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Hezbollah on Full Alert in Wake of Gaza war
Hezbollah has stepped up security measures on the Lebanese border in response to the full-scale Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip. Citing an unnamed Lebanese official, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Tuesday that the Lebanese resistance is fully prepared not to allow “Israel a chance to avenge its defeat in the July 2006 war and has therefore raised its alert level for defense purposes.”
Israel is expected to take advantage of the transition in the White House “to embark on a new adventure” and change the status quo on the Lebanese border, the Al-Hayat report adds. In a recent report, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy revealed that Israel’s determination to curb Hezbollah’s military and political prowess has strengthened the likelihood of another Israel-Lebanon war.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Lebanese army announced that at least six Israeli warplanes had flown over several regions of the country in violation of the…
Unconventional Weapons Against the People of Gaza
This report confirms that these attacks are quite deliberately directed against civilians, using new unconventional weapons.
This is a carefully planned humanitarian catastrophe. How can anybody in their right mind support the actions of the Israeli government.
Read this interview with a distinguished and courageous Norwegian doctor.
Analysis: Israel is on Its Way to Reoccupying All of the Gaza Strip
The way events played out yesterday did not stir the political leadership into thinking of stopping the ground offensive and moving toward a cease-fire. On the contrary, Israel is moving toward a decision to occupy the whole Gaza Strip.
The message yesterday from Jerusalem was that it is impossible to end Operation Cast Lead without an achievement, and if in the next two days there is no satisfactory diplomatic solution, Israel will have to broaden the operation.
“Broadening the operation” could mean moving from house to house as in Operating Defensive Shield in 2002 in the West Bank, aiming to kill or capture as many Hamas fighters as possible. Or it could mean surrounding Gaza City, similar to the way the Egyptian Third Army was cut off in 1973, or like the siege of Beirut in 1982, until Hamas’ leaders emerge from their hideouts with their hands up. This could take…
Value of 2008 Bailouts Exceeds Combined Costs of All Major U.S. Wars
CNSNews.com:The total value of the bailouts undertaken by the federal government in 2008 now exceeds the combined cost of every major war the United States has ever engaged in, according to a comparison of war costs calculated by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the value of the bailouts as calculated by Bloomberg News or Bianco Research.
According to CRS, all major U.S. wars (including such events as the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, but not the invasion of Panama or the Kosovo War), cost a total of $7.2 trillion in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars.
According to Bloomberg, the federal government has made commitments worth a total of $8.5 trillion in the bailouts of 2008. That includes actual expenditures as well as loan and asset guarantees. Bianco Research puts the total value of the…
Obama Selects CFR Member Sanjay Gupta to be Surgeon General
“America’s most famous television surgeon, Sanjay Gupta, is poised to take his black bag and microphone to the White House as President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for U.S. surgeon general,” reports the Washington Post. “A neurosurgeon who is also a correspondent for CNN and CBS, Gupta was chosen as much for his broadcasting skills as for his medical résumé, suggesting that the incoming administration values visible advisers who can drive a public message.”
In 2007, CFR member Gupta ignored research indicating that thermersol and its mercury-based preservative did indeed cause autism.
Gupta was not only chosen for his “broadcasting skills,” but also because he is a trusted insider. Not surprisingly, Gupta is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Part of Gupta’s “public message” is that thermersol and its mercury-based preservative has nothing to do with autism. In 2007, Gupta went on CNN to state there appears to be no relationship between thimerosal…
Most Americans Say Media Making Crisis Worse
Seventy-seven percent of Americans think the U.S. media are making the economic situation worse by highlighting negative news and, as a result, lowering consumer confidence and investment activity.
The survey of 1,000 adults was conducted in early December by Opinion Research Corp. which asked: “Do you think the financial press is making the economic crisis worse by projecting fear into people’s minds?”
Broken down by income, 79 percent said yes from households making $25,000 to $35,000, and 78 percent said yes from households making $75,000 or more. By demographic, 85 percent of 18-to-24 year olds said yes, while 65 percent of African-Americans agreed.
Engines of Recovery Flame Out as Economy Seeks Obama-Fed Rescue
Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) — The engines that have lifted the U.S. economy out of every recession since World War II will be of little help this time around.
Inventory rebuilding, household spending, home construction and payroll growth — the forces that powered, to a greater or lesser extent, each recovery since 1945 — may remain missing for much of 2009. A glut of unsold properties may keep housing depressed, while shriveled savings will discourage consumers. Companies may be reluctant to restock and rehire while their profits are squeezed.
“There are no obvious drivers of growth from the private sector,” says Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York.
The result: A recovery, whenever it comes, may be anemic and heavily dependent on low-cost lending by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and stepped-up spending by new President Barack Obama. Short-term interest rates might have to remain around zero…
Israel Using Depleted Uranium Against Gaza Victims
Medics have found traces of depleted uranium in victims of Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza, according to a Press TV report, meaning the ultimate death toll could be far higher as future generations are plagued by cancers and birth defects.
“Norwegian medics told Press TV correspondent Akram al-Sattari that some of the victims who have been wounded since Israel began its attacks on the Gaza Strip on December 27 have traces of depleted uranium in their bodies,” states the article.
Following the conclusion of the first Gulf War in 1991, in which depleted uranium was used by U.S. forces, cancers and birth defects in Iraq soared and many veterans organizations agree that the weapon was responsible for the emergence of Gulf War Syndrome that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.
Depleted uranium shell holes at the infamous Highway of Death in Iraq showed measurements 1,000 times more radioactive than background…
Where Ways Intersect: The Profitable World of Spooks and Narco Traffickers
When Afghan drug kingpin Haji Bashir Noorzai was arrested in New York in 2005, it set off a chain of events that continue to echo today. A federal jury in Manhattan convicted Noorzai September 22, for his involvement in an international narcotics trafficking conspiracy that sold tens of millions of dollars of heroin on world markets. The drug lord now faces life in prison and will be sentenced on January 7.
But things aren’t always what they seem. Noorzai, described by federal investigators and journalists as “the richest man in Afghanistan,” enjoyed close and cosy relations with the Taliban’s top leader Mullah Omar, al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence agency (ISI). Indeed, Noorzai had become one of the capo tutti capos of Afghanistan’s flourishing heroin rackets and profited handsomely from the protection of his Taliban “friends,” his ISI mentors and allegedly the CIA.
The Washington Post reported December 27, that Noorzai’s New…
Cheney: Bush’s Actions Legal If Not Impeached
If you don’t get punished, you didn’t go anything wrong, right?
That’s the message Vice President Dick Cheney gave in an interview with CBS’ Bob Schieffer on Sunday, suggesting that a president’s actions are legal if those actions didn’t result in his impeachment.
Asked by Schieffer if he believed that anything the president does in time of war is legal, Cheney said there is “historic precedent of taking action that you wouldn’t take in peacetime.”
Cheney referenced Abraham Lincoln as an example of another president who “suspended the writ of habeus corpus” during a war, prompting this exchange:
SCHIEFFER: But nobody thinks that was legal.
CHENEY: Well, no. It certainly was in the sense he wasn’t impeached. And it was a wartime measure that he took that I think history says today, yeah, that was probably a good thing to do.
ABC News: Alien Blimps Over Salt Lake City
ABC News wants you to believe we are being visited by aliens. In the video here, they say the residents of Salt Lake City are scratching their heads.
However, there is plenty of documentation these supposed alien blimps are in fact surveillance vessels manufactured for Homeland Security.
Purdue Team To Float High-altitude Airship For Weather, Security
ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2005): WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Researchers from Purdue University are working to develop a high-altitude, helium-filled craft that may hover over the same spot for up to a year for applications in areas such as surveillance, homeland security, missile defense and weather forecasting.
EU’s New Figurehead Believes Climate Change is a Myth
The European Union’s new figurehead believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state. The views of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, 67, have left the government of Mirek Topolanek, his bitter opponent, determined to keep him as far away as possible from the EU presidency, which it took over from France yesterday.
The Czech president, who caused a diplomatic incident by dining with opponents of the EU’s Lisbon treaty on a recent visit to Ireland, has a largely ceremonial role.
But there are already fears that, after the dynamic EU presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy — including his hyper-active attempts at international diplomacy over the credit crisis and Georgia as well as an historic agreement to cut greenhouse gases — the Czech effort will be mired in infighting and overshadowed by the platform it will give to Mr Klaus and his controversial…
India Sleepwalks To Total Surveillance
It wasn’t tough for a protagonist in a Kundera novel to figure out if he/she were living in a police state. Looking out of the apartment window they could see agents of the state keeping a watch over them from a car parked in the street round the corner. Sometimes shady characters broke in and rummaged through shelves looking for letters or diary notes. Their phones were wiretapped and there was absolutely no way of knowing if the friend they met for a drink last night was an informer or not.
It was our age of innocence and Kafka wasn’t thought to be a realist. Under repressive regimes people lived in constant fear, but the terror they felt and the machinery that enforced it was tangible.
Not any more. We live in a time when information about our personal lives and behaviour are being gathered, stored and shared by governments and multinational…
Al Qaeda is Eyeing MySpace, Facebook, Friends Reunited, PalTalk
Great Britain’s Security Service MI5 requested its British troops to remove personal details of themselves off popular social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Friends Reunited due to discovering that they were being monitored by Al-Qaeda operatives. In the January, 2008 Free Republic article, ‘Al-Qaeda eyes MySpace Pages’, Gordon Thomas writes about the concern expressed by the MI5 chief Jonathan Evans in a document titled ‘Personal Security’. Evans asks for security service personnel to be aware of the monitoring and gathering of personal details that can be formed into intelligence used to launch terrorist attacks against their colleagues, or family members.
Though access to many of these social websites may be for members only, all one needs to register is an e-mail address. Al-Qaeda operatives are using hundreds of false accounts to access personal information. And what are they finding?
Thousands of military and security personnel who have posted detailed information about…
U.S. Economy: Manufacturing Shrinks as Orders Plunge
Bloomberg: The decline in U.S. manufacturing deepened in December as demand for such products as cars, appliances and furniture reached the lowest level since at least 1948, signaling further cutbacks in factory jobs and production this year.
The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index fell to 32.4, below economists’ forecasts and the lowest level since 1980, from 36.2 the prior month. Readings less than 50 signal contraction. The group’s new-orders measure reached the lowest level on record and prices slid the most since 1949.
“Every component suggests that the weakness is going to carry over into 2009,” Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “There’s just not a whole lot of new business coming in,” and companies will have a “painful adjustment” as consumers shun spending.
Today’s figures underscore that, with private demand collapsing, manufacturers’ best hope for new business this year…
Expert: Hamas Will Defeat Israel in Gaza
Khaled Hroub, author of several books on Hamas, including Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide, talked with Al Jazeera about Hamas and why he believes the IDF ground invasion — now underway — will be a failure.
Hroub believes Israel’s much trumpeted assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, co-founder of Hamas, and Ahmed Yassin, the the spiritual leader of Hamas, does not effectively weaken the organization. This is likely the case as well with the recent assassination of Nizar Rayyan, a senior Hamas leader. “I can’t see Hamas being weakened by killing one or two or three or even more leaders in the Gaza Strip,” said Hroub. “Hamas’ leaders are very used to hiding and escaping Israeli attacks. I can’t see this affecting Hamas much.”
Hamas’ strength, according to the expert, is derived from its broad social and political base in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Its leadership is decentralized between Gaza, the West…
EU Spends £2 Billion Each Year on ‘Vain PR Exercises’
New research by Open Europe, a think-tank that supports EU reform, has found that so-called European “information” campaigns are one-sided and boast a budget that is bigger than Coca-Cola’s total worldwide advertising account.
One publication, entitled How the European Union works, described the EU as “a remarkable success story”. Another English-language “information” pamphlet claimed the EU “is delivering a better life for everyone” and described the single market as “a winning formula.”
The researchers also found a European Commission document that admitted: “Neutral factual information is needed of course, but it is not enough on its own. Genuine communication by the EU cannot be reduced to the mere provision of information.”
Lorraine Mullally, director of Open Europe, said: “Taxpayers should not be footing the bill for vain PR exercises to make us love the EU. The EU needs urgent and radical reform, not expensive campaigns to improve its image.”
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Northcom Combat Team Conducts ‘Humanitarian Support’ Exercise in Maryland
The Armed Forces Press Service has initiated a propaganda campaign designed to convince the American people that deploying the 3rd Infantry Division in the United States in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is a good thing. The propaganda piece appeared on the Hinesville, Georgia, Coastal Courier’s website on December 26.
“The first active-duty unit dedicated to supporting U.S. civilian authorities in the event of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack recently wrapped up three days of intensive training its members hope they never have to apply in real life,” Donna Miles reports for the Armed Forces Press Service. “Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team got hands-on training in skills they would depend on to provide humanitarian support during a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive incident, known here as a CBRNE.”
Cut Cables Disrupt Internet and Telephone Services between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia
Internet and telephone services hit the Gulf Arab region when marine cables were cut causing communications disruption with Europe, the Middle East, and Asia on Wednesday. This will disrupt regional economics and could last for some time. In the BBC News article “Severed Cable Disrupts Net Access”, Friday, 19 December 2008, parts of the Gulf Arab region was plunged into darkness disrupting 80 percent of Egypt services, and 65 percent of services between Europe and India. Severe disruptions also included facilities in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.
Two undersea cables were cut near the northern coast near Alexandria, Egypt and the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia. The initial cuts were on sections linking Sicily to Egypt in the segments of two intercontinental cables known as Sea-ME-We-4 and Flag Europe-Asia and on Friday a third cable was revealed to be damaged off the UAE coast. According to a Arabian Business.com…
