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Archive for May 20th, 2008

Earthquakes:Natural or Man-Made?

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Earthquakes:Natural or Man-Made?

 

By Jason Jeffrey

Precautions against unconventional arms must be intensified as potential terrorists develop chemical and biological weapons and electromagnetic methods that could create holes in the ozone layer or trigger earthquakes or volcanoes.
– Former US Secretary of Defense William Cohen speaking at the University of Georgia, 1997

The devastating tsunami created December 26, 2004 by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people on the shores of the Indian Ocean caught the world off guard. It was the largest earthquake since the 9.2 magnitude Good Friday Earthquake off Alaska in 1964, and ties for fourth largest since 1900.

     The earthquake that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra occurred in a location geologists know is susceptible to powerful earthquakes. The quake occurred along a “subduction zone,” in which the Indian tectonic plate is being subducted, or pulled beneath, the Burma tectonic platelet. The overlying plate jumped upward more than 4.5 metres, lifting the water above it and setting off the tsunami.

     For some, the finger of blame doesn’t point squarely at nature but at top secret military testing in the waters of the Indian Ocean.

     The Egyptian weekly magazine Al-Osboa claimed the earthquake that triggered the tsunami “was possibly” caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which “Israeli and American nuclear experts participated”.

     An Australian researcher, Joe Vialls,1 in his article “Did New York Orchestrate The Asian Tsunami?” analyses how easy it would be to deliver “a multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon to the bottom of the Sumatran Trench, and then detonate it with awesome effect.”

     Days after the disaster, Canadian Professor Michel Chossudovsky wrote an article titled “Foreknowledge of A Natural Disaster: Washington was aware that a deadly Tidal Wave was building up in the Indian Ocean”.2 He noted “the US Navy was fully aware of the deadly tidal wave, because the Navy was on the Pacific Warning Centre’s list of contacts. Moreover, America’s strategic Naval base on the island of Diego Garcia had also been notified. Although directly in the path of the tidal wave, the Diego Garcia military base reported ‘no damage’.”

     “With modern communications, the information of an impending disaster could have been sent around the world in a matter of minutes, by email, by telephone, by fax, not to mention by live satellite television,” he adds.

     Others see the catastrophe as a ‘sign of the times’ in which we live, and a portent of what is to come as the Earth and humanity experience even more changes as part of the end of a world cycle.

Natural Earthquakes

     Natural earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates over the Earth’s mantle. Sandwiched between Earth’s crust and molten outer core, the vast mantle accounts for 83 percent of the planet’s volume. It is filled with solid rock but, heated by the core and by its own radioactive decay, it circulates like a pot of impenetrable soup. That circulation is the driving force behind the surface motion of tectonic plates, which builds mountains and causes earthquakes.

     The destructive power of an earthquake comes from the momentum gathered when two opposing “faults” or tectonic plates that may have been locked together for decades, suddenly move apart. The result is that solid rock which normally moves only with the passing of geological ages accelerates briefly to 8000 kmh, unleashing huge quantities of energy and creating a shaking movement of up to a metre a second.

     Most people consider earthquakes to be natural in origin, but what if there was such a thing as man-made earthquakes? Well, there are. There is the official version of what constitutes a man-made earthquake, and then there is a body of suppressed research pointing to a more insidious agenda.

Artificially-Induced Earthquakes

     Officially, there is an area of research devoted to man-made earthquakes. Geologists and seismologists agree earthquakes can be induced in five major ways: fluid injection into the Earth, fluid extraction from the Earth, mining or quarrying, nuclear testing and through the construction of dams and reservoirs.

     In fact, there are officially recorded instances of earthquakes caused by human activity.

     Geologists discovered that disposal of waste fluids by means of injecting them deep into the Earth could trigger earthquakes after a series of quakes in the Denver area occurred from 1962-1965; the periods and amounts of injected waste coincided with the frequency and magnitude of quakes in the Denver area. The earthquakes were triggered because the liquid, which was injected under very high pressure, released stored strain energy in the rocks.

     Man-made earthquakes may seem like something out of the X-Files, and it’s probably only a matter of time before the idea is picked up by Hollywood.

     The plotline of Hammer of Eden, written by best-selling author Ken Follett, revolves around a terrorist group threatening to level San Francisco with a man-made earthquake. When asked by Salon magazine how real is the idea of a man-made earthquake, Follett replied that, “Some of the seismologists told me, ‘There’s no way this could happen.’ But others gave sad little shrugs and said, ‘It’s hard to say. Who knows? Maybe. It’s within the realm of possibly.’”

Suppressed Research:
Tesla Technologies

     Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Nikola Tesla is one of the 20th century’s greatest scientists. A prodigious inventor of electronic devices and pioneer of free energy, Tesla never gained the recognition he deserved because his scientific breakthroughs were deemed too ‘sensitive’ by the corporate and government powers of the day.

     In a book entitled Tesla – The Lost Inventions, a section is headed “Man-Made Earthquake”. It discloses Tesla’s fascination with the power of resonance and how he experimented with it not only electrically but on the mechanical plane as well. In his Manhattan lab, Tesla built mechanical vibrators and tested their powers. One experiment got out of hand.

     Tesla attached a powerful little vibrator driven by compressed air to a steel pillar. Leaving it there, he went about his business. Meanwhile, down the street, a violent quaking built up, shaking down plaster, bursting plumbing, cracking windows, and breaking heavy machinery off its anchorages.

     Tesla’s vibrator had found the resonant frequency of a deep sandy layer of subsoil beneath his building, setting off a small earthquake. Soon Tesla’s own building began to quake. It is reported that just as the police broke into his lab, Tesla was seen smashing the device with a sledge hammer, the only way he could promptly stop it.

     In a similar experiment, on an evening walk through the city, Tesla attached a battery powered vibrator, described as being the size of an alarm clock, to the steel framework of a building under construction. He adjusted it to a suitable frequency and set the structure into resonant vibration.

     The structure shook, and so did the earth under his feet. Tesla later boasted he could shake down the Empire State Building with such a device. If this claim was not extravagant enough, he went on to say a large-scale resonant vibration was capable of splitting the Earth in half.

     An article from the July 11, 1935 issue of the New York American entitled ‘Tesla’s Controlled Earthquakes’, stated Tesla’s “experiments in transmitting mechanical vibrations through the Earth – called by him ‘the art of telegeodynamics’ – were roughly described by the scientists as a sort of controlled earthquake.”

     The article quotes Tesla as saying:

The rhythmical vibrations pass through the Earth with almost no loss of energy. It becomes possible to convey mechanical effects to the greatest terrestrial distances and produce all kinds of unique effects. The invention could be used with destructive effect in war…

     The January 1978 edition of Specula magazine ran an article describing an incredibly profound phenomenon that could be produced within the Earth by what is called the ‘Tesla Effect.’

     According to the article, electromagnetic signals of certain frequencies can be transmitted through the Earth to form standing waves in the Earth itself. In certain cases, coherence to this standing wave can be induced wherein a fraction of the vast, surging electromagnetic current of the Earth itself feeds into and augments the induced standing wave.

     In other words, “much more energy is now present in the standing wave than the …amount being fed in from the Earth’s surface.” By interferometer techniques, giant standing waves can be combined to produce a focused beam of very great energy. This can then be used to produce earthquakes induced at distant aiming points.

     Tesla expressed grave concerns about the effects of this technology because it is exactly the type of thing that could easily get out of control once it begins vibrating within the Earth – and it could actually cause the Earth to vibrate to pieces.

     Another leading Tesla researcher and nuclear engineer, Lt. Col. Thomas Bearden, lecturing at a Symposium of the US Psychotronics Association (USPA) in 1981, stated:

Tesla found that he could set up standing waves… in the Earth (the molten core), or, just set it up through the rocks – the telluric activity in the rocks would furnish activity into these waves and one would get more potential energy in those waves than he put in. He called the concept the Tesla Magnifying Transmitter (TMT).

     Bearden goes on to explain how TMTs worked:

     They will go through anything. What you do is that you set up a standing wave through the Earth and the molten core of the Earth begins to feed that wave (we are talking Tesla now). When you have that standing wave, you have set up a triode. What you’ve done is that the molten core of the Earth is feeding the energy and it’s like your signal – that you are putting in – is gating the grid of a triode… Then what you do is that you change the frequency. If you change the frequency one way (start to dephase it), you dump the energy up in the atmosphere beyond the point on the other side of the Earth that you focused upon. You start ionising the air, you can change the weather flow patterns (jet streams etc) – you can change all that – if you dump it gradually, real gradually – you influence the heck out of the weather. It’s a great weather machine. If you dump it sharply, you don’t get little ionisation like that. You will get flashes and fireballs (plasma) that will come down on the surfaces of the Earth… you can cause enormous weather changes over entire regions by playing that thing back and forth.

HAARP: The Pentagon’s Ultimate Weapon

     In an Arctic compound 450 kilometres east of Anchorage, Alaska, the Pentagon has erected a powerful transmitter designed to beam more than a gigawatt of energy into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Known as Project HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program), the experiment involves the world’s largest “ionospheric heater,” a device designed to zap the skies hundreds of kilometres above the Earth with high-frequency radio waves.

     Why irradiate the charged particles of the ionosphere (which when energised by natural processes make up the lovely and famous phenomenon known as the Northern Lights)? According to the US Navy and Air Force, co-sponsors of the project, “to observe the complex natural variations of Alaska’s ionosphere.” As well, admit the Pentagon, to develop new forms of communications and surveillance technologies to enable the military to send signals to nuclear submarines and to peer deep underground.

     Ever since the existence of HAARP became public, a number of independent researchers have warned the operation has a secret agenda including weather modification, mind control, hi-tech military experiments, and the triggering of earthquakes.

     HAARP transmissions may also be used for the detection and monitoring of electromagnetic or “plasma” phenomena, precursors of seismic activity and tectonic movement. Researchers believe HAARP transmissions are actually being used to activate or trigger exactly the same electromagnetic conditions that can cause tectonic movement.

     Jerry Smith in his book HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy, warns many atmospheric scientists working on the secretive military project might be unaware of HAARP’s grave potential to wreak havoc on the Earth. He writes:

If HAARP is a TMT [Tesla Magnifying Transmitter], and these researchers correctly understand Tesla’s work, we could be in a lot of trouble. It is quite possible that the scientists working on HAARP do not know what they are playing with… Beyond that their ignorance might be compounded if HAARP is indeed a secretive black-ops military project. The military has devised a way of keeping secrets called ‘compartmentalisation’ where each unit knows only what it needs to know… Only the control group knows what’s going on… If there is a control group familiar with TMTs directing the actions of scientists unschooled in Tesla technology, those lower level operatives could be directed to wreak havoc with created weather or manufactured earthquakes….

     The key technology behind HAARP is the brainchild of scientist Bernard Eastlund. Judging from his APTI patent, Tesla was a major inspiration for Eastlund’s ionospheric heater. A New York Times story, dated December 8, 1915, describes one of Tesla’s ideas which are remarkably similar to Eastlund’s.3

     In 1966, Professor Gordon J.F. MacDonald was associate director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, a member of the US President’s Science Advisory Committee, and later a member of the US President’s Council on Environmental Quality.

     He published papers on the use of environmental-control technologies for military purposes. MacDonald made a revealing comment: “The key to geophysical warfare is the identification of environmental instabilities to which the addition of a small amount of energy would release vastly greater amounts of energy.”

     World-renowned scientist MacDonald developed ideas for using the environment as a weapon system and he contributed to what was, at the time, only in the wildest dream of a futurist. When he wrote his chapter, “How To Wreck The Environment,” for the book Unless Peace Comes, he was not kidding around. In it he describes the use of weather manipulation, climate modification, polar ice cap melting or destabilisation, ozone depletion techniques, earthquake engineering, ocean wave control and brain wave manipulation using the planet’s energy fields.

     He speculated these types of weapons would be developed and, when used, would be virtually undetectable by their victims. Is HAARP one such weapon?

     In her book Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War, renowned scientist and nuclear activist Dr. Rosalie Bertell says such electromagnetic weapons “have the ability to transmit explosive and other effects such as earthquake induction across intercontinental distances to any selected target site on the globe with force levels equivalent to major nuclear explosions.”

     Her book explains that pulsed, extremely low frequency (ELF) waves can be used to convey mechanical effects and vibrations at great distances through the Earth.

     Such manipulation of the Earth, she states, “has the capability to cause disturbance of volcanoes and tectonic plates, which in turn, have an effect on the weather,” creating storms and torrential rains over an area. Anyone notice the world’s weather has been very strange in recent months?

Beachings and Seismic Tests

     On November 28, 2004, Reuters reported that during a three day span, 169 whales and dolphins beached themselves in Tasmania, an island off the southern coast of mainland Australia. The cause for these beachings is not known, but Bob Brown, a senator in the Australian parliament, said “sound bombing” or seismic tests of ocean floors to test for oil and gas had been recently carried out near the sites of the Tasmanian beachings.

     According to Jim Cummings of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, seismic surveys utilising airguns have been taking place in mineral-rich areas of the world’s oceans since 1968. Among the areas that have experienced the most intense survey activity are the North Sea, the Beaufort Sea (off Alaska’s North Slope), and the Gulf of Mexico; areas around Australia and South America are also current hotspots of activity.

     The impulses created by the release of air from arrays of up to 24 airguns create low frequency sound waves powerful enough to penetrate up to 40km below the seafloor. The “source level” of these sound waves is generally over 200dB (and often 230dB or more), roughly comparable to a sound of at least 140-170dB in air.

     According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, these 200dB – 230dB shots from the airguns are fired every 10 seconds or so, from 10 metres below the surface, 24 hours a day, for 2 week periods of time, weather permitting.

     These types of tests are known to affect whales and dolphins, whose acute hearing and use of sonar is very sensitive.

     On December 24, 2004 there was a magnitude 8.1 earthquake more than 800 kilometres southeast of Tasmania near New Zealand, with a subsequent aftershock 6.1 a little later in the morning that same day.

     Then on December 26 the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck leading to the devastating tsunami that killed more than 300,000 people.

     On December 27, 20 whales beached themselves 180 kilometres west of Hobart on the southern island state of Tasmania.

     Interestingly, the locations of the whale beachings over the previous 30 days correlates with the same general area struck by the 8.1 Australian earthquake. The seismic testing also took place in the same area. Then two days after the Australian tectonic plate shifted, the 9.0 earthquake shook the coast of Indonesia.

     There is strong evidence suggesting oil exploration activities have induced earthquakes in the past, although a link is yet to be established in this case.

     A paper “Seismicity in the Oil Field” by Russian academics admit, “Scientists have observed that earthquakes can be triggered by human action…. Some geophysicists, including the authors of this article, believe that if the natural tectonic regime had been taken into account during the planning of hydrocarbon recovery, the earthquakes might have been avoided.”4 

     This is a sobering admission when we consider that some geologists say the Australian quake was the likely trigger for the Indonesian quake.

Sign of the Times?

     The death and devastation caused by major earthquakes around the world can only worsen in years to come, as growing urban development and unprecedented population growth compound the lethal effects of natural and, as some researchers claim, man-made seismic hazards.

     With the world’s population nearing an estimated 6.5 billion, there are fewer unpopulated places for quakes to strike. And with ever more people to accommodate, there is more multistoried construction in vulnerable fault zones.

     Frightening and controversial projects like HAARP, with applications ranging from weather modification to mind control, should be of great concern to us all. And most worrying is mounting evidence the US military now has the ability to create earthquakes – the ultimate weapon of war.

     Was the earthquake of December 26 man-made or the result of natural forces? There are many who believe such events are part of a cyclic period of earth changes. Strange weather patterns, an increase in earthquake activity, and natural disasters across the planet, are anticipated at the end of major world cycles.

     Christians often call attention to the Gospel account where Jesus says a sign of the end of the world age would be “earthquakes in diverse places” (Matthew 24:7). Many believe this verse refers to the times in which we live.

     In traditional Hindu cosmology, we are now nearing the end of the Kali Yuga which is the final and most negative of four evolutionary cycles which are Satya Yuga (Golden Age), Treta Yuga (Silver Age), Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age), and Kali Yuga (Iron Age).

     Similarly, the ancient Greeks traced the lineage of mankind through five successive “ages” or “races” from the “Golden Age” to the present “Iron Age.”

     The Visuddhimagga, a compendium of Theravada Buddhist philosophy, gives further details about the recurring cycles that destroy mankind and cleanse the Earth. The text relates there are 64 world destruction cycles in which the world perishes seven times by fire, and an eighth time by water. This cycle of eight destructions repeats itself seven times, and then at the end of the eighth cycle the final destruction is by wind rather than water. Then the cycle of 64 begins anew.

     Man’s most ancient traditions tell us these cycles reflect the creative process of the cosmos. The memories of a lost ‘Golden Age’, found in all earthly cultures, point to a time in the distant past when harmony and balance prevailed. This harmony is upset during the Iron Age, which is prophesied to end amid a proliferation of inverted spiritual values and rampant materialism, accompanied by devastating natural disturbances.

     Act of man or act of nature, the recent earthquake and tsunami may indeed be another ‘sign of the times’ signalling the last days of the present world order. We do well to recall the words of the gifted French esotericist Rene Guenon:

This end only appears to be the “end of the world,” without any reservation or specification of any kind, to those who see nothing beyond the limits of this particular cycle;… the end now under consideration is undeniably of considerably greater importance than many other, for it is the end of a whole Manvantara [world age]… this end will itself immediately become the beginning of another Manvantara… if one does not stop short of the most profound order of reality, it can be said in all truth the “end of a world” never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion.

 

http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Articles/Earthquakes_Natural_or_Man_Made.html

US ‘violated Venezuela airspace’

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US ‘violated Venezuela airspace’

 

 

Venezuela has demanded an explanation from Washington after a US military aircraft violated its airspace.

The US ambassador in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, has been summoned to explain Saturday’s event.

US officials admitted a naval plane on a counter-narcotics mission had “navigational problems” that led it to briefly enter Venezuelan airspace.

Tension has been rising in the region with both the US and Colombia accusing Caracas of financing Colombian rebels.

‘Series of provocations’

Venezuelan Defence Minister Gustavo Rangel said the US jet had been tracked by his country’s air defences over the Venezuelan-owned island of La Orchila on Saturday.

Mr Rangel told a news conference that the US aircraft “practically flew over” La Orchila – where Venezuela has a military base and President Hugo Chavez has a residence – and another island before turning back.

“This is just the latest step in a series of provocations,” he said.

US officials admitted the incident later on Monday.

“Support of Venezuelan air traffic control was greatly appreciated as they rendered assistance in guiding the US aircraft to international airspace, the US Joint Interagency Task Force South said in a statement.

“A US S-3 aircraft conducting counter-drugs operations lost navigational situational awareness causing it to fly into Venezuelan airspace off the mainland coast,” the statement added.

The Florida-based task force conducts counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean. The S-3 is a reconnaissance aircraft.

The BBC’s James Ingham in Caracas says it comes at a time of increased tension in the region, with both the US and Colombia accusing Venezuela of financing the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

Colombia says various documents prove that Venezuela has funded the rebels. Mr Chavez insists he has never provided any support.

The US violation of Venezuelan airspace comes two days after a similar claim was made against Colombia.

The Bogota government denied that its troops had crossed into Venezuelan territory on Friday.

Our correspondent says the latest row will further increase tension between Venezuela and two countries it clearly sees as enemies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7409244.stm

Written by eldib

May 20, 2008 at 11:18 pm

City of the Dead-Mosul on Lockdown

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City of the Dead – Mosul on Lockdown

 

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Mosul.

Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al Qaida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country’s northern capital into a ghost town. Soldiers shoot at any civilian vehicle on the streets in defiance of a strict curfew. Two men, a woman and child in one car which failed to stop were shot dead by US troops who later issued a statement saying the two men were armed and one man made ‘threatening movements.’

It is not easy to reach Mosul, a city of 1.4 million people on the Tigris river, sealed off from the outside world by hundreds of police and army checkpoints since the Iraqi government offensive against al-Qa’ida began at 4 am on Saturday morning.

The operation is a critical part of the government’s attempt over the last six weeks to reassert military control over Iraq which has led to heavy fighting in Baghdad and Basra.

We began the journey from the Kurdish capital Arbil in a convoy of white pick up trucks, each with a heavy machine gun in the back manned by alert-looking soldiers, some wearing black face masks, that were escorting Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Mosul, to his office in the city.

Soon after crossing the long bridge over the Zaab river and leaving territory officially controlled by the Kurds, we saw lines of trucks and cars, whose drivers presumably had not heard of the curfew, being stopped by police. The soldiers defending our convoy said that there was little real danger ahead, but even so we turned into a military headquarters in the Christian village of Bartilla to exchange our pick ups for more heavily armoured vehicles with small windows a few inches across of bullet proof glass.

I had been to Mosul down this road half a dozen times since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and on each occasion the military escort necessary to reach the city safely has grown bigger. Squinting through the small glass portholes I could see local people were clearly taking the curfew seriously. Even the miserable looking cafes used by the truck drivers, and which I had imagined were never closed, had put up their metal grills.

In eastern Mosul the streets are usually bustling and stalls spill onto the road near the tomb of the prophet Jonah who died in Mosul sometime after his alarming experience with the whale. Most of the people living in this part of the city are in any case Kurds, who support the central government against al-Qa’ida, but here again every shop was shut and there were police and soldiers at checkpoints every fifty yards.

An extra brigade had been sent from Baghdad for the present offensive along with special security troops to reinforce the 2nd and 3rd divisions. Outside the police headquarters the black vehicles of the Interior Ministry, each with a heavy machine gun and a yellow head of a tiger as an insignia on the doors, were drawn up in rows.

American helicopters flew high overhead as well as drones for reconnaissance. There was the occasional burst of firing and bomb blast in the distance. The governor of Mosul, Dunaid Kashoula, says the city ‘has come to be dominated by the leaders of al-Qa’ida as a result of the delay in the military operation’ originally scheduled for earlier this year. Nevertheless, the insurgents in Mosul have never held whole quarters of the city and there was no street fighting.

The government offensive in Mosul was promised in January by the prime minister Nouri al-Maliki as the last battle against al-Qa’ida. He promised revenge for the assassination of the previous police commander for the city who had been assassinated by an al-Qa’ids suicide bomber dressed in a police uniform.

There is no doubt that security in Mosul has been getting worse over the last six months. Mr Goran, who effectively runs the city, says that 90 people were killed in Mosul last September compared to 213 dead this March including 58 soldiers and policemen. The number of roadside bombs had risen from 175 to 269 over the same period.

The official theory for this is that al Qa’ida in Iraq, which has only a limited connection with Osama bin Laden and is largely home grown, has been driven out of its old bastions in Anbar and Diyala provinces and Sunni districts of Baghdad. It has therefore retreated to Mosul, the largest Sunni Arab city and the third largest in Iraq.

This is probably over simple. Attacks on US troops in Anbar province have started again and in Sunni districts of west Baghdad al-Qa’ida appears to be lying low rather than being eliminated. In many cases in Baghdad al-Sahwa, the supposedly anti-al-Qa’ida awakening Councils paid by the Americans, in practice have cosy arrangements with al-Qa’ida.

I had decided to go to Mosul – and therefore arrived in the first hours of the government offensive – because of what turned out to be a false report that the head of al Qa’ida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri check spelling, had been captured in a pre-dawn raid in the city. Later Iraqi security officers said they captured many ‘Emirs’, al Qa’ida cell leaders, and targeted hundreds of suspected houses.

These are critical days for the Iraqi government of Mr Maliki. Since 25 March he has launched military offensives in Basra and Baghdad. He is getting support from the Americans and the Kurds. But it it is not clear if the Iraqi army will fight without the backing of US firepower in the air or on the ground. On Saturday a ceasefire was agreed with the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in Sadr City giving the government greater control. But, as in Mosul, it is not clear how far the government’s opponents have simply retreated to fight another day.

I was in Mosul on the day it was surrendered by Saddam Hussein’s forces in 2003.Scenes of joy were succeeded within the space of a few hours by looting and gun battles between Arabs and Kurds. Five years later Mosul, one of the great cities of the world, looks ruinous and under siege. Every alley way is blocked by barricades and the only new building is in the form of concrete blast walls. The fact that the government has to empty the streets of Mosul of its people to establish peace for a few days shows how far the city is from genuine peace.

http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick05192008.html

Written by eldib

May 20, 2008 at 11:12 pm

Posted in Irak, USA, oil

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U.S. Bush apologizes over Quran shooting in Iraq

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U.S. Bush apologizes over Quran shooting in Iraq

 

BAGHDAD, May 20 (Xinhua) — U.S. President George W. Bush has apologized to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki over the shooting of the holy Quran by an American soldier, Iraqi official television reported on Tuesday.

“The prime minister received an apology from U.S. President George W. Bush on the incident of shooting of a Quran by a U.S. soldier,” the state-run television al-Iraqia said.

On May 11, the Iraqi police found the desecrated copy of the Islamic holy book at a small shooting range near a police station in Radwaniyah. The volume was riddled with bullets and had graffiti inside the cover.

Later, the U.S. military apologized to the local community leaders in Radwaniyah, a mostly Sunni district on Baghdad’s southwestern outskirts.

A U.S. military spokesman viewed the incident as both “serious and deeply troubling” but stressed that it was an “isolated incident and a result of one soldier’s action.”

U.S. commanders have undertaken disciplinary action against the soldier who was involved, and he has been removed from Iraq to the United States, he said without releasing the name of the shooter or how he would be disciplined.

On Monday, the Iraqi Islamic Party, headed by Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, said apology by U.S. commanders in Iraq is not enough.

“Such offences have occurred frequently during the past few years and apology is no more enough and the U.S. military has to take stronger measures to honor values of Muslims,” the party said in a statement.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/20/content_8215439.htm

Written by eldib

May 20, 2008 at 11:09 pm

Posted in Irak, USA

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The Real McCain 2: Over Half a Million Views in 24 Hours!

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The Real McCain 2: Over Half a Million Views in 24 Hours!

 

This is truly spectacular: within 24 hours, The Real McCain 2 has skyrocketed to over half a million views! It’s the #1 most viewed video on YouTube right now, and it’s getting loads of love on Digg as well. These numbers put us right up there with many cable news shows, as you can see from the ratings. The difference between us and them, however, is that we’re spreading our message virally through the web. We’re also spreading the truth about John McCain.

This incredible feedback clearly indicates that what the general public wants to see (and what the corporate press has failed to show) is an accurate portrayal of McCain. So continue to pass this video along to all of your family, friends, and colleagues.

We need to end the mainstream media’s love affair with McCain, and we need to end it now!

 

 

 

 

Written by eldib

May 20, 2008 at 11:07 pm

Posted in USA

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