You Tube
Monday, July 16, 2007
Exosquad was a cartoon that ran from 1993-1995. The writers were obviously clued in as many of the issues covered foretold events more than a decade later. In this clip, the bad guys force everyone to attend "civil registration" where an ID chip is implanted under their skin as a "New World Order" is announced.
Ewen MacAskill
London Guardian
Monday July 16, 2007
The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.
The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."
The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.
Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. "The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," the source said this week.
Nick Burns, the undersecretary of state responsible for Iran and a career diplomat who is one of the main advocates of negotiation, told the meeting it was likely that diplomatic manoeuvring would still be continuing in January 2009. That assessment went down badly with Mr Cheney and Mr Bush.
"Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact," said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively. They are also reluctant for Israel to carry out any strikes because the US would get the blame in the region anyway.
"The red line is not in Iran. The red line is in Israel. If Israel is adamant it will attack, the US will have to take decisive action," Mr Cronin said. "The choices are: tell Israel no, let Israel do the job, or do the job yourself."
Almost half of the US's 277 warships are stationed close to Iran, including two aircraft carrier groups. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise left Virginia last week for the Gulf. A Pentagon spokesman said it was to replace the USS Nimitz and there would be no overlap that would mean three carriers in Gulf at the same time.
No decision on military action is expected until next year. In the meantime, the state department will continue to pursue the diplomatic route.
Sporadic talks are under way between the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, on the possibility of a freeze in Iran's uranium enrichment programme. Tehran has so far refused to contemplate a freeze, but has provisionally agreed to another round of talks at the end of the month.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said that there are signs of Iran slowing down work on the enrichment plant it is building in Natanz. Negotiations took place in Tehran last week between Iranian officials and the IAEA, which is seeking a full accounting of Iran's nuclear activities before Tehran disclosed its enrichment programme in 2003. The agency's deputy director general, Olli Heinonen, said two days of talks had produced "good results" and would continue.
At the UN, the US, Britain and France are trying to secure agreement from other security council members for a new round of sanctions against Iran. The US is pushing for economic sanctions that would include a freeze on the international dealings of another Iranian bank and a mega-engineering firm owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Russia and China are resisting tougher measures. You Tube
Monday July 16, 2007
Some guy tries his bush loving debate against Cindy Sheehan and her supporters and gets shamed.
Alex Kingsbury
US News
Monday July 16, 2007
Plans to network together thousands of private and public video surveillance cameras in New York City have been in the works for years. Yet it was only this month, in the wake of the attempted bombings in London, that those plans took on a new sense of urgency. By the end of the year, Gotham officials say, the surveillance system will have hundreds of cameras scanning Lower Manhattan, watching tunnels, bridges, and the thousands of cars and people that move through the country's financial hub. The new network is raising perennial questions over the balance between New Yorkers' civil liberties and the powers of law enforcement.
The British government installed a similar system in London in the 1990s, designed to deter Irish Republican Army attacks. Christened the "ring of steel," the system in reality proved to be more of a Maginot line in terms of preventing attacks. The IRA was not deterred, nor was an al Qaeda-style group in 2005 when bombers struck the city's mass transit system. Yet the systems have proved invaluable in reconstructing terrorist attacks and, in the case of the failed car bombings this month, in tracking down suspects.
New York's Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says that the system, when complete, will incorporate 1,000 public and 2,000 private cameras, electronic license plate readers, and a 24-hour command center to monitor the many tireless electronic eyes. The system will also include remote-controlled movable barriers that could be used to isolate or redirect traffic in the event of an emergency. The new system carries an estimated price tag of $8 million for the first year. "We are determined to prevent another attack," Mayor Michael Bloomberg told Congress last March, "and we are sparing no expense."
Officer down. But cameras are not new to New York, nor is using private cameras in police investigations. Long before 9/11, there were hundreds of police security cameras around New York—one New York Civil Liberties Union report counted more than 2,300 visible from street level in 1998. There are now more than 4,200 cameras south of 14th Street, according to the report. In 2003, the NYPD began installing more cameras in high-crime neighborhoods under a pilot program. There are now more than 120 cameras in that system throughout the five boroughs, and hundreds more are planned.
Officials credit that system, combined with increased officer presence, with an 18 percent reduction in major felony crimes and a 22 percent decrease in shooting incidents in the first four months of 2007. Indeed, the very day that the specifics of the new ring-of-steel plans were announced, two NYPD officers were shot by a suspect fleeing a traffic stop in Brooklyn. The incident was caught by three separate, private security cameras in the area, which aided police in the hunt for the suspects.
Civil liberties advocates remain critical of the expansion of camera surveillance, raising questions about the nature of the private-public coordination of the cameras and rules for oversight. "At a very minimum, there should be strict procedures to delete old security tapes and ensure that there can't be unauthorized access to the system," says Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State who specializes in technology and privacy issues.
The NYCLU, meanwhile, cites anecdotal evidence of camera operators becoming voyeurs and police abuse of surveillance during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Also during that year, graphic footage of a suicide captured by a police surveillance camera mounted in a Bronx housing project appeared on a website featuring violent images and pornography. A police officer was later accused of leaking the tape. "Especially when private systems are incorporated into a police network, questions have to be asked about what rules govern those private actors," says Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU.
Even supporters of the camera systems acknowledge that their network is unlikely to prevent a determined criminal, especially one willing to commit a suicide attack. Insurance companies, some of the keenest risk assessors, also don't see the camera systems as significantly lowering the risk of an attack, in terms of lower premiums at least. And there hasn't been much vocal public opposition to cameras either. "The horse is way out of the barn—New York is a camera town," says Lieberman. "But it happens so incrementally that maintaining safeguards is even more important."
This story appears in the July 23, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report. AP
Monday July 16, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - A Marine corporal testifying in a court-martial said Marines in his unit began routinely beating Iraqis after officers ordered them to "crank up the violence level."
Cpl. Saul H. Lopezromo testified Saturday at the murder trial of Cpl. Trent D. Thomas.
"We were told to crank up the violence level," said Lopezromo, testifying for the defense.
When a juror asked for further explanation, Lopezromo said: "We beat people, sir."
Within weeks of allegedly being scolded, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman went out late one night to find and kill a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamandiya near the Abu Ghraib prison. The Marines and corpsman were from 2nd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment.
Lopezromo said the suspected insurgent was known to his neighbors as the "prince of jihad," and had been arrested several times and later released by the Iraqi legal system.
Unable to find him, the Marines and corpsman dragged another man from his house, fatally shot him, and then planted an AK-47 assault rifle near the body to make it appear he had been killed in a shootout, according to court testimony.
Four Marines and the corpsman, initially charged with murder in the April 2006 killing, have pleaded guilty to reduced charges and been given jail sentences ranging from 10 months to eight years. Thomas, 25, from St. Louis, pleaded guilty but withdrew his plea and is the first defendant to go to court-martial.
Lopezromo, who was not part of the squad on its late-night mission, said he saw nothing wrong with what Thomas did.
"I don’t see it as an execution, sir," he told the judge. "I see it as killing the enemy."
He said Marines consider all Iraqi men part of the insurgency.
Lopezromo and two other Marines were charged in August with assaulting an Iraqi two weeks before the killing that led to charges against Thomas and the others. Charges against all three were later dropped.
Thomas’ attorneys have said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury from his combat duty in Fallouja in 2004. They have argued that Thomas believed he was following a lawful order to get tougher with suspected insurgents.
Prosecution witnesses testified that Thomas shot the 52-year-old man at point-blank range after he had already been shot by other Marines and was lying on the ground.
Lopezromo said a procedure called "dead-checking" was routine. If Marines entered a house where a man was wounded, instead of checking to see whether he needed medical aid, they shot him to make sure he was dead, he testified.
"If somebody is worth shooting once, they’re worth shooting twice," he said.
The jury is composed of three officers and six enlisted personnel, all of whom have served in Iraq. The trial was set to resume Monday.
ALISON GENDAR
NY Daily News
Monday July 16, 2007
The NYPD's intelligence chief says Osama Bin Laden's henchmen have stepped up recruitment over the past six months - turning a desolate area of northern Pakistan into a training ground for a new generation of terrorists.
"They want to come here, and whatever their capabilities, they absolutely are focused on returning to New York City," NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence David Cohen told the Daily News.
Cohen said he was well aware of the threat before a new report prepared for the White House became public last week.
The intel report - titled "Al Qaeda better positioned to strike the West" - details how the terror network has regrouped and recovered from losses it suffered after 9/11. Though the findings caused a stir in Washington, Cohen told The News: "None of this should surprise us."
"We assume on any give day that someone is planning to do something in New York City," Cohen said during an exclusive interview. "Our posture is based on that fundamental assumption."
The report, prepared by the intelligence community for a White House meeting last week, does not indicate a specific threat against the U.S. or New York in coming months, Cohen said.
"Nothing coming out in the past few days would alter what we do on a daily basis," he said.
But Al Qaeda's regrouping underscores the need to keep the city's defenses up.
Al Qaeda retrenched by infiltrating a section of northern Pakistan that its government proved unable to control, Cohen said.
The sanctuary enabled the once-crippled network to build new mobile training camps, set up safehouses, train the next generation of top- and mid-level leaders and build ties to local terror groups, Cohen said.
"The absence of military presence in that area provides some sort of sanctuary," he explained. "Unless the pressure is constant, they will adapt."
Osama Bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are believed to be in Pakistan orchestrating the rebuilding of the terror network, Cohen said.
International law enforcement agencies are telling the Police Department that increasing numbers of extremists have been crossing into Pakistan, Cohen said.
"That enables them to take greater risks," he said. "If they lose a valued operative, they are now confident that another one is coming down the pike."
Even Al Qaeda's communication network has improved. It can now release Internet propaganda videos in a matter of hours after a terror attack.
Three months ago, federal officials monitoring classified reports began whispering about a "buzz" that Al Qaeda was readying strikes against U.S. targets by the end of the year.
In April, a military source attributed the worries to a "gut feeling" by analysts. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff used the same term this week.
Cohen said the best response was a sustained vigilance - not sudden surges of activity.
"The operational tempo has intensified in the past six months," Cohen said. "We are aware of that increase, and are on it." Think Progress
Monday July 16, 2007
On Wednesday, the Senate voted 97-0 to pass a resolution sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to censure Iran “for what it said was complicity in the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.” The resolution required the Bush administration to regularly report to Congress on Iran’s role in Iraq.
While the resolution explicitly rejected authorization for immediate military action, the gist of the resolution declared Iran is participating in acts of war against the United States, thereby laying the foundation for a confrontation with Iran. Newshoggers wrote that the resolution may provide the “political cover for launching a war.”
Validating the concern many felt, Sen. Sam Brownback appeared on Fox News shortly after the vote and declared he was ready to preemptively strike Iran. Host Sean Hannity asked Brownback, “There’s probably going to come a point for the next president that they’re going to have to determine whether to go out and have that preemptive strike. And you’re ready and would be ready to do that?”
“Yes, I am, and I think we have to be,” Brownback answered. “Sean, if we’re going to be serious about this fight, and we’re in this fight, and probably for a generation. We’re probably in this fight for a generation.” Watch it:
When the Congress vote to authorize force against Iraq in 2002, it cited as justification the fact that Congress had passed a law in 1998 sponsored by Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) and co-sponsored by Lieberman that concluded Iraq posed a serious threat. From the 2002 resolution:
Whereas in Public Law 105-235 (August 14, 1998), Congress concluded that Iraq’s continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in ‘material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations’ and urged the President ‘to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations’
UPDATE: Hullabaloo has more.
UPDATE II: The LA Times reports the greatest number of foreign militants come from Saudi Arabia.
Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News
Monday July 16, 2007
A British scientist and member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, John A. Blacker MSc IMI (Physical Systems), is planning to sue the BBC for mass public deception via their “9/11: The Conspiracy Files” program, RINF Alternative News can reveal.
The program program which aired on 18 February, 2007, promised to offer a thorough examination of the events of 9/11 and answer many of the questions posed by the 9/11 Truth Movement.
However, the hour long program failed to investigate the tough questions and ignored hard evidence that points towards a deeper conspiracy, while presenting an unfair and unbalanced view of 9/11 research.
ST911 Scientist to Sue BBC for Public Deception
Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News
Monday July 16, 2007
A British scientist and member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, John A. Blacker MSc IMI (Physical Systems), is planning to sue the BBC for mass public deception via their “9/11: The Conspiracy Files” program, RINF Alternative News can reveal.
The program program which aired on 18 February, 2007, promised to offer a thorough examination of the events of 9/11 and answer many of the questions posed by the 9/11 Truth Movement.
However, the hour long program failed to investigate the tough questions and ignored hard evidence that points towards a deeper conspiracy, while presenting an unfair and unbalanced view of 9/11 research.
Scientist and member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, John A. Blacker, is taking action against this portrayal on the grounds of ‘Total Public Deception’.
In ongoing correspondence with the BBC, Mr. Blacker is requesting an official apology and a second program to be produced in order to ‘set the record straight’.
Mr Blacker is preparing to take legal action against the BBC and is currently gathering evidence.
Earlier this month, ex MI5 whistleblower, David Shayler, along with Adrian Connock, producer of Mind the Gap which exposed the false flag terrorism in London on 7/7/05, released an extensive video rebuttal destroying the BBC’s attempt to discredit scientific evidence and eyewitness reports.
Speaking to RINF, Mr. Blacker said: “The BBC is being sued for lying to viewers and a formal apology and a new film correcting the scandalous misinformation is needed.
“How can 80+ strongest, undamaged and heaviest bottom floors offer only 0.78 seconds of resistance between them - yet were designed and built to withstand 3 times working load and have “indestructible cores” when new. This is without considering air resistance and any other slowing effect.
“This simple maths proves 911 was a demolition,” he said.
In Mr. Blacker’s most recent letter to the BBC he provides scientific evidence to support his theory of a controlled demolition.
Here is the letter.But the clip, less than a minute long, is undated and correspondents say it may be re-run footage. Its authenticity also cannot be independently verified.
Osama Bin Laden is filmed outdoors in army fatigues and praises those who die in the name of "holy war".
The US Senate on Friday voted to double the reward on him to $50m (£24.5m).
Escaped militant
The clip of the al-Qaeda leader features in a 40-minute video on a militant web site that carries the logo of al-Qaeda's media wing.
The video mainly shows fighters paying tribute to fellow militants killed in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden says: "The happy [man] is the one that God has chosen to be a martyr."
He says the Prophet Mohammed "wished upon himself this status".
The last Bin Laden message - an audio tape in July 2006 - referred to identifiable events, including the situation in Somalia.
However, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says this time he makes no reference to recent events, unlike his strategic adviser Ayman al-Zawahiri, whose frequent videos are far more specific.
The bulk of the new video pays tribute to dead militants.
The self-proclaimed leader of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed, praises "courageous knights" who have answered the call "for the sake of God to kick out the occupier who has desecrated the pure soil of Afghanistan".
Another key figure identified on the video is Abu-Yahya al-Libbi, who escaped from US custody at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan two years ago.
He says the Muslim world is "offering the best of its men and sacrificing the good of its sons... to protect its ideology".
On Friday, the US voted 87-1 to double the reward for the death or capture of Osama Bin Laden.
The vote came amid warnings that al-Qaeda had rebuilt its capacity to mount attacks and was trying to insert agents into the US.
A leaked draft of a new US intelligence report says al-Qaeda is at its strongest since just before the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.
CNN
Sunday, July 15, 2007
(CNN) -- Osama bin Laden stresses the importance of martyrdom for Muslim causes in a videotape that purportedly contains a 50-second message from the al Qaeda leader.
The 40-minute videotape, whose audio was being translated from Arabic by CNN, was intercepted before it was to appear on several Islamist Web sites known for carrying statements from al Qaeda and other radical groups.
The videotape, titled "A Special Surprise from As-Sahab. Heaven's Breeze Part I," was made in the last four weeks, but the clips appear to be old, said Octavia Nasr, CNN's senior editor for Arab affairs. There is no indication of where it was shot, and CNN cannot verify its authenticity.
"We're aware of the tape," a government official, who didn't want to be identified, told CNN. The official agreed that the tape's content is not necessarily new.
"There has not been, over time, a one-to-one correlation between release of a tape and any significant operation or attack afterward," the official added.
Bin Laden, with a bodyguard standing directly behind him, is looking down slightly in the video, appearing to address an audience below, which is unseen.
He says that the Prophet Mohammed wanted to be a martyr, and that is a worthy goal for every Muslim.
"So be alert, be wise and think. What is this status that the best of mankind wished for himself? He wished to be a martyr. He himself said, 'By him in whose hands my life is! I would love to attack and be martyred, then attack again and be martyred, then attack again and be martyred.'
"So this whole broad life is summarized by him who was inspired by God, the Lord of the heavens and earth, praised and exalted is he. This glorious prophet who was inspired by God summarized this entire life by these words. He wished upon himself this status. Happy is the one who was chosen by God as a martyr."
Bin Laden was one of several men appearing and speaking on the tape. They include Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq who was killed in a U.S. airstrike June 7, 2006.
The video was branded by As-Sahab Media, the company that traditionally handles al Qaeda communications to the public.
The environment shown is similar to that on releases made before the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, in which bin Laden is seen in the company of some of the hijackers, Nasr said.
Some of the backdrops also resemble those shown in videos when the U.S. attacks against the Taliban in Afghanistan began not long after the 9/11 attacks, she added.
The last time a recording of bin Laden was made public it was an audiotape, with an Arabic transcript, released on June 30, 2006.
For several weeks, radical Islamist Web sites have been announcing that there would be "good news soon from Sheikh Osama bin Laden."David Leppard
London Times
Sunday, July 15, 2007
A SUSPECTED Al-Qaeda operative who is believed by MI5 to have played a key role in the events leading up to the July 21 failed bombings is at liberty and living in east London.
Mohammed al-Ghabra, a 27-year-old Syrian who has been given British citizenship, is said by security sources to have arranged for the leader of the failed 21/7 London suicide attacks to travel to Pakistan for terrorist training.
The sources said al-Ghabra instructed a second terrorist suspect to facilitate a four-month trip to Pakistan by Muktar Said Ibrahim, the leader of the July 21 gang.
Ibrahim learnt how to make bombs while in Pakistan. Four months later, he deployed his training in a bid to kill dozens of people on three London Tube trains and a bus.
Al-Ghabra – who last year was accused by the British and American financial authorities of association with terrorism – lives with his mother and sister in a maisonette in a cul-de-sac in Forest Gate, east London. He is unemployed and regularly attends the local mosque on Romford Road.
Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP and security expert, said: “It is extraordinary that a man who is alleged to be central to a mass murder plot is still at liberty. How can this be?”
Last week Ibrahim and three other bombers were convicted of conspiracy to murder at Woolwich crown court. The judge, Mr Justice Fulford QC, sentenced the gang to life imprisonment with a minimum of 40 years each. He said they would have murdered at least 50 people and injured hundreds more if their plot had succeeded.
After the court case, it emerged that in December 2004 Ibrahim was followed to Heathrow airport by 10 MI5 undercover agents. The MI5 team was tailing the man driving him, Rauf Mohammed, an Iraqi taxi driver who was suspected of working with al-Ghabra in helping radical British Muslims travel to Iraq to fight against British and American troops.
Ibrahim and two other passengers were in the car. A well-placed source said: “MI5 judged they were going to take part in holy war activities in Pakistan. It was thought this might include going to terrorist training camps.”
The source added: “We knew the journey was arranged by Rauf Mohammed, acting on the instructions of Mohammed al-Ghabra.”
The connection with Rauf Mohammed (who was later charged and acquitted of terrorism offences) led Ibrahim and his travelling companions to be questioned by Special Branch before they boarded their flight.
They were found to be carrying thousands of pounds in cash, a military first-aid kit and a ballistics manual. Nonetheless, MI5 allowed Ibrahim to travel to Pakistan. There he was trained by Al-Qaeda to make explosives and groomed to become a suicide bomber.
Despite his known links to Rauf Mohammed, Ibrahim was not stopped, searched or questioned by police when he returned to Heathrow on March 8, 2005.
The lack of surveillance made it possible for Ibrahim to recruit three other would-be suicide bombers to make unobserved bulk purchases of hydrogen peroxide, used to manufacture the bombs.
Security sources have confirmed that they were alerted to Ibrahim’s return to the country. But they said he was not then classified by MI5 as a priority target.
One source said: “He was regarded as a low-key follower. He wasn’t forgotten. But the intelligence on him was not as worrying as it was on a whole host of others who were being watched at full tilt.”
The decision, according to sources, was based on an assessment by the Pakistanis – who had been asked to track Ibrahim – that he did not pose a terrorist threat.
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said yesterday: “It is simply extraordinary that the security service did not either prevent Ibrahim travelling abroad or put him under close surveillance when he returned. This is the third occasion in which the security services have failed to identify terrorists before they carried out their attacks.”
Speaking of al-Ghabra’s alleged role, Davis added: “It is also extraordinary, if true, that a prime facilitator of terrorist activity has neither been arrested or charged and is still at large.”
Al-Ghabra said last week: “I am not going to say anything. I say no comment.
My battle is through the courts and I refuse to be tried by the media.”
He was referring to allegations made against him last December when the British Treasury wrote to him saying it had “reasonable grounds for suspecting that you are, or may be, a person who facilitates the commission of acts of terrorism”.
In a statement issued at the time, it said: “Al-Ghabra has organised travel to Pakistan for individuals seeking to meet with senior Al-Qaeda individuals and to undertake jihad training. Several of these individuals have returned to the UK to engage in covert activity on behalf of Al-Qaeda.
“Additionally, al-Ghabra has provided material support and facilitated the travel
of UK-based individuals to Iraq to support the insurgents’ fight against coalition forces.”
The Treasury claimed it had information showing he had undertaken jihadi training at a terrorist camp in Kashmir.
The US Treasury froze his bank accounts, saying it was “designating” al-Ghabra as someone “who provides material and logistical support to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations”.
Al-Ghabra said when these allegations were made: “If I am a money-maker and this is why they have decided to put the sanctions against me, how could I have so many financial problems myself?”
He denied that he played any role in the so-called pipeline of young Muslim men that were travelling to fight with the insurgents in Iraq.
He said MI5 had repeatedly accused him in interviews with his friends of being a terrorist money man.
“I don’t have the capability of supporting anyone financially, barely myself. If anyone has the evidence, please show it to me. I am not the banker.”
Four years ago, al-Ghabra was charged with fraud and possession of a document or record that could be useful to terrorism. He spent nine months on remand before being acquitted in July 2004.Miami airport was briefly evacuated after baggage screeners found a possible explosive device - but it turned out to be a false alarm.
A suspicous device was found during luggage screening at the F terminal, and passengers and staff were told the leave the building.
The all-clear was given just over an hour later.
Television footage showed hundreds of passengers and staff gathering along roads leading to the terminal.
"A possible explosive device showed up in an X-ray machine at the checkpoint," airport spokesman Greg Chin told the Associated Press news agency.
Bomb disposal experts were called in to investigate but the item was found to be harmless.
The terminal serves United Airlines domestic and international flights.
Mark Townsend and Jamie Doward
London Observer
Sunday, July 15, 2007
One of Britain's most senior police officers has demanded a return to a form of internment, with the power to lock up terror suspects indefinitely without charge.
The proposal, put forward by the head of the Association of Police Chief Officers (Acpo) and supported by Scotland Yard, is highly controversial. An earlier plan to extend the amount of time suspects can be held without charge to 90 days led to Tony Blair's first Commons defeat as Prime Minister. Eventually, the government was forced to compromise on 28 days, a period which Gordon Brown has already said he wants to extend.
The Observer understands that the Acpo proposal has been discussed in meetings between Brown and senior police officers. Whitehall sources said the PM was receptive to the association's demands, but believes an upper detention limit is essential to avoid a de facto Guantanamo Bay based in the UK.
Ken Jones, the president of Acpo, told The Observer that in some cases there was a need to hold terrorist suspects without charge for 'as long as it takes'. He said such hardline measures were the only way to counter the complex, global nature of terrorist cells planning further attacks in Britain and that civil liberty arguments were untenable in light of the evolving terror threat.
Jones, a former chair of Acpo's counter-terrorism committee, said: 'We are now arguing for judicially supervised detention for as long as it takes. We are up against the buffers on the 28-day limit. We understand people will be concerned and nervous, but we need to create a system with sufficient judicial checks and balances which holds people, but no longer than a day [more than] necessary.
'We need to go there [unlimited detention] and I think that politicians of all parties and the public have great faith in the judiciary to make sure that's used in the most proportionate way possible.'
The proposal has provoked anger among civil rights groups. 'It is coming to the point when we have to ask serious questions about the role of Acpo in a constitutional democracy,' said Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty. 'We elect politicians to determine legislation and we expect chief constables to uphold the rule of law, not campaign for internment.' Internment was last used in Britain during the Gulf war against Iraqis suspected of links to Saddam Hussein's army. It has also been used against terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland and Germans during the Second World War.
Jones said the increasingly international element of the terror threat made evidence-gathering a longer and more difficult process. He argues that a system is required where suspects can be arrested earlier than those suspected of involvement in more traditional crime.
'We can't let the threat develop to the point we ordinarily would, because the potential for a suicide bomber to take hundreds of lives is too awesome to merely contemplate, and so we are into the evidence-gathering phase much earlier,' he said.
'Then we are into judicially supervised detention. The fact is that these cases do take much longer to investigate. The reach of an investigation can be global. We are using a system designed to protect the rights of a suspect of a routine criminal case in the United Kingdom and we are pushing it to its limit.
'We should never have got involved in the 90-day debate. In hindsight, we should have said that we needed an extraordinary mechanism to give us the ability to investigate these complex cases under judicial supervision,' said Jones.
Moves to extend the police's power to hold suspects will be dealt with in a security bill in the autumn.
Jones also admitted Acpo had discussed problems of control orders, used as a form of house arrest for suspects, with the government. 'Clearly it's an idea that does need a refreshed view on it. But the solution of doing nothing is not an option really,' he said of the orders, which have been criticised after a number of those supposedly under their control absconded. Jones's comments chime with those made by the man in charge of reviewing the government's terrorism laws. Lord Carlile of Berriew said problems with the immigration service and Passport Agency left terrorists free to move in and out of Britain.
The Observer can also reveal that the criminal convictions of the leader of the 21/7 bomb plot, Muktar Said Ibrahim, were not disclosed to the immigration authorities when he applied to remain in the UK. In 1996 Ibrahim, originally from Eritrea, was given two prison sentences to run concurrently, one for three years, the other for two, for handling stolen goods, sexual assault and robbery. But the offences were not revealed to officials when they granted him leave to remain in April 2000 - despite the fact they were still running.
· Police yesterday charged another two men, one in Australia and one in Britain, in connection with the failed car bomb attacks on London and Glasgow last month. Dr Sabeel Ahmed, 26, will appear in court in London tomorrow. Dr Mohammed Haneef, 27, has appeared before Brisbane magistrates. Tim Blair
Australian Sunday Telegraph
Sunday, July 15, 2007
LAST month Australians endured our coldest June since 1950. Imagine that; all those trillions of tonnes of evil carbon we've horked up into the atmosphere over six decades of rampant industrialisation, and we're still getting the same icy weather we got during the Cold War.
Not that June should be presented as evidence that global warming isn't happening, or that we're causing it. Relying on such a tiny sample would be unscientific and wrong, even if it involves an entire freakin' continent's weather patterns throughout the course of a whole month, for Christ's sake.
No such foolishness will be indulged in here.
Sadly, those who believe in global warming - and who would compel us also to believe - aren't similarly constrained. A few hot days are all they ever need to get the global warming bandwagon rolling; evidently it's solar powered. Here, for example, is an Australian Associated Press report on May's weather, which in places was a little warmer than usual:
"Climate change gave much of Australia's drought-stricken east coast its warmest May on record, weather experts say.
"Global warming and an absence of significant cold changes had driven temperatures well above the monthly average, said meteorologist Matt Pearce.
According to Mr Pearce, May's temperatures were "yet another sign of the widespread climate change that we are seeing unfold across the globe."
If that's the case, shouldn't June's cold weather - coldest since 1950, remember - be a sign that widespread climate change isn't unfolding across the globe? We're using the same data here; one month's weather. And, in fact, the June sample is Australia-wide while May only highlights the east coast. Fear the dawn of a great "coldening"!
While Australia freezes, it's kinda hot in California. Again, local toastiness is evidence of global warming; one San Francisco Chronicle writer this week referred glibly to their "global-warming-heated summer".
What phenomenon was responsible for previous summers? Maybe they got by on the superheated fumes radiating off Lateline host Tony Jones.
Snow cone Tone hosted an in-studio discussion Thursday night after the ABC presented The Great Global Warming Swindle, and he was hotter than a Christina Aguilera video. "Welcome to our debate on this deeply flawed and utterly mistaken documentary, which is wrong in every regard and was made by a zombie," Jones said in introduction (I'm only lightly paraphrasing).
During an interview with filmmaker Martin Durkin Tone was visibly sweating; no easy achievement during a typical summer in the UK, to where he'd flown for his heated little chat. Perhaps Tone was anticipating the phantom British summer forecast by The Independent's environment editor, Michael McCarthy, in April:
"The possibility is growing that Britain in 2007 may experience a summer of unheard-of high temperatures, with the thermometer even reaching 40C, or 104F, a level never recorded in history.
"This would be quite outside all historical experience, but entirely consistent with predictions of climate change."
As Wimbledon watchers would be aware, what with the rainiest tournament since Jimmy Connors defeated John McEnroe in 1982, those unheard-of high temperatures remain unheard-of. Someone might conclude, therefore, that the not-hot summer is not entirely consistent with predictions of climate change.
But climate change is like Michael Moore's tracksuit - it can fit anyone. In 2005, Greenpeace rep Steven Guilbeault helpfully explained: "Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that's what we're dealing with."
What we're dealing with, apparently, is weather.
What will the weather be like 100 years from now? Don't ask Britain's Guardian, which, like the Independent, is full of Warmin' Normans whose warm warnings never come true. "It could be time to say goodbye to defining features of British life," the paper claimed a few months ago, "like rainy picnics and cloudy sunbathing . . ."
Other defining features of British life - screaming, inaccurate nonsense from the Guardian, for example - will never be farewelled. Cue wet Wimbledon, the coldest day for Test match cricket (7.4C) in English history, and this BBC online headline: "Where has the UK's summer gone?"
Maybe it migrated to Australia, like Augustus Owsley Stanley III, the American LSD enthusiast and manufacturer.
Possibly influenced by his product, Owsley moved to outback Queensland about twenty years ago, reportedly convinced that imminent global warming would cause - in the tradition of warm meaning cold - the whole Northern Hemisphere to be covered with ice.
Owsley, now 72, is still in Queensland, and likely not a little confused. Things didn't exactly turn out as predicted. While his former Californian haunts melt due to "global warming", this year Queensland has gone frosty. Townsville's June was its coldest since 1940; June 24 saw the coldest Brisbane morning on record.
Think of these little factoids the next time your read a report linking a hot day or month or year to global warming. And, if you run into this Owsley bloke, please ask him to quit adding things to environmentalists' water supplies.
Nuclear scare after Japan quake
A strong earthquake in central Japan has damaged a large nuclear power plant causing a leak of radioactive material, officials at the plant have said.
Water containing radioactive substances leaked into the sea and a fire broke out in one of the Kashiwazaki plant's electrical transformers.
The reactors at the plant automatically shut down during the magnitude 6.8 earthquake.
At least seven people were killed and hundreds injured in the earthquake.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6901213.stm BBC News
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Foreign Secretary David Miliband has insisted that the US will continue to be the UK's most important partner.
His assertion comes after comments from two other ministers seemed to hint at a cooling of relations with the US.
"Our commitment to work with the American government in general, and the Bush administration in particular, is resolute," Mr Miliband told the BBC.
He said issues such as climate change and terrorism could only be tackled with the US.
His statement came after new Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch Brown claimed the UK and the US would no longer be "joined at the hip" on foreign policy.
And International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander warned in a speech against unilateralism and called for an "internationalist approach" to global problems.
'Different challenges'
Some analysts considered those remarks as evidence of Labour distancing itself from the US - and the close personal ties between former Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush.
But Mr Miliband rebuffed those claims, saying: "We have a strong new leader in the United Kingdom, he is going to be a valued partner with the United States.
"He is going to work very closely with President Bush. That is the right thing to do."
Mr Miliband said Lord Malloch Brown had been reflecting on the past and saying that Britain faced a "different set of challenges than we did 10 years ago".
A strategy paper published last year by the government under Mr Blair stated that the US was the UK's single most important bilateral partner in the world, alongside its multilateral partnerships with bodies such as the UN.
Mr Miliband said nothing had changed, and that the UK and US had a "shared history and shared values".
"We want to be serious players who make a difference in the world - and you do that with the United States, not against them," he told BBC One's Sunday AM programme.
'Get a grip'
Meanwhile, former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown said the UK should use the relationship with the US to Britain's advantage.
Speaking of operations in Iraq, he said: "We have real autonomy - in fact I suspect one of Mr Blair's mistakes was he did not use the leverage he had to influence American policy."
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell called on Mr Brown to "get a grip".
"What is at issue is not the relationship with the US but the nature of that relationship," he said.
"Under Tony Blair the relationship was so subordinate as to appear subservient. Britain needs to be America's candid friend not its client."
Earlier in the week, Gordon Brown told BBC Radio Five Live that he would continue to work, as Tony Blair did, "very closely with the American administration". BBC News
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Half a million illegal immigrants should be given the right to stay in Britain, a think tank has said.
The Institute of Public Policy Research says such an amnesty would bring in £1bn in extra taxes, and save costs of £4.7bn needed to deport people.
It is urging Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to adopt the move, saying a large scale deportation would never happen.
The Home Office said an amnesty was unnecessary and would create "a strong pull for waves of illegal migration".
It is not known how many illegal immigrants are in the UK, with estimates varying widely from 300,000 to 900,000.
The Home Office has estimated it would take more than 30 years to deport them all.
Danny Sriskandandarajah, head of migration and equalities at the Institute of Public Policy Research, said: "The simple truth is that we are not going to deport hundreds of thousands of people from the UK.
"Our economy would shrink and we would notice it straightaway in uncleaned offices, dirty streets and unstaffed pubs and clubs.
"So we have a choice: make people live in the shadows, exploited and fearful for the future; or bring them into the mainstream, to pay taxes and live an honest life."
Housing pressures
Immigration minister Liam Byrne has repeatedly rejected calls for an amnesty.
A Home Office spokesman said a new Australian-style points system for managed migration would allow skilled migrants into the UK to fill gaps in the economy.
The pressure group Migrationwatch UK has argued that an amnesty on illegal immigrants would put too much pressure on council housing.
Migrationwatch has also questioned the benefits brought by legal migrant workers, saying their economic benefit was equal to 4p a week for each person in Britain.
Trade unions recently said migrant workers who come to the UK legally had boosted the economy.
The TUC said the amount of tax paid by migrants exceeded the cost of supplying public services. POLLY DUNBAR
Daily Mail
Sunday, July 15, 2007
It could be the perfect answer for parents anxious about their children's whereabouts.
A device the size of a large matchbox is being launched that exactly pinpoints a carrier's location through a global positioning system accessed by computer or mobile phone.
The gadget, called buddi, can be clipped to children's clothing or carried in their pockets. Parents then log on to see their child's position on a detailed map via satellite tracking.
Buddi also has two buttons that can be pressed if the wearer is lost or in trouble to alert friends or relatives through an emergency call centre active 24 hours a day.
It is the first such device to be launched in Britain and is the brainchild of Sara Murray, 38, a former marketing consultant. She spent two years developing the idea as a result of her own experiences as mother of a daughter, now 14.
"When my daughter was little she got lost in a supermarket and in that moment of panic when I realised she was missing, I wished I had something I could put on her to keep track of her," she said.
"I found her safe and sound but, as she grew up, there were many more occasions when I worried where she was and thought there must be a better way of monitoring her. Then, two years ago, I came up with the idea for buddi."
Ms Murray, who lives in Pimlico, South-West London, said her idea could help other vulnerable people such as those with dementia or learning difficulties.
"We live in difficult times and any service that can provide people with the confidence that they can be traced within seconds, or alert people in emergencies, is something I am sure will help people," she added.
The device is backed by organisations responsible for vulnerable people, such as Parents and Children Together and the National Autistic Society. It goes on sale on the internet next month, costing £299 to buy plus £20 a month to operate.
But critics warn it could encourage parents' paranoia and lead to children being over-reliant on the system rather than developing skills to cope with potential dangers. Michele Elliot, director of children's charity Kidscape, said: "Tracking devices could be useful in certain circumstances, such as for children with learning disabilities or elderly people with dementia.
"But I would warn parents to use their common sense and not become too dependent on them.
"I worry that giving these devices to children will send out the message that the world is very dangerous and they can't ever be out of contact with their parents. They might never learn important lessons for themselves."
Ms Murray has also launched a product called petbuddi, which can be attached to a pet's collar and used to track them.
But the version for children has a more intriguing alternative use. Maybe it is just the job for suspicious wives fretting about a husband "working late" again. John Follain
London Times
Sunday, July 15, 2007
FOR two decades until his capture in 1994, Carlos the Jackal murdered, bombed and kidnapped his way to infamy, retaining the title of world’s most dangerous terrorist before Osama Bin Laden stole his crown.
But speaking from the Clair-vaux prison in northeast France last week he berated terrorist cells said to have targeted Britain, criticising them for plotting to kill ordinary people.
In his first telephone interview with a newspaper, the Venezue-lan-born Vladimir Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, 57, said he was saddened by any loss of life in London, where he lived as a young man. He also attacked what he called a lack of professionalism in some cells linked to Al-Qaeda.
Sanchez is serving a life sentence for three murders in Paris in 1975. He will go on trial again in January over four bomb attacks in France in 1982 and 1983 that killed 12 people and wounded more than 100.
Sanchez, who is now overweight and diabetic, showed no remorse, laughing when asked about the number of his victims.
“I’m not a sadist or a maso-chist – I don’t enjoy the suffering of others,” he claimed in a thick Latin American accent. “When we had to eliminate them it was in a cold, simple way with the least pain possible.”
His most audacious attack was the kidnapping of 11 oil ministers in Vienna in 1975, which elicited an estimated £10m in ransom. He eluded the CIA and French intelligence with the help of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, the Libyan leader, Saddam Hus-sein in Iraq and a network of bases behind the Iron Curtain.
“Kensington and Chelsea were places where I spent my youth, so I’m not happy about people getting killed in the streets of London,” he said.
He condemned Al-Qaeda followers without specific targets, saying: “They are not professionals. They’re not organised. They don’t even know how to make proper explosives or proper detonators.”
Sanchez was a self-styled “professional revolutionary” who studied in Moscow in the 1960s before signing up with a Palestinian guerrilla movement. After being dispatched to London in the 1970s, he taught Spanish at a secretarial college in Mayfair, where he flirted with students while making lists of people to be kidnapped or murdered.
His first attempt failed when Joseph Edward Sieff, the president of Marks & Spencer, was shot at his home in St John’s Wood in 1973, but survived.
In 1975, Sanchez shot dead two unarmed counter-intelli-gence officers and an informer near the Sorbonne. When a journalist found a copy of Frederick Forsyth’s thriller The Day of the Jackal at his flat in Bayswater, west London, the nickname “Carlos the Jackal” followed.
To Sanchez’s irritation, it has stuck. He did not object to being called a terrorist but “Jackal” irked him because it was the nickname of an unpopular police chief in Venezuela.
“It was invented by the Guardian. It was my newspaper – I used to buy it every day,” he said.
In 1982 Carlos launched what French prosecutors call “a private war” when his then-girl-friend, Magdalena Kopp, and an accomplice were arrested in Paris with a car full of explosives.
He is accused of blowing up two trains, Marseilles railway station and a Paris street to secure Kopp’s freedom. She married Sanchez and had a daughter.
He dismissed his coming trial as “bullshit”, arguing that the French had no right to prosecute him because he had been illegally detained in Sudan in 1994 and brought to France. “I am being held hostage,” he claimed.
Asked about his victims, he said: “I don’t know how many I’ve killed . . . I’ve been fighting since I was 14. Fighting, fighting. Do you know how many people got killed in these fights?”
The French say the number was 83 but he said: “I couldn’t count. Less than 100 anyway.” And what had those deaths achieved? “Our example has been followed, not only by communists but even by jihadists.”
In 1991 he settled in Amman but sent his wife and daughter to live in Venezuela. “There were too many temptations - pretty girls and married women,” he said. He later married Lana Jarrar, a Jordanian 19 years his junior.
Since his arrest he has been married again, this time to his lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre. “I think things are more difficult for her than for me, but this is the price to pay for one’s struggle against the empire,” he said. Mark Townsend
London Observer
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Britain's biggest supermarket chain received a series of bomb threats yesterday, forcing the closure of 14 Tesco stores. Police launched a criminal investigation following the threats, which are believed to have been made by a number of people. Officers, however, said terrorists or extremists were not behind the safety scare.
A statement from Hertfordshire Police, where Tesco has its headquarters, said the stores were temporarily closed for public safety. At Tesco's Barrhead store, East Renfrewshire, Scotland, staff were escorted outside and sent home for the day shortly after 12.30pm. A worker at a neighbouring shop said: 'Police came and told us it had received a bomb threat. They suggested we might want to close.' Police refuse to comment on who was behind the scare. No one was hurt in the incidents.
Tesco stores in Lancashire, Suffolk, Dyfed Powys in Wales, Fife and Strathclyde in Scotland, Leicestershire, Humberside, West Mercia, West Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and London were affected. All are expected to open today.
Jon Ponder
Pensito Review
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Apologists for Pres. George W. Bush routinely lay blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Clinton administration, because the Clinton team failed purportedly missed an opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden.
But since 2005, at least, the Bush administration has known that al Qaeda’s senior leadership, including, presumably, bin Laden, is in Pakistan — and yet the president refuses to attempt to apprehend them.
Why? Because the Pakistanis won’t allow it.
Here’s what an intelligence official said in congressional testimony earlier this week:
“It’s not that we lack the ability to go into that space,” said Tom Fingar of the office of the Director of National Intelligence. “But we have chosen not to do so without the permission of the Pakistani government,” Fingar told members of Congress who demanded to know why the U.S. did not take more decisive action against a known enemy.
Bush is suddenly averse to invading a sovereign nation? How bizarre. He has drained our blood and treasury to go after Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with the 2001 attacks. And yet, he lets Musharraf, a dictator, provide a safe haven for the perpetrators of the atrocity.
Karl Rove drew derisive laughter at a news conference in Denver earlier this month when he referred to the government’s new policy of not invading other countries preemptively:
KARL ROVE: The United States has concerns about taking unilateral action in a sovereign nation without their approval. And so this has always been the difficulty we have with — [Laughter.] Unless, of course, they‘re Saddam Hussein
Rove gave that answer to a question about the revelation that the administration had fixed locations for senior al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan in 2005, but while the Navy SEALs were en route, Sec. Donald Rumsfeld and, probably, Vice Pres. Cheney, called off the attack.
Last week, Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Secretary, said he had a feeling in his gut that there would be an attack on the United States this summer. If the unthinkable does happen, it will be interesting to see how they manage to blame this one on Pres. Clinton.