WAR 1027:***The***Perfect***Storm***

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THE WINDS OF WAR​

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U.S. countercharges Syria with destabilizing Lebanon and region

08:57, October 27, 2010
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/7178657.html​

Countering Syria's charges that the United States sowed chaos in every place it entered, U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley alleged Tuesday that recent Syrian behavior and rhetoric has had "a destabilizing effect" on Lebanon and the region that has contributed to recent tensions.

"We understand that certain actors within and outside Lebanon, including Syria, Hezbollah and Iran, may believe they stand to gain by escalating sectarian tensions in an attempt to assert their own authority over Lebanon," Crowley told reporters at the State Department.

He cited as examples Syria's continued transfer of weapons to Hezbollah and its recently-issued arrest warrants for 33 Lebanese and foreign nationals, including the Lebanese government state prosecutor and head of the national police.

"You know, these activities by Syria directly undermine Lebanon 's sovereignty and directly undermine Syria's stated commitments to Lebanon's sovereignty and independence," the spokesman asserted. "So if the issue is who is playing a more constructive role in the region, we stand by our pledge to support a sovereign, stable and independent Lebanon, with strong Lebanese institutions, as the only way to realize the best interests of the Lebanese people and the region as a whole."

In an interview with the Arab daily Al-Hayat published Tuesday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that the United States " created chaos in every place it entered," asking "Is Afghanistan stable? Is Somalia stable? Did they bring stability to Lebanon in 1983?"

The U.S. intervened in 1983 in Lebanon's civil war, which started in 1975 and ended in 1990.

"We believe we're playing a constructive role in the region, as we believe that Syria is not," Crowley told reporters.

Tensions among the Lebanese parties escalated following reports that the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon would soon implicate members of Hezbollah in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Source: Xinhua
 
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In Mideast House of Cards, U.S. Views Lebanon as Shaky

By MARK LANDLER
Published: October 26, 2010
www.nytimes.com​

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, already struggling to stave off a collapse of Middle East peace talks, is increasingly alarmed by unrest in Lebanon, whose own fragile peace is being threatened by militant opponents of a politically charged investigation into the killing in 2005 of a former Lebanese leader.

With an international tribunal expected to hand down indictments in the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, in the coming months, the Hezbollah militia is maneuvering furiously to halt the investigation, or failing that, to unseat Lebanon’s government, which backs it.

The White House sent a senior diplomat to Beirut last week to reassure Lebanon’s president, Michel Suleiman, of President Obama’s support for the investigation and his country’s stability. The visit by the diplomat, Jeffrey D. Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, came on top of a telephone call to Mr. Suleiman by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“The president felt very strongly that we need to reconfirm our commitment to Lebanon’s independence, Lebanon’s sovereignty and Lebanon’s stability,” Mr. Feltman said in an interview. “There are people inside Lebanon who are arguing that it faces a choice of justice versus stability. That’s an artificial choice.”

The administration’s worries go beyond Lebanon itself, and help explain why it, and not the stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, has been the major preoccupation of American foreign policy officials for the last few weeks.

The diplomatic activity follows a splashy tour of Lebanon by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who got an ecstatic reception from members of Hezbollah, the Shiite movement financed and equipped by Iran. American officials were particularly struck by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s trip to a small town a few miles north of the Israeli border, where he called for the “Zionists to be wiped out.”

Lebanon has long been a proxy state for battles between adversaries in the Middle East, and Iran’s attempts to build influence there are not new. But at a time when the United States is trying to revive peace talks, administration officials concluded that Iran’s latest muscle-flexing could not go unanswered.

“You don’t want the perception of a vacuum,” Mr. Feltman said. “You don’t want the perception that Ahmadinejad is the only game in town.”

Analysts said that the United States was right to reassert its commitment to Lebanon, but that it may be acting too late. Rising prices for weapons suggest that militias other than Hezbollah are rearming, increasing the threat of a civil war.

There are limits to what the administration can do to stabilize a country as divided as Lebanon. The United States has given the Lebanese armed forces $670 million in military aid since 2006. But last August, several members of Congress put a hold on further funds after a skirmish between Lebanese and Israeli soldiers raised suspicions that parts of the Lebanese Army were in league with Hezbollah.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s jubilant reception in Lebanon has only added to the resistance on Capitol Hill. Representative Eliot L. Engel, a Democrat from New York who sponsored a bill imposing sanctions on Syria, said he would consider voting to block aid because of fears that it could end up helping Hezbollah.

“We need to be careful about what we do there, so we’re not strengthening the hand of a terrorist group like Hezbollah and its allies,” Mr. Engel said in an interview. “We just don’t want to use our monies to enhance policies that are bad for Americans and bad for the people of Lebanon.”

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon was sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council in 2007 to investigate the car bombing that killed Mr. Hariri and 22 others in February 2005. Lebanon’s coalition government, now led by Mr. Hariri’s son, Prime Minister Saad Hariri, has pledged to contribute 49 percent of the tribunal’s expenses and enforce its judgments.

The Netherlands-based tribunal has been at work since March 2009, but has said little about when it plans to hand down indictments.

A raft of reports in Lebanon’s news media said an announcement could come as early as December, though some reports now suggest that the tribunal may not act until the first quarter of next year.

In either case, a sense that the investigation is entering its final stages has contributed to a feverish political environment.

The trouble is, those indicted may include members of Hezbollah, and the group, which holds seats in the Lebanese cabinet, is demanding that Prime Minister Hariri disavow the investigation. Syria, also under suspicion for having a role in Rafik Hariri’s assassination, has taken up calls to discredit the tribunal.

Syrian officials, who had once backed Saad Hariri’s government, are now sharply critical of him and his March 14 alliance, a coalition that grew out of the “Cedar Revolution,” which pushed Syrian troops out of the country. Al Akhbar, a Lebanese newspaper that is closely allied with Hezbollah and Syria, declared recently that “taking authority away from Hariri would teach him how to keep it.”

Saudi Arabia has tried to mediate, without much success. American officials say they believe that the tribunal will be able to complete its investigation. But their concern is that indictments will draw protesters onto the streets, inflaming tensions between Shiite and Sunni factions. Unrest could also lead to fresh skirmishes between Lebanese and Israeli forces along the border between the countries.

That would imperil a peace effort that is already on life support. Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu’s chief negotiator, Yitzhak Molcho, has been in Washington for the last few days, officials said, floating various ideas on ways to revive the talks. But there is no indication of an imminent breakthrough.

Syria’s increasingly disruptive role is also raising questions about the Obama administration’s 18-month effort to engage that country. Some analysts said it was time for the administration to rethink that effort.

“This is the moment when we need a straight answer out of Syria,” said Andrew Tabler, an expert on Syria and Lebanon at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They just seem unwilling or unable to deliver it.”




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02:10 27.10.10

French newspaper uncovers routes Syria and
Iran use to ship missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon

By Amos Harel
www.haaretz.com​

Three separate Hezbollah units are responsible for moving rockets from Syria to Lebanon and deploying them at various sites operated by the group, the French daily Le Figaro reported Monday.

Over the past year, international media outlets have published numerous reports on the upgrading of Hezbollah's high-trajectory missile capabilities and the increasing threat they pose against Israeli population centers. So far, Kuwaiti newspapers have been publishing most of these reports, joined now by a French paper quoting government sources in Paris.

In its detailed report on Hezbollah's missile and rocket arrays, Le Figaro described a dramatic event that occured in January: "A warning signal flashed on American radar screens. The signal on the screen indicated preparations to move 26 M-600 rockets from Damascus to the Syria-Lebanon border. The rocket, manufactured in Syria, with a range of about 250 kilometers, were to have been given to Hezbollah in Lebanon, making strikes possible deep in Israeli territory."

The report did not say whether the missiles had actually been moved into Lebanon.

The past year has seen similar reports of the transfer of M-600 rockets as well as Scud missiles to Lebanon. In February, according to reports from Lebanon, some 40 Israeli fighter jets flew low one night over the Syrian border, and the Arab press was rife with various accounts of an Israeli move to halt the smuggling of the missiles.

According to Le Figaro, the Hezbollah unit moving the rockets is the 108 unit, which is the first link in the chain of rocket deployment. The task of the 108, whose main headquarters is in Damascus, is to ensure that the weapons move from storage sites throughout Syria to the Syria-Lebanon border.

The storage sites are divided into "regular stores" and "reserve stores." The regular sites are in the Syrian cities of Duma and Adra, near Damascus airport. Proximity to the airport is essential because most of the weapons from Iran arrive by plane. The reserve stores are in Aleppo, Homs and Tartus, Syria.

A few weeks ago, Avi Scharf reported in Haaretz on the presence of a Syrian and Hezbollah missile base in Adra, and published aerial photos of the site as they appeared on Google Earth.

The next link in the chain is Unit 112, which is responsible for supplying the weapons to Hezbollah storage sites in Lebanon and distributing them to the bases. The weapons usually arrive at the end of every month, taking advantage of regular electricity outages in Syria at these times.

The weapons are moved by trucks with bogus license plates. The 108 has flooded the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon with missiles and rockets.

At the missiles' final stop, two teams from the third unit, Unit 100, see to the deployment of Hezbollah fighters among the bases, and brings in Iranian experts and advisors via Damascus airport. Unit 100 organized and provided security for the return of Hezbollah fighters to Lebanon after joint training with Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Iran, during which Iranian Fateh-110 rockets (a type similar to the M-600 ) were fired.

The abundance of recent reports about Hezbollah is not accidental. It seems that Western intelligence agencies are pursuing a number of goals: to warn against Hezbollah's developing capabilities, a veiled threat against Syria so it will limit its involvement in weapons smuggling, and the preparation of international groundwork in case Israel decides to act against the weapons smuggling or the rocket array itself.

Recent months have seen rising tensions between Hezbollah and its adversaries in Lebanon, ahead of an announcement by the International Court in The Hague that it will be trying senior Hezbollah officials in the case of the murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Such an announcement is expected in December.

One possibility is that Hezbollah might try to heat up the border with Israel to distract public discourse in Lebanon from the Hariri case.

According to Le Figaro, the array it described shows the strategic importance of Syria in Hezbollah's logistics. Sources in the French defense ministry told the daily that even if tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have declined since the Second Lebanon War, "the possibility cannot be discounted of Israeli action against the sites under the responsibility of Unit 108 in Syria."

According to one French expert, Iran has apparently formulated a plan to put the M-600 into operation, which is being carried out by Syria and Hezbollah. In recent years, Hezbollah has deployed long-range missiles and rockets north of the Litani River. "There, and not in south Lebanon, the organization has built its strategic sites," the expert said.

Over the past months, Hezbollah has rebuilt its launch sites for Iranian Fajar rockets, which have a range of 45 kilometers. Hezbollah has also completely upgraded its command and control system, and has dug tunnels along the border with Syria, between the cities of Baalbek and Hermel in Lebanon, to help forces to fall back in the case of renewed conflict with Israel.

Hezbollah has also built an independent underground communications system in the areas under its control, from the suburbs of south Beirut to the Bekaa Valley.

Le Figaro also reported that Hezbollah recently established its own naval commando unit.



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10/26/10, 2:44 PM
:dot4:
‘Syria Helps Hizbullah Build Anti-Israel Army in North Lebanon'

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
www.israelnationalnews.com​

Syria has helped Hizbullah entrench itself in northern Lebanon with 40,000 long-range missiles and 10,000 militia men, increasing its war capability against Israel, the French daily Le Figaro reported Tuesday.

The newspaper said that U.S. intelligence radar screens picked up the transfer of missiles as far back as last January, between Damascus and the Syrian-Lebanese border. The addition of 40,000 missiles, most of them made in Iran, gives the Hizbullah terrorist organization the capability of attacking Israel from north of the Litani River, out of sight of United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) forces who are supposed to hold Hizbullah at bay in the south.

Even in the south, Hizbullah has easily circumvented UNIFIL, building a maze of underground tunnels and bunkers and storing many weapons in mosques, fire stations and schools. Israeli intelligence officers estimate that Hizbullah possesses at least 60,000 missiles under the noses of UNIFIL, three times the number of rockets it had stockpiled at the start of the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006.

Le Figaro’s publication of the supply line of weapons from Syria offers further proof that Syria has effectively used Hizbullah to retain its strong influence in the country, wracked by a 15-year civil war until a few years ago and still suffering from political instability.

The United States pressured Syria to withdraw its forces after the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former anti-Syrian prime minister of Lebanon. However, Damascus – with the combined efforts of Iran – maintains its influence through Hizbullah and its pro-Syrian political allies.

Le Figaro published details on Hizbullah ground and missile units that are supplied by Syria, often under cover of power blackouts and through tunnels underneath the northeastern border with Lebanon. The newspaper said that Hizbullah practices using the missiles in Syria because it does not have large enough camps in Lebanon.



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Assad accuses US of 'creating chaos everywhere it goes'

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
10/26/2010 23:23
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=192893​

BEIRUT — Syria's president has accused the United States of sowing chaos overseas, snubbing Washington's efforts to improve ties with Damascus.

Bashar Assad told Al-Hayat newspaper in an interview published Tuesday that the US "created chaos in every place it entered."



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Syria has helped Hizbullah rearm, recruit, French paper claims

By Patrick Galey
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
www.dailystar.com.lb​


BEIRUT: Hizbullah has with Syria’s help amassed an arsenal of more than 40,000 rockets and missiles, a leading French newspaper reported Tuesday.


Damascus has also relocated long-range missiles close to the Syrian border with Lebanon and is seeking ways of getting the warheads into Hizbullah’s hands, according to the Parisian daily Le Figaro.


Quoting military sources and claiming to have obtained US intelligence images of Syrian M-6002 missiles in military bases northwest of Damascus, the paper said that Hizbullah now possessed a core fighting force of 10,000 soldiers. Its “principal bureau” – codenamed unit 108 – “is charged with ensuring the transport of arms and munitions between stockpiling sites in Syria and other infrastructure situated on the Syrian-Lebanese border, where the Shiite militia has reinforced its bases,” the report said.


A series of satellite and surveillance drone reconnaissance images have emerged in recent months allegedly showing large rockets in Syria and groups moving smaller arms throughout south Lebanon. Israel holds that Syria has provided Hizbullah with long-range SCUD missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv. Damascus has repeatedly denied this charge, although several US lawmakers have come out in support of Israeli allegations.



While Israel has claimed reconnaissance efforts have produced evidence of Hizbullah’s rearmament in the wake of the 2006 war, several international missions in Lebanon, including the United Nations, have repeatedly failed to conclusively show weapons transfers are occurring.


“Independently, we haven’t had confirmation of the highly sensitive transfer of missiles with Iranian technology, which descend in either guided or non-guided versions,” the paper quoted a French military source as saying. “One cannot exclude [the possibility] that missiles made in Iran have been provided for Syria.”


The report also claimed that Hizbullah had been recruiting members in Syria since 2008, when the party’s military commander Imad Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus, an attack for which Hizbullah holds Israel responsible.


Several recent incidents have exposed the existence of non-state weapons in south Lebanon, an area in which UN peacekeepers are mandated to operate. In its report, Figaro claimed that, in a bid to avoid confrontation with international organizations such as UNIFIL, Hizbullah had moved the majority of its weapons stockpile north of the Litani River, or underground, in order to prevent detection.



Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=120839#ixzz13WbKUQqA
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

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leforstx said:
http://www.debka.com/article/9105/
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Iran accuses 7 spies - two for links with Israeli intelligence

DEBKAfile Special Report
October 26, 2010, 7:36 PM (GMT+02:00)
http://www.debka.com/article/9105/​

Tehran Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi said Tuesday, Oct. 26 that two people would go on trial for collaborating with Israeli intelligence - in addition to the five arrested earlier on charges of contacts with foreign intelligence services. He did not identify any of the seven accused, stressing only that they had all received large sums of money and the cases against them were ready for court.

He said the last two accused spies "were linked with the Zionist regime's intelligence services to pass intelligence to them" for large sums of money. According to the Iranian prosecutor, one of the two was involved in "counter-revolutionary activities" while the other "worked on issues pertaining to domestic affairs of the country."

The first five were accused of passing secrets about Iran's space program, economy and defense systems to unspecified "enemies of the nation" - usually a reference to the United States and Israel.

Dolatabadi described one of the five as "a 28-year old who used to work in the aviation and space industries and had gathered some information" and a second as "connected with the anti-Iran Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO)."

debkafile's Iranian sources note that Tehran had been widely expected to produce "Israeli spies" at some point soon. There was no reference to Israel when the first five arrests were announced. It was only on Tuesday that the Tehran prosecutor added another two charged with spying for "Zionist regime intelligence."

There were two motives behind this development:

1. It coincided with the loading of the first 160 fuel rods into the Bushehr nuclear reactor - and for good reason. This process had been postponed from August by the attack on its systems by the Stuxnet computer virus. Tehran has not been able to get to the bottom of this attack and, fearing its source was still lurking somewhere in the country for more mischief, decided to use scare tactics against possible culprits by arresting spies on charges that carry the death sentence.

2. Monday night, Oct. 25, Dennis Ross, Obama's Special Assistant and NSC Senior Director on the Central Region spoke at length to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC about the close strategic cooperation between Washington and Jerusalem. "I’m not aware of another country that we engage more regularly on such a wide range of issues," he said. "Over the last two years, I have seen four-star generals, intelligence officers, and high-ranking diplomats all develop personal relationships with their Israelis counterparts. Frankly, this degree of coordination is unprecedented."

He went on to advise Iran's leaders to "listen carefully to President Obama who has said many times, 'we are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.'"

Last May, the rulers of Iran and Syria resolved never to allow any military threat against either to go unchallenged - either directly or through their allies. Hence, the arrest of "two Israeli spies."



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Spirit Of Truth said:
ANy word on IDF troop movements?
Click to expand...




SofT; Well over a week back (when the "SILENCE) fell over the Middle East. And I submitted my "Messenger on the Wall" resignation. The whole of the Middle East; Arabs, Israelis, and U.S. forces were all deployed to their positions. - Then everything "went silent"!!!!

Those forces, all of them are still in their "positions" all that is needed is a "GO word" given any one of those forces and it will be, with-in minutes minutes "The Perfect Storm!"


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Islamic Jihad member killed by IDF fire in Gaza

By JPOST.COM STAFF
10/27/2010 14:58
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=192974​

IDF tank fire killed a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Wendesday near the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. The army confirmed that it fired at two suspects approaching the border fence and hit one of them.

Palestinian sources said the man who was killed was Jihad Sobhi Afaneh, 20, and the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, the al-Quds Brigades, said he was a member of the group.

Earlier Wednesday, a mortar shell was fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip, and exploded in an open field in the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council. No injuries or damage were reported.



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10/27/10, 2:16 PM

IDF Tank Shells Stop Three Gaza Terrorists; One Killed

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/140300​

Islamic Jihad said one of their terrorists was killed Wednesday when a three-man cell approached the security fence and was met by tank fire at the northern edge of Gaza.

The two other terrorists escaped without injury, and the soldiers were not wounded in the incident. The Islamic Jihad said the cell was on a “mission.”

In a separate incident, foreign media reported that the IDF wounded a Gaza Arab who was looking for building material near the Erez crossing. Military spokespersons said they are investigating the report.

Terrorists in Hamas-controlled Gaza have sharply escalated mortar fire at Israel the past few days. Four shells were fired Wednesday morning, three of them missing their mark and landing in Gaza and the fourth exploding on a kibbutz farm near Sderot.

On Tuesday, five shells were fired, two of them landing in Gaza and three in the western Negev. No injuries or damage was reported in the mortar attacks.

The IDF has carried out a policy since shortly after the end of the Operation Cast Lead in early 2008 to retaliate after every terrorist attack. Gaza-based terrorists have attacked Israel with more than 300 mortar shells and rockets since the end of the ceasefire that ended the counterterrorist campaign.



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Israeli Occupation Gunboats Attack Palestinain Fishermen in Gaza

Wednesday October 27, 2010 13:14
by Sandy Khair - IMEMC & Agencies
http://www.imemc.org/article/59763​

On Wednesday at dawn, Israeli gunboats opened fire at fishing boats off the shoreline in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

A WAFA correspondent reported that an Israeli gunboat opened fire randomly at Palestinian fishing boats, preventing them from fishing freely.

In related news, Israeli war planes flying at low altitudes over the Gaza Strip, carried out an intensive mock air attack and released small hot air balloons.The Authorities consider it as a continuation of the aggressive actions targeting citizens living in the Gaza Strip.

Traditionally, many people in the Gaza Strip depend on fishing as the main source of their livelihood. However, the Israeli occupation and the illegal restrictions keep Gaza fishermen from fishing in their own waters and earning a livelihood. Therefore, fish from the Gaza Strip is sold at high prices that few people can afford, and has a negative effect on their economy.



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Police, protesters clash in Arab Israeli town

By DALIA NAMMARI, Associated Press
Dalia Nammari, Associated Press – 22 mins ago
news.yahoo.com​

UMM EL-FAHM, Israel – Dozens of Jewish extremists hoisting Israeli flags defiantly marched through this Arab-Israeli town Wednesday, chanting "death to terrorists" and touching off clashes between rock-hurling residents and police who quelled them with tear gas.

As the unrest unfolded, an Israeli court convicted a prominent Arab-Israeli activist of spying for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in a plea bargain that will send him to prison for up to 10 years.

The court case and the violence in Umm el-Fahm added to mounting tensions between Israel's Jewish majority and its Arab minority.

Israel Arabs, who make up about one-fifth of the country's citizenry, have grown jittery amid repeated questions about their loyalty by nationalist elements in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

The Jewish extremists converged on Umm el-Fahm, one of Israel's largest Arab towns, because it is known as a stronghold of the country's radical Islamic Movement. It was the second time Jewish ultranationalists have marched through the town in the past year and a half. Residents called it a provocation.

Khaled Hamdan, the town's mayor, faulted police for protecting the protesters and their leader, calling them "a madman and a bunch of racists."

"The purpose behind this (march) clearly is to provoke and to cause chaos," he said.

The scenes of Israeli Arabs — their faces masked by checkered headscarves, burning tires, hurling rocks at riot police and scrambling to dodge tear gas and police fire — recalled images of violence between Israeli forces and the Arabs' Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Police said 10 people were arrested, but reported no serious injuries.

Hundreds of police deployed in the town after Israel's Supreme Court authorized the march, which took place on the outskirts of town. Some 350 Arab residents gathered in anticipation of the rally, and youths threw rocks at police, who dispersed the crowd with tear gas and stun grenades.

Police kept journalists away from the 50-meter (yard) path of the march. But resident Amneh Jabari, a 38-year-old woman who lives along the march route, said marchers, hoisting white-and-blue Israeli flags and reciting prayers, chanted "death to the Arabs" and "Umm el-Fahm will be Jewish."

The Jewish militants are admirers of Meir Kahane, a U.S.-born rabbi who preached that Palestinians should be expelled from Israel and the West Bank. An Arab gunman assassinated Kahane at a New York hotel 20 years ago.

March organizer Baruch Marzel said the activists came to demand that the Israeli government outlaw the Islamic Movement, just as it did Kahane's Kach Party.

"If the Kach Party was outlawed, then the Islamic Movement deserves to be outlawed 1,000 times over," he said.

An Arab-Israeli lawmaker, Hanin Zoabi, told Army Radio that two rubber bullets hit her in the back and in the neck. Zoabi infuriated many Israelis earlier this year by joining a Gaza-bound international flotilla that Israeli commandos stormed at sea, sparking clashes that left nine Turkish activists dead.

Police said they did not fire rubber bullets. It was possible Zoabi was hit by a tear gas canister or other projectile.

The Arab minority comprises 20 percent of Israel's citizens. Israeli Arabs are ethnically Palestinian, but unlike their brethren in the West Bank and Gaza, they enjoy equal rights under the law. They often suffer discrimination and are statistically poorer and less educated than Israeli Jews. Tensions between the two communities run deep.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party has played heavily on the perceived disloyalty of the country's Arab citizens.

His efforts to pass anti-Arab legislation could target people like Amir Makhoul, the Arab activist who admitted to spying for Hezbollah in Wednesday's plea bargain.

Makhoul's lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, said his client admitted to passing information about the location of a military weapons factory to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah during Israel's war against the group in 2006. Makhoul also told his contact where he believed captive Lebanese fighters were held.

Makhoul used a coded e-mail program to send the information to a community activist in Jordan who Israeli intelligence believes belongs to Hezbollah.

Makhoul knew the man, Hussan Jaja, through their mutual activism, and it appeared that Jaja wheedled him into giving over the information, Abu Hussein said.

He said the information that Makhoul shared is common knowledge and available on the Internet, but that Makhoul agreed to a plea bargain because of the difficulty of proving his innocence. The court is expected to sentence Makhoul in November. Without a deal, he could have faced life in prison.

Makhoul is a vocal critic of Israel, and the media was barred from reporting his arrest for weeks. His case is similar to that of another prominent Arab-Israeli leader, Azmi Bishara, a lawmaker who fled the country to avoid facing espionage allegations.



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9:46 a.m. Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Crowd harasses UN investigators in Beirut

By ZEINA KARAM
The Associated Press
www.ajc.com​

BEIRUT — A crowd chased away a team of U.N. officials gathering evidence Wednesday in the death of a former Lebanese prime minister, scuffling with the investigators and shouting abuse before snatching a briefcase, police said.

.Nobody was hurt in Wednesday's melee, which underscored the charged emotions behind the international tribunal looking into Rafik Hariri's 2005 assassination. The Hague-based court said they are taking the incident seriously.

The tribunal has not yet indicted any suspects in the assassination, but speculation that the court could name members of the Hezbollah militant group has raised fears of violence between the heavily armed guerrilla force and Hariri's mainly Sunni allies.

Wednesday's incident happened at a clinic in Beirut's southern suburb of Ouzai, a Hezbollah stronghold.

Dr. Iman Sharara, who runs the clinic, said two men — an Australian and a French national — showed up with a Lebanese interpreter for an appointment to go through some phone records.

When she went outside to speak to her secretary, she saw a large group of women force their way into the clinic, screaming and trampling on documents belonging to the clinic.

"It looked like a real battle," she told reporters. "The investigators fled. The interpreter, they pulled her hair, they snatched things from them ... I returned to my clinic, hid inside and called my husband."

"I was shocked," she added. "I have no idea how and why this happened."

A police official said more than 30 women stormed the building, with another 75 or so remaining outside. He added, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give official statements, that the crowd shouted curses at the tribunal and one protester stole an investigator's briefcase.

It was not clear what was in the briefcase.

Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV station quoted witnesses as saying patients at the clinic became angry when they saw two foreign investigators walk in.

The court did not provide details but told The Associated Press in an e-mail that they take the incident "very seriously and we are currently looking into it."

The massive truck bombing that killed Hariri and 22 other people along Beirut's Mediterranean waterfront on Feb. 14, 2005 was one of the most dramatic political assassinations the Mideast has seen. A billionaire businessman, Hariri was Lebanon's most prominent politician after the 15-year civil war ended in 1990.

Suspicion fell on neighboring Syria, since Hariri had been seeking to weaken its domination of the country. Syria has denied having any role in the murder, but the killing galvanized opposition to Damascus and led to huge street demonstrations helped end Syria's 29-year military presence.

Since then, speculation has grown that Hezbollah — which is backed by Syria — will be indicted. Though the tribunal has not yet named any individuals or countries as suspects, Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has announced that he expects members of his group to be indicted. He vows not to hand them over to be prosecuted.

Many fear that indictments of Hezbollah members could trigger violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. In 2008, sectarian clashes killed 81 people and nearly plunged Lebanon into another civil war.




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Tensions Mount In Lebanon Over Hariri Murder Probe

by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
October 27, 2010
www.npr.org​

October 27, 2010 There are growing fears that tensions in Lebanon between Sunni and Shiite Muslims could lead to a sectarian war.

A special, U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is adding to the strain. The leader, a Sunni, died in a car bombing in Beirut in 2005.

The tribunal is expected by the end of the year to indict members of Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shiite faction. Leaders of the Iranian-backed group say they won't stand for being formally accused of responsibility for the murder.

Lebanon's various allies in the Middle East and the West are engaged in a flurry of diplomatic trips around the region to keep the government from falling and violence from erupting.

But many Sunni Muslims in Lebanon say they want someone to pay for the death of their popular prime minister. But they also worry about potential violence if Hezbollah members are indicted.

In a Beirut cafe called Future, a retired civil servant, Abu Haisam, likened the current tension between the Sunni and Shiite sects to a volcano that is ready to blow.

Every Lebanese is thinking Apocalypse Now.

- Fares Soueid
"Hezbollah isn't going to stay quiet. I mean, these guys are heavily armed by Iran," he said. "They were given those weapons to fight Israel and now they are turning them on us."

The 85-year-old and many others in Beirut fear a repeat of May 2008, when Shiite gunmen took over the Muslim part of Beirut after the government tried shutting down Hezbollah's telecommunication network, among other things.

In a Shiite neighborhood, lottery worker Mustafa Fawaz shares Abu Haisam's concerns about the growing rift. But the 52-year-old blames Israel and the United States for stirring up the tensions.

He, like many Lebanese Shiites, accuses the two countries of manipulating the U.N. tribunal into falsely accusing Hezbollah to embarrass its main patron, Iran. They argue the tribunal should be done away with before any indictments come out.

Paul Salem, who heads the Carnegie Middle East Center, a think tank, says the crisis is serious.

"Hezbollah is effectively asking the Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who is the son of the assassinated former prime minister, to give up on the tribunal which is investigating his own father's assassination," he said. "This is very, very difficult for the prime minister to do. It's very, very difficult for the Sunni community to swallow."

It is especially since the Lebanese government had agreed earlier to drop allegations of Syrian involvement in the bombing. That agreement cost the younger Hariri a lot of support.

Lebanese politicians on both sides are thus far refusing to budge. Analysts fear the dispute could topple the fragile coalition government, which is led by Hariri's camp and backed by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia on one side, and includes Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, on the other.

Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Fayyad claimed the tribunal has no credibility and that the Shiite faction has a right to defend itself against false allegations.

"We consider one result of the indictments must be more escalations of the tensions between the Sunnis and Shiites in this country and maybe out of this country on the regional level," Fayyad said.

But Fares Soueid, the secretary general for Hariri's coalition, claimed such assertions are only an attempt to give the guilty parties a way to avoid prosecution.

Soueid said Hariri's faction is supporting the tribunal for "moral reasons."

“It’s the first time we can reach justice in Lebanon," he said, adding that the U.N. tribunal's actions need not lead to sectarian strife.

"Every Lebanese is thinking Apocalypse Now — that this tribunal is coming with an apocalyptic vision. I think it's not true,” Soueid explained.

Some Lebanese agree with him.

Hilal Khashan, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut, is optimistic that, given international pressure, the sides will reach a compromise that makes everybody only "half upset."

Salem, of the Carnegie Middle East Center, said the Lebanese government may also try to buy more time by asking the tribunal to review its investigation




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For Fair Use: Discussion

10/27/10

How WikiLeaks Makes Confrontation With Iran More Likely

Source: James Kirchick RFE/RL
http://www.payvand.com/news/10/oct/1223.html​

It is no secret that Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, opposes the American-led war efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He is not some dispassionate journalist bringing information to light for its own sake; he has an agenda, and makes no bones about it. "This material shines light on the everyday brutality and squalor of war," he said before releasing a stash of classified documents related to the Afghan conflict this summer. "The archive will change public opinion and it will change the opinion of people in positions of political and diplomatic influence."

WikiLeaks will indeed "change" opinions. But they should not alter them in the pacifistic way Assange desires.

Far from demonstrating that it is America and its allies which are responsible for most of the violence that has engulfed Iraq in the seven years since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the latest WikiLeaks reveal, in the words of the "Washington Post," that "the vast majority of Iraqi civilian deaths were caused by other Iraqis, not by coalition forces." And many of those deaths were perpetrated by Iraqis who received training in neighboring Iran. "The New York Times" last week said that the documents reveal the "shadow war between the United States and Iraqi militias backed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards."

According to a 2006 report, for instance, Azhar al-Dulaimi, a Shi'ite militia commander who had kidnapped officials from Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education, was trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, Iran's terrorist proxy in Lebanon. This is but one of the connections to Iran that the WikiLeaks reveal; the documents offer a trove of information spelling out in specific detail how various instruments of the Iranian regime funded, equipped, and trained Shi'ite militants to kill not only their fellow Iraqis, but coalition troops as well.

Critics of the war have long painted allegations of Iranian involvement in Iraq as exaggerated, the cynical attempts of Western hard-liners to gain support for tougher policies against Tehran. Reasonable people can of course differ on how to deal with the Iranian regime. But what is now beyond dispute is that it clearly sees itself as engaged in a war against the United States and those attempting to forge an independent and democratic Iraq.

According to the documents, Iran has served as a veritable training camp for terrorists who use Iranian territory as a base from which to conduct deadly operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The regime's Quds Force, the external branch of the Revolutionary Guards that equips terrorists throughout the Middle East and allegedly even in Latin America, has trained Shi'ite militants from Iraq in the use of explosives and sniper rifles.

Crucially, as the "Times" points out, this training continued after President Barack Obama publicly reached out to Iranian officials and reiterated his intention to withdraw American troops by the end of next year: "The attacks continued during Mr. Obama's first year in office, with no indication in the reports that the new administration's policies led the Quds Force to end its support for Iraqi militants," says the "Times." "The pending American troop withdrawals, the reports asserted, may even have encouraged some militant attacks."

The Afghan war logs that Assange leaked earlier this year told much the same story about Iran's destabilizing influence, a point I stressed at the time. Let's just say that the Islamic republic's involvement in that country has involved tactics more worrying than the Tammany Hall-esque handing of "bags of money" to President Hamid Karzai and his senior aides.

Asked about his motives in releasing classified information, Assange has said, "I enjoy crushing bastards." Presumably, he's referring to the international coalition -- the officials, soldiers, and humanitarian aid workers -- trying to bring some measure of stability to Iraq and Afghanistan, and not the theocrats and mass murderers who have visited such destruction and misery on those countries. Assange doesn't seem to have much fire in his belly for going after them. But the unwitting effects of his latest document dump, as with the last, have been to reveal the true nature of Al-Qaeda and the Iranian regime, and to open a window into what the region will look like should their efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq prove successful.



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Report: 'Obama will not last his first term in office'

By JPOST.COM STAFF
10/27/2010 15:39
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=192977​

US President Barack Obama is unlikely to last his first term in office as there are efforts by American officials to remove him, an analyst from Executive Intelligence Review told Iranian PressTV on Wednesday in an interview.

"There are people who are upset within the administration and the Democratic party who are seriously considering how to remove Obama from presidency," analyst Edward Spannaus was quoted as saying by PressTV.

Spannaus also said that military officials are upset with Obama because he "is not attentive" to what is going on in the world, reported PressTV.

"We have troops killing and being killed and he is not interested in dealing with it," Spannaus said.



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THE BORDER BADLANDS​

For Fair Use: Discussion

Six more dead in Mexico drug wars

Wednesday, 27 October 2010 09:00
thepeninsulaqatar.com​

MEXICO CITY: The bodies of four men, apparently killed by drug traffickers, were found early yesterday on a freeway south of Mexico city, officials said, as two headless corpses were discovered in the violence-wracked north.

“There were four dead men. They had their hands tied behind their backs,” said a prosecution source who asked to remain anonymous. He said the men were found on the Mexico-Cuernavaca highway near the town of Temixco, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Mexico’s sprawling capital. A message left with the bodies attributed the murders to a clash between two factions of a drug cartel led by the Beltran Leyva brothers.

Authorities have said the conflict has left dozens dead in recent months in Morelos state and the neighbouring state of Guerrero, which includes the tourist center of Acapulco. Meanwhile, in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, scene of hundreds of drug-related killings, two headless bodies were found with a message linking them to a drug cartel, police said. The carnage came after a string of bloodletting across Mexico.

Thirteen recovering drug addicts were gunned down at a rehab center in Tijuana late Sunday. Near the resort city of Acapulco, six men were found executed on Sunday and three other bodies were found bound on Monday. In Juarez, Mexico’s most violent city, 14 youths killed at a party early Saturday and three police officers were killed outside their patrol vehicle on Sunday.



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Texas Sheriff Warns Colo. Officers About Border

Gonzalez, Tiffany Hartley Spoke To Law Enforcement Officers

Posted by Kim Nguyen, Web Editor
11:41 am MDT October 26, 2010
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/25516740/detail.html​

DENVER -- The wife of a Colorado man presumably gunned down on a lake on the U.S.-Mexico border said Monday that Americans need to wake up to the problem of violence there.

Tiffany Hartley and the Texas sheriff who has been investigating the case spoke at a session in Denver for law-enforcement officers. Hartley has said she and her husband were sightseeing on Falcon Lake when her husband, David, was shot Sept. 30. She said she tried to rescue him but raced back to the U.S. side as bullets whizzed by.

The search for his body has been suspended due to violence in the area, said Hartley, who was living in Texas but is now back in Colorado, where she grew up.


Zapata County Sheriff Sigi Gonzalez said he has been pressing since at least 2005 for more federal help to protect residents on the Mexican border who are afraid of going on their own land after dark, as the sounds of rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire have become more familiar.

"On the border, people live in fear on the U.S. side. On the Mexico side, forget it. It's totally out of control. Or I should say, it's in the control of the drug cartels," Gonzalez said before the session.

Hartley, who grew up in Loveland, Colo., said she is speaking up about violence on the border on behalf of her own family but also for other victims with relatives in Mexico who have stayed silent for fear of retaliation.

"Ultimately, this is bigger than just David. His death will not be in vain because I will continue to do what I can to secure our border," she said.

She told 7NEWS over the weekend that law enforcement authorities need to focus on what's happening at the border.

"You know, (for) so long we've focused on what's going on internationally, across the ocean, we need to focus on what's in our backyard," Hartley said.

She said she's confident her husband's body will be found in border waters.

Pirates have robbed several Americans on Falcon Lake this year. Though the Hartleys had been living in Reynosa, Mexico, and then McAllen, Texas, Hartley said she hadn't realized the breadth of violence perpetrated by Mexican drug cartels until she and her husband were targeted.

The cartels have pushed into the U.S., too. A 2008 report from the National Drug Intelligence Center shows Mexican drug trafficking organizations have operations in at least 195 U.S. cities, including five in Colorado and cities in Alaska and Hawaii.

Organizers of the session Monday said they had asked Gonzalez to speak before the Hartley case began. Gonzalez said he regularly speaks around the country about border issues.



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KKC

KKC

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The Flying Dutchman said:
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:srdot:
Report: 'Obama will not last his first term in office'

By JPOST.COM STAFF
10/27/2010 15:39
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=192977​

US President Barack Obama is unlikely to last his first term in office as there are efforts by American officials to remove him, an analyst from Executive Intelligence Review told Iranian PressTV on Wednesday in an interview.

"There are people who are upset within the administration and the Democratic party who are seriously considering how to remove Obama from presidency," analyst Edward Spannaus was quoted as saying by PressTV.

Spannaus also said that military officials are upset with Obama because he "is not attentive" to what is going on in the world, reported PressTV.

"We have troops killing and being killed and he is not interested in dealing with it," Spannaus said.



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This is HUGE if this is true. Why haven't we heard of this from other sources? BTW. Thought you had hung it up Dutch. Glad to see you back. Thanks for the insider.
 
Spirit Of Truth

Spirit Of Truth

Inactive
The Flying Dutchman said:
SofT; Well over a week back (when the "SILENCE) fell over the Middle East. And I submitted my "Messenger on the Wall" resignation. The whole of the Middle East; Arabs, Israelis, and U.S. forces were all deployed to their positions. - Then everything "went silent"!!!!

Those forces, all of them are still in their "positions" all that is needed is a "GO word" given any one of those forces and it will be, with-in minutes minutes "The Perfect Storm!"
Click to expand...

Don't know. I would expect words of troop movements by Syria and/or Israel is something very serious was brewing. Of course, the whole region is a ridiculous tinderbox by design, so it's just a matter of who strikes a match. The DJIA looks ready to reverse from 11K into the Elliott Wave 'Apocalypse Wave', so it wouldn't be much of a surprise for me if WW3 erupts soon. Haven't prepped because I'm sick of this ill-fated, insane world and hope the first bomb lands on me.
 
Spirit Of Truth

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The Flying Dutchman said:
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For Fair Use: Discussion

:srdot:
Report: 'Obama will not last his first term in office'

By JPOST.COM STAFF
10/27/2010 15:39
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=192977​

US President Barack Obama is unlikely to last his first term in office as there are efforts by American officials to remove him, an analyst from Executive Intelligence Review told Iranian PressTV on Wednesday in an interview.

"There are people who are upset within the administration and the Democratic party who are seriously considering how to remove Obama from presidency," analyst Edward Spannaus was quoted as saying by PressTV.

Spannaus also said that military officials are upset with Obama because he "is not attentive" to what is going on in the world, reported PressTV.

"We have troops killing and being killed and he is not interested in dealing with it," Spannaus said.



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The man does seem terribly aloof. Understandably being President is a tough job, but it's as if he's not altogether there.
 
J

jpigott

Veteran Member
Spirit Of Truth said:
Don't know. I would expect words of troop movements by Syria and/or Israel is something very serious was brewing.
Click to expand...

Yea, me too. There was some vague reference by Debka the other day that the region was mobilizing for war, citing news that the USS Abraham being deployed to the region and word of the $60B Saudi-US arms deal. But that is a lot different than word that the IDF is moving columns of Merkavas to the border.

Given the relatively small size of Israel and the Israeli free press, a mobilization of any size is virtually impossible to conceal.
 
almost ready

almost ready

Inactive
The Obama White House in disarray report seems to be sourced from Wayne Madsen Report subscriber content. There is also a series of "deepthroat" reports said to be from white house insiders who are disaffected with the O administration. You can get a peek at the non-subscriber stuff here:

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/216/574/Wayne_Madsen:_White_House_in_Crisis.html

Rumor is there's the highest level of WH intrigue/chaos since just before Nixon resigned.
 
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:dot4:
Fifteen people killed in Mexican car wash: official

Published on 27 October 2010 - 6:25pm
www.rnw.nl​

A group of armed men killed 15 people Wednesday at a car wash in the western Mexican state of Nayarit, a spokesman for the state prosecutor said.

"Fifteen young people were assassinated this morning in a car wash in Tepic," the spokesman told AFP, asking to remain anonymous.

Most of the victims were employed by the car wash, and were also recovering drug addicts, local media said.

It was the third such mass slaying in Mexico in only a few days, and Wednesday's attack was typical of recent assaults in the country's brutal drugs war as rival cartels slug it out for control of the drug trade.

More than 28,000 people have died in the conflict since President Felipe Calderon came to power in December 2006.

The latest carnage came after a string of bloodletting across Mexico.

Thirteen recovering drug addicts were gunned down at a rehab center in Tijuana late Sunday. Near the resort city of Acapulco, six men were found executed on Sunday and three other bodies were found bound on Monday.

Drug violence has claimed more than 7,000 lives nationwide in 2010, making it the deadliest year since Calderon launched a war on drug cartels in 2006, dispatching more than 50,000 troops.

Mexico's border regions have witnessed much of the drug conflict as cartels battle over lucrative trafficking routes into the United States.



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:srdot:
Every officer in small Mexican town quits after HQ attacked

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last Updated: 2:15 PM, October 27, 2010
www.nypost.com​

A small town in northeast Mexico lost its entire police force Tuesday following an attack as border violence continues to escalate in the region.

Every officer in the small town of Los Ramones quit, one day after gunmen attacked their headquarters.

Los Ramones Mayor Santos Salinas told Reforma newspaper that the station and some patrol cars were riddled with bullets but nobody was injured.

He said 14 members of the police force told him they quit Tuesday morning.

Nobody answered the phones at Salinas's offices.

Los Ramones is in Nuevo Leon, a state torn by fighting between the Gulf and Zetas drug gangs. Police stations in small northeastern Mexican towns are frequently attacked, and several mayors have been assassinated.

Mexico's ill-equipped municipal forces often quit after cartel attacks.

Calderon has proposed eliminating all of Mexico's municipal police forces and replacing them with one force per state.

Meanwhile, the bodies of two men, one of them decapitated, were found in another Mexican border city Tuesday, and police suspect they may have been behind the massacre of 14 young people at a birthday party.

The bodies were found inside an SUV in Ciudad Juarez, said prosecutor Jorge Gonzalez Nicolas. One of them had been decapitated, and his head was left in the car. Both bodies had their hands and feet bound and bore signs of torture.

A sign left with the bodies accused them of killing women and children.

Gonzalez said the message raised the possibility that the two men were involved in the attack on the party Friday night.

Gunmen pulled up to two homes next door to each other in a lower-middle-class Ciudad Juarez neighborhood and opened fire on about four dozen partygoers gathered for a 15-year-old boy's birthday party.

The dead were 13 to 32 years old, including six women and girls.

Gonzalez said the survivors would be shown photographs of the faces of the two men found dead Tuesday. The two men appeared to be in their early 20s, which coincides with accounts from some of the survivors, he said.

One survivor has said that a gunman who appeared to be about 20 opened fire on the crowd after nobody would answer questions about a car parked outside the houses.

More than 6,500 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, since a turf war erupted two years ago between the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels.

It has become the deadliest city in Mexico, where nationwide, more than 28,000 people have died in drug-gang violence since President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of troops and federal police in late 2006 to step up the assault on cartels.

And in the southern state of Oaxaca Tuesday, state police found the bound, tortured bodies of four people in a clandestine grave in a vacant lot near the state capital, also known as Oaxaca.

The lot is located near a highway. State police have not yet identified the bodies and were unable to say whether the killings may have been drug related, but Mexico's drug cartels frequently dump the bodies of murdered rivals in such pits.

And in another cartel-style killing Tuesday in the state of Morelos, the bodies of four men were found near a roadside with about 30 shell casings, along with a sign threatening anyone who supported captured U.S.-born drug capo Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "La Barbie."

The message was signed by the "CPS," or Southern Pacific cartel, and "The H." Both are believed to be references to the remnants of the Beltran Leyva cartel that was engaged in a bloody turf war with Valdez Villareal before his capture. The message was also signed "The Z Friends." The letter "Z'' often is used to refer to Zetas drug gang.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/intern...can_town_B4200bmXCnfEabdaXt7SEI#ixzz13aUj2HRw

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The Flying Dutchman

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jpigott said:
Yea, me too. There was some vague reference by Debka the other day that the region was mobilizing for war, citing news that the USS Abraham being deployed to the region and word of the $60B Saudi-US arms deal. But that is a lot different than word that the IDF is moving columns of Merkavas to the border.

Given the relatively small size of Israel and the Israeli free press, a mobilization of any size is virtually impossible to conceal.
Click to expand...

Go back about three weeks, possibly four weeks (on the Perfect Storm threads). And you will run into articles covering the Israeli IDF moving "Divisions" to their northern and southren borders - I have seen no articles telling of those troops being with-drawn to their barraks....
 
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20:17 27.10.10

Knesset softens title of motion on 'U.S. war crimes' to avoid altercation with Obama

The secretariat had initially accepted right-wing MK Michael Ben-Ari's proposal as titled, but changed name in the middle of discussion upon protest from Deputy FM Ayalon.


By Jonathan Lis
www.haaretz.com​

The Knesset secretariat on Wednesday changed the title of an agenda motion on U.S. military documents recently leaked by the website WikiLeaks, to avoid damaging Israel's relations with the Obama administration.

The secretariat had initially accepted right-wing MK Michael Ben-Ari's proposal to discuss "U.S. war crimes", but took an unusual step and altered the name in the middle of deliberations on the motion.

Ben-Ari, who recently asked the United Nations to investigate "U.S. war crimes", had already taken to the podium and delivered a combative address regarding the behavior of the American government when the secretariat made its decision.

The move was prompted by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, who stood up after Ben-Ari and protested the title of the motion.

"I don't know if you did this to be defiant or teasing or maybe even just out of black humor," Ayalon said to Ben-Ari when he took his place at the podium. "I just have no other way of looking at this."

"In Jerusalem, in the Israeli house of legislation, this is how we present something like this?" said Ayalon." This is terrible, and not just from a utilitarian perspective. The fact that the U.S. is our best and strongest friend cannot be appealed."

"MK Ben-Ari, I completely appreciate your parliamentary abilities, but you are almost wasting a motion for the agenda," Ayalon added.

"Had you said 'Al-Qaida war criminals', I would have understood. Had you said 'the report that emerged, that was leaked,' I would understand. But 'U.S. war crimes?"

The deputy foreign minister went on to lambaste the secretariat for not monitoring the title. Following Ayalon's remarks, Ben-Ari himself decided to change his motion to deliberation on 'the reports published regarding the issues of U.S. war crimes" – which was accepted as being less inflammatory.

The documents, which have been called "the biggest leak in history", showed that the United States covered up Iraqi security forces' torturing of prisoners and hid the true facts about civilian casualties during combat.



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J

jpigott

Veteran Member
The Flying Dutchman said:
Go back about three weeks, possibly four weeks (on the Perfect Storm threads). And you will run into articles covering the Israeli IDF moving "Divisions" to their northern and southren borders - I have seen no articles telling of those troops being with-drawn to their barraks....
Click to expand...

Dutch,

I do recall reading about the IDF moving hundreds of tanks to the border for an "exercise" and shuffling around alot of equipment up that way, but I thought that was more like 2-3 months ago. I could be wrong. If it really only was a few weeks ago then it certainly increases the chances they are still prepositioned up that way.
 
The Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchman

Deceased
jpigott said:
Dutch,

I do recall reading about the IDF moving hundreds of tanks to the border for an "exercise" and shuffling around alot of equipment up that way, but I thought that was more like 2-3 months ago. I could be wrong. If it really only was a few weeks ago then it certainly increases the chances they are still prepositioned up that way.
Click to expand...

*Remember also:

That the Israeli IAF made a deal w/the Saudis to preposition munitions, fuel and aircraft parts for their bomber aircraft at one of the Saudi's northern air bases.

Those supplies were topped off (at about the time) I was giving my resignation as a "Watcher on the Wall" ~ Citing that I did not believe I could get any closer (to warning everyone - that the $][it was about to Hit The Fan).

TFD


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Iran would surrender Egyptian Islamists for Cairo's aid in Iraq and Lebanon

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
October 27, 2010, 9:14 PM (GMT+02:00)
http://www.debka.com/article/9106/​

Tehran ready to betray Ayman Zuwahiri's henchmen to CairoTo curry favor with Egypt, Iran has offered to hand over 13 long wanted Egyptian Islamic Jihad terrorists in return for Cairo's support for installing Shiite Nuri al-Maliki as Iraqi prime minister and helping to find a way out of the impasse over the Hizballah's indictment for the Hariri assassination. This is revealed exclusively by debkafile's counter-terror sources.

Ayman al Zuwahiri, al Qaeda's second in command after Osama bin Laden, is the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

His authority is beginning to surpass that of Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda's branches in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. He is also the patron of the rising al Qaeda star, Sheikh Anwar Al-Awakli, who is on the run in Yemen after inspiring US Major Hassan Malik Nidal to carry out a massacre at the US Ford Hood base last November.

debkafile adds that until Tehran made this advance to Cairo, no Western intelligence organization knew about the 13 or more Egyptian Islamic Jihad terrorists given sanctuary in and allowed to stay in touch with their leader. For Zuwahiri, their surrender to Egypt would be a serious blow.

But some of those circles suspect that Bin Laden's latest audiotape threatening France, which was aired by al Jazeera Wednesday, Oct. 27, may be connected with the mounting rivalry between him and his lieutenant and a bid use this setback to steal Zuwahiri's thunder.

The Iranian offer to Egypt is a package that also includes an proposal to rename the Tehran street honoring Sadat's assassin Mohammed Shawky al-Istambouli, which has been a bone of contention between them for 29 years.

In return, President Hosni Mubarak is asked for two favors: One is to persuade Saudi King Abdullah to accept Al-Maliki as Iraqi prime minister; Tehran will arrange for the Saudi candidate for the post Iyad Allawi, who won the Iraqi election by a slender majority, to be awarded a place of honor in the new coalition in Baghdad.
The other is to persuade the Saudi king to go along with a compromise deal to rescue Hizballah from indictment by the UN tribunal for the 2005 Hariri assassination.

Tehran and Riyadh are already discussing a way out of the impasse because both understand that the issue is a ticking bomb that could gravely destabilize Lebanon and lead Hizballah to go for trouble on the Israeli border.

Tuesday, a high-ranking Egyptian diplomat, asked about the Iranian proposition, said he had no idea what Tehran was after. debkafile can confirm Cairo knows exactly what Tehran wants.



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J

John H

Inactive
Teaser on Debka today...

http://www.debka.com/article/9104/

War preparations advance around and in Iran

DEBKAfile DEBKA-Net-Weekly October 26, 2010, 10:31 AM (GMT+02:00)

Tags: Dennis Ross US-Iran Middle East war buildup

The US is building up naval, air force and marine strength around Iranian shores as Barack Obama's aide Dennis Ross reiterates his determination to keep the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear arms. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Hizballah and Hamas are also deep in military preparations, fearing a war eruption in weeks or months - as DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals in its coming issue out Friday with hitherto unpublished disclosures.

Don't miss this exclusive survey of a region in the grip of a mounting war scare.

To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly, click here
 
Spirit Of Truth

Spirit Of Truth

Inactive
almost ready said:
The Obama White House in disarray report seems to be sourced from Wayne Madsen Report subscriber content. There is also a series of "deepthroat" reports said to be from white house insiders who are disaffected with the O administration. You can get a peek at the non-subscriber stuff here:

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/216/574/Wayne_Madsen:_White_House_in_Crisis.html

Rumor is there's the highest level of WH intrigue/chaos since just before Nixon resigned.
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That's interesting in this respect.

On October 24, 1973, we reached DEFCON 3 due to a confrontation with Russia over the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur war that month. This was the second closest the world ever came to nuclear war other than "Black Saturday", October 27, 1962, when we reached DEFCON 2 in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The late-October 1973 political crisis marked when the DJIA reversed from the psychologically important 1000 mark that year into a 40% drop that marked the onset of the worst recession up to that time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Thus, a high-level political crisis at the White House, mixed with a new Arab-Israeli conflagration, mixed with late-October, would definitely constitute an ultimate red alert for nuclear war in the immediate future if this were to unfold with the DJIA reversing from Dow 11,000 and entering the crux of the Elliott Wave 'Apocalypse Wave' at this juncture.

Of course, no one can comprehend what I'm explaining here, so let me put it this way. The "strong delusion" of 2 Thessalonians 2 might be about to come to an abrupt End. I tried my best, but no one understands and the people simply want to entertain themselves to death and cooperate in their own destruction, so I guess our fate is our fate and that's just the way it is. Thanks for all your help fellow humans and 'God'. Maybe HIStory is a just a dark tragedy.
 
The Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchman

Deceased
Spirit Of Truth said:
That's interesting in this respect.

On October 24, 1973, we reached DEFCON 3 due to a confrontation with Russia over the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur war that month. This was the second closest the world ever came to nuclear war other than "Black Saturday", October 27, 1962, when we reached DEFCON 2 in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The late-October 1973 political crisis marked when the DJIA reversed from the psychologically important 1000 mark that year into a 40% drop that marked the onset of the worst recession up to that time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Thus, a high-level political crisis at the White House, mixed with a new Arab-Israeli conflagration, mixed with late-October, would definitely constitute an ultimate red alert for nuclear war in the immediate future if this were to unfold with the DJIA reversing from Dow 11,000 and entering the crux of the Elliott Wave 'Apocalypse Wave' at this juncture.

Of course, no one can comprehend what I'm explaining here, so let me put it this way. The "strong delusion" of 2 Thessalonians 2 might be about to come to an abrupt End. I tried my best, but no one understands and the people simply want to entertain themselves to death and cooperate in their own destruction, so I guess our fate is our fate and that's just the way it is. Thanks for all your help fellow humans and 'God'. Maybe HIStory is a just a dark tragedy.
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And that is why I began a thread titled "You People Scare Me"
 
M

momof23goats

Deceased
obama is off on a tour , will be in asia for a few days, wonder if Iran has a little some thing else planned, ? makes ya wonder when they put out statements like they did.
 
The Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchman

Deceased
Spirit Of Truth said:
We're two peas in a pod Dutch. Just voices in a wilderness where only the trees are listening. So be it. Must be God's will, eh...
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Ever have I personally had a difficulty of making myself understood, as to th 'excate' meaning I wished/wanted to impart.

My fear is not seeing the 'practical meat world' approuch to exhisting after the rule of law goes the way of the Do Do bird, the great Awk, passenger pigon etc.

American, as a general rule; are unable to revert to "the survival of the fittest" mentality - when the time comes for such to be the 'main stay' of exhistance.

For my inability to make myself understood, for this, I apologize to everyone.

The Flying Dutchman


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