Secret US military plan for Pakistan on hold: report

WASHINGTON – Top Bush administration officials drafted a secret plan late last year to make it easier for US Special Operations forces to operate inside Pakistan’s tribal areas, but Washington turf battles and the diversion of resources to Iraq have held up the effort, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The Times quoted a senior Defense Department official as saying there was “mounting frustration” in the Pentagon at the continued delay in deployment of special operations teams into Pakistan’s mountainous and lawless western tribal regions, where senior al Qaeda operatives are thought to be hiding.

The Times report, based on more than four dozen interviews in Washington and Pakistan, said al Qaeda’s new safe haven in Pakistan was in part due to the administration’s accommodation to Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf, whose advisers have long played down the terrorist threat.

It was also a story, the report concluded, of infighting between U.S. intelligence agencies and a shifting in White House priorities from counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the war in Iraq.

The Times quoted a retired CIA officer as estimating that al Qaeda training compounds in Pakistan now host as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Infighting within the CIA included battles between field officers in Kabul and Islamabad and the counter-terrorism center at CIA headquarters in Virginia whose preference for carrying out raids remotely, via Predator missiles strikes, was derided by field officers as the work of “boys with toys,” the Times reported.

Growing Threat

Turf battles between CIA officials in Afghanistan and others in Pakistan have also impeded progress, the Times reported, with officers in Kabul expressing alarm at what they see as a growing threat from the tribal areas and those in Islamabad, who are more prone to accept the Pakistani government’s argument that the tribal areas are beyond anyone’s control.

The level of expertise among CIA officers in the region was also a drag on operations, the report said. “We had to put people out in the field who had less than ideal levels of experience,” it quoted a former senior CIA official as saying.

One reason for that, two former intelligence officials told the Times, was that the Iraq war had drained away most of the CIA officers with field experience in the Islamic world.

The Times said the Pentagon’s top commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, ordered military officers, Special Operations and CIA operatives to assemble a dossier in late 2006 showing Pakistan’s role in allowing militants to establish a safe haven in the tribal territories.

The general’s order reflected a “broader feeling of outrage” within the Pentagon that the war on terror “had been outsourced to an unreliable ally, and at the grim fact that America’s most deadly enemy had become stronger.”

In response to Eikenberry’s dossier, the White House sent Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy CIA Director Stephen Kappes to Islamabad in March 2007 to register U.S. concern.

That visit, the Times said, was the beginning of a more aggressive effort by the administration to pressure Pakistan into stepping up the fight. Last year’s decision to draw up the Pentagon order authorizing a Special Operations campaign in the tribal areas was part of that effort, it said.

Link

China resists US push for UN to punish Zimbabwe

MATTHEW LEE Associated Press Writer

BEIJING-A U.S.-led push to punish Zimbabwe ran into resistance Sunday from China, which can veto U.N. penalties sought against its African ally over President Robert Mugabe’s claim to re-election.

After talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that also covered Taiwan, Tibet and North Korea, China’s foreign minister said Beijing favors negotiations between Mugabe, who was sworn in for a new term Sunday, and the opposition.

“The most pressing path is to stabilize the situation in Zimbabwe,” Yang Jiechi told reporters at a news conference with Rice. “We hope the parties concerned can engage in serious dialogue to find a proper solution.”

“China hopes the international community, African countries in particular, can a play a more constructive role in this regard,” he said. “China as a responsible country will also play a constructive role in this process.” After his swearing-in, Mugabe promised talks with the opposition.

Yang stuck to a position that China, one of Zimbabwe’s chief friends and trading partners, long has held. But his comments came just after Rice had spent a significant amount of time making the case for the Bush administration’s new push to pressure Mugabe, officials said.

Not much later, in Zimbabwe’s capital, Mugabe was sworn in for a sixth term. Hours before, electoral officials said he had won a discredited runoff. Leaders in Africa and elsewhere had condemned Friday’s runoff, in which Mugabe was the sole candidate. Opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn because of the violence. Human rights groups have said opposition supporters were the targets of brutal state-sponsored violence during the campaign, leaving more than 80 dead and forcing some 200,000 to flee their homes.

Before traveling to Beijing, Rice was in China’s earthquake-devastated southwest, visiting some of the tens of thousands of people left displaced by last month’s temblor. Rice praised China’s disaster recovery effort, saying it contrasted with Myanmar’s reluctance to allow in foreign aid after a devastating cyclone. She was the highest-ranking American to inspect the damage in the mountainous Sichuan province where almost 70,000 people have died, including thousands of schoolchildren killed when their classrooms crumbled.

President Bush said Saturday the U.S. was working on ways to further punish Mugabe and his allies. That could mean steps against his government as well as additional restrictions on the travel and financial activities of Mugabe supporters. The U.S. has financial and travel penalties in place against more than 170 citizens and entities with ties to Mugabe, the White House says.

Bush also wants the U.N. Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe as well as travel bans on Zimbabwe government officials. Mugabe leads an “illegitimate government” that retained power only through a fraudulent election, Bush said after the runoff. “The Mugabe regime held a sham election that ignored the will of the people of Zimbabwe.”

Rice has said the U.S. plans to introduce a resolution in the council this coming week. The United States holds the council’s presidency until July 1, but appears to face an uphill battle in getting several important members to agree to any penalties.

In addition to China, both Russia, also a permanent veto-wielding council member, and elected member South Africa have opposed action on Zimbabwe, saying the situation is an internal matter.

Although Yang indicated that Beijing’s stance had not changed, Rice said the U.S. would pursue the matter. She said that conditions in Zimbabwe had “deteriorated to a grave level” and that “the sham election there is likely to bring more violence.”

“We believe that it’s time for the international community to act more strongly,” Rice said. “Frankly, it makes sense to deny the government of Zimbabwe the means to use violence against its own people.”

At present, there is no international arms embargo against Zimbabwe. China is one of its main suppliers of weapons and ammunition, although Yang said a recent shipment had been returned “at the request of the receiving party.”

That shipment made headlines this spring when some African countries refused to allow the freighter to dock at their ports, partly at the urging of the United States and others.

While differing on Zimbabwe, Rice and Yang both expressed hope for the success of the effort get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.

On Thursday, North Korea submitted a long-delayed accounting of its atomic activities. Bush announced that the U.S. intended to ease some penalties against the communist country and North Korea demolished the cooling tower at its Yongbyon reactor complex.

Rice expressed hope that China, which is leading the six-nations disarmament talks, and the other participants would move quickly to complete the process. Yang agreed.

On other matters, Rice said:

-the U.S. is concerned about the situation in Tibet after recent unrest against Chinese rule and supports continued talks between Beijing and representatives of the Dalai Lama. Yang said his government was open to such talks; shortly after he and Rice met, Chinese authorities said a new round would be held in July.

-the U.S. hoped to carry on its recently resumed human rights dialogue with China; Yang said China was willing to do so.

On her tour of the quake region, she stopped in Dujiangyan, a badly hit city of 250,000 where officials said 3,000 people died and 90 percent of the buildings are now uninhabitable.

“My goodness,” she said as she surveyed a pile of rubble, once a gym, before heading to a community of thousands of temporary homes and a water purification facility that is run by an American charity.

“I can see that the Chinese government and officials have been attentive,” Rice told reporters. “I can see how much effort has gone into the recovery. But with a disaster of this magnitude, no one can do it alone.”

“We are very glad that the Chinese people have reached out for help,” she added.

At the camp of temporary homes, she spoke to parents of a young boy. “I wish you the very best,” she said. “I’m sorry you lost so much but I know you are going to recover. You have a great spirit.”

http://www.mworld.com/m/m.w?lp=GetStory&id=312210041

The Shape of Things to Come

US, EU nearing deal on access to private data

• Deal to give US access to private information about people on other  side of Atlantic

NEW YORK: The United States and the European Union are nearing a deal on letting law enforcement and security agencies obtain private information like credit card transactions and travel histories about people on the other side of the Atlantic, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

The newspaper, which obtained an internal report on the potential agreement, said it would amount to a diplomatic breakthrough for US counter-terrorism officials after a history of clashing with the EU over demands for personal data.

It was unclear when the agreement could be completed, said the Times, citing officials, but the Bush administration wants to resolve the issues before leaving office in January and is hoping for an agreement that would not require congressional approval. Negotiators, meeting since February 2007, have mostly worked out draft language for 12 major issues at the heart of a “binding international agreement”, according to the report. Among other things, the pact would make clear that European governments and companies could lawfully exchange personal information with the United States.

A major unresolved issue is whether residents of EU countries would be able to sue the US government over its handling of their personal data, said the Times. US law does not allow foreigners to sue the US government for damages in such instances, said the Times.

The talks resulted from conflicts between the United States and Europe over information sharing after the September 11 attacks. The Bush administration had demanded access to passenger data held by airlines flying out of Europe and by a consortium, known as Swift, which tracks global bank transfers. Several EU countries objected, citing privacy laws. US and EU officials hope to avoid future confrontations “by finding common ground on privacy and by agreeing not to impose conflicting obligations on private companies”, the Times quoted Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the Homeland Security Department, as saying.

“Globalisation means that more and more companies are going to get caught between US and European law,” said Baker, who is involved in the talks. Some European officials expressed concern at the prospective agreement’s ramifications. “I am very worried that once this will be adopted, it will serve as a pretext to freely share our personal data with anyone, so I want it to be very clear about exactly what it means and how it will work,” said Sophia in’t Veld, a Dutch member of the European Parliament.

reuters

Link

MDC Working With Rhodesian Selous Scout Networks

to Spread Violence in Zimbabwe and South Africa

The political violence in Zimbabwe that the international press dominated by the London-based Anglo-Dutch financial cartel is using to work the world into a frenzy about Zimbabwe is being carried out by networks controlled by London.

Top opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) officials are “working in cahoots with some Rhodesian elements to set up underground structures that are behind the anti-immigrant attacks in South Africa and the terror campaign in Zimbabwe,” according to the Zimbabwe Sunday Times June 1. The Times reports that “Although the MDC has been claiming that its supporters have fallen victim to political violence, top party officials are allegedly recruiting young Zimbabweans in South Africa who are being deployed to cause terror in Zimbabwe.” The Times said that some people are being recruited from universities in South Africa, and others are Zimbabwe National Army deserters and former policemen.

Zimbabwean sources report that the modus operandi for these forces, in Zimbabwe, is to alert the press that an atrocity has taken place, at the same time they have their operatives dress up in the regalia of the ruling Zanu-PF, and go out to commit an atrocity. The press is soon on the scene, hearing witnesses saying that the attack was carried out by Zanu people.

The Times reports that some of the recruits are quartered at a farm outside Tswane (Pretoria), and that a second group is known to be based at a farm in South Africa near Pietermaritzburg, where youths are being trained by former Rhodesian Selous Scouts.

One of the intentions of the violence carried out in Zimbabwe by the MDC-Scouts apparatus, according to the Times, was to create “refugee centres for Zimbabweans, which would force the United Nations to discuss Zimbabwe at Security Council level.” The violence this force perpetrates also provides ample grist for the mill of the international press’ anti-Mugabe campaign, and also puts pressure on Mbeki, who is trying to resolve the British-created Zimbabwe situation.

According to the Zimbabwe Guardian June 2, “The Selous Scouts was a special-forces regiment of Prime Minister Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Army which operated from 1973-1980. The charter of the Selous Scouts directed ‘the clandestine elimination of freedom fighters inside and outside the country.

Selous Scouts and Rhodesian forces, according to the Guardian, are said to have introduced the form of attack called necklacing tieing up a person, and killing him by burning a tire placed around his neck into South Africa. This technique was used during the transition to independence in South Africa, and again recently against immigrants, according to the Guardian. Following the dissolution of the Smith regime in 1980, the Guardian reports, many of its soldiers travelled south “to join the South African Defence Force, especially the 5 Reconnaissance Commando.”

LINK

Background

6/25/08 Zimbabwe Attack on Dirty Tricks Deflated UK Initiative at UN
http://larouchepac.com/news/2008/06/25/zimbabwe-attack-dirty-tricks-deflated-uk-initiative-un.html

6/23/08 Zimbabwe Violence Bears British Counterinsurgency Stamp
http://larouchepac.com/news/2008/06/24/zimbabwe-violence-bears-british-counterinsurgency-stamp.html

RELATED CONTENT:

6/26/08 British Assassination Threat Against Zimbabwe President Mugabe
http://larouchepac.com/news/2008/06/26/british-assassination-threat-against-zimbabwe-president-muga.html

4/12/08 Discussion with Zimbabwean Ambassador
http://larouchepac.com/media/2008/04/12/discussion-zimbabwean-ambassador.html

http://libertesinternets.wordpress.com

Mosul – Iraq’s Second Largest City in Chaos

Richard Warnick

June 29, 2008

The northern city of Mosul is the second-largest in Iraq (Basra is a close third). Despite the scarcity of news from Iraq lately, you may have heard about the launching of a long-delayed offensive last month to regain control of the ruined city of nearly 2 million people for Nouri al-Maliki’s Green Zone government. The grandly-named “Operation Lion’s Roar” was hyped by the U.S. government as “wiping out the last urban bastion of al Qaeda in Iraq.” Here’s a brief sitrep on Mosul.

After a roadside bomb explosion

The Iraqi security forces are unable to secure Mosul, according to the Iraqi daily Azzaman. Here’s what happened in May: given six months warning as a result of many delays, the Sunni insurgents who were supposed to be attacked left town. American, Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces had to content themselves with arresting about a thousand former Baath officers, Islamists and other “usual suspects,” few of whom could be truthfully described as insurgents. In keeping with the hype, Iraqi officials told the Americans that they had caught “some very big fishes.”

To the puzzlement of most local observers, the U.S. Army then proceeded to build an earthen berm around Mosul that was immediately mocked as another Maginot Line or Bar Lev Line. Following the “Lion’s Roar” operation, there was an insufficient number of Iraqi troops available to maintain security. Militant groups re-entered the city and gunmen reportedly are roaming the streets in force.

Officials said they are also concerned about the presence of the Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers, who guard their own enclaves in the largely Arab city. Maliki’s forces maintain an uneasy relationship with the heavily armed Peshmerga.

While the U.S. Army builds its wall and conducts raids, there just aren’t enough American forces to hold Mosul. Spencer Ackerman explains:

Even during the surge there were only so many forces to go around, and Baghdad was the priority for understandable-enough reasons. Now the surge is over and we have a commander Lieutenant General Ray Odierno who, when he says anything at all, says he’s going to stay a successful course. But he doesn’t have the resources to do the same things his predecessor did. So what’s left? What’s left is either to change the strategy or to pray/hope/lie about the capabilities of the Iraqi Army.

Residents of Mosul have been caught in the middle of violent clashes for years. Services, such as power and water are nonexistent. Bridges have been demolished. All the streets are broken and pitted with holes left by roadside bombs. Unemployment is up to 70 percent.

“Both the security forces and the terrorists were created by the occupation and are working against the citizens of Mosul,” said Razaaq Jerjes, a 41-year-old doctor who quit his job at a local hospital two years ago after several of his colleagues were murdered by insurgents.

Link

US and China go bump in the Middle East

By Khody Akhavi

WASHINGTON – For China these days it seems that nothing – not rising energy prices; not sanctions aimed at its more unsavory business partners, Myanmar and Sudan; not even the prospect of a nuclear Iran – can curb its thirst for oil.

As China’s energy needs grow at a rate higher than any other country’s, so too have its economic relationships with the oil-producing nations of the Gulf. Like the US more than 60 years ago, China today is seen as a new and commercially refreshing player, happily unsentimental and – crucially – disinterested in the internal affairs of the region.

As Adbulaziz Sager of the Gulf Research Center notes, “The chief advantage of China’s role in the region is its lack of political baggage.”

With the US mired in its “war on terror”, tied up in knots of its own making, needing desperately to extricate itself from Iraq while preserving its eroding influence, China appears poised to challenge US interests in the region.

But if that has Washington worried, it shouldn’t, says Jon B Alterman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has co-authored a new study with John Garver on China’s interests in the region entitled “The Vital Triangle: China, the United States, and the Middle East.”

“The tendency in the US is to see China as a threat or counter to US interests,” he said during a panel on Wednesday, adding that China’s involvement in the region exposes its own national security vulnerability.

“The Chinese lose sleep at night thinking that their energy dependence relies on the Middle East,” he said.

Beijing, which imports half its oil from the Middle East, views political instability in the region as its greatest threat. Often, it is Washington’s policies that precipitate that insecurity, and which Beijing – with no political or military footprint of its own – has been unable to curb.

According to ambassador Chaz Freeman, a career US diplomat and chief interpreter during president Richard Nixon’s path-breaking visit to China in 1972, the Chinese “don’t see themselves as rivaling the US” in the region, yet they are unlikely to “subordinate themselves to us, or underwrite our dominance”.

The status quo presumably makes a strategic relationship between the US and China all the more appealing. While opportunities exist to create a multilateral security framework to reduce tensions and keep the oil flowing, China has been generally reluctant to take on the role of “responsible stakeholder” on the international stage, a term coined by former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick.

It is even more cautious in dealing with the issue of immediate concern to the US: Iran’s nuclear program and Beijing’s cordial relations with Tehran.

As Alterman and Garver contend, “China recognizes Iran as a durable and like-minded major regional power with which cooperation has and will serve China’s interest in many areas.”

Iran exports 340,000 barrels of oil per day to China, making it Beijing’s third-largest supplier, behind Angola and Saudi Arabia. China’s investments in Iranian oil infrastructure include a recent deal estimated at US$100 billion to develop the Yadavaran oil field, and the construction of a 386-kilometer oil pipeline running through neighboring Kazakhstan.

From Washington’s perspective, it is Beijing’s technical cooperation on Iran’s civilian nuclear program and China’s continued attempts to deflect pressure on Iran over its nuclear dossier that are most troubling. China’s sale of what Washington considers dual-use chemicals, capable of being diverted to military use, has led the US to sanction some of China’s state-owned companies.

“Nuclear Iran is going to be a game changer in the Middle East,” said Nicholas Burns, former US under secretary of state for policy .

As the Europeans have decreased their economic trade with Iran in response to US-led calls for isolation, Burns said that Beijing has only stepped in to fill the void.

On Monday, the European Union tightened its own sanctions on Iran, freezing assets of the Iranian Bank Melli and imposing travel bans on high-level experts involved in Iran’s nuclear program.

“The Chinese need to understand the primacy of the Middle East for the United States,” he said. “Will China realize it’s on the virtual governing board of the world? There’s a question of whether China sees that role for themselves.”

While Washington awaits the improbable, it seems that Beijing will continue to hedge its bets. It has slowly been persuaded to act on Iran, joining the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council – Britain, France, Russia and the US – in addition to Germany, to offer Tehran a revised package of incentives should it halt its uranium-enrichment activities.

China’s official position states that sanctions will not fundamentally resolve the nuclear issue, and are only a means to persuade Iran to negotiate under conditions agreed on by the United Nations Security Council. Like Russia, the Chinese oppose any move that would lead to an escalation in tensions at the expense of their economic interests in Iran.

But China also wants to avoid a confrontation over Tehran’s program and balances against whichever side – the US or Iran – leans towards it, said Alterman.

“The more the US tips towards war, the more China sides with Iran; if Iran is being confrontational, the more they tip to the US,” said Alterman. “It’s a subtle policy, not what they do, but how they do.”

For Freeman, the erosion of US influence in the region means that Washington won’t be able to set the agenda, or control events as it once did. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.

“What we are witnessing is part of a broad dilution of US dominance,” he said. “If you can’t tell people what to do, then you must persuade them, and that is what diplomats supposedly know how to do.”

Link

This Recession, It’s Just Beginning

By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, June 27, 2008

So much for that second-half rebound.

Truth be told, that was always more of a wish than a serious forecast, happy talk from the Fed and Wall Street desperate to get things back to normal.

It ain’t gonna happen. Not this summer. Not this fall. Not even next winter.

This thing’s going down, fast and hard. Corporate bankruptcies, bond defaults, bank failures, hedge fund meltdowns and 6 percent unemployment. We’re caught in one of those vicious, downward spirals that, once it gets going, is very hard to pull out of.

Only this will be a different kind of recession — a recession with an overlay of inflation. That combo puts the Federal Reserve in a Catch-22 — whatever it does to solve one problem only makes the other worse. Emerging from a two-day meeting this week, Fed officials signaled that further recession-fighting rate cuts are unlikely and that their next move will be to raise rates to contain inflationary expectations.

Since last June, we’ve seen a fairly consistent pattern to the economic mood swings. Every three months or so, there’s a round of bad news about housing, followed by warnings of more bank write-offs and then a string of disappointing corporate earnings reports. Eventually, things stabilize and there are hints that the worst may be behind us. Stocks regain some of their lost ground, bonds fall and then — bam — the whole cycle starts again.

It was only in November that the Dow had recovered from the panicked summer sell-off and hit a record, just above 14,000. By March, it had fallen below 12,000. By May, it climbed above 13,000. Now it’s heading for a new floor at 11,000. Officially, that’s bear market territory. We’ll be lucky if that’s the floor.

In explaining why that second-half rebound never occurred, the Fed and the Treasury and the Wall Street machers will say that nobody could have foreseen $140 a barrel oil. As excuses go, blaming it on an oil shock is a hardy perennial. That’s what Jimmy Carter and Fed Chairman Arthur Burns did in the late ’70s, and what George H.W. Bush and Alan Greenspan did in the early ’90s. Don’t believe it.

Truth is, there are always price or supply shocks of one sort or another. The real problem is that the underlying fundamentals had gotten badly out of whack, making the economy susceptible to a shock. The only way to make things better is to get those fundamentals back in balance. In this case, that means bringing what we consume in line with what we produce, letting the dollar fall to its natural level, wringing the excess capacity out of industries that overexpanded during the credit bubble and allowing real estate prices to fall in line with incomes.

The last hope for a second-half rebound began to fade earlier this month when Lehman Brothers reported that it wasn’t as immune to the credit-market downturn as it had led everyone to believe. Lehman scrambled to restore confidence by firing two top executives and raising billions in additional capital, but even that wasn’t enough to quiet speculation that it could be the next Bear Stearns.

Since then, there has been a steady drumbeat of worrisome news from nearly every sector of the economy.

American Express and Discover warn that customers are falling further behind on their debts. UPS and Federal Express report a noticeable slowdown in shipments, while fuel costs are soaring. According to the Case-Shiller index, home prices in the top 20 markets fell 15 percent in April from the year before, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac report that mortgage delinquency rates doubled over the same period — and that’s for conventional home loans, not subprime. United Airlines accelerates the race to cut costs and capacity by laying off 950 pilots — 15 percent of its total — as a number of airlines retire planes and hint that they may delay delivery or cancel orders of new jets from Boeing and Airbus. Goldman Sachs, which has already had to withdraw its rosy forecast for stocks, now admits it was also too optimistic about junk bond defaults, and analysts warn that Citigroup and Merrill Lynch will also be forced to take additional big write-downs on their mortgage portfolios.

Meanwhile, General Motors, already reeling from a 28 percent plunge in the pace of auto and truck sales, now confronts the fact that it won’t get any help this time from GMAC, its once highly profitable finance arm, which is reeling from an increase in delinquencies on home and auto loans. With the carmaker hemorrhaging cash, whispers of a possible default sent the price of insuring GM bonds soaring on the credit default market.

You know things are bad when middle-class Americans have to give up their boats and Brunswick, the nation’s biggest maker of powerboats, is forced to close 10 plants and lay off 2,700 workers.

For much of the year, optimists took comfort in the continuing strength of the technology sector and exports to fast-growing countries around the world. But even those bright spots have dimmed.

Tech stocks got hammered yesterday after software maker Oracle and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion warned that the pace of corporate orders had slowed.

And both India and China raised interest rates and bank reserves sharply in an effort to tame inflation and slow their overheated economies, even as the air continued to rush out of their real estate and stock market bubbles.

Like the rain-swollen waters of the Mississippi River, this sudden surge of downbeat news has now overflowed the banks of economic policy and broken through the levees of consumer and investor confidence. At this point, there’s not much to do but flee to safety, rescue those in trouble and let nature take its course. And don’t let anyone fool you: It will be a while before things return to normal.

Steven Pearlstein can be reached at pearlsteins@washpost.com.

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Liverpool under threat of a UFO led ‘alien invasion’!

London, June 27 :

Reported FO sightings in Liverpool have sparked fears that the city is on the brink of facing an ‘alien invasion.’

Former policeman Steve Rafferty, 50, and his daughter Emma, saw 13 orange orbs and filmed the unexplained phenomena on a mobile phone.

Another witness captured footage and radio stations were jammed with callers reporting sightings.

“They looked as if they were searching for somewhere to land. Liverpool could face an alien invasion,” The Sun quoted one witness, as saying.

The sightings came as three soldiers reported seeing UFOs spinning over an army base in Shropshire, in the west of the country.

The 13 flying objects were captured on film and are now reportedly being investigated by army officials.

A schoolboy photographed a UFO on the same day that three soldiers reported their mystery sighting.

Shaun Williams, 12, went out to snap a light aircraft performing stunts above his home in Llanelli, South Wales.

Later, he looked at the pictures on his digital camera – and realised he had also captured a saucer shape against a clear blue sky.

“I couldn’t believe it when I looked back at my pictures and this strange object was there,” Shaun said.

http://www.newkerala.com/one.php?action=fullnews&id=77765

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When Vince Pybis saw some strange lights in the sky over Liverpool on the night of 23.06.08, the first thing he did was reach for his mobile phone to record what he saw.

After overcoming some initial trouble in working the video camera function on his mobile phone, Vince honed in on the lights – and he wasn’t alone, as other callers called BBC Radio Merseyside to report the scene over Knotty Ash and Alder Hey.

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Comment :

Is it one of many tests conducted by the US/UK army of the last secret weapon to manipulated and hypnotized a large part of the population frightened ?

Wil we see this UFO’s in other part of the world, middle-east or China…

Dib