Aletho News

The Bat Ayn Settlement – Neighbors from Hell

Palestine Solidarity Project | 20 November 2010

The Bat Ayn settlement was established in the early 1990s by a breakaway group from the nearby Gush Etzion settlement. Bat Ayn was established under the guidance of the controversial Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg. Rabbi Ginsburg has been quoted in the New York Times as stating that “any trial based on the assumption that Jews and goyim [non-Jewish people] are equal is a total travesty of justice”. Rabbi Ginsburg also praised the actions of Baruch Goldstein who in 1994 murdered 29 people and wounded more than 125 people who were praying in a mosque in Hebron.

Bet Ayn is one of over 200 Israeli settlements within the West Bank. The International Court of Justice has deemed these settlements illegal under international law which prohibits an occupying power from moving its population into occupied territory. At least 42% of land in the West Bank is currently occupied by settlers or set aside for further settlement expansion. The ongoing construction of settlements has been criticized by the United Nations, the United States of America and the European Union.

Today more than 1,000 settlers from Bet Ayn live on land that was used for centuries by Palestinian families. Residents of Bet Ayn have a long history of violence. In 2002, four people from Bet Ayn were convicted of terrorism related offences following an attempt to blow up a Palestinian girl’s school in East Jerusalem. The men were arrested outside of the school with a trailer containing explosives.

Residents of Bet Ayn frequently attack neighboring residents of Palestinian villages and destroy their sources of income. The following are some examples of settler violence, destruction and intimidationsince April 2009:

– November 16 2010, burnt and destroyed 70 olive trees in the Saffa Valley.

– November 15 2010, burnt and destroyed 85 fig and olive trees in the Saffa Valley.

– 24 June 2010, set fire to farmland in the Saffa Valley and threw stones and bottles at nearby houses.

– 11 March 2010, set fire to a number of trees in the Saffa Valley.

– 9 January 2010, 40 settlers attacked three local farmers with stones.

– 31 December 2009, shot a local famer with a hand gun.

– 20 December 2009, shot at local farmers.

– 13 July 2009, set fire to farmland in the Saffa Valley.

– 1 and 2 May 2009, entered the Saffa Valley destroyed fruit trees and shot at nearby residential homes.

– 26 April 2009, beat two elderly Palestinians, including holding down an 80 year old male and
repeatedly smashed his head with stones.

– 8 April 2009, invaded Palestinian land and shot at local residents.

– In 2007, large numbers of settlers from Bet Ayn terrified locals by marching through neighboring
Palestinian villages dressed in white and carrying weapons, including M16 machine guns. The primary
reason behind this campaign of terror and destruction is an attempt to deter local Palestinian farmers
from farming their land to facilitate the annexation of the land by the Israeli military for further
settlement expansion.

A website associated with the Bet Ayn settlement states:

All who visit the Bat Ayin are struck by the beautiful vistas, the peaceful surroundings, and
the profound level of devotion and spirituality of the people who live there. (http://www.bat-
ayin.org/73023/About-Us)

Unfortunately, life for Palestinians living nearby the Bat Ayn settlement is far from peaceful.

November 21, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Why did Saban and other Jewish donors give a man charged with espionage $670,000?

By Philip Weiss on November 20, 2010

Wow I missed this angle on the AIPAC scandal. Jeff Stein at the Washington Post didn’t. Neither did Justin Elliott who picked it up, calling it “a story that shows just how committed the nationwide network of pro-Israel donors are to their cause”. Myself I am not sure of the motivation for this largesse to Rosen. My wife, who witnessed the kind treatment by his friends of the late-troubled-neocon Eric Breindel through numerous ordeals, used to say that neoconservatives are more loyal than lefties; but I wonder whether these givers weren’t trying to buy something from Rosen? Stein:

largely buried beneath such tawdry details was an admission arguably far more damaging to Rosen’s drive to prove the organization ruined his professional life: that major Jewish donors supported him with hundreds of thousands of dollars during the four years after his dismissal in May 2005.

Lawyers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, argue that such financial support, as well as continuing references to Rosen as an influential figure in Middle East policy circles, shows that his firing hasn’t materially affected his life.

Indeed, many of the dozen benefactors Rosen named, including entertainment mogul Haim Saban and Slim-Fast billionaire Daniel Abraham, are also major donors to AIPAC, which fired him after the Justice Department charged him with illegally giving classified information to Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler and an Israeli Embassy official.

During his Sept. 22 deposition, AIPAC’s lawyer alleged that Rosen had received “over $1 million in gifts or severance or payments of benefits between ’05 and ’09.” Rosen detailed gifts that amounted to $670,000.

…The payments stopped in 2009, Rosen says, when the government dropped its case against him and another AIPAC official, saying it couldn’t make an espionage case against them.

During its deposition of Rosen, AIPAC’s lawyer Thomas L. McCally clearly tried to make his confessions of pornography and philandering the central issues in his dismissal. Rosen shot back that he had “witnessed” AIPAC’s executive director Howard Kohr “view… pornographic images on AIPAC computers,” as well as “his secretary do it repeatedly, and call people over to see it, including Howard Kohr.” He said he “witnessed other members of staff do it,” too.

Kohr did not respond to a request for comment on Rosen’s pornography allegation. AIPAC spokesman Patrick Dorton declined to comment on that allegation but said his suit had no merit.

Rosen.. [contends] that government attorneys stampeded the organization into firing him by playing its officials a selectively edited portion of a wiretapped conversation that made him look like he knew he was illegally trafficking in classified Pentagon documents.

Within hours, the organization announced it was firing Rosen because such alleged behavior “did not comport with standards that AIPAC expects of its employees.”

Rosen says his actions were common practice at the organization. He said his next move is to show that AIPAC, Washington’s major pro-Israeli lobbying group by far, regularly traffics in sensitive U.S. government information, especially material related to the Middle East.

November 20, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Children of Jahalin get innovative school

Aletho News | October 25, 2010

This year the Palestinian Bedouin children of Jahalin have a new school building built of bamboo. The new ‘desert school’ of the Wadi Abu Hindi community is the latest project of the Italian NGO Vento Di Terra and the Arcò group of architects.

The community was displaced from the Negev in 1948 and re-established in the West Bank, the community falls into the ‘Zone C’ area of Israeli civilian and military control. In 1997 the community resolved to build a school, but Israel demolished both the school and the homes twice.

Finally an Israeli court ruled the demolitions illegal and granted a temporary reconstruction permit. Like most of the constructions in Bedouin villages in area C, the school was a sheet metal structure which becomes unbearably hot. Despite the harsh conditions the school served 120 children. Vento di Terra has now improved the conditions with the use of special materials.

The ‘Desert School’ project faced specific restrictions imposed by the Israeli military authorities. Vento di Terra was able to respond to all of the challenges with the use of bamboo, earth and straw. The project moved forward with the community playing an active role in its planning, organization and realization. Local labor was utilized in retrofitting the buildings with improved climatic and acoustic insulation.

Respecting the centuries old history that has seen the Bedouins crossing the deserts of the Middle East, which continues to this day, dozens of kids cross the mountains by foot or with their inseparable mule to go from home to school. As soon as the bell announces the end of the school, a long line of children and mules disappear into the Palestinian desert.

Photographers: Andrea and Magda. (more pictures: http://www.andrea-magda.com/en/portfolio-8971-0-80-la-scuola-nel-deserto-by-vento-di-terra-e-arco.html )

If you are interested in hosting the exhibition or if you want to buy some pictures, please contact contact@andrea-magda.com

For any information about the school please visit www.ventoditerra.org or contact ventoditerra@ventoditerra.org

October 25, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Cholera outbreak kills 138 in Haiti

Press TV – October 22, 2010

At least 138 people have died after suffering acute fever, vomiting and diarrhea in Haiti. Many more with similar symptoms have been admitted to hospitals north of Port-au-Prince. A health official said on Thursday that an outbreak of cholera was to blame for the deaths in recent days, reported AFP.

“The first results from the lab tests show that there is cholera, but we don’t know which type”, said an official from the public health ministry.

The outbreak was centralized on the northern half of Haiti, said Jessica Du Plessis of the UN humanitarian affairs agency.

According to Du Plessis, there were about 300 people suffering from Cholera-like symptoms in hospitals in the town of Saint-Marc, about 100km (60 miles) north of the country’s capital. However, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian spokesperson in Haiti, Imogen Wall, Haitian health authorities have informed the World Health Organization of 1,526 cases so far in the outbreak area, Reuters reports.

This latest incident comes as Haiti continues its struggle to recover from the aftermath of January’s earthquake which killed some 250,000 people and left more than 1.5 million others homeless.

There were fears of a cholera outbreak in the aftermath of the earthquake when many survivors were forced into makeshift camps under unsanitary conditions and modest access to clean drinking water, but no outbreaks materialized. Cholera is transmitted by water and food that has been in contact with unclean water, contaminated with bacterium Vibrio Cholerae.

Serious diarrhea and vomiting, leading to dehydration, are the main symptoms associated with Cholera. As the disease has a short incubation period, it can be fatal if not treated on time by re-hydrating and administering antibiotics.

October 21, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

After delays, Finnish FM allowed into Gaza, Jordanian soccer team excluded

Since Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza only selected officials – including EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon – have visited Gaza via Israel

Palestine Information Center – 14/10/2010

GAZA — Finland’s Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb landed Thursday morning in the Gaza Strip after several days of Israel denying him entry.

Palestinian sources said Stubb was allowed to pass over the Beit Hanoun crossing on his way to the Gaza Strip, where he will convene several meetings with international bodies, businessmen, and Palestinian figures. He will also visit war-devastated areas in the Strip.

The Foreign Minister is set on visiting sites devastated by the Israeli army in the northern Gaza Strip to be briefed on the extent of devastation the war had on Gaza. More than 20,000 homes and the Strip’s main infrastructure were ruined in the attack.

Israeli authorities denied the FM’s request to visit Gaza a few days back, alleging that similar visits could constitute recognition of Hamas.

In a separate development, a professional Jordanian soccer team was denied entry into Gaza by Egyptian authorities.

Tariq Khouri, head of the Wihdat Sports Club in Jordan, said he requested more than 50 days ago entry visas from the Egyptian embassy in Amman so the team could head to Gaza through the Egyptian Rafah crossing. But so far Egyptian authorities have made no response.

Khouri said the purpose of the visit was to bust the four-year blockade on the Gaza Strip.

The soccer team was supposed to play against the Gaza sports club and a number of local teams in the Strip.

October 14, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Target: Ecuador

Coup Fails, Threat Remains

By MARK WEISBROT | Counterpunch | October 4, 2010

In June of last year, when the Honduran military overthrew the social democratic government of Manuel Zelaya, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador took it personally. “We have intelligence reports that say that after Zelaya, I’m next,” said Correa.

Yesterday it turned out to be true. Some analysts are still insisting that what happened was just a police protest over possible benefit cuts that got out of hand. But to anyone who watched the prolonged, pitched gun battle on TV last night, when the armed forces finally rescued President Correa from the hospital where he was trapped by the police, this did not look like a protest. It was an attempt to overthrow the government.

The coordinated actions in various cities, the takeover of Quito’s airport by a section of the armed forces – all of this indicated a planned coup attempt. And although it failed, at various points during the day it was not so clear what the outcome would be.

The government pointed a finger at former president and army Colonel Lucio Gutierrez, and he was on television yesterday calling for the ouster of Correa. He accused the president of everything from supporting the FARC (the guerrilla group fighting Colombia’s government) to wrecking the economy.

The coup might have had a chance if Correa were not so popular. Despite his enemies in high places, the president’s approval rating was 67 percent in Quito a couple of weeks ago. His government has doubled spending on health care, significantly increased other social spending, and successfully defaulted on $3.2 billion of foreign debt that was found to be illegitimately contracted. Ecuador managed to squeak through 2009 without a recession and is projected to grow about 2.5 percent this year. Correa, an economist, has had to use heterodox and creative methods to keep the economy growing in the face of external shocks because the country does not have its own currency. It adopted the dollar in 2000, which means that it can do little in the way of monetary policy and has no control over its exchange rate.

Correa had warned that he might try to temporarily dissolve the Congress in order to break an impasse in the legislature, something that he has the right to request under the new constitution – it would have to be approved by the Constitutional Court. This probably gave the pro-coup forces something they saw as a pretext. It is reminiscent of the coup in Honduras, when Zelaya’s support for a non-binding referendum on a constituent assembly was falsely reported by the media – both Honduran and international – as a bid to extend his presidency.

Media manipulation has a big role in Ecuador too, with most of the media controlled by right-wing interests opposed to the government. This has helped build a base of people – analogous to those who get all of their information from Fox News in the United States, but proportionately larger – who believe that Correa is a dictator trying to turn his country into a communist Cuba.

The U.S. State Department issued a two-sentence statement from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton late yesterday afternoon that urged “all Ecuadoreans to come together and to work within the framework of Ecuador’s democratic institutions to reach a rapid and peaceful restoration of order.” Unlike the White House statement in response to the Honduran coup last year, it also expressed “full support” for the elected president. This is an improvement; although it is unlikely that it reflects a change in Washington’s policy towards Latin America.

The Obama Administration did everything it could to support the coup government in Honduras last year, and in fact is still trying to convince the South American governments – including Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and the collective organization of UNASUR – to recognize the government there. South America refuses to recognize the Lobo government because it was elected under a dictatorship that did not allow for a free or fair contest. The rest of the hemisphere also wants some guarantees that would stop the killing of journalists and political activists there, which has continued and even become worse under the “elected” government.

As the South American governments feared, Washington’s support for the coup government in Honduras over the last year has encouraged and increased the likelihood of right-wing coups against democratic left governments in the region. This attempt in Ecuador has failed, but there will be likely be more threats in the months and years ahead.

Mark Weisbrot is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: the Phony Crisis.

October 5, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

The Israeli threat to global security

By Paul Woodward | War in Context | October 2, 2010

A USB memory stick carrying the Stuxnet malware is believed to have provided intruders with access to Iran’s nuclear program. The same technique was used in November 2008 to break into CENTCOM, providing a foreign government with unfiltered access to the Pentagon’s command of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Did both attacks come from the same source?

Earlier this week, Reuters reported:

Cyber warfare has quietly grown into a central pillar of Israel’s strategic planning, with a new military intelligence unit set up to incorporate high-tech hacking tactics, Israeli security sources said on Tuesday.

Israel’s pursuit of options for sabotaging the core computers of foes like Iran, along with mechanisms to protect its own sensitive systems, were unveiled last year by the military intelligence chief, Major-General Amos Yadlin.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since set cyber warfare as a national priority, “up there with missile shields and preparing the homefront to withstand a future missile war”, a senior source said on condition of anonymity.

Back in 1997, when the US did not overtly support political assassinations, President Clinton intervened to save the life of Khalid Meshaal. The Hamas political bureau chief had been poisoned by Mossad operatives (carrying stolen Canadian passports) on the streets of Jordan’s capital, Amman.

Clinton wasn’t trying to help Hamas but knew that a peace treaty he had helped broker between Israel and Jordan would be in jeopardy if Prime Minister Netanyahu thought he could disregard the sovereignty of Jordan and carry out assassinations with impunity. Likewise, neither King Hussein nor the Canadian government believed that Israeli actions showing a flagrant disregard for the authority of their respective governments could go unanswered.

Netanyahu would probably have found Clinton’s pressure unpersuasive were it not for the fact that the Israeli operatives had already been arrested. In exchange for their release, the Israelis supplied the antidote that saved Meshaal’s life while also releasing the Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Then came 9/11.

Before long, Yassin had been assassinated, the US was using Israeli methods of torture in its campaign against an amorphous Islamic threat, Israel’s own war crimes were sanctioned by the US in the name of the war on terrorism, and the use of stolen foreign passports by Mossad agents committing murder on foreign soil provoked nothing more than a diplomatic slap on the wrists.

When suspected Israeli agents were reported this week to be conducting surveillance on the NSA in Utah, the national security breach did not provoke a murmur in the national media — even though a string of similar incidents prior to 9/11 raised questions about whether Israel could have had foreknowledge of the attacks.

The willingness of this and the previous administration to allow Israel to disregard international law shows that even if the Israel lobby can no longer flourish like a night flower, its power is barely diminished. Even so, the appearance of the Stuxnet malware should be a wake-up call to every government around the world that refuses to place Israel’s national interests above its own.

In its conception, Stuxnet can be viewed very much like a targeted killing — but one designed to attack silently and leave no trace of its origin.

It’s creators understood that they had designed an exceedingly dangerous weapon and so they made sure its damage could be contained. But it seems not to have worked according to plan and so caution got tossed out of the window. Apparently, Israel did what it has done so many times before: pursued what it regarded as its own interests with an utter disregard for the international consequences.

Computerworld reports:

The original infection method, which relied on infected USB drives, included a counter that limited the spread to just three PCs, said [Liam] O Murchu [operations manager with Symantec’s security response]. “It’s clear that the attackers did not want Stuxnet to spread very far,” he said. “They wanted it to remain close to the original infection point.”

O Murchu’s research also found a 21-day propagation window; in other words, the worm would migrate to other machines in a network only for three weeks before calling it quits.

Those anti-propagation measures notwithstanding, Stuxnet has spread widely. Why?

Kaspersky’s [Roel] Schouwenberg [a senior antivirus researcher] believes it’s because the initial attack, which relied on infected USB drives, failed to do what Stuxnet’s makers wanted.

“My guess is that the first variant didn’t achieve its target,” said Schouwenberg, referring to the worm’s 2009 version that lacked the more aggressive propagation mechanisms, including multiple Windows zero-day vulnerabilities. “So they went on to create a more sophisticated version to reach their target.”

That more complex edition, which O Murchu said was developed in March of this year, was the one that “got all the attention,” according to Schouwenberg. But the earlier edition had already been at work for months by then — and even longer before a little-known antivirus vendor from Belarus first found it in June. “The first version didn’t spread enough, and so Stuxnet’s creators took a gamble, and abandoned the idea of making it stealthy,” said Schouwenberg.

In Schouwenberg’s theory, Stuxnet’s developers realized their first attempt had failed to penetrate the intended target or targets, and rather than simply repeat the attack, decided to raise the ante.

“They spent a lot of time and money on Stuxnet,” Schouwenberg said. “They could try again [with the USB-only vector] and maybe fail again, or they could take the risk of it spreading by adding more functionality to the worm.”

O Murchu agreed that it was possible the worm’s creators had failed to infect, and thus gain control, of the industrial systems running at their objective(s), but said the code itself didn’t provide clear clues.

What is clear, O Murchu said in a news conference Friday morning, is that Stuxnet evolved over time, adding new ways to spread on networks in the hope of finding specific PLCs (programming logic control) hardware to hijack. “It’s possible that [the attackers] didn’t manage to get to all of their targets [with the earlier version],” O Murchu said. “The increased sophistication of Stuxnet in 2010 may indicate that they had not reached their target.”

With the proliferation of Stuxnet, Schouwenberg said that the country or countries that created the worm may have themselves been impacted by its spread. But that was likely a calculated risk the worm’s developers gladly took.

And that risk may have been quite small. “Perhaps they knew that their own critical infrastructure wouldn’t be affected by Stuxnet because it’s not using Siemens PLCs,” Schouwenberg said.

The danger now posed by Stuxnet is not simply through its direct proliferation but by virtue of the fact that it provides a blueprint that can be adapted by other parties who would otherwise lack the resources to create malware this sophisticated from scratch.

What might have been conceived as a tool to prevent the creation of a weapon of mass destruction could itself be turned into a WMD.

The Washington Post reports:

“Stuxnet opened Pandora’s box,” said Ralph Langner, a German researcher whose early analysis of the worm’s ability to target control systems raised public awareness of the threat. “We don’t need to be concerned about Stuxnet, but about the next-generation malware we will see after Stuxnet.”

Sean McGurk, director of the U.S. National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center at the Department of Homeland Security, said that the department posted its first report to industry recommending steps to mitigate the effects of Stuxnet on July 15. But “not even two days later,” he said, a hacker Web site posted the code so that others could use it to exploit the vulnerabilities in Microsoft.

“So we know that once the information is out in the wild, people are taking it and they’re modifying it,” he said.

In other words, what started as an Israeli cyber attack on nuclear installations in Iran could end up crashing the US powergrid or causing havoc anywhere else on the globe.

Even before Stuxnet loomed over the horizon, serious warnings were being issued about the United States’ vulnerability to a crippling cyber attack, yet thus far none of those raising the alarm have pointed to the ways in which Israel’s cyber warfare capabilities may now indirectly or directly threaten the United States and its interests.

October 3, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Words Inadequate to Describe U.S. Bio-Crime In Guatemala

By Siglo Vientiuno*, Guatemala | October 2, 2010

Medical historian Susan M. Reverby stumbled upon the Guatemala research while exploring the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study in the United States. Threvelation has forced President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to express shock and revulsion over the unconscionable involuntary use of Guatemalans as medical subjects.

There seems to be no proper epithet to describe the experiments that the United States, between 1946 and 1948, performed on 1,500 Guatemalans, who were infected with injections of syphilis and gonorrhea without their consent.

Perhaps the adjective “crime against humanity,” utilized by President Alvaro Colom when asked for his opinion on the subject, barely touches on the seriousness, albeit still imprecisely, of such aberrant facts as the U.S. revealed yesterday

The results of a study on what had been done by her compatriots came to light this year, when Professor Susan Reverby of Wellesley College uncovered archival documents that commented on the experiment conducted by the once embattled U.S. doctor of public health, John Cutler.

[Editor’s Note: According to the documents prepared by Dr. Cutler and revealed by Professor Reverby, prisoners, soldiers and inmates in mental asylums in Guatemala were intentionally infected, sometimes by using prostitutes provided by the scientists, sometimes by pouring the germs onto skin abrasions caused by the researchers.]

The aim of the study in Guatemala, which was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Pan American Sanitary Office, the precursor of the Pan American Health Organization, was to investigate new ways of preventing sexually-transmitted diseases.

The vulnerable subjects of the experiments (prostitutes, soldiers, prisoners and the mentally ill), who have now been shown to have been treated like “laboratory mice,” were also encouraged to spread the disease to others, and some who contracted syphilis weren’t treated.

The findings abound in horrifying details that U.S. officials have sought to explain while offering their apologies to the Government of Guatemala.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that it was something “unethical” and expressed indignation about the “reprehensible” research, deplored “these abominable practices” and said that “the behavior shown during the study does not represent American values and our commitment to human dignity.”

And President Barack Obama, by telephone, told President Colom of his “deep regret for the experiments.” Obama gave the “unwavering commitment” of his country to ensure that current medical studies meet all international legal and ethical standards.

Now the qualifications and apologies abound, and although the facts of the case arose 64 years ago, the dignity of the Guatemalan people has been stained and their honor trampled upon. This is not likely to be remedied, despite all of the joint committees for uncovering what happened.

Although pondering the possibility of compensation is certainly fitting, it would be far more desirable that acts of this nature never occur again.

Guatemala – Siglo Vientiuno – Original Article (Spanish)

* Translated By Miguel Gutierrez

October 3, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

27 NATO fuel tankers destroyed in Pakistan

By Hijratullah Kharotai | Pajhwok Afghan News |  October 1, 2010

QUETTA: Twenty-seven oil tankers carrying fuel for Afghanistan-based NATO forces have been destroyed in a suspected militant attack in southern Pakistan on Friday, security officials said.

With Islamabad-Washington ties tense over a series of deadly coalition incursions into Pakistan’s tribal region, the predawn assault happened in Shikarpur district of Sindh province.

A convoy of more than 30 tankers carrying fuel supplies for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was attacked at a pump station near the superhighway, a police official told Pajhwok Afghan News.

The brazen assault came hours after Pakistan blocked logistic supplies to international forces stationed in the neighbouring in the wake of its airspace violation by coalition helicopters.

Security guards at the Torkham border crossing were ordered not to allow supply trucks to cross into Afghanistan — hours after three paramilitary soldiers were killed and as many injured during a helicopter raid in Kurram Agency on Thursday.

District Police Officer (DPO) Abdul Hamid Khosa said 27 oil tankers were torched in the assault, the first in Shikarpur, which caused no casualties. The unidentified gunmen, numbering about 20, managed to escape, he added. Law-enforcement agencies are looking for the attackers.

But Iftikhar Ali, a Quetta-based journalist, claimed 27 fuel tankers and three civilian vehicles parked nearby were burnt in the rocket strike. He said two men were wounded during the attack which took place at about 2:00am.

He added the fuel tankers were on their way from the port city of Karachi to Quetta, capital of southwestern Balochistan province, from where they were to travel to Afghanistan.

On Thursday, the Pakistani president told the CIA director any violation of the country’s sovereignty was counterproductive and unacceptable. At a meeting with Leon Panetta in Islamabad, Asif Ali Zardari said his government was averse to the contravention of internationally agreed principles

October 1, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

US-British meddling in St. Vincent & The Grenadines to oust ALBA

By Patrick J. O’Donoghue | VHeadline News | September 02, 2010

Radio Nacional de Venezuela (RNV) has published a letter written by St Vincent & the Grenadines Prime Minister, Ralph Gonsalves to the international community, denouncing destabilization attempts by British and United States groups.

In a three-page letter, Gonsalves singled out the “interference” of the co-founders of the US-based Co-habitat organization and their campaign to “save democracy for just five dollars.” The letter stated that the island’s opposition New Democratic Party is backing the campaign.

The Prime Minister also mentioned interference on the part of the British company, Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) as working to “undermine the government and Vincentian sovereignty.”

Elections are due to take place within the next two or three months and the main target of the opposition and foreign groups is cut off the relations between the government and President Chavez. The opposition, if it wins the election, is expected to take St. Vincent and The Grenadines out of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA).

Gonsalves had been expected to visit Venezuela at the beginning of August to review PetroCaribe and ALBA trade agreements and seek markets for banana exports.

VHeadline.com was unable to get any confirmation or information from the Prime Minister’s Office in St Vincent regarding a future Gonsalves visit. The Prime Minister’s secretary stated that she was unable to make any commentary on the matter.

Former Prime Minister, Sir James Mitchell is highlighted in the Gonsalves letter as a board member of the British SCL. He has stated that he never saw “anything wrong in having foreign consultants for elections.”

Mitchell also defended US citizens operating out of St. Vincent asking for contributions to protect democracy supposedly under threat from Gonsalves, saying the “use of Internet technologies to raise funds for any cause has now become a way of life.”

The Venezuelan government has made no commentary on the letter to date.

September 5, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment