Infinite Unknown

From the article:

“Shaffer was previously known for alleging before the 9/11 Commission and Congress that a covert Pentagon task force called “Able Danger” had identified Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks, before the assaults on New York and the Pentagon. Shaffer’s claim was later rejected by congressional investigators, among others. But he repeats the assertion in the book.”

The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing - 10,000 copies - of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed, according to military and other sources.

“Operation Dark Heart,” which was scheduled to be published this month by St. Martin’s Press, recounts the adventures and frustrations of an Army reservist, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who served in Afghanistan in 2003, a moment when the attention of Washington and the military had shifted to Iraq.

Shaffer, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, describes a number of planned covert operations, including an aborted cross-border surveillance operation using sophisticated eavesdropping technology that targeted high-level al-Qaeda operatives based in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The operation was shut down by military officials concerned about offending Pakistan, according to Shaffer’s account.

Shaffer’s book was reviewed and cleared in writing by the Army Reserve earlier this year, but this summer the Defense Intelligence Agency objected to the use of the names of American intelligence officers, among other issues.

A senior Pentagon official said that the DIA obtained a copy of the manuscript in mid-July, adding that the agency “did a quick review” and found “some issues we were very concerned with.” The agency then referred the matter to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which distributed the manuscript to other agencies, presumably including the CIA, “all of whom had major objections to things in the book,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The official said the Defense Department “sent up a team to talk with the publisher some time ago,” and has been negotiating an agreement that might allow the Pentagon to purchase already printed copies of the book and permit a subsequent version to go forward as long as it complies with U.S. government requests.

Both sides now appear to have agreed on the contents of the second printing, but negotiations are focused on what to with the 10,000 copies already published.

The Pentagon is now negotiating with Shaffer’s publisher to buy the entire first print run, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. The Pentagon’s plan to destroy all 10,000 copies of the initial printing was first reported Thursday night by the New York Times.

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Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Anthony Shaffer, CIA, Department of Defense, globla news, Government, Pakistan, Pentagon, Politics, Terrorism, Terrorists, U.S.

Soldiers face charges over secret ‘kill team’ which allegedly murdered at random and collected fingers as trophies of war

Andrew Holmes, Michael Wagnon, Jeremy Morlock and Adam Winfield are four of the five Stryker soldiers who face murder charges. Photograph: Public Domain

Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret “kill team” that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies.

Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.

In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

According to investigators and legal documents, discussion of killing Afghan civilians began after the arrival of Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs at forward operating base Ramrod last November. Other soldiers told the army’s criminal investigation command that Gibbs boasted of the things he got away with while serving in Iraq and said how easy it would be to “toss a grenade at someone and kill them”.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Civilians, Crimes, Global News, Government, Military, Politics, U.S., War, War Crimes

More transparency we can believe in!

In a 6-5 ruling issued this afternoon, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Obama administration a major victory in its efforts to shield Bush crimes from judicial review, when the court upheld the Obama DOJ’s argument that Bush’s rendition program, used to send victims to be tortured, are “state secrets” and its legality thus cannot be adjudicated by courts.

The Obama DOJ had appealed to the full 9th Circuit from last year’s ruling by a 3-judge panel which rejected the “state secrets” argument and held that it cannot be used as a weapon to shield the Executive Branch from allegations in this case that it broke the law.

I’ve written multiple times about this case, brought by torture/rendition victim Binyam Mohamed and several others against the Boeing subsidiary which, at the behest of the Bush administration, rendered them to be tortured.

Flu permitting, I’ll have much more to say about this decision tomorrow, but for the moment, I wanted to highlight the first paragraph from The New York Times article on this ruling, written by Charlie Savage.  Just marvel, in particular, at the last sentence:

“The ruling handed a major victory to the Obama administration in its effort to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy power.”  That says it all.

The distorted, radical use of the state secret privilege — as a broad-based immunity weapon for compelling the dismissal of entire cases alleging Executive lawbreaking, rather than a narrow discovery tool for suppressing the use of specific classified documents — is exactly what the Bush administration did to such extreme controversy.  To see how true that is, just look at this article from Talking Points Memo, from April of last year, in which Zachary Roth consulted with numerous legal experts about my argument that Obama was abusing this weapon in exactly the same way Bush did.  His findings were encapsulated in the TPM headline:

Roth wrote:

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald wrote that the move “demonstrates that the Obama DOJ plans to invoke the exact radical doctrines of executive secrecy which Bush used.” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann called it “deja vu all over again”.

Not having Greenwald’s training in constitutional law (and perhaps lacking Olbermann’s all-conquering self-confidence), we wanted to get a sense from a few independent experts as to how to assess the administration’s position on the case. Does it represent a continuation of the Bushies’ obsession with putting secrecy and executive power above basic constitutional rights? Is it a sweeping power grab by the executive branch, that sets set a broad and dangerous precedent for future cases by asserting that the government has the right to get lawsuits dismissed merely by claiming that state secrets are at stake, without giving judges any discretion whatsoever?

In a word, yes.

Suffice to say — with great understatement — Obama’s doing this doesn’t trigger the same level of outrage and objection as when Bush did it, at least not in most circles.  And I do so fondly recall the days back in the Spring of last year when civil libertarians who were vigorously objecting to Obama’s Bush-replicating legal positions were told by vocal Obama supporters that Obama was only doing this in order to ensure that Bush’s extremist legal theories were rejected by courts and thus we were all generously showered with the Magnanimous Gift of Good Precedent.  Again with great understatement, Obama’s appealing the 9th Circuit’s rejection of the Bush/Obama “state secrets” argument to the full court — and thus securing one of the most harmful judicial endorsements ever of this radical secrecy doctrine — is not exactly consistent with that Obama-justifying rationale. Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Bush administration, CIA, George Bush, Government, Interrogation, Obama administration, Politics, Torture, U.S.

A toxic tide of acid mine water is rising steadily beneath Johannesburg which, if left unchecked, could cause earth tremors, power blackouts and even cancer among residents, experts have warned.

Particularly at risk is the central business district which is built over the central basin and is home to some of Africa?s biggest firms Photo: ALAMY

The water is currently around 600 metres below the city’s surface but is rising at a rate of between 0.4 and 0.9 metres per day, meaning it could overflow onto the streets in just under a year and a half.

Because it would take 13 months to build a pumping station to clear the water, a legacy of 120 years of mining around Johannesburg, the state has just four months to find the millions of pounds needed to fund it.

It is currently locked in negotiations with multinational mining firms who have profited from the area’s rich natural resources over who should pay and how much.

Announcing a task force of experts set up to deal with the issue yesterday, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said she was hoping that the potential dividends from tapping a new water supply for human consumption and use in industry would entice investors.

Acidic water is created when abandoned mine shafts and tunnels fill up with ground water which oxidises with heavy metals and the sulphide mineral iron pyrite, known as “fool’s gold” because of its yellowish hue.

Without effective drainage, it pours out into waterways, polluting crops and poisoning those living nearby.

According to water activist Mariette Liefferink, from the Federation for a Sustainable Environment, the water is the same acidity of lemon juice or vinegar and poses an “enormous threat” to the city and its inhabitants.

Particularly at risk is the central business district which is built over the central basin and is home to some of Africa’s biggest firms. According to Miss Liefferink, the buildings they are housed would be damaged as the mine water corrodes steel and concrete.

She added that some of the city’s poorer residents are already living on top of mine dumps filled with carcinogenic metals which, if they react with the rising mine water, will pollute the entire water system.

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Tags: Environment, Global News, Government, Health, Johannesburg, Politics, South Africa, Water

See also:

- Powers urge defiant Iran to cooperate with IAEA:

(Reuters) - Russia and China called on trade partner Iran on Tuesday to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog after the Vienna-based organisation accused Tehran of making its work more difficult by barring some inspectors.

Iran, which rejects Western accusations it is seeking to build atom bombs, said it was cooperating fully with the agency and had the right to reject U.N. inspectors which gave “false” information about its nuclear programme.

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, obtained by Reuters on Monday, said the Islamic Republic was pushing ahead with its nuclear work in defiance of tougher international sanctions.

Iran has passed a crucial nuclear threshold, weapons inspectors have warned, and could now go on to arm an atomic missile with relative ease.

Fuel is unloaded at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran, August 21, 2010 Photo: GETTY IMAGES

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iranian nuclear scientists had made at least 22 kilograms of enriched uranium up to 20 per cent purity, a technical hurdle that is the hardest to overcome on the way to weapons-grade uranium.

Experts estimate that 20 kgs of uranium is a significant step toward arming a warhead. The uranium would still need to have its purity raised to 90 per cent, but that is a relatively easy process.

The agency’s report comes in spite of the recent imposition at the United Nations of a fresh round of sanctions against Iran and will heighten fears of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear plants. The prospect of an attack had receded only recently with American assurances that Tehran was more than a year away from acquiring a bomb.

The Vienna-based nuclear watchdog indicated Tehran had maintained its absolute defiance of international pressure to curb its programme despite the imposition of harsh sanctions in May. The IAEA has grown increasingly alarmed at Iran’s behaviour and the latest report, which will be presented to the agency’s governors at a meeting next week, lambasted Tehran on a series of fronts.

The country’s refusal to answer questions on its attempts to make a nuclear warhead that could be fitted on to its most advanced missiles was denounced as a violation of sanctions.

The agency also rebuked the regime for its repeated failure to co-operate with weapons inspections designed to ensure that material was held securely at Iranian plants.

Iran barred two weapons inspectors from the country in June after they reported undeclared nuclear activity by scientists. It has also systematically objected to other scientists on spurious grounds.

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Tags: Global News, Government, IAEA, Iran, Nuclear weapons, Politics

Looks like another staged event.

Divide et impera!

See also:

- Florida pastor not backing down on Koran-burning (Reuters)

- Should Petraeus have weighed in on Koran burning? General defends himself. (Christian Science Monitor)

Rev. Terry Jones at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., Monday, Aug. 30, 2010. Jones plans to burn copies of the Koran on church grounds to mark the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States that provoked the Afghan war. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said Wednesday he was determined to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11, despite pressure from the White House, religious leaders and others to call it off.

Pastor Terry Jones said at a press conference that he has received a lot of encouragement, with supporters mailing copies of the Islamic holy text to his Gainesville church of about 50 followers. He proclaimed in July that he would stage “International Burn-a-Koran Day” to mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11.

“As of right now, we are not convinced that backing down is the right thing,” said Jones, who took no questions.

Jones said he has received more than 100 death threats and has started carrying a .40-caliber pistol since announcing his plan to burn the book Muslims consider the word of God and insist be treated with the utmost respect. Jones, 58, was flanked by an armed escort Wednesday.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Kabul, took the rare step of a military leader taking a position on a domestic matter when he warned in an e-mail to The Associated Press that “images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence.”

Petraeus spoke Wednesday with Afghan President Karzai about the matter, according to a military spokesman Col. Erik Gunhus. “They both agreed that burning of a Koran would undermine our effort in Afghanistan, jeopardize the safety of coalition troopers and civilians,” Gunhus said, and would “create problems for our Afghan partners … as it likely would be Afghan police and soldiers who would have to deal with any large demonstrations.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the pastor’s plans were outrageous, and along with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, urged Jones to cancel the event.

“It is regrettable that a pastor in Gainesville, Florida, with a church of no more than 50 people can make this outrageous and distrustful, disgraceful plan and get the world’s attention, but that’s the world we live in right now,” Clinton said in remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jones gained some local notoriety last year when he posted signs in front of his church declaring “Islam is of the Devil.” But his Koran-burning idea attracted wider attention. It drew rebukes from Muslim nations and at home as an emotional debate was taking shape over the proposed Islamic center near the ground zero site of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.

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Tags: CFR, Council on Foreign Relations, Government, Koran, Politics, Religion, Society, Terry Jones, U.S.

China is poised to sign a $2bn (£1.3bn) deal to build a railway line in Iran in the first step of a wider plan to tie the Middle East and Central Asia to Beijing.

The Chinese have already built a railway line serving Tibet, above, and now plan a modern variant on the old ‘Silk Road’ through Central Asia Photo: AP

China’s railways minister, Liu Zhijun, is expected to visit Tehran this week to seal the deal, according to his Iranian counterpart, Hamid Behbahani.

“The final document of the contract has already been signed with a Chinese company and the Chinese minister will visit Iran on September 12 to ink the agreement,” said Mr Behbahani.

The new line will run from Tehran to the town of Khosravi on the border with Iraq, around 360 miles as the crow flies, passing through Arak, Hamedan and Kermanshah.

Eventually, the Iranian government said, the route could link Iran with Iraq and even Syria as part of a Middle-Eastern corridor. That could also benefit the 5,000 Iranians who make pilgrimages each day to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq.

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Tags: China, Economy, Global News, Government, Iran, Politics

And the US government told you it is safe to stay or even encouraged you to plan your holidays there and BP hasn’t stopped spraying Corexit all over the place.

Added: 3. September 2010

Related information:

- Scientist Rick Steiner Got Gulf Disaster Right From The Beginning, Warns Crisis Is Far From Over

- Gulf Chemist: Mercenaries Hired By BP Are Now Applying Extremely Toxic Dispersant - at Night and In an Uncontrolled Manner - Which BP Says It No Longer Uses (Pictures)

- FDA admits NOT testing for MERCURY, ARSENIC, or any other TOXIC HEAVY METALS in Sea Food

- Gulf claims chief Ken Feinberg says BP no-sue rule was his idea, takes control of BP’s $20bn fund

- Scientists Find Giant 22-Mile Plume Of Oil Droplets From BP’s Deepwater Horizon Well ‘Missed’ By Official Account

- Matt Simmons Dies In An ‘Accidental Drowning’ At His Home

- Matthew Simmons: ‘We’ve Now Killed The Gulf Of Mexico’ (Flashback)

- Gulf Oil Blowout: Matt Simmons Was Right!

- Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico Has Stalled From BP Oil Disaster! (!)

- Scientists: Evidence Of Gulf Oil And Dispersant Mix Making Its Way Into The Foodchain

- The Growing Health Crisis in the Gulf of Mexico:

Corexit also contain arsenic, cadmium, chromium, mercury, cyanide, and other heavy metals. Dispersing oil with it increases toxicity 11-fold ….

- EPA Whistleblower On Gulf Health Risk Cover-Up: ‘People Who Work Near Corexit Are Hemorrhaging Internally.’:

People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do.EPA now is taking the position that they really don’t know how dangerous it is, even though if you read the label, it tells you how dangerous it is. And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death age is around fifty. It’s very dangerous, and it’s an economic-it’s an economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public.

- Gulf of Mexico BP Oil Rig Blast: Safety Alarm Was Off

- And Now: BP Plans Deep-Water Drilling Off Libya

-  Rachel Maddow: The Gulf Of Mexico Déjà Vu (Must See!)

- Matt Simmons: BP Cap Is A Fraud - ‘It’s The Biggest Cover-Up We have Ever Seen’

- Gulf Of Mexico Water Sample EXPLODES! Other Samples Prove To Be Toxic

- Toxicologists: Corexit ‘Ruptures Red Blood Cells, Causes Internal Bleeding’, ‘Allows Crude Oil To Penetrate ‘Into The Cells’ and ‘Every Organ System’

Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Benzene, BP, Corexit, Environment, Global News, Government, Gulf of Mexico, Health, Obama administration, U.S.

See also: Belarus web activist Oleg Bebenin (Aleh Byabenin) found hanged

Watchdog warns of official hostility towards journalists amid loss of TV station licences and mystery over fate of investigative reporter

The erosion of press freedom in Ukraine has been linked to the disappearance of journalist Vasyl Klymentyev, above, last month. Photograph: Petro Matvienko

It was 8.55am when the investigative journalist Vasyl Klymentyev set off from his home in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city. As editor-in-chief of Kharkiv’s Novy Stil (New Style) newspaper - a small publication known for unearthing juicy scandals about corrupt local officials - Klymentyev had many enemies and was rather cautious. He set the burglar alarm.

What happened next on that morning in early August is a matter of speculation. The one fact everyone agrees on is that Klymentyev vanished. His family reported him missing the next day and Kharkiv police opened a murder inquiry. His friends are convinced he is dead, though so far there is no body. On 17 August a boy discovered his mobile phone and keys in a small rubber boat floating in a rural reservoir.

For journalists, Klymentyev is a chilling symbol of how press freedoms are being curtailed in Ukraine seven months after the election of Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s new pro-Russian president. Yanukovych, his critics say, has set about reversing the gains of the 2004-10 Orange Revolution, in which newspapers and TV flourished. Reporters talk of a new era of fear and censorship.

Last week Kiev’s district court stripped two independent opposition television stations, TVi and 5 Kanal, of their licences. TVi has fallen off the main airwaves, while 5 Kanal - which came to prominence with its coverage of the 2004 pro-democracy demonstrations - has had its audience severely reduced. The winner is Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, owner of the pro-Yanukovych Inter Media television empire - and head of Ukraine’s SBU security service.

In a report last week the watchdog Reporters Without Borders (PDF) said broadcast media pluralism in Ukraine was being “seriously eroded”, warning of a “disturbing level of hostility towards journalists on the part of the authorities”, including “physical attacks”.

Ukraine’s apparent lurch towards authoritarianism has alarmed EU leaders and MPs. Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, expressed her concerns during a visit to Kiev last week.

“We are going back to the USSR,” Petro Matvienko, the deputy editor of Novy Stil, said last week. “In the USSR the [Communist] party was in charge. Now we are in the hands of a criminal totalitarian gang. It’s worse.”

Dangerous investigation

Matvienko said he was certain Klymentyev was dead, killed by someone whose interests he had crossed. Shortly before his disappearance, Klymentyev had been preparing a story about the mansions of four top officials, one from Ukraine’s security service.

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Tags: Government, Politics, Ukraine, Vasyl Klymentyev, Viktor Yanukovych

Added: 21. August 2010

More on 9/11:

- Flashback: Donald Rumsfeld said Flight 93 shot down

- NASA Flight Director: 9/11 Aircraft Speed Is The ‘Elephant In The Room’

- Dr. Alan Sabrosky, former director of studies at the US Army War College: The US Military now KNOWS Mossad carried out 9/11 Attacks

- Former FBI Senior Special Agent Ted Gunderson Says 9/11 Was An Inside Job

- 9/11: PENTAGON AIRCRAFT HIJACK IMPOSSIBLE: FLIGHT 77 DECK DOOR CLOSED FOR ENTIRE FLIGHT

- 9/11 Family Member Manny Badillo schools France 24 News

- Sibel Edmonds ‘Bombshell’: Osama Bin Laden Worked for US Until 9/11

- Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Finally Testifies Under Oath

- Footage of WTC 7 and North Tower Collapse

- Highly-Credible People Question 9/11

- 70 Reasons To Doubt The Offical Story of 9/11

- Career Army officer sues Rumsfeld, Cheney, saying no evacuation order given on 9/11

Continue reading »

Tags: 9/11, Global News, Government, Politics, Terrorism, Terrorists, U.S.