Islamist movement Hamas accuses Israel..[ 609 ]

Hamas promises vengeance as Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is electrocuted in Dubai

(Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

The father of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh holds his son's picture. The Hamas military leader was behind the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers

James Hider, Middle East Correspondent30-1-2010

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas accused Israel yesterday of assassinating one of its military chiefs in Dubai — a man who helped to found the group’s armed wing and who was behind the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in the first intifada 21 years ago.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was a key to the continuing operations to smuggle weapons into the blockaded Gaza Strip, was killed in a hotel in Dubai on January 20, Hamas officials said. He is believed to have been behind the attempted smuggling of truckloads of weapons into Gaza through Sudan last year — a convoy that was blown up by Israeli jets while still in Africa.

Hamas officials refused to specify the circumstances of his death until an inquiry had been held, and hinted that the delay in announcing the killing was part of an attempt to capture his assassins. Dubai police said they had begun a manhunt but suspected that the killers had already left the emirate using fake European passports.

They said: “The culprits left a trace behind that points to them and will help in chasing and arresting them.” The police promised to work with Interpol to track the killers down.

Mr al-Mabhouh’s brother, Faiq, said that the death was caused by electrocution. “The first results of a joint investigation by Hamas and the United Arab Emirates show he was killed by an electrical appliance that was held to his head,” he said. Security sources quoted in Gulf media said that as well as electrical burns, al-Mabhouh’s body bore traces of strangulation.

Israel has so far declined to comment on the charges but in the past has carried out numerous overseas assassinations of Palestinian military leaders, as well as killing a number of officials inside the Palestinian territories in airstrikes, including Hamas’s wheelchair-bound spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 2004. His successor, Abdelaziz al-Rantissi, was killed in an almost identical helicopter attack a month later.

Izzat Rashaq, a senior Hamas official in Damascus, said that Mr al-Mabhouh, a 50-year-old father of four from the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, had masterminded the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, during the first Palestinian uprising against Israel in the late 1980s. He is believed to have pioneered the tactic of abducting soldiers to exert pressure on Israel. Hamas has been holding one soldier, Gilad Schalit, inside Gaza for 3½ years. The two soldiers were kidnapped on two occasions in 1989. The body of one was discovered seven years later.

Mr al-Mabhouh had been in Israeli prisons on different occasions before being exiled and taking up residence, together with many other Hamas leaders, in Damascus. He was killed a day after he arrived in Dubai. Hamas did not say what he was doing in the Gulf city, which many militant groups use as a financial hub.

Hamas, which Israel has blockaded in Gaza for three years and which it tried to topple in a brief war last year, said that it would “retaliate for this Zionist crime at the appropriate time and place”. It added that Mr al-Mabhouh was buried yesterday in a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus.

His alleged assassination may have been the latest operation by the Israeli spy agency Mossad and its special forces to hunt down the Jewish state’s enemies and kill them. In 1972, after Palestinians from the Black September organisation killed nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Israeli agents tracked down and assassinated the masterminds of the attack across Europe and the Middle East.

One of the highest-profile assassination attempts was of Khaled Meshaal in Jordan in 1997, when Israeli agents squirted poison in his ear. Jordanian police caught the two agents and held them until Israel agreed to hand over the antidote to the toxin, and the Hamas leader survived.

Israeli special forces also killed the Fatah co-founder, Khalil al-Wazir, widely known as Abu Jihad, in his home with his family in Tunis in 1988. He was shot while watching TV news of the Palestinian uprising.

One of the assassinations attributed to Israel, but which it has never acknowledged publicly, was of Imad Mughniyeh, the head of Hezbollah’s armed wing and the world’s most-wanted terrorist before Osama bin Laden carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks.

He had been behind deadly attacks against Jewish organisations in Argentina and had transformed the Lebanese militia into the most successful guerrilla group in the Arab world. He died in an explosion in his car in Damascus in 2008.

Wake Up, America...![ 608 ]

Up, America!

24.11.2009

To my Fellow Americans, “I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within” - General Douglas MacArthur. What exactly did General MacArthur mean? Let me try to explain. The United States was founded as a Constitutional Republic based on liberty and the unalienable rights of the individual; and where the government exercised it’s limited power and authority with the consent of “We the people”. But slowly, over the course of the past 100 years, “invisible” forces have turned us into a socialist “Democracy” where government is the Ultimate power and authority; where every action of our lives is legislated and restricted, and where Rights are becoming nonexistent. (If that sounds like an absurd statement, then think about this: the United States, a supposed Free society, has a population of 300 Million; yet this Free society has a total of 2.3 million adults held in prison; or one in every 99.1 adults. That puts the US far head of ANY other country: including Communist China, a supposed repressive society. China has a population of 1.3 Billion people, yet they have only 1.5 million people behind bars). To those who believe that we continue to be a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, and that the government is limited in it's power and authority as enumerated in the Constitution, I say take the blinders off your eyes and wake up! If you do, and honestly seek the truth, this is what you will see. That today the true seat of Power in Washington is the “Invisible Government”, which exercises its total control from behind the scenes. Who is this Invisible Government? It is a small elite group of individuals who own and control the Giant International Banks and Corporations, and who exercise their control through the Military-Industrial Complex. Through their foundations and organizations, like the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission , they train and groom those who would be the “movers and shakers” of both U.S. political parties; in other words, they own and control the Republican and Democratic parties.

Japan's PM policy speech...[ 607 ]

Hatoyama pledges to save the lives of the people in policy speech

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, front, delivers a policy speech at the Diet on Friday. (Mainichi)

TOKYO 30-1-20010

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama delivered a policy speech at the plenary sessions of both chambers of the Diet on Friday, underscoring the importance of protecting the lives of the people through policy measures.

"I want to protect the lives, the lives of the people," Hatoyama said at the outset of his speech. He used the term "life" on a total of 24 occasions throughout the address.

Labeling the fiscal 2010 budget draft a "life-saving" one, Hatoyama said, "We've been able to work out a well-balanced budget thanks to the change of administration (in September last year)."

Regarding the planned relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Hatoyama reiterated his promise to make a final decision on a relocation site by the end of May. He also emphasized that the government will deepen and develop the Japan-U.S. alliance into a multilayered one on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the current Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, apparently out of concerns with the touchy bilateral relations over the relocation issue.

Quoting India's Mahatma Gandhi, Hatoyama said the "Seven Deadly Sins" that Gandhi advocated against, including "politics without principle" and "commerce without morality," precisely apply to the various issues that Japan and the world face today.

"Our Cabinet's mission is to develop the economy into one that can bring about human happiness, where we human beings are not servants of the economy," the prime minister said.

Citing the features of the fiscal 2010 budget draft, including the creation of child-care allowances and a revision to medical remunerations, Hatoyama proudly called the draft a "life-saving budget." He also said the government will "implement relentless economic stimulus measures" to prevent the nation's economy from sinking into a double-dip recession.

Calling job security a "pressing issue," Hatoyama promised that the government will work toward creating a new labor market by encouraging growth in various fields, from environment and energy to medicine, nursing care and health. The government will also recognize activities by citizens and non-profit organizations as a new sector of "pubic services," the prime minister said.

Turning to measures to restore sound finance, the prime minister said the government will work out multiple-year economic goals during the first half of 2010. The government will also implement the second round of cost-cutting measures through screening unnecessary projects, including the realignment of the government's special account, while making a drastic review of the central government reform plan this summer at the earliest at the prime minister's initiative.

Hatoyama avoided mentioning "an equal Japan-U.S. relationship," which he emphasized during his first policy speech at the Diet in October last year. Instead, he asserted that an unwavering Japan-U.S. alliance is essential as a precondition for realizing his pet concept of an East Asian Community.

The premier reiterated an apology over his funding scandal, saying, "I have caused a lot of trouble and concerns to the public." However, he didn't mention a funding scandal involving DPJ Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa's fund-raising body Rikuzan-kai.

Alliens in Russia ??[ 606 ]

Aliens Land in Russia

01/20/2010 09:59 Source: Pravda.Ru

Residents of the city of Perm, in Russia’s Ural region, say that they could see a strange object in the sky. The object, eyewitnesses said, was hanging in the air above the city, scanned the area with a beam of light and even let off several “passengers.” The people did not specify what kind of passengers they were exactly and how they disembarked from what seemed to be a spaceship.

A woman saw a strange object in the window at about 2-4 o’clock a.m. She woke up her daughter and asked her to take a look at the strange sight. The two women could see a disk-like object sending three glittering beams of light on the ground.

Many city residents discussed the strange object on local forums.

Nikolai Subbotin, the director of RUFOS research station said the specialists of the station were investigating the information about the appearance of a UFO above Perm on January 9, Arguments and Facts newspaper wrote.

Pravda.Ru

Tony Blair ,former UK's PM ejected claims..[ 605 ]

Blair: No 'covert' deal with Bush over Iraq

January 29, 2010 -- Updated 1846 GMT (0246 HKT)

Blair faces Iraq inquiry

London, England (CNN) -- Former British prime minister Tony Blair on Friday rejected claims that he had struck a secret deal with U.S. President George W. Bush in 2002 pledging British backing for the invasion of Iraq.

Testifying in front of the inquiry into the UK's participation in the U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, Blair said he had stated publicly that Iraq needed to be confronted over its ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction.

But Blair had told Bush that he would be "with him" when the pair met at the U.S. president's Texas ranch in April 2002, he said.

"What I was saying -- I was not saying this privately incidentally, I was saying it in public -- was 'We are going to be with you in confronting and dealing with this threat,' Blair told the inquiry, headed by former civil servant John Chilcot.

"The one thing I was not doing was dissembling in that position. The position was not a covert position, it was an open position."

Blair said that plans for how Iraq should be governed after the invasion had failed to foresee the destabilizing roles played by Iran and al Qaeda, nor problems with Iraq's civil service.

On the matter of the legal basis for the invasion, Blair said U.N. resolution 1441 authorized military action in Iraq without a further resolution -- but admitted "there was always a case either way" and said a second resolution would have been "preferable politically."

"But in the end, we got to the point in the middle of March where frankly we had to decide," Blair said. "We were going either to back away or we were going to go forward and I decided, for the reasons that I've given, that we should go forward."

Several hundred anti-war protesters gathered outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, opposite the Houses of Parliament in central London, to mark Blair's appearance at the inquiry, chanting "Blair lied, thousands died!" and "Tony Blair! War criminal!"

Mock pallbearers wearing Blair masks carried a black coffin. Some in the crowd wore "Jail Tony" T-shirts and toted signs saying "Stop the War," "Troops out of Afghanistan." and "Bliar," a deliberate misspelling of his name.

Video: UK anti-war protest

Video: Legal basics needed for war

Video: Blair's big Iraq questions

Video: Campbell defends Iraq dossier

Left-wing lawmaker George Galloway said that Blair's actions in Iraq were "more terrible than the crimes of Macbeth" and called on the former prime minister to "commit hari-kiri in front of the world" on the steps of the conference center.

Relatives of the 179 British troops killed in Iraq were among those admitted to the public gallery.

Blair said he believed "beyond doubt" his controversial pre-war claim that Iraq was capable of launching chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes and said concern over Iraq's ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction had been the main factor behind Britain's decision to back the war.

But he admitted Washington and London had different views, with the U.S. favoring regime change to overthrow Saddam Hussein as the main justification for war.

The 45-minute claim was made in Blair's preface to an intelligence document that came out in September 2002 and detailed the threat posed by Iraq. The document, Blair said, was "clear" in backing up the claim he made in the preface.

"If you go back to that time, if you read the executive summary and the information that follows, I can't see how you can come to a different conclusion," Blair said of evidence for the 45-minute claim.

British media quickly highlighted the claim and it filled the headlines of British newspapers the next day. But no significant caches of chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq since the invasion.

The former prime minister denied he had inserted the 45-minute claim to make the intelligence document seem more important.

Blair said he not only believed the claim was true, but he also worried about the possibility that it wasn't true -- and he had to act on that concern.

"Supposing we put it the other way around and it was correct, and I wasn't going to act on it. That was the thing that was worrying me," Blair said.

"Your worry is not simply, 'Is the intelligence correct so that I can act?'" he added. "Your worry is also if it is correct, what am I going to do about it?"

Earlier, Blair told the inquiry he had been "determined" to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the U.S. despite their differing opinions over the reasons why war was necessary.

"The Americans, in a sense, were saying, 'We're for regime change 'cause we don't trust he's ever going to give up his WMD ambitions,'" Blair said.

"We were saying, 'We have to deal with his WMD ambitions. If that means regime change, so be it.'"

Blair said that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. had changed attitudes in both London and Washington towards how Saddam Hussein's regime should be handled.

"Up to September 11 we thought he was a risk, but we thought it was worth trying to contain it," Blair testified.

"The crucial thing after 9/11 is that the calculus of risk changed... After September 11, if you were a regime engaged in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), you had to stop."

Blair told the inquiry that he had considered the 9/11 attacks to be an attack on the UK as well as the U.S.

"I said I would stand shoulder to shoulder with them. We did that in Afghanistan, and I was determined to do that again" in Iraq, Blair said.

In an interview aired last month on the BBC, Blair sparked controversy by indicating he would have gone to war even if Saddam had been found to have no WMD, or weapons of mass destruction.

Blair said Friday that Iraqi citizens were "actually upbeat about the future" and said a "majority think security and services are getting better."

"It's too early to say right now whether the democracy will take root and function effectively," but there were "hopeful signs," he said.