China plans first spacewalk

China plans to carry out its first spacewalk later this year. An official from the nation's manned space program made the announcement on Thursday.

The Shenzhou Seven will take off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwestern province of Gansu.

Chinese astronauts will leave their spacecraft for the first time, and the craft will also release a small satellite.

The official said breakthroughs have been made in significant techniques related to the spacewalk.

Research into the development of spacecraft and rockets has continued smoothly, and astronauts have gone through extensive training. Link

Former SAS soldier blows apart Miliband denial of UK torture involvement.

This statement was prepared and read by Ben Griffin, ex-SAS soldier, at a press conference on Monday 25 February 2008.

Our government would have us believe that our involvement in the process known as Extraordinary Rendition is limited to two occasions on which planes carrying detainees landed to refuel on the British Indian Ocean Territory, Diego Garcia. David Miliband has stated that the British Government expects the Government of the United States to “seek permission to render detainees via UK territory and airspace, including Overseas Territories; that we will grant that permission only if we are satisfied that the rendition would accord with UK law and our international obligations; and how we understand our obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture¹.” (Taken from a statement given to the House of Commons by the Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Thursday 21 February 2008)

The use of British Territory and airspace pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of Extraordinary Rendition in the first place. Since the invasion of Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001 UKSF has operated within a joint US/UK Task Force. This Task Force has been responsible for the detention of hundreds if not thousands of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq. Individuals detained by British soldiers within this Task force have ended up in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Bagram Theatre Internment Facility, Balad Special Forces Base, Camp Nama BIAP and Abu Ghraib Prison.

Whilst the government has stated its desire that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed, it has remained silent over these other secretive prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. These secretive prisons are part of a global network in which individuals face torture and are held indefinately without charge. All of this is in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions, International Law and the UN Convention Against Torture.

Early involvement of UKSF in the process of Extraordinary Rendition centres around operations carried out in Afghanistan in late 2001. Of note is an incident at the Qalai Janghi fortress, near Mazar-i-Sharif. UKSF fought alongside their US counterparts to put down a bloody revolt by captured Taliban fighters. The surviving Taliban fighters were then rendered to Guantanamo Bay.

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003 this joint US/UK task force appeared. Its primary mission was to kill or capture high value targets. Individuals detained by this Task Force often included non-combatants caught up in the search for high value targets. The use of secret detention centres within Iraq has negated the need to use Guantanamo Bay whilst allowing similar practice to go unnoticed. More

You think you are free?

Watching old movies makes me sad. I'm inevitably reminded of a kindlier, gentler world without cameras that spy on populations, where overseas travelling was pleasurable and privacy was an individual's right.

Nowadays, states are usurping responsibilities that are rightfully those of their citizens. Western so-called democracies, in particular, are supposed to have governments that are servants of the people, whereas, in fact, the opposite is true. Under the guise of doing what's best for us or ensuring our security, governments are exercising more and more control over our lives. And, tragically, we are facilitating this erosion of our own freedoms, mostly because we're not even aware it's happening.

The US and Britain are leading the pack in this encroaching Orwellian nightmare. "War is peace; Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is strength," wrote George Orwell in his book 1984. In recent years, they have waged wars in the name of peace, put entire populations under their thumb in the name of freedom while government spin and a compliant media serve to keep people ignorant about their leaders' true motives.

If we only knew we are being indoctrinated to offer up our personal freedoms to save ourselves from a horrible fate at the hands of nicotine, calories and Al Qaida. We are being taught to fear asylum seekers, climate change, crazed terrorists and even each other. Western governments are perfecting the politics of fear because fearful populaces will do their bidding without question and willingly subject themselves to control.

Britain has become a master of this technique. It currently holds a database containing the DNA of 4.5 million people, arrested for both serious crimes and minor infractions. The police have found this tool so useful they are pushing to expand it to cover everyone in the country although the Home Office has rejected the idea for the moment.

By 2012 Britons over 16 will be required to hold biometric ID cards checkable by police, immigration and customs officials, as well as public and private bodies such as travel agencies, airlines, banks and even retailers.

By 2010, Britain is also expected to incorporate Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips in passports designed to carry a wealth of personal data on travellers.

Embedded

Non-stop Gaza Massacre

In less than 24 hours between Feb 27 & 28, 2008, Israel killed 30 Palestinians, 10 of them are babies and children

US send warships to eastern Med

US Sending 3 Warships to Eastern Mediterranean As Regional Tensions Mount

The U.S. Navy is sending three ships to the eastern Mediterranean Sea in a show of strength during a period of tensions with Syria and political uncertainty in Lebanon.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the deployment should not be viewed as threatening or in response to events in any single country in that volatile region.

"This is an area that is important to us, the eastern Med," he said when asked about news reports of the ship movements. "It's a group of ships that will operate in the vicinity there for a while," adding that "it isn't meant to send any stronger signals than that. But it does signal that we're engaged, we're going to be in the vicinity and that's a very, very important part of the world."

Another military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because full details about the ship movements are not yet public, said a Navy guided missile destroyer, the USS Cole, was headed for patrol in the eastern Mediterranean and that the USS Nassau, an amphibious warship, would be joining it shortly. The officer said a third ship would go later, but he did not identify it by type or name.

The U.S. Sixth Fleet, whose area of operations includes the entire Mediterranean, is based at Naples, Italy.

The decision to send the ships appeared to be a not-too-subtle show of U.S. force in the region as international frustration mounts over a long political deadlock in tiny, weak Lebanon. The U.S. blames Syria for the impasse, saying Syria has never given up its ambitions to control its smaller neighbor.

The presidential election in Lebanon has been delayed 15 times. Just this week the date was pushed back to March 11.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to visit the Middle East next week. More

Top prosecutor in AIPAC case quits

The top prosecutor in the case against two former AIPAC staffers is quitting.

Less than two months before the trial date Kevin DiGregory, an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia's Eastern District, is joining the private intellectual property firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips starting Monday.

DiGregory has led the classified information case against Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, since they were indicted in August 2005.

Prosecutors based the case on a never-used 1917 statute criminalizing not just the leaking but the receipt of classified information. In filings and public hearings over the years, the presiding federal judge, T.S. Ellis III, has increasingly suggested that the prosecution's case is flimsy and constitutionally fallible. JTA

Iran 'number one world power': Ahmadinejad

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Thursday that Iran was the world's "number one" power, as he launched a bitter new assault on domestic critics he accused of siding with the enemy.

"Everybody has understood that Iran is the number one power in the world," Ahmadinejad said in a speech to families who lost loved ones in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

"Today the name of Iran means a firm punch in the teeth of the powerful and it puts them in their place," he added in the address broadcast live on state television.

Ahmadinejad's comments come amid renewed Western efforts on the UN Security Council to agree a third package of sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to suspend sensitive nuclear activities.

They also came a day after former top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani launched an unprecedented attack on Ahmadinejad's foreign policy, accusing him of using "coarse slogans and grandstanding".

"You can see how some people here... try to materialise the plans of the enemies and by showing that Iran is small and the enemy is big," added Ahmadinejad.

"These are the people who put the enemies of humanity in the place of God," said the deeply religious president... AFP

Stop Fed Intervention

A Statement to the House Banking Committee, February 26, 2008

Mr. Chairman,

Price controls are almost universally reviled by economists. The negative economic consequences of price floors or price ceilings are numerous and well-documented. Our current series of hearings have been called to discuss the most important, but least understood, price manipulation in the world today: the manipulation of the interest rate.

By setting the federal funds rate, the rate at which banks in the Federal Reserve System loan funds to each other, the Federal Reserve inhibits the actions of market participants coming together to determine a market interest rate. The Federal Reserve and the federal government do not deign to interfere in setting the price of houses, the interest rate on mortgages, or the prices of wood and steel. The Fed’s actions in setting the federal funds rate however, because it reflects the price of money to a borrower and thus affects demand for money, affects prices throughout the economy in a manner less pervasive but just as damaging as direct price controls.

The example of the Soviet Union should have taught us that no one person, no group of people, no matter how scientifically trained, can arbitrarily set prices and not expect economic havoc. Only the spontaneous interaction of market participants can lead to the development of a functioning price system that allows the needs and wants of all participants to be met. The sense I get from reading much of the punditry is that the federal funds rate is set often by the whims of the Federal Reserve governors. Even mechanistic explanations such as the Taylor Rule rely on inputs that are often left up to the discretion of the Fed policymakers: what is the potential GDP, do we use CPI or PCE, overall CPI versus CPI less energy and food, etc. Ron Paul

It Does Happen In America

Don Siegelman, a popular Democratic governor of Alabama, a Republican state, was framed in a crooked trial, convicted on June 29, 2006, and sent to Federal prison by the corrupt and immoral Bush administration.

The frame-up of Siegelman and businessman Richard Scrushy is so crystal clear and blatant that 52 former state attorney generals from across America, both Republicans and Democrats, have urged the US Congress to investigate the Bush administration’s use of the US Department of Justice to rid themselves of a Democratic governor who "they could not beat fair and square," according to Grant Woods, former Republican Attorney General of Arizona and co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee. Woods says that he has never seen a case with so "many red flags pointing to injustice."

The abuse of American justice by the Bush administration in order to ruin Siegelman is so crystal clear that even the corporate media organization CBS allowed "60 Minutes" to broadcast on February 24, 2008, a damning indictment of the railroading of Siegelman. The "60 Minutes" segment is so compelling that the Republican-owned CBS affiliate in Alabama, WHNT, blacked out the broadcast, offering a lame excuse of technical problems that CBS in New York denied. The Republican-owned news media in Alabama worked hand in glove with the political prosecution to ruin Siegelman. Paul Craig Roberts Lew Rockwell.com

Founder of Pro-Zionist PNAC Predicts War Between U.S. and China Over Taiwan

PNAC founder predicts US-China war

The United State could go to war with communist China over Taiwan, according to the founder of the neo-conservative think tank Project for New American Century - the group who successfully lobbied the American government to invade Iraq.

"The Taiwan problem can explode at any moment," Dr. Robert Kagan told the German weekly Die Zeit. "Let's talk about a mid-term danger. It's not guaranteed that a conflict can be avoided if China becomes more democratic but it will be easier to prevent it."

But Dr. Kagan believes that the US has a strategic edge of China as Washington has established military alliances with China's neighbours Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and a nuclear cooperation with India.

Dr. Kagan, who graduated from Yale, and holds a doctorate from American University in Washington, DC, was a co-signatory of the 1998 letter to former President Bill Clinton urging him to go to war against Iraq.

The other PNAC members who signed the letter include former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's deputy and disgraced former World Bank head Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who outed CIA officer Valerie Plame in mid-June 2003, and the former US Permanent Representative to the UN John Bolton, who falsely testified to the Congress about Iran's enriched uranium contamination.

Robert Kagan is presently a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund. Link

Russia Warns of War

NATO has been getting rather pejorative lately. In fact, NATO is acting like vicious White House Neocons. The rest of the news is also Zionist driven.

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The Hippocratic Oath Dies in Gitmo

I have been representing Abdul Al-Ghizzawi, one of my Guantánamo clients, for two and a half years. The day I took on his case, I knew little about him other than he was seriously ill. My goal from that day forward has been to ascertain what is wrong with Al-Ghizzawi and get him the medical care he needs.

In the fall of 2006, Dr. Jürg Reichen, a respected liver specialist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, filed an affidavit in which he testified that, based on the symptoms described by Al-Ghizzawi and based on my own observations of Al-Ghizzawi, it seemed likely that he was suffering from hepatitis B and perhaps liver cancer. Reichen would have been able to make a more conclusive diagnosis with my client’s medical records, but the government has refused to turn them over.

In response to Reichen’s affidavit, the government provided an affidavit from its medical director at the base, one Dr. Ronald Sollock. Sollock signed a sworn statement claiming that Al-Ghizzawi received a full medical screening upon his arrival in 2002 and had indeed tested positive for hepatitis. Moreover, he appeared to have contracted tuberculosis at some point in 2004. Despite these alarming diagnoses, Sollock insisted that my client was “just fine” (as if TB and hepatitis indicated good health).

Although Al-Ghizzawi signed a release allowing me to receive his medical records, Judge John D. Bates, a George W. Bush appointee in the U.S. District Court for D.C., refused to order the government to provide Al-Ghizzawi medical treatment, or me his medical records. More

Russia's Medvedev warns Kosovo's independence could set Europe ablaze

The man all but certain to win Russia's presidency warned Wednesday that Kosovo's independence could destabilize Europe.

First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is expected to easily win Sunday's presidential vote, said Kosovo's independence has "jeopardized security and stability of the vast region."

Medvedev said recognition of Kosovo's declaration Feb. 17, spearheaded by the United States, has "put Europe in a very difficult situation."

"The United States is far away and is not facing any risks, but Europe could go ablaze," he said in a campaign speech in the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod. "It's enough to put a match to set everything ablaze."

Russia has vocally condemned Kosovo's independence from Serbia and its recognition by the U.S. and major EU powers, saying it violates international law and threatens to destroy the existing system governing international relations.

Medvedev said Wednesday that Kosovo's independence could encourage a rise in organized crime and drug trafficking across Europe — which would threaten Russia, among other nations.

He promised that Moscow would continue to offer political support to Serbia and said that a new Russian natural gas pipeline would provide "significant" economic assistance to Belgrade.

President Vladimir Putin sent Medvedev to Belgrade on Monday to supervise the signing of a deal for the South Stream pipeline, which would run under the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria before extending to Serbia and, possibly, other European nations.

The agreement will make Serbia a key hub for Russia's energy supplies to the European continent. The Associated Press

Sun will swallow Earth: Official

Two scientists from the University of Sussex and Mexico's University of Guanajuato appear to have confirmed that if we're still around in 7.6 billion years, global warming will be the least of our worries, since our beloved Mother Earth will be drawn inexorably towards the Sun and snuffed from existence.

Sussex Uni's Robert Smith and Guanajuato's Klaus-Peter Schroeder got out their calculators to determine once and for all whether Earth would escape a blazing death by spinning into a more distant orbit around the Sun, or whether it's ultimately curtains.

The former theory suggests that, as the Sun expands into a red giant, it will eject its outer gaseous layers, thereby losing mass and weakening its gravitational grip on the Blue Marble.

However, this get-out clause doesn't factor in tidal forces or the drag of the Sun's outer layer, according to the doomsday boffins. The Earth actually exerts its own (modest) gravitational pull on the Sun, causing the face closest to us to bulge out - an extrusion which constitutes bad long-term news.

Smith explained to Space.com: "Just as the Earth is pulling on the Sun's bulge, it's pulling on the Earth, and that causes the Earth to slow in its orbit. It will spiral back and finally end up inside the Sun."

In addition to this fatal attraction, the gaseous layers escaping from the Sun will exacerbate the problem, creating drag on Earth's orbit, further slowing it. The Register

Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade

The Reuters headline on February 23 reads: "Rice holds Serbia responsible for US embassy attack."

Reading this I couldn't help thinking about the ultimatum delivered to the Belgrade government in July 23, 1914 by representatives of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Yes, I know it's a stretch and we're not in a similar crisis (yet), but I can't help noticing even distant historical parallels.

Recall from high school history class that Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Bosnia on June 28 by Gavrilo Princep, a member of the Serbian minority in Bosnia. Bosnia's mixed population of Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslims had been under Austro-Hungarian administration since 1878.

In the Herzegovinian Rebellion of 1875 peasants---Serbian and Croatian serfs of Muslim beys or overlords---in what was then Ottoman Turkish territory rose up in protest of unbearable tax burdens. Serbia, technically still part of the Ottoman Empire but independent de facto since 1868, and the tiny Princedom of Montenegro intervened on the side of the rebels, and were soon joined by Russia, Romania and Bulgaria. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878 Bosnia-Herzegovina was ceded to Vienna. The Ottoman Empire retained formal overlordship, but in 1908 Austria-Hungary (over considerable protest by Serbia and Russia) annexed the state outright.

Gavrilo Princep was a Pan-Slavist, a member of the secret Black Hand society committed to the ideal of a Yugoslavia or "state of southern Slavs:" Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Montenegrans, Slovenians. Perhaps he thought that killing Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia would abet that cause. If so, maybe he was right: just 18 million deaths and four years later, as one of the many outcomes of the "Great War," the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes," was proclaimed, renamed in "Kingdom of Yugoslavia" in 1929. Counterpunch

Russia abides by international law in its support for Serbia - FM

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that Russia acted in line with international laws by supporting Serbia's efforts to regain its territorial integrity.

The Kosovo parliament unilaterally adopted on February 17 a declaration on the breakaway republic's independence from Serbia. Belgrade has called the decision illegal and is demanding to cancel it. However, the United States and some other Western countries have recognized Kosovo's independence.

"It is unacceptable that for the first time in the post-war history, a country [Serbia], which is a member of the United Nations, has been divided in violation of all principles used in resolving territorial conflicts," Lavrov said in an interview with Russia's Vesti 24 television.

"We are actively supporting Belgrade's demands to restore its territorial integrity and sovereignty," he said, adding that the unilateral recognition of Kosovo's independence would have a negative impact on other regional conflicts, including those in the Middle East.

He also expressed concern over attempts by some political forces to replace the UN as the main mediator in international conflicts.

"Someone is willing to use the Kosovo precedent to see whether it is possible to shift the center of decision-making to a different place naming NATO as such. This is a most dangerous game," he said.

He also accused the EU of double-standard policies in the settlement of the Kosovo conflict.

"Their [the EU] logic is quite funny - after destroying territorial integrity of a legitimate state [Serbia], they say they are determined to protect territorial integrity of an illegal formation [Kosovo]," the minister said. RIA Novosti

Robot wars 'will be a reality within 10 years'

The world is sleepwalking into an international robot arms race, an expert will warn today.

Prof Noel Sharkey fears increased research by countries including America, Russia, China and Israel will lead to the use of battlefield robots that can decide when to kill within 10 years.

He will also predict that it is only a matter of time before robots become a standard terrorist weapon, replacing suicide bombers.

Prof Sharkey, of the University of Sheffield's Department of Computer Science, will outline his concerns in a speech at a conference in Whitehall, London, on the ethics of unmanned military systems organised by the Royal United Services Institute, a respected defence think tank.

Prof Sharkey, best known as a judge in the BBC television series Robot Wars, said: "There's a massive drive towards developing autonomous robots for more complex missions. We are rapidly moving towards robots that can make the decision to apply lethal force, when to apply it and who to apply it to. I think maybe we're talking about a 10-year time frame.

"If one country develops autonomous robots, it is clear that other countries will follow suit." More

'I plotted to assassinate Balkan warlord,' M16 agent tells Diana inquest

A senior MI6 agent plotted to assassinate a feared Serbian warlord using British spies or the SAS, the Diana inquest heard yesterday.

The officer - identified only as A - thought that if the extreme nationalist seized power in the former Yugoslavia during the early 1990s he would launch a campaign of genocide as bad as Hitler's.

He proposed a hit on the warlord - who was not named in court but is thought to be the notorious leader Arkan - to the head of the Secret Intelligence Service in the Balkans at the time and was told to submit the plan in writing.

It is thought to be the first time an active MI6 agent has taken the stand in a court hearing.

To protect his identity, the court was cleared of everyone except the jury, lawyers and clerks, with his testimony relayed by audiolink to an annexe at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

The agent told the inquest: "I was worried about the possibility of this man taking power in Serbia and I thought we ought to think about having a contingency plan to assassinate this guy.

"My vague options were to use our special agents or our special forces."

Serbian dissidents opposed to the warlord were also a possibility, he said.

Pakistan says Indian missile test to trigger arms race: report

Pakistan's military chief on Wednesday said that a test by India of a sea-based nuclear-capable missile would start a new arms race between the South Asian arch rivals, state media reported.
India conducted its first test of a nuclear-capable missile from an undersea platform on Tuesday, completing its goal of having air, land and sea ballistic systems.

"This is going to start a new arms race in the region," the Associated Press of Pakistan quoted naval chief Admiral Muhammad Afzal Tahir as telling a group of journalists at a ship-building facility inauguration in Karachi.

"We are aware of these developments, and these developments are taking place with a view to put nuclear weapons at sea and it is a very, very serious issue," the state news agency quoted him as saying.

Pakistan carried out nuclear weapons tests in May 1998, following similar tests by India, with which it has fought three wars. AFP

Britain Told to Release Blair Cabinet's Minutes

A British official on Tuesday ordered the government to release minutes from two meetings of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet in March 2003, saying they could shed light on "uncertainties and controversies" surrounding Britain's decision to join the United States in the invasion of Iraq.

"There is a widespread view that the justification for the decision on military action in Iraq is either not fully understood or that the public were not given the full or genuine reasons for that decision," Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said in his ruling on a request made under the Freedom of Information Act.

The case illustrates how sensitive the Iraq war remains five years after the invasion. The war is extremely unpopular in Britain and was a key factor in Blair's departure after a decade in office. Many people in Britain remain skeptical and suspicious about the government's motivations for becoming the Bush administration's chief ally in Iraq.

Thomas rejected government arguments that the minutes should be exempt from public release because they deal with the formulation of public policy and ministerial communications. The Cabinet Office had argued to him that public disclosure of minutes would inhibit free and candid debate about sensitive issues in future cabinet sessions.

Thomas, who was allowed to inspect the minutes as part of his deliberations, said that while he respected the government's position, "arguments for the withholding of the information are outweighed by the public interest in its disclosure."

The information commissioner's ruling is binding, but the government has 28 days to appeal. A spokesman for the Cabinet Office said officials were reviewing the decision.

"The requirements of openness and transparency must be balanced against the proper and effective functioning of government," the Cabinet Office said in a statement Tuesday. Washington Post

UN Nuclear Chief: US, Russia Must Disarm

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Russia and the United States should reduce their nuclear arsenals and lead the way toward a world free of atomic weapons, the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief said Tuesday.

"Their continued reliance on nuclear weapons as the cornerstone of their security sends the wrong message," Mohamed ElBaradei said at a nuclear disarmament conference in the Norwegian capital, Olso.

ElBaradei, who leads the International Atomic Energy Agency, also urged the former Cold War foes to take their nuclear weapons off high alert and resume disarmament talks.

"The risk of accident or miscalculation would be dramatically lowered if weapons were taken off the Cold War hair-trigger alert," he said.

The U.N. General Assembly's disarmament committee called in November for all nuclear weapons to be taken off high alert, over objections from the United States, Britain and France. AP

Who will end the American Empire and its neocon crazies before they end the world?

The hypocrisy of US government officials is boundless. On February 18, the US government inflamed Serbians by recognizing Muslim separatists in Kosovo, a historic province of Serbia, as an independent country. Two hundred thousand Serbs marched in protest and the US embassy in Belgrade was damaged. Is this surprising? No, not unless you are an official in the American Empire. The notorious Empire Neocon Counsel, Azlmay Khalilzad, Bush’s representative to the UN, declared, "I’m outraged by the mob attack."

What’s an embassy building compared to a province of Serbia, a province that stirs nationalist sentiments associated with the Serbs' long military struggles with the Turks? Had it not been for the Serbs, Europeans would probably be Turks.

To neocon Khalilzad a province of Serbia is nothing. It is merely real estate to be given away by US recognition bestowed on a breakaway movement led by what some consider to be a gang of Muslim drug runners.

Secretary of State Condi Rice also found the Serbian response to the US giving away part of their country to be "intolerable."

Former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke also sees no reason for the Serbs to be upset that America gave away part of their country. He explained away the Serbian protests by declaring, "The Russians are behind this."

We can understand why US diplomacy is a failure when we see our diplomats explaining that, had it not been for the Russians stirring them up, Serbians wouldn’t have noticed the loss of a historic part of their country.

Perhaps Kosovo should have its independence. However, the US government could not have handled the issue in a more provocative way. Online Journal

Free speech 'shrinking' in Russia

Russian freedom of speech is "shrinking alarmingly" under President Vladimir Putin, says Amnesty International.

The murders of outspoken journalists go unsolved, independent media outlets have been shut and police have attacked opposition protesters, said the report.

It also said "arbitrary" laws were curbing the right to express opinion and silencing NGOs deemed to be a threat by the authorities.

The report comes ahead of Russian's presidential elections on 2 March.

The director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, said: "The space for freedom of speech is shrinking alarmingly in Russia and it's now imperative that the Russian authorities reverse this trend."

She said dissent could be a matter of life or death in the case of outspoken journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in Moscow two years ago.

The 52-page Freedom Limited report warned any opposition demonstrations could suffer heavy clampdowns in the coming days, as Amnesty said had happened in the run-up to past elections.

First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, whom President Vladimir Putin has named his favoured successor, is expected to be elected in this Sunday's poll. BBC

Iran says opposition group lies on nukes

AP Interview: Iranian Ambassador Says Opposition Group Fabricates Nuclear Weapons Allegations

Iran's ambassador to the United Nations said Monday that an Iranian opposition group is feeding fabricated evidence to Washington that purports to show the Tehran government tried to produce nuclear weapons.

Ambassador Mohammad Khazee said in an interview with The Associated Press that the U.S. is getting unreliable intelligence from the Mujahedeen Khalq, also known as the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, which was allied with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. The U.S. and European Union list it as a terrorist group.

Khazee insisted Iran has resolved all outstanding issues about its nuclear program and said Tehran should not face any new U.N. sanctions. He warned that new sanctions would harm "the credibility" of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The U.N. Security Council, however, is expected to approve a third round of sanctions against Iran later this week for its defiance of a council demand that it suspend uranium enrichment until it has allayed suspicions about its nuclear program.

Khazee said at a news conference that if new sanctions are approved "it would not be logical to comply with the resolution."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice disputed the Iranian assessment of the IAEA report, saying it provided "very strong" grounds for the Security Council to move ahead quickly with new sanctions. Raw Story

Another Black Eye for the UN

Several internal audits by one of its own agencies reveal that the UN has wasted tens of millions of dollars in its "peacekeeping operations" in Sudan over the past three years.

Follow this link to the original source: "Audit of U.N.’s Sudan Mission Finds Tens of Millions in Waste"

The UN Security Council established its mission in Sudan in March 2005, under the guise of helping to settle a 22-year-old civil war that has left 2 million dead, leaving tens of thousands, if not millions, homeless and hungry.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post obtained a copy of a confidential audit from October 2006 where "a number of potential fraud indicators and cases of mismanagement and waste," were noted by the UN Office for International Oversight Services, the UN agency conducting the audits. Irregularities that have been identified so far include:

• Thousands of food rations being lost to theft and spoilage.
• Millions of dollars being wasted by renting warehouses that were never used.
• The unnecessary expenditure of $1.2 million used for booking blocks of luxurious hotel rooms for UN staffers that were never used.
• A UN agent is accused of steering a $589,000 contract to Radiola Aerospace for solar airport runway lights when the company helped his wife obtain a student visa.
• Two senior procurement officials, one U.S. citizen and one from New Zealand, are charged with misconduct for not complying with rules designed to prevent corruption.
• A $200 million contract with Eurest Support Services, a British catering company, is being examined, as the company has already been charged with rigging bids in three different African countries.
• One contract to supply gravel for peacekeeping barracks was described in the audit as "exorbitant."
• Over $9 million in unnecessary fees went to a Canadian company, Skylink Aviation, by releasing it from its obligation to fulfill a contract.
• Another $9 million was wasted by hiring a company to clear UN goods through customs instead of UN staffers doing the job.

Now, for the excuses:

India test-fires sea-based nuclear-capable missile: ministry

India conducted its first test of a nuclear-capable missile from an undersea platform on Tuesday, completing its goal of having air, land and sea ballistic systems, the defence ministry said.

The launch from a submerged pontoon took place off India's southeast coast near the port city of Visakhapatnam around 1:00 pm (0730 GMT), a defence ministry spokesman said.

"The test was successful. We are waiting further details," said the spokesman who declined to be named.

India announced earlier this month that it would conduct its first test of a submarine-based ballistic missile named the K-15, which has a top range of 700 kilometres (438 miles).

S. Prahlada, chief controller of India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has said the K-15 missile would be "integrated" with a nuclear-powered submarine that India is building.

After conducting nuclear tests in May 1998, New Delhi announced a doctrine which stressed the development of air, land and sea ballistic capabilities.

With the latest test, India joins an elite group -- the United States, Russia, France and China -- that has such ability.

The test comes two months after India's chief military scientist M. Natarajan said New Delhi would test a ballistic missile with a range of 6,000 kilometres in 2008.BBC

General Welch's Whitewash

A new report on the August 30 incident in which six nuclear-armed advanced cruise missiles were effectively "lost" for 36 hours, during which time they were, against all regulations, flown in launch position mounted on a pylon on the wing of a B-52H Stratofortress, from Minot AFB in North Dakota across the continental US to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, has left unanswered some critical questions about the event.

Directed by retired Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch, the task force's Report on the Unauthorized Movement of Nuclear Weapons found plenty wrong with the way the US military handles its nuclear weapons, but appears to have dealt lightly with the specific incident that sparked the inquiry-only giving it a few paragraphs.

According to the report, when nuclear-capable missiles are placed onto a pylon assembly (in the case of the B-52, these pylons can hold six missiles), procedures call for a clear distinction to be made as to whether they are armed with nuclear weapons or with dud warheads. In the storage bunker, pylons with dud warheads are supposed to be encircled with orange cones like those used by highway repair crews, and placards announcing that the warheads are duds are supposed to be hung on all four sides. This reportedly was not done, leaving no distinction between one pylon containing six nuclear-armed missiles, and two others that had missiles carrying nukes.

A second failure was in record keeping. According to regulations for handling nuclear weapons, every step in moving a nuke requires written verification and manual checking. When the weapons were taken from storage racks and installed on the missiles, there should have been written records, including the serial numbers of each warhead. When a breakout crew moved the nuclear-armed missiles on the pylon and passed it to a convoy crew for removal from the storage bunker to the airfield for mounting on the plane, there was supposed to be a visual verification of the warheads by the convoy crew, and another written record of the transfer of ownership. When the convoy crew handed over the pylon to the crew chief for mounting on the plane, there was supposed to be another warhead verification check by the crew chief and another written record. Finally, the aircrew was required to verify the payload, warhead by warhead. More

Russia's NATO envoy says U.S. wants to divide and rule

Russia's ambassador to NATO suggested Sunday that Kosovo's split from Serbia was the result of an imperialistic American effort to "divide and rule."

In heated remarks in a televised interview, Dmitry Rogozin also reiterated Russia's warning that Western recognition of Kosovo could encourage separatism worldwide, using Germany's large ethnic Turkish population as an example.

Ethnic Turks in Berlin might one day ask: "Why should we not create our own — not Kosovo but Berlinosovo, Abrikosovo, Kokosovo and so forth," said Rogozin, a former lawmaker and nationalist political party leader, apparently referring to the name of the German capital and to apricots and coconuts.

"It's the atomization of the world," Rogozin said on state-run Vesti-24 television. "Who benefits from this? Only those who prefer to divide and rule — the old imperial principle. This is first of all the United States of America."

By recognizing Kosovo over the opposition of Serbia and without U.N. approval, Rogozin said, Western nations were replacing international law with a system in which "there will be only one rule: he who has brute physical power is strong and is right."

Russia, he stressed, must maintain a strong military to ensure its security.

But, he said "We do not intend to interfere in some military, forceful way in a hot spot far from our borders," Rogozin said. The developments there do not constitute "direct attacks on Russia, direct attacks on our national interests," he said.

Another Kosovo lie exposed: NATO used doctored video to justify bombing of passenger train

In the Frankfurter Rundschau of January 6 reporter Arnd Festerling documented how NATO used falsified video recordings to justify its conduct of the war in Kosovo.

At least 14 people died on April 12, 1999 when a US Airforce bomber fired on a railway bridge near the Serbian village of Grdenicka just as a passenger train was crossing the bridge. Following the initial strike of the train, the pilot returned to make a second sweep of the burning bridge and dropped a bomb on a carriage that had not been hit by the first assault.

At the time NATO described the bombing of the commuter train as a tragic accident. NATO's presentation of events, it now emerges, was based on doctored video recordings and misleading descriptions of what took place aboard the fighter plane.

One day after the strike, in an effort to demonstrate that the attack was a case of inadvertent “collateral damage”, General Wesley Clark, the Supreme Commander of NATO forces, called a press conference and showed two video films taken by cameras located in the noses of the remote control-guided bombs. According to Clark, the films made clear that the passenger train was approaching too fast for the pilot, who was concentrating on the difficult business of guiding the bombs, to react. The pilot had “less than a second” to abort the strike, Clark asserted.

Of course, this version of events did not explain why the plane turned round and dropped a second bomb. But the official NATO account given by Clark was misleading in two further respects.

First, the video film sped up the actual sequence by a factor of at least three. Second, the fighter plane used in the attack—type F15E—had a crew of two, a pilot and a weapons systems officer. The pilot played no role in directing the bombs and could not have been diverted by that task. In this type of plane the bombs find their own way to the target as soon as the target co-ordinates have been set by the weapons systems officer, who can, however, intervene to stop or divert them. More

Inside the world of war profiteers

Inside the stout federal courthouse of this Mississippi River town, the dirty secrets of Iraq war profiteering keep pouring out.

Hundreds of pages of recently unsealed court records detail how kickbacks shaped the war's largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into Iraqi sand.

The graft continued well beyond the 2004 congressional hearings that first called attention to it. And the massive fraud endangered the health of American soldiers even as it lined contractors' pockets, records show.

Federal prosecutors in Rock Island have indicted four former supervisors from KBR, the giant defense firm that holds the contract, along with a decorated Army officer and five executives from KBR subcontractors based in the U.S. or the Middle East. Those defendants, along with two other KBR employees who have pleaded guilty in Virginia, account for a third of the 36 people indicted to date on Iraq war-contract crimes, Justice Department records show.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Rock Island sentenced the Army official, Chief Warrant Officer Peleti "Pete" Peleti Jr., to 28 months in prison for taking bribes. One Middle Eastern subcontractor treated him to a trip to the 2006 Super Bowl, a defense investigator said. More

Iran warns will hit back at UN sanctions

Iran on Sunday warned it would hit back with an appropriate response to new UN Security Council sanctions over its contested nuclear programme, as Western powers stepped up efforts to punish Tehran.

Britain, France and the United States are pushing for a new sanctions resolution in the coming week after the UN atomic watchdog said it could still not confirm if the Iranian atomic drive was peaceful.

"In the case of the adoption of the resolution, we will make a deserving action. We will announce our decision at the right time based on the content of the resolution," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday warned of "firm reprisals" against any country leading the way to impose new sanctions, adding that Iran was "not joking."

"They could spend 100 years passing resolutions but it will not change anything," he said in an interview with state television. AFP

Iran says work plan closed, U.S. intelligence fake

Iran said on Sunday it had cleared up all past outstanding issues over its nuclear program with the United Nations nuclear watchdog and accused the United States of providing intelligence that was fake.

"The work plan is finished," Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Reuters, referring to a pact between Tehran and the IAEA to answer outstanding questions about its nuclear activities one by one.

In its latest report published on Friday, the IAEA said Iran had responded to questions and clarified issues raised in the context of the work plan struck in August, with the exception of alleged studies into the possible deionization of nuclear materials.

The agency said it confronted Iran for the first time with Western intelligence reports of work linked to making atomic bombs, adding Tehran had failed to provide satisfactory answers.

Soltanieh said the intelligence, coming mainly from the U.S. and a laptop spirited out of Iran in 2005, was fake. "This is 100 percent fabricated and forged," said Soltanieh.

Tehran was only shown some of the documents in mid-February, after it had already given its final assessment on the outstanding issues to the agency and in any case too late to be addressed in time for the February report, said Soltanieh.

United States envoy to the IAEA Gregory Schulte rejected the accusations, saying indications that Iran had conducted weapons related work had come from multiple sources, involved a number of activities and were "very consistent" with findings in the National Intelligence Estimate published in December.

Schulte also added that Iran has had years to answer. REUTERS

US imperialism behind Kosovo split

Russian envoy to NATO has said that Kosovo's split from Serbia was the result of an imperialistic American effort to 'divide and rule'.

Dmitry Rogozin reiterated Russia's warning that Western recognition of Kosovo could encourage separatism worldwide.

"Who benefits from this? Only those who prefer to divide and rule - the old imperial principle. This is first of all the United States of America," Rogozin said on state-run Vesti-24 television.

He added that by recognizing Kosovo without UN approval, Western nations were replacing international law with a system in which "there will be only one rule: he who has brute physical power is strong and is right."

However, Rogozin ruled out using force to solve crisis.

The former Russian lawmaker also alleged that Kosovo's independence declaration was supported by a powerful narcotics mafia.

He said there were "shadowy structures that stand behind Kosovo's independence. This is first of all a 'narcomafia' that long ago turned Kosovo into ... a gigantic laboratory for the production of heroin and cocaine for all the countries of Europe." Press TV

SAS veteran: 'We held terror suspects before handing them over to US for rendition'

A former SAS soldier will claim today that British special forces are being used to detain suspects for extraordinary rendition.

Ben Griffin, 29, says the Government is "deeply involved" in the process, in which US forces have transported terror suspects around the world for interrogation, often to countries where they face interrogation under torture.

He left the Army on moral grounds at the beginning of last year after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the "illegal" tactics of US troops.

Last week Foreign Secretary David Miliband told MPs in the Commons that two US rendition flights transporting terrorist suspects had landed on British soil.

"We were under no illusion as to what awaited the individuals handed over by us.

"For the British to claim that they only became aware of the use of British territory this week is disingenuous. UK special forces are being used at the coalface to mine these individuals.

"The use of British territory as a stop-off during the rendition process pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it is often British soldiers detaining these individuals in the first place."

Despite years of denials the Government disclosed that two flights had refuelled on British territory, the island of Diego Garcia, in 2002.

Mr Miliband said the two flights had each been carrying a single suspect and six years on, one of the men is still being held by the US at Guantanamo Bay, while the other has been released. UK Daily Mail

New evidence challenges official picture of Kennedy shooting

The official record states that senator Robert F Kennedy, like his brother before him, was killed by a crazed lone gunman. But the assassination of a man who seemed to embody so much hope for a bitterly divided country embroiled in an unpopular war still troubles this nation.

Little about the official explanation of the events at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5 1968 makes sense. Now a new forensic analysis of the only audio recording of the fatal shots has given new weight to a controversial theory that there were in fact two shooters, and that the man convicted of Kennedy's killing — Sirhan Sirhan - did not fire the fatal shots.

Following his victory speech to supporters after clinching a tight democratic primary victory in California, Kennedy left the podium in the Embassy ballroom to address a press conference.

But the shortcut he and his entourage took through the hotel's pantry quickly descended into bloody mayhem. As Kennedy turned from shaking hands with two of the kitchen staff, a gunman stepped forward and began firing. Kennedy was hit by four shots including one which lodged in the vertebrae in his neck and another which entered his brain from below his right ear. He died in hospital the following day. Five other people were injured but survived.

Sirhan - a Palestinian refugee who said he wanted to "sacrifice" Kennedy "for the cause of the poor exploited people" - was quickly apprehended. He was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.

"Sirhan was apprehended at the scene with literally a smoking gun," said acoustic forensic expert Philip Van Praag of PVP Designs, who has carried out the new analysis. "At the beginning many people looked upon this as an open-and-shut case. It was one man, Sirhan Sirhan, who was observed by a number of people, who aimed and fired a gun in the direction of Kennedy's entourage."

But the lone gunman explanation has always looked shaky. The autopsy of Kennedy's body suggested that all four shots that hit him came from behind, and powder marks on his skin showed they must have been from close range.

But Sirhan was in front of Kennedy when he fired, and after shooting two shots was overcome by hotel staff, who pinned him to a table. Also, Sirhan fired eight shots in total, yet 14 were found lodged around the room and in the victims.

"There is no doubt in our minds that no fewer than 14 shots were fired in the pantry on that evening and that Sirhan did not in fact kill Senator Kennedy," said Robert Joling, a forensic scientist who has been involved with the Kennedy case for nearly 40 years. He and Van Praag have published a book on the killing this week entitled "An Open and Shut Case". Guardian

'War by Way of Deception' Teaser

France heads for war games in the Gulf

French armed forces will take part in large-scale war games in the Gulf next week, underlining France’s growing military presence in the region as heightened tensions persist over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

France will deploy 1,500 personnel, two frigates and eight Mirage fighter jets to the defence exercises, held in conjunction with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

Paris has long-standing defence co-operation agreements with the two countries and is one of their biggest suppliers of arms. But its involvement in the joint manoeuvres, which have been code-named Gulf Shield, follows President Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement last month of a permanent French base in Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital.

The base, across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran, will give France its first permanent foothold in the Gulf and will send a signal to Tehran that Paris is determined to protect its strategic interests in the region.

Iran has criticised Mr Sarkozy’s announcement as an “unfriendly” move.

“We believe such a presence is not conducive to peace and security in the region,” Mohammad Ali Hosseini, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said at the time.

The French president has adopted a tougher stance than that of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, against Iran’s nuclear activities and is seeking stronger international sanctions against Tehran.

A UAE official said there was nothing new in French military exercises in the Gulf, but these war games come at a time of diplomatic manoeuvring.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the UAE’s prime minister and ruler of Dubai, undertook some rare shuttle diplomacy this week, with visits to both Iran and its ally, Syria.

The French base will be contained within a UAE facility and will eventually house up to 400 personnel from the navy, army and air force. It is intended as a depot to support French maritime surveillance operations in the Gulf, allowing ships to spend more time in the region. A UAE official said it could develop into a more comprehensive base over time. Financial Times

Diana inquest probes murky world of espionage

British intelligence officers are facing unprecedented public scrutiny as they take the stand at the inquest into Princess Diana's death to deny claims that the security services killed her on the royal family's orders.

Their former boss has already given a fascinating glimpse into the murky world of espionage -- but this is not all about glamorous 007 figures. Theirs is a more mundane world of bureaucratic checks and balances.

With his deadly array of guns and gadgets, James Bond has a Licence to Kill in his constant battle to thwart villains plotting world domination.

In reality, the world's most famous spy would need a Class Seven authorization agreed by his line managers and personally signed by the Foreign Secretary.

Britain's former spy chief Richard Dearlove gingerly lifted the lid on this secret world when giving evidence to the inquest into the 1997 deaths of Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed in a Paris car crash.

"His testimony made the security services sound more like a firm of accountants than a bunch of 007s," The Daily Telegraph concluded.

Now it is the turn of 10 serving and former intelligence officers to appear in court -- but their identities will be protected and they will be just referred to as numbers or letters.

The court will be cleared of the media and public on Tuesday when they start to give evidence, which will be piped by audio link to an annex. Reuters

CIA 'plane used for torture flights landed in Britain last week'

The row over the use of British air bases for American "torture" flights flared up again last night following evidence that a plane linked to the transport of terrorist suspects landed in Britain on Wednesday.

A Gulfstream IV private jet, which has been identified by Amnesty International as a CIA-linked plane implicated in so-called "rendition," arrived at RAF Northolt in West London just hours before the Government was forced into a humiliating U-turn on the practice.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted to the Commons on Thursday that two US rendition flights landed at a British air base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in 2002 – despite previous repeated denials from Tony Blair and Jack Straw.

Former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett revealed today that poor record keeping could be to blame for the government's late disclosure on the subject. UK Daily Mail

UK deeply involved in CIA renditions

US funding militia to destabilize Iran

The United States is clandestinely funding militant groups within Iran's borders to destabilize the country, The Daily Telegraph says.

According to the daily, CIA officials are secretly funding militias among the numerous ethnic minorities clustered in Iran's border regions in order to mount pressure on the country to give up its nuclear program.

Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA's classified budget but is now "no great secret", according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington speaking anonymously to The Sunday Telegraph.

"The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran's ethnic minorities to destabilize the Iranian regime," said Fred Burton, a former US State Department counter-terrorism agent.

Some of the groups have resorted to terrorist methods. These include the notorious Mujahedin Khalq Organization [MKO] which has a long and bloody history of targeting Iranian civilians and government officials alike.

Another group claimed to be supported by the CIA is the Jundullah organization known for attacking high-profile Iranian targets, especially government and security officials.

Although Washington officially denies involvement in such activity, Tehran has long maintained that it has detected the hand of both US and Britain in guerrilla attacks on internal security forces.Press TV

US pushes EU to shut down Iranian banks

US military investigates stealth bomber crash

The US military was investigating on Saturday after a B-2 stealth bomber crashed on take-off from the Pacific island of Guam, the first such incident involving the futuristic craft.

Both pilots on board ejected safely as the 1.2-billion-dollar radar-evading plane, with its distinctive triangular shape, went down at Andersen airbase on the remote island, the US air force said.

"Two pilots from the 509th Bomb Wing were on board and ejected. They have been evaluated by medical authorities and are in good condition," it said.

"Emergency responders are on scene. A board of officers will investigate the accident," said the headquarters of the US air force in the Pacific.

It was the second US air force crash this week after two F-15C jets collided during training over the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, killing a fighter pilot.

Crowds gathered at the crash site after the bomber, one of just 21 in the air force inventory, went down at about 10:45 am (0045 GMT).

A thick plume of smoke rose over the airbase and officials closed one of its two runways, diverting planes to Guam International Airport, the Pacific Daily News website said.

"Everybody was on their cellphones and the first thing everyone wanted to know was did the pilots make it out in time," said an eye-witness quoted by the website.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, here with visiting US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, confirmed the crash but did not give further details.

"We are grateful for the safety of the pilots," said Mike Cruz, acting governor of the US territory.

"The Air Force and Guam have a long-standing relationship and we help each other in this community we share, especially during times like these."

The long-range bomber was visiting from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. Operated exclusively by the US, the B-2 has never crashed since first seeing combat in the air war over Kosovo in 1999. More

UK deeply involved in CIA renditions

A former British special forces commando who quit the military says Britain is "deeply involved" in the US practice of rendition.

The soldier, Ben Griffin, quit the elite Special Air Service (SAS) in protest at what he said were US abuses in Iraq, BBC's website reported.

He left the SAS in 2005 after taking part in operations in the Persian Gulf and said that British soldiers detained suspected extremists and interrogated them before handing them over to the US military.

"We were under no illusion as to what awaited the individuals handed over by us," he said in a statement issued by Stop the War Coalition, with which he is now involved.

Britain, which supported the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, has maintained that it has not allowed the CIA "extraordinary rendition" flights with suspected extremists on board to land on British soil.

However, Foreign Secretary David Miliband apologized to parliament on Thursday after the US authorities said that two prisoners were transferred via the US air base on Diego Garcia, a British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean, in 2002.

The revelation - which has raised questions that there may be more to follow - came after an administrative error on the part of the US, he added.

Meanwhile, Griffin says, "The UK government is deeply involved in the whole process of rendition." He has details of dates of operations in which he was involved and a letter from one British interrogator who was "upset at what he has been part of".

Elsewhere, Andrew Burgin, from the Stop the War Coalition, told AFP that he didn't know whether or not Griffin would give the details in public at a news conference that is scheduled for Monday.

Interestingly, the defense ministry for its part has told AFP that they didn't comment on SAS operations and referred queries on rendition to the Foreign Office, which conveniently, had no immediate comments to make. Press TV

Secret Report Uncovers Massive Fraud at European Parliament

Chris Davies, a Liberal Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the North-West of the UK, is a member of the Budget Control Committee of the European Parliament. As he told BBC’s Today Programme (listen here), he discovered, quite by chance, that Parliament’s auditors had made a report detailing abuses on a vast scale, abuses that suggest some MEPs are simply plundering the system to enrich themselves.

Notwithstanding that he is a member of the Budget Control Committee, Mr. Davies was only allowed to see the report on condition that he signed all sorts of confidentiality agreements, read the report in a sealed “secret room”, protected by biometric locks and security guards and neither made a copy of nor took notes of the report.

Mr. Davies said the report contained accounts of abuse – let’s call a spade a spade here and call it theft and fraud – on a truly shocking scale. Though individuals were not named he made it clear that the extent of the embezzlement and fraud was on such a scale that it could only be met with condign prison sentences for some of those engaged in such practices.

OLAF, the EU Fraud Squad, had not yet heard of this report which makes one wonder if attempts are being made to bury it so as not to rock the boat and to conceal from the European people the extent to which MEPs are looting the public purse for their own enrichment.

Davies made a number of politically rather incorrect statements about where he reckons the worst offenders come from and it is not from the UK, Scandinavia, The Netherlands.

So widespread is the abuse that the AVERAGE amount being nicked is £125,000 ($245,000, €166,000) for each one of the Parliament’s 785 MEPs. So bad is the situation that Hans-Gert Pöttering, its president, and a group of senior MEPs are desperately trying to find ways to ensure that there was no “collateral damage” from the report (which presumably means trying to ensure that their heads do not roll as a result of their failure to act in the matter which would thus have the effect of removing them from the gravy train). The excuse being given for this exercise is laughable:

“We want reform but we cannot make this report available to the public if we want people to vote in the European elections next year.” Brussel's Journal

Disinformation flies as US raises Iran bar

A new report on Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is about to be released and US "pre-emptive" diplomacy, aimed at preventing an IAEA "clean bill of health" that could derail Washington's effort for a new round of UN sanctions on Iran, is at full throttle - with the timely help of disinformation.

Setting the bar unusually high, the US envoy at the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, has warned that unless Iran "confesses" about its "past work on weapons designs and weaponization and the role of the Iranian military", international efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff will be "doomed".

Washington's brand new benchmark comes in the wake of a spate of US media reports that the US has "shared new intelligence" with the IAEA that corroborates American allegations of past Iranian nuclear proliferation activities. According to the New York Times, the US decided to "turn over intelligence data" and allow the IAEA privileged access for "divulging confidential information" by reversing "longstanding refusal to show the data, citing the need to protect intelligence sources". [1]

A widely published report by Associated Press cites diplomats as saying that the material forwarded to the IAEA over the past two weeks expands on previous information from the Americans. [2]

But, we learn, the new information pertains to data from the same "stolen laptop" that was the source of the previous information, which was termed unreliable at the time by, among others, David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington. (For more on the laptop story see the author’s The IAEA and the new world order, Asia Times Online, February 3, 2006.)

Six powers to meet Monday on Iran nuclear program

Six major powers are to meet Monday in Washington for fresh talks on how to make Iran give up its contested uranium enrichment activities, a top US diplomat official said Friday.

The State Department's number three Nicholas Burns said foreign ministry officials of the six -- the five UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany -- would review a proposed third UN sanctions resolution against Iran.

"We will review our strategy (launched at the United Nations) in New York, the pace of the resolution," Burns told reporters.

The six powers want Iran to stop enriching uranium, a process which they suspect Tehran aims to use to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists it is only seeking nuclear power for civilian purposes.

Britain's and France's ambassadors to the UN on Thursday formally submitted to the Security Council members the text of a resolution for new sanctions, which they hope to see passed as soon as possible.

The poposed sanctions include economic and trade restrictions and a travel ban against officials involved in the nuclear program.

The five permanent council members are Britain, the United States, France, China and Russia.

The UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, complained in a recent report that the Islamic Republic had supplied only patchy details of its activities to its inspectors. Raw Story

Moscow threatens force over Kosovo

Moscow's ambassador to NATO says Russia could resort to 'brute force' if NATO or the EU formally recognize Kosovo as an independent state.

In a video link-up from Brussels Dmitry Rogozin said, "if the European Union works out a common position, or if NATO breaches its mandate in Kosovo, these organizations will be in conflict with the United Nations," Interfax news agency reported.

"We too will have to proceed from the view that in order to be respected we must use brute force, in other words armed force."

Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has been vehemently opposing Kosovo's independence, backing Serbia, and reflecting Moscow's close ties with the leadership in Belgrade.

Rogozin also cited unconfirmed reports that NATO troops were blocking the border between Kosovo and Serbia and not allowing Serb officials into Kosovo.

"This is not what we agreed. If this information is confirmed, then here in Brussels there will be some tough talking with our partners, and there could be quite a dramatic development in relations between Russia and NATO," RIA Novosti quoted Rogozin as saying.

The Russian envoy highlighted that 'under no circumstances' should NATO get involved in politics and that "It must remain neutral.''

So far, over a dozen nations have recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany, while Russia, China, Spain and others, have rejected the unilateral declaration. Press TV

Rioters attack British embassy in Kosovo

Satellite strike shows US missile defense works: Gates

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that the successful shoot-down of a rogue US spy satellite demonstrated that America's missile defense system works.

"I think the operation speaks for itself in that respect," Gates told reporters here after touring one of the warships that supported the operation in the Pacific ocean.

"I think the question over whether this capability works has been settled," he said. "The question is what kind of threat, how large a threat, how sophisticated a threat (the United States faces)."

Late Wednesday, the USS Lake Erie fired a single modified tactical SM-3 missile that hit the schoolbus-sized satellite some 250 kilometers (150 miles) over the Pacific as it traveled at more than 7,000 miles (11,265 kilometers) per hour, the Pentagon said. AFP

China accuses US of hypocrisy in space

"The Chinese side is continuing to closely follow the US action which may influence the security of outer space and may harm other countries," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao.

Nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction are banned from space under a 1967 international treaty, but Washington's plans have caused concerns about non-nuclear arms in space.

Experts fear debris isn't the only fallout from satellite shoot-down

A U.S. missile strike that appeared Thursday to have shattered a crippled spy satellite and vaporized its hazardous hydrazine fuel sent up cheers among Pentagon planners, who for three weeks had worked feverishly to turn an anti-missile system into one that could track and kill an object orbiting the Earth.

But even as debris from the shattered satellite began raining down over the Pacific Ocean, there were worries that the U.S. achievement might spur other nations to advance their own anti-satellite programs and turn outer space into a potential battlefield.

"I don't see how other nations don't see this as an anti-satellite test," said Theresa Hitchens, the director of the Washington D.C.-based Center for Defense Information, a centrist national security policy institute. "They'll see it as the weaponization of space."

China, which last year came under harsh U.S. criticism for using a missile to destroy an aged weather satellite hundreds of miles in space, was the first to react.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement demanding that the United States share details of the shoot-down, which took place at approximately 10:26 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday as the satellite passed over the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles west of Hawaii. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, on a visit to Hawaii, said the military would provide "appropriate" data to the Chinese.

Russia had no immediate reaction, though Russian President Vladimir Putin warned recently that the U.S. use of its anti-missile system against satellites would bring a response.

Hitchens said she believed that both China and Russia would use the U.S. destruction of the satellite as reason to step up development of their own anti-satellite weapons. China, she said, is "likely to use this as an excuse to do what they wanted to do already." Russia, she added, "will come down hard on this."

For U.S. military officials, confirmation that the missile probably destroyed the satellite and its hydrazine tank came in two forms.

The first was a dramatic video — possibly shot from another satellite, though military officials wouldn't say — that showed the satellite as a small point of light. Suddenly, the light explodes into a fireball and then becomes a roiling, expanding cloud that military officials believe was the hydrazine vaporizing.

The second was tracking data that indicated that only football-sized debris remained from the 5,000-pound, bus-size satellite.

Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said officials had a "high degree of confidence" that the missile had fulfilled its mission, which U.S. officials ordered out of concern that the hydrazine fuel tank would survive re-entry and land in a populated area.FULL STORY

Ellsberg: Speak out while you can

US whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg raps those aware of Bush's violations of the Constitution, saying they should speak out and save lives.

"When they keep silent about their knowledge of that situation, they are themselves violating their oath to support and defend the Constitution," Ellsberg said in an interview with City Pages.

Advising such people to reveal truths that might save an untold number of lives, the former military analyst explained that there is a high possibility of new military adventurism in the Middle East.

"Don't wait till bombs are falling in Iran or a new war is started wrongly or thousands more people have died when you know that your bosses are lying the public into a wrongful war or committing other crimes or violating the constitution," said the former Pentagon official.

According to Ellsberg, there is a good chance that Bush will wage war on Iran in the next year.

"I think that the risk remains significant, and indeed the fact that the President isn't running again for office may free him in his mind," he explained.

Daniel Ellsberg, who shocked the world in 1971 by disclosing 7,000 classified pages of a Defense Department report, revealed the existence a much deeper battle in Vietnam than the public was aware of. Press TV

Who Killed JFK Jr ? - 1of11

Wikileaks busts Gitmo propaganda team

WASHINGTON--The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed this week in a report by the government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainee ID numbers from Wikipedia last month, the systematic posting of unattributed "self praise" comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantanamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro's encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as "an admitted transexual" [sic].

Guantanamo Bay deletes detainee ID numbers, labels Fidel Castro "an admitted transexual" and more.

WASHINGTON--The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed this week in a report by the government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainee ID numbers from Wikipedia last month, the systematic posting of unattributed "self praise" comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantanamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro's encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as "an admitted transexual" [sic].

Shayana Kadidal, Managing Attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative, said in response to the report:

"The military's efforts to alter the record by vandalizing Wikipedia are of a piece with the amateurism of their other public relations efforts: their ridiculous claims that released detainees who criticize the United States in the media have 'returned to the battlefield,'.

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Star Wars?

Raw Video Shows Navy Missile Destroying Doomed Satellite

Call For "Federal World Government" Endorsed By Hillary

Former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite receives an award from the World Federalist Association for supporting globalism and admits, "We need a system of enforacable world law, a federal world government." Hillary Clinton endorsed the award.

Shot satellite fuels arms race fears

The US military has shot down a disabled spy satellite on the edge of the atmosphere.

Washington has always insisted that it decided to carry out this operation purely on safety grounds

Officials said they feared that debris from the satellite, including toxic gas from a fuel tank, could harm people after it re-entered the atmosphere.

And the build-up to the mission has certainly had some of the hallmarks of a science fiction disaster movie.

The critics, including the Russian and Chinese governments, are not so sure, and have argued that what the Americans have done is bound to stoke up fears of an arms race in space.

The US criticised the Chinese when they carried out an anti-satellite test just over a year ago.

Its complaint was that it was a deliberate military move, and that it was shrouded in secrecy. Now, the Americans have used a weapons system that is part of their missile defence programme. BBC

China set to launch record number of spacecraft in 2008: report

China will launch a record number of spacecraft this year, state media reported Tuesday, amid a rise in tensions among world powers over the militarisation of space.

China plans to send up more than 10 missions this year, said Yang Baohua, head of the China Academy of Space Technology, according to the China Daily.

"China's space technology has entered a new stage. The design and manufacture of satellites takes less time, and homemade satellites are more reliable and have a longer lifespan," Yang said.

China has launched an average of eight spacecraft in the past two years, according to the report.

The missions this year will include two Shenzhou VII spaceships -- one of which will feature the country's first spacewalk -- two environmental satellites and a communications satellite for Venezuela.

The news comes amid rising tensions between Russia, China and the United States over the militarisation of space.Full article