are permanent members of the UN Security Council, which adopted an extensive arms embargo in 2005.

Amnesty said that Russian and Chinese state-owned arms firms had supplied Sudan's government with a range of arms and ammunition, ranging from aircraft to light weapons.

Government denials

The governments of Russia and China have denied Amnesty's accusations.

In Moscow, a foreign ministry spokesman rejected the report, saying: "None of our arms are being supplied to Darfur."

"We rigorously observe the provisions of the UN resolution banning deliveries of arms to Darfur," he said.

In Beijing, Jiang Yu, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, called the report "a groundless accusation".

"The Chinese government takes a responsible attitude and a strict management policy on arms exports," she said.

Incriminating photographs

Amnesty International's 24-page report contained several photographs of Russian and Chinese warplanes which it said were based at Nyala airport in the Darfur region in the last few months.

The report also said that Sudan imported $24m worth of arms and ammunition from China, in addition to nearly $57m worth of parts and aircraft equipment and $2m dollars worth of parts of helicopters and airplanes.

It added that the Chinese company AviChina Industry and Technology "recently delivered six K-8 military training/attack aircraft to the Sudanese Air Force and a further six will follow soon."

Civilians in Darfur have often described coming under aerial attack from the Sudanese air force.

A EUROPEAN COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS?

free market press
George Soros, the billionaire, spent $27.5 million in 2004 to try to defeat George W. Bush. Clearly, the man is a huge success in political terms. He is now pouring money into Barack Obama's campaign. If I were Obama and his advisers I'd feel a little worried.

Soros also funds other organizations like MoveOn.org, dedicated to the overthrow of the, in their minds, illegitimate Bush administration and American hegemony, while they are at it, and Human Rights Watch, whose purpose appears to be to write anti-American and anti-Israeli reports. His activities in the former Communist countries are separate and have, actually, produced useful results, where he has not been thrown out.

Clearly, the man has decided that he cannot win in the United States - money does not necessarily buy political power in a democracy. So, he has turned to Europe (whatever that might mean to him) and announced that he will set up a European Council on Foreign Relations. He announced this, yesterday at a conference in Oxford and added:

Europe has to be interested in recreating what used to be called the West, based on the principles of international cooperation. Out of this idea came the idea of founding a European Council on Foreign Relations.

Well, that's nice. Is this the equivalent of the one telephone number that Henry Kissinger used to long for?

After all, it is not clear where the Council will be set up and whom it is going to advise in the way the original one advises the State Department or other parts of the American government (usually rather badly). So, is the European Council going to be in Brussels, advising Javier Solana and the incipient EU diplomatic corps? Or is it going to compete with the German Council on Foreign Relations or our own Chatham House or Foreign Policy Centre?

Answer seems there to be none but one thing has emerged immediately - this will be a sinecure for Professor Tim Garton Ash, who is advising Soros on the project. What does Professor Garton Ash say?

"Our resources are similar to the United States, but we punch pathetically below our weight," Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European Studies at Oxford University who is helping Mr. Soros with the plans, said in an interview. "The idea is to contribute a European voice. It's still in the making."

Who is this "we" one wonders.

According to Bloomberg:

Garton Ash said that the new institute would concern itself with global inequality and climate change. Soros said that integrating China into international institutions was a reason why the group would be needed.

Why he thinks that Europeans are going to decide what China does or does not do remains a mystery. But that's the problem with all these "internationalists" - they rarely know what goes on outside their own backyard.

Germany's World Bank Director Lobbies Board to Oust Wolfowitz

May 8 (Bloomberg) -- Germany's director on the World Bank board is under orders from his government to press for the ouster of President Paul Wolfowitz over his role in giving his companion a pay raise, a European official said.

The German director, Eckhard Deutscher, has been told to rally opinion on the 24-person board against Wolfowitz, who was found to have violated the bank's ethics rules. Germany wants Wolfowitz out before Chancellor Angela Merkel hosts a Berlin forum on Africa in two weeks, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Deutscher declined to comment.

Deutscher, 58, is the dean of the World Bank's executive board and represents its third-largest shareholder, after the U.S. and Japan. European finance ministers today stepped up their criticism of Wolfowitz, saying the uproar over the pay- and-promotion package for his partner had hobbled his ability to lead the world's largest development agency.

``We need a president with a good reputation and good integrity,'' Finance Minister Wouter Bos of the Netherlands told reporters today in Brussels, where he attended a meeting with European counterparts. ``I have serious doubts.''

U.S. Accuses Six Men of Plotting to Attack Fort Dix

May 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. authorities arrested six men identified as ``Islamic radicals'' on charges of plotting to kill American soldiers at the Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey.

The men were arrested last night and charged with conspiring to use machine guns and other weapons in a planned attack that was thwarted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They scouted military bases, trained with weapons and discussed killing soldiers, according to a complaint filed in federal court in Camden, New Jersey.

``There is no evidence that they received direction from an international terrorism organization,'' White House spokesman Tony Snow said today. ``There is no direct evidence of a foreign terrorist plot.''

The arrests followed a 15-month undercover investigation by the FBI that began after an individual went to a retail store seeking to make a copy of a DVD depicting 10 young men shooting assault weapons while shouting ``God is Great'' in Arabic, according to a complaint filed yesterday in Camden.

On Jan. 31, 2006, a store official notified the FBI about the DVD, the complaint said. Federal agents used two informants to record meetings and phone calls with the suspects as they weighed attacks on several military bases before settling on Fort Dix, the complaint said. The base, in central New Jersey, is located about 20 miles from the state capital in Trenton.

Four of the suspects were born in the former Yugoslavia, one is from Jordan and another from Turkey, according to Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie.

`Jihadist Images'

The six men are scheduled for an initial appearance today in Camden federal court. Christie will hold a news conference at 2:30 p.m. in Camden.

One of the FBI informants, identified in the complaint as CW-1, developed a relationship with Mohamad Shnewer, one of the accused men, federal authorities said. Shnewer gave the informant a DVD with ``various jihadist images,'' according to the complaint.

Shnewer told the informant to review two other video files stored on his laptop computer, including ``what appears to be the last will and testament of at least two of the hijackers'' involved in the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the complaint said.

Another video showed ``images of Osama bin Laden and other Islamic extremists making various speeches in which the speakers call the viewer to join the jihadist movement,'' court papers said.

`Armed Attacks'

Besides Shnewer, the complaint identifies the suspects as Serdar Tatar, Dritan Duka, Eljvir Duka, Shain Duka, and Agron Abdullahu. The alleged conspirators believed that Abdullahu was a sniper in Kosovo and that CW-1 had experience in the Egyptian military, the complaint said.

Shnewer showed the other informant, CW-2, ``a number of videos'' on his laptop that ``depicted armed attacks on and the killing of United States military personnel,'' the complaint said.

At meetings with CW-1 in early August, Shnewer said that he, Tatar and the three Dukas were part of a group planning to attack a U.S. military base, specifically Fort Dix, and a nearby naval base, the complaint said.

Schnewer said six or seven jihadists could kill at least 100 soldiers by using rocket-propelled grenades or other weapons, and that they could train in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, according to court papers.

`Not Afraid to Die'

``Shnewer also said that he and others in the group had saved money to pay for the weapons and that they were not afraid to die,'' the complaint said.

A few days later, CW-2 asked Shnewer ``what made him think of Fort Dix as a target,'' the complaint said. Shnewer replied: ``My intent is to hit a heavy concentration of soldiers.''

In mid-August 2006, Shnewer and CW-1 scouted the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey and the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the complaint said.

The informants recorded many conversations with the Dukas as they discussed plans to buy rocket-powered grenades and machine guns, the complaint said. Tatar told CW-1 that he would get a map of Fort Dix from his father's pizzeria near the facility.

The Duka brothers rented a house in Gouldsboro, Pennsylvania, and traveled there in early February with Abdullahu to practice firing the weapons, the complaint said.

`Kill American Soldiers'

CW-2 met with Dritan and Shain Duka on March 10, when the informant asked about Tatar, the complaint said.

``Shain Duka explained that Tatar wanted to join the U.S. Army so that he could kill U.S. soldiers from the `inside,''' the complaint said. ``When CW-2 asked about Tatar again, Dritan Duka remarked, `He had only one mind, how to kill American soldiers.'''

The Dukas later said that, ``rather than waging jihad overseas, they could do so in the United States,'' the complaint said.

The case is USA v. Dritan Duka, 07-m-2046, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey (Camden).

From Unlikely Quarters, Bruce Willis Ends The JFK Debate

prisonplanet
The Kennedy assassination furore is over and the "conspiracy theorists" won, 9/11 is soon to follow

Bruce Willis' insightful and definitive comments to Vanity Fair about the assassination of JFK, in which he boldly states that Kennedy's killers were never caught and are still in power today, are a benchmark as to how far the truth movement has progressed since 9/11.

"They still haven't caught the guy that killed [President] Kennedy," Willis told Vanity Fair's June issue.

"I'll get killed for saying this, but I'm pretty sure those guys are still in power, in some form. The entire government of the United States was co-opted," adds the Die Hard star.

Bruce Willis is a perfect example of how the rampant corruption of the U.S. government and the overwhelming evidence proving that the entire war on terror is a manufactured hoax has ostracized even the administration's most fervent cheerleaders.

The son of a military man, Willis was and still is an ardent patriot and like many was caught up in the post-9/11 fervor, believing that his beloved America had been attacked from outside and committed his work to supporting a positive and healthy message that America's motives in the war on terror were just and necessary.

Willis' genuine patriotism and moral compass was exploited and perverted by the Neo-Con agenda to police the world not in the interests of America but to serve the agenda of the military industrial complex. Again, like the majority of the nation, for a time Willis was fooled into supporting the lie, but soon came to the realization that he had been double crossed.

After Hollywood director Richard Linklater handed Willis DVDs of Alex Jones' documentary films Terror Storm and Martial Law on the set of Fast Food Nation , Willis underwent a political awakening and his entire paradigm was shifted.

Sources tell us that Willis is now virtually obsessed with "conspiracy" material and, like Charlie Sheen before him, spent months researching the JFK assassination as well as 9/11 before he spoke publicly to Vanity Fair.

We salute Mr. Willis for having the courage to use his huge profile to draw people's attention to subjects of vital importance, flying in the face of the fear, in his own words, that they might kill him for doing so.

Willis' comments follow last week's definitive revelations concerning the role of CIA veteran E. Howard Hunt in the murder plot and his deathbed confession that the assassination of JFK was a conspiracy on behalf of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The establishment news media have completely blackballed one of the stories of the decade and it would take a very naive person to believe the ignorance wasn't deliberate. As Bruce Willis said, the U.S. government was overthrown in November 1963 and the military-industrial complex have been running the show ever since - they are still in power today. The press are afraid to cover this story because a lot of people who have pursued the truth about the assassination or simply been in a position to know certain information - have ended up in a coffin pretty soon after.

Some even scoff at the tape's authenticity simply because it was aired first on Coast to Coast Live , a show that tackles a multitude of controversial and quirky issues. How else could Saint John Hunt have got the tape released when no corporate media outlet dare touch it? Coast to Coast has 20 million listeners every night, in using them as a forum, Hunt was ensuring the maximum exposure possible outside of mainstream channels.

The tape is real, the confession is real - burying your head in the sand and pretending it's all a fairy tale is not going to make the truth of this story go away.

We are now declaring victory on proving the assassination of JFK was an inside job - polls routinely show that around 90% of Americans agree and one of the main conspirators has now admitted this to be the case, in addition to others on the inside like Madeleine Duncan Brown and LBJ's lawyer who also blew the whistle on the fact that it was a coup de 'tat orchestrated by Johnson.

There can no longer be any debate, the establishment press can continue to use their little "grassy knoll" cliches to try and debunk anyone who questions the official government version of anything, but the fact is that they now reflect a tiny minority of popular opinion in this context.

Similarly in the case of 9/11, polls show that around 84% distrust the government's account and suspect a cover-up, and no amount of ad hominem attack slurs and Popular Mechanics style hit pieces are going to reverse that growing trend.

The game is almost up, we are in the fourth quarter and we have accrued an unassailable lead - the "conspiracy theorists" have won and though things may get worse before they get better, the success of our mission to rouse the human race from its sleepwalk will soon begin to catalyze measurable change in the world around us and freedom will rise again.

Saudis, US sponsoring covert action against Iran

raw story
The governments of Saudi Arabia and the United States are working with other states in the Middle East region to sponsor covert action against Iran, according to a report in this month's edition of The Atlantic. The report also suggests that covert attacks may occur against Iran's oil sector.

David Samuels, in a lengthy article on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East, reports that the US is promoting a campaign against Iran that includes covert action.

Since last Fall, he writes, "Rice and her colleagues in the administration decided to embark on a daring and risky third course: a coordinated campaign, directed with the help of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates....The bill for the covert part of this activity, which has involved funding sectarian political movements and paramilitary groups in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, is said to amount to more than $300 million. It is being paid by Saudi Arabia and other concerned Gulf states, for whom the combination of a hasty American withdrawal from Iraq and a nuclear-armed Iran means trouble."

Samuels suggests that Iran has already faced a variety of internal attacks as a consequence of this covert program.

"They pointed to an upsurge in antigovernment guerrilla activity inside Iran, including a bomb in Zahedan, the economic center of the province of Baluchistan, that killed 11 soldiers in the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on February 14; the mysterious death of the Iranian scientist Ardashir Hosseinpour, who worked on uranium enrichment at the Isfahan nuclear facility; and the defection of a high-ranking Iranian general named Ali Asgari, a former deputy minister of defense who was also the Revolutionary Guard officer responsible for training and supplying Hezbollah during its war against the Israelis in southern Lebanon in the 1980s," Samuels notes.

More than that, Samuels warns that these covert actions may soon target Iran's petroleum sector.

"People focus altogether on the nuclear facilities and how difficult they would be to take out," he quotes former Secretary of State George Shultz as saying. "But it’s not difficult for somebody to sabotage those refineries."

Samuels' report echoes an earlier story by the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh.

"The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said," he wrote in the March 5 article.

Activists rally to urge amnesty for illegal immigrants

london independent
Religious leaders, musicians, actors and union chiefs will join the largest migrant rally in British history today, calling for an amnesty for 500,000 illegal immigrants which would give them rights to stay and work in this country.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor led the calls for the Government to allow a "pathway into citizenship" for workers who have been in this country for at least four years. But it sparked a fresh row between migrant aid groups and anti-immigration lobbyists.

Campaigners, who include the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, and the Iraqi British actor Lewis Alsamari, who appeared in the film United 93, will call for an end to the exploitation of illegal workers, who are often paid below the minimum wage or are denied legal rights in the "underground" economy.

The campaign, Strangers into Citizens, could prove an embarrassment for ministers who are imposing tougher penalties on employers of illegal immigrants and are reluctant to be seen to be soft on immigration.

The pressure group Migrationwatch, which strongly opposes the campaign, said the Home Office estimates were out of date, and a more accurate estimate of the numbers in this country who could benefit from an amnesty is more than one million.

"The Government's policy is to strengthen measures against employers of illegal workers and to tighten access to health and education services," a spokesman for Migrationwatch said. Extending access to welfare state for illegal immigrants could cost £1.5bn a year and add a million to the housing lists, he said.

Keith Best, the chief executive of the immigration advisory service, accused Migrationwatch of being "confused and misrepresenting the facts". He said immigrants were not entitled to state benefits and added: "The only way in which migrant workers can undercut British workers in low-skilled jobs is by being paid less than the minimum wage, which is unlawful."

Elizabeth Mountford, a director of Initial Facilities Services, one of the largest cleaning contracting companies in the UK, said she supported the campaign because of the number of workers she could not employ because they were illegal.

"It is common for us to win a new contract but then have to turn away some of the staff we have inherited because they do not have the right papers," she said "I have often had to terminate the employment of people who have been in this country for five years or more. These workers should have a means by which they can become legal."

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, who will conduct a mass for migrant workers at Westminster Cathedral before the march and rally at Trafalgar Square, rejected criticism that the amnesty would lead to another half-million illegal immigrants coming to Britain.

"I don't think that's true," he said on the BBC's Sunday AM programme. "What we're dealing with are the people already here. The Government must decide how many people to 'allow' in. There are two hundred million migrants all round the world. It's a huge number. And I think states now are realising they've got to look at this in a just way."

He said today's rally would concentrate on the plight of those in Britain who are undocumented migrants. "A way has got to be found whereby they can become citizens and have the advantages of that," he said."That's the advantages for this country as well. Many of them are married, settled down and so they live in a kind of shadow land. That's not right and it's not fair."

US government moves to gag terrorist on CIA ties

wsws.org
With his trial on immigration charges set for May 11, the US government has filed a motion in federal court seeking to bar the international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles from testifying on his role as an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Venezuela has demanded that Posada Carriles be extradited to face charges there related to his masterminding of a 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian passenger jet that killed 73 people. He evaded punishment for the crime—at the time the worst single act of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere—by escaping a Venezuelan prison in 1985.

Violating international and bilateral treaties, Washington has rebuffed Venezuela’s request, charging Posada Carriles instead with minor violations of US immigration law for entering the US without a visa and lying to immigration officials. Last month, the terrorist, who had been in federal custody since May 2005, was set free on bail and returned to Miami.

The release has provoked international protests and exposed the hypocrisy of the so-called “global war on terrorism” proclaimed by a government that has sponsored and continues to harbor and protect a wanted terrorist.

The nine-page motion submitted to the federal court in El Paso, Texas, argues that the relationship between Posada Carriles and the CIA ended 30 years ago and therefore is irrelevant.

Declassified documents have established that Carriles was recruited as an agent of the CIA in 1961, was sent into the US Army for a year of training in demolition and terrorist tactics and remained directly on the CIA payroll at least until 1967. From 1969 to 1974, he served as a senior officer in the Venezuelan secret police, DISIP, charged with capturing, torturing and killing left-wing opponents of the government. During that period he remained an informant and “asset” of the CIA in Latin America.

In 1976, he planned the airline bombing, leaving its execution to two employees of his private detective agency that he set up in Caracas after a change of government forced him out of the secret police. Just two weeks before the October 1976 airline bombing, he was involved in another terrorist attack, this one in the center of Washington. A car bomb killed the exiled former foreign minister of Chile, Orlando Letelier, and an American aide, Ronni Moffitt.

After his escape from prison in Venezuela, Posada Carriles made his way to El Salvador, where he became a key operative in the illegal terror war against Nicaragua financed by the CIA and directed by the network established by the Reagan administration under the direction of Lt. Col. Oliver North of the National Security Council. He went on to Guatemala, becoming a government intelligence officer during a brutal counterinsurgency campaign that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

In the 1990s, by his own admission, Posada Carriles directed a series of terrorist bombings against hotels and tourist spots in Cuba, killing an Italian tourist.

And, in November 2000, he was involved in an aborted attempt to blow up a conference hall in Panama, where Cuban President Fidel Castro was scheduled to speak to hundreds of people. He was arrested and jailed for the plot, but then pardoned by outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso in 2004, reportedly as the result of either US pressure or bribes from anti-Castro Cuban exile groups.

In response to the government attempt to quash any public testimony about Posada Carriles’s ties to the CIA, the terrorist’s defense lawyers filed a countermotion this week, insisting that it was impossible to discuss the “context” of the case without dealing with their client’s relation with the agency. Moreover, the document claimed, this relationship “lasted for 25 years.”

“The government’s statement that his service to the United States ended in 1976 is incorrect,” the document said.

The implications of the motion are clear. Posada Carriles was working for the CIA when he planned and executed the terrorist bombing that murdered 73 people aboard the Cuban plane as well as the car-bomb assassination in Washington. Moreover, he remained an agent or “asset” of the US intelligence agency while continuing to carry out acts of terrorist and repressive violence in Cuba, Central America and elsewhere for at least another decade. Both of the 1976 terrorist acts took place when George H.W. Bush, the current US president’s father, was director of the CIA.

Declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/index.htm in 2005 establish that the CIA had advance intelligence on the planned airline bombing and that the FBI’s attaché in Caracas had repeated contacts with one of the operatives who placed the bomb on the plane and, just days before the bombing, obtained a visa for him to travel to the US.

The US government’s attempt to gag Posada Carriles about his CIA ties and the countermotion alleging that these connections spanned at least 25 years expose the real reason that the Bush administration refuses to abide by international law and extradite him to Venezuela to face trial.

While the administration has offered the incredible justification that Posada Carriles could face torture in Venezuela—this from a government that has not only tortured its own detainees at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, but also deliberately sent them to other countries to be tortured—the real reason is that such a prosecution would expose Washington’s role in decades of terrorism and repression in Latin America.

On April 25, Venezuela’s ambassador to the Organization of American States, Nelson Pineda, charged the US with harboring a “convicted and confessed terrorist” and demanded that Washington comply with its bilateral extradition treaty with Venezuela. Pineda read out a statement from the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry that stated:

“The freeing of the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is the final result of the maneuver that the government of George W. Bush put in motion to protect him and with this act it promotes impunity and disgracefully mocks the memory of the victims of the bombing of the Cubana de Aviación plane that took place in 1976.

“This act of complicity, committed by the sinister American president, seeks to buy the silence of Posada Carriles, who has for many years been an agent of the CIA and a pawn of the Bush clan, as the declassified documents of the US demonstrate and therefore has valuable information about the criminal activities carried out against the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Responding to these charges, the US alternate representative to the OAS, Margarita Riva-Geoghegan, ignored Venezuela’s extradition request, baldly stating, “The United States is not harboring Luis Posada Carriles.” She continued, “The United States is proceeding with its own national prosecution in an area where Mr. Posada Carriles has broken US law.”

Such claims are absurd on their face. The charges of murder and terrorism, substantiated by Washington’s own declassified documents, clearly take precedence over the minor immigration infractions that are being used as a pretense for ignoring the demand for extradition and providing a cover for what is in reality the harboring and protection of Posada Carriles.

In Cuba, meanwhile, the annual May Day demonstration in Havana was dominated by signs and slogans demanding the extradition of Posada Carriles as well as the freeing of the “Cuban Five,” five Cuban nationals who have been jailed in the US since 1998. Framed up on conspiracy and espionage-related charges for monitoring anti-Castro terrorist exile groups based in Miami, the five were convicted in 2001 and sentenced to jail terms ranging from 15 years to life.

Eco-Extremist Wants World Population to Drop below 1 Billion

business and media institute

Apparently, saving the whales is more important than saving 5.5 billion people. Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers, now warns mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth.

Watson's May 4 editorial asked the question “The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?” Then he left no doubt about the answer. “We are killing our host the planet Earth,” he claimed and called for a population drop to less than 1 billion.

The commentary reminded readers that Watson had called humans a disease before and he wasn't sorry. “I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.' I make no apologies for that statement,” the column continued.

Watson was invoking the worst of Robert Malthus, an English political economist who claimed that mankind was overpopulating the earth. That claimed first appeared in the late 1700s. Watson urged some solutions for mankind as part of a process to “need to re-wild the planet”:

· “No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas.” New York, London, Paris, Moscow are all too big. Then again, so are Moose Jaw, Timbuktu and even Annapolis, Md.

· “We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference.”

· “We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.”

· “Sea transportation should be by sail. The big clippers were the finest ships ever built and sufficient to our needs. Air transportation should be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary.”

· At least Watson was generous and said people could still talk with one another across great distances. “Communication systems can link the communities,” he proclaimed from on high.

The Watson rant kept on going calling for everything from cutting down on the population of domesticated dogs and cats to cutting down on everything else in what he called “simplify, simplify, simplify.”

Watson essentially called for humans to return to primitive lifestyles. “We need to stop flying, stop driving cars, and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles. The Mennonites survive without cars and so can the rest of us.”

Related article
Top Scientist Advocates Mass Culling 90% Of Human Population

US Tries to Avoid WTO Sanctions from Online Gambling Case Ruling

poker pages
The U.S. is looking to World Trade Organization (WTO) procedure to clarify its stance on its online gambling ban, to avoid any WTO member seeking or expecting compensation, a U.S. Trade Representative told reports Friday.

The WTO process would allow the U.S. to clarify its stance on the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) which was at the heart of the WTO appeal the US lost March 30.

In a long-running David versus Goliath case brought by the tiny Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda against the United States, the WTO ruled in 2005 that the US discriminates against online gambling operators that are not located within the United States, and ordered the US to take corrective action to comply with the rulings.

Washington can maintain the anti-gambling law if it is applied equally to remote betting on horse racing, the global trade mediator ruled.

On March 30, the WTO turned down the appeal the US lodged against the WTO ruling (click here to read related article).

Reuters pointed out that the WTO now allows other WTO members, ranging from tiny Antigua and Barbuda to the 27-nation European Union, to seek potential damages from the US through the WTO.

However, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative John Veroneau told reporters the United States did not believe there was any basis for other countries to receive compensation.

Veroneau argued that a case brought by Antigua and Barbuda several years ago took advantage of a "drafting error" made by the United States as part of its commitments in the early 1990s to open its recreational services market.

Even though U.S. law has banned interstate gambling for years, the United States had failed to make clear that its commitments "did not extend to gambling," Veroneau said. "Neither the United States nor other WTO members noticed this oversight in the drafting of U.S. commitments until Antigua and Barbuda initiated a WTO case ten years later."

"U.S. federal and state laws have banned interstate gambling for decades, therefore it would be nonsensical for the U.S. to make a commitment to open up interstate gambling for foreign providers when it was unlawful for U.S. providers," Veroneau told reporters.

It is somewhat ironic that his statement comes the same time that New York State regulators approved interstate horse betting, between the states of New York and Connecticut.

The New York Racing Association Inc., a private, non-profit association that owns and operates the three largest race tracks in New York (Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga) recently received approval from New York State gambling regulators allowing it to accept online bets from residents of New York and Connecticut.

However, since Internet gambling is illegal in Connecticut according to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, he is asking New York gambling regulators to block Connecticut residents from placing Internet bets on horse races in New York State, according to an article in the Hartford Courant.