Middle East Fast Bleeding Money

(Source: IPS - Inter Press Service)By Mekay, Emad

Developing countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region lost 1.2 trillion dollars in the nine years of the study, an average of 130 billion dollars a year, most of which goes to banks in the U.S., the UK, Switzerland and other G8 countries, economist Karly Curcio told IPS in an interview. MENA alone accounted for 24.3 percent of the hike in all global illicit money outflows between 2000 and 2008, according to a new report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based organization that advocates transparency in the international financial system.

Four oil-producing Arab countries appeared on the top 10 list of illicit money transfer exporters.

Saudi Arabia was the lead Arab country with outflows of 302 billion dollars over the nine years studied the report, 'Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries 2000 ? 2009'.

The United Arab Emirates came next at 276 billion dollars, followed by Kuwait at 242 billion dollars and Qatar at 138 billion dollars.

Curcio said that capital flight in the region was mostly in the form of bribes, kickbacks, tax evasion, deals in contraband goods, criminal activities and other forms of corruption.

'The dramatic increase in the world price of oil this decade likely contributed to the rapid increased volume of illicit financial flows out of the resource-rich region,' added Curcio, who is co-author of the report.

Another method for illicit money transfers is when a country's residents acquire foreign assets illicitly by over-invoicing imports and under-invoicing exports - a practice known as trade mis- pricing that is more common outside the MENA region especially in Asia and Mexico.

Globally, developing nations were losing an average of 725 billion dollars a year to illicit money transfers. China was the world's largest exporter of illegal funds by far at a whopping 2.18 trillion dollars followed by oil exporters Russia at 427 billion dollars and Mexico at 416 billon dollars, the GFI said in its report.

Egypt was the first exporter of illicit funds after the four top Arab oil- exporting countries in the region with estimated total outflows of 57 billion dollars between 2000 and 2008, an average of 6.3 billion dollars a year.

Israel followed at 15.2 billion dollars, an annual average at 1.6 billion dollars a year, and Lebanon at 11 billion dollars for nine years, an average outflow of 1.2 billion dollars per year.

'We regard our figures as conservative, since they do not include smuggling, some forms of trade mispricing, and asset swaps,' says Raymond W.

Baker, director of Global Financial Integrity. 'Skyrocketing prices for oil, other minerals, and foodstuffs, generated funds which easily escaped abroad.'

The 64-page report comes at a critical time in the Middle East when people of the region are witnessing an unprecedented popular revolution against the Western-backed corrupt rule of President Zine el Abidine Ben and his family. Tunisians say they revolted in part because they saw the slow obliteration of their wealth to corruption by the Ben Ali regime.

Tunisian media online are reporting that the Ben Ali family accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth in stolen money that is now in Western banks.

The new interim government in Tunisia has requested that foreign countries, especially Switzerland, freeze all assets of the Ben Ali clan.

While the Middle East outpaced other regions in terms of the speed of growth of illicit outflows, it took second place in terms of the size of flows after Asia.

Asia accounted for 44.4 percent of total illicit flows from the developing world while MENA represented 17.9 percent, developing Europe17.8 percent, the Western hemisphere 15.4 percent, and Africa 4.5 percent.

The report says that oil-producing countries around the world, many of them in the Middle East, are fast pushing China as the world's largest exporter of illicit funds.

China's share of all developing world outflows fell from 46 percent in 2000 to 27 percent in 2008 while Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Nigeria - all oil exporters - are now becoming more important as sources of illicit capital.

Authors of the report say they studied World Bank and IMF data of unrecorded capital leakages through the balance of payments which helps capture illicit transfers of the proceeds of bribery, theft, kickbacks, and tax evasion.

The Washington-based GFI said it was recommending greater transparency in the global financial system to curtail further bleeding of wealth from already poor nations.

'Illicit capital flight needs somewhere to go, therefore, one of the best ways of dealing with the problem of these illicit outflows is to increase transparency in the global financial system and make it much harder to hide ill-gotten wealth,' Monique Danziger, communications director told IPS.

'This includes doing away with the kind of bank secrecy for which Switzerland is famous for but also requiring financial institutions in places like the United States to be more open and accountable.' (c) NoticiasFinancieras - Inter Press Services - All rights reserved

CNN... What else need we say...

Apparently we won't be getting that live debate... good thing too, Peter Bergen is pretty much a bore... they just don't get it, or do they?

Dmitry Orlov: Social Collapse Best Practices

Hillarious at times!!!

JP Morgan Makes Big Bucks from Food Stamp Growth, Then Hires Workers in India with Our Tax Dollars

JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. Yes, you read that correctly. When the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, JP Morgan makes more money. In the video posted below, JP Morgan executive Christopher Paton admits that this is "a very important business to JP Morgan" and that it is doing very well. Considering the fact that the number of Americans on food stamps has exploded from 26 million in 2007 to 43 million today, one can only imagine how much JP Morgan's profits in this area have soared. But doesn't this give JP Morgan an incentive to keep the number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program as high as possible?

There are just some things that are a little too "creepy" to be "outsourced" to private corporations. The JP Morgan executive in the interview below does his best to put a positive spin on all this, but it just seems really unsavory for a big Wall Street bank to be making so much money off of the suffering of tens of millions of Americans....

So if unemployment goes down will this ruin JP Morgan's food stamp business?

Well, apparently not. In the interview Paton says that 40% of food stamp recipients are currently working, and he seems convinced that there could be further "growth" in that segment.

So is this what America is turning into? A place where tens of millions of the unemployed and the working poor crawl over to Wal-Mart and the dollar store every month to use the food stamp debit cards provided to them by JP Morgan? It turns out that JP Morgan also provides child support debit cards in 15 U.S. states and they also provide unemployment insurance benefit debit cards in seven states.

Apparently states have found that they can save millions of dollars by "outsourcing" the provision of these benefits to big financial firms like JP Morgan. So what happens if you have a problem with your food stamp debit card? Well, you call up a JP Morgan service center. When you do this, there is a very good chance that you are going to be helped by a JP Morgan call center employee in India. That's right - it turns out that JP Morgan is saving money by "outsourcing" food stamp customer service calls to India.

When ABC News asked JP Morgan about this, the company would not tell ABC News which states have customer service calls sent to India and which states have them handled inside the United States.... JP Morgan is the only one today still operating public-assistance call centers overseas. The company refused to say which states had calls routed to India and which ones had calls stay domestically. That decision, the company said, was often left up to the individual states.

JP Morgan has been moving some of these call center jobs back inside the United States due to political pressure, but this whole situation is a really good example of what the "global economy" is doing to middle class Americans.

Just try to imagine the irony - a formerly middle class American that has lost a job to outsourcing calls up to get help with food stamp benefits only to be answered by a call center employee in India.

Welcome to the global economy, eh? But wait, there is more.

It has just been announced that JP Morgan has admitted that they wrongly foreclosed on over a dozen military families and that they have been overcharging "thousands" of other military families on their mortgages. Ouch.

It is a really bad public relations move to mess with military families. Is anyone over at JP Morgan even paying attention? JP Morgan has also been one of the primary financial institutions involved in the foreclosure "robo-signing" scandal. They just seem to be having all kinds of problems lately. But they are not alone.

The truth is that we have gotten to the point where big Wall Street banks such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and Morgan Stanley just have way, way too much power. The biggest Wall Street financial institutions had no trouble begging for bailouts from the U.S. government during the financial crisis, but when the American people have needed a little grace and mercy from them they have been less than helpful.

Arabic grammar - Allah's Mercy in the Qur'an

Tunisia continues to open its breast to Islam - May Allah send them brothers and sisters in Egypt, Jordan and throughout the region that open it up as well

In just a week,Tunisia has changed beyond recognition, with the freedoms the public now enjoys unthinkable under the previous regime.

Protesters have now been joined by a small number of police - it would be a turning point if this now spreads to wider sections of the force.

Al Jazeera's Nazanin Moshiri reports from Tunis.

While the media portrayed Tunisian Youth that simply wanted to go to Europe, the reality is that a groundswell of Tunisians know Islam is their solution... As N. Africa is the crossroads of West and East, they are expressing themselves through the media of the era and no Saudi shaikh silent when the regime brings the oppressor home under protection, is needed to know music is haram. However, it is evident this struggle includes an Islamic component We should support that and nurture that and know that once iman enters into the hearts of men and is given an oppurtunity to profess its message, there is no doubt that it reins superior. We pray that Allah give Islam a free voice in Tunisia and throughout the region and ask you all to keep them in your prayers absent idealist criticisms.

Some interesting articles follow> 

Link Where's the Next Revolution? 

Link How a Single Match Can Ignite a Revolution

Link Tunisia Missing 1.5 tons og gold after unrest

Link 5,000 rally in Jordan 'Bread and Freedom Demo'\

Link IMF Arab unemployment an urgent challenge

Link Morning in Tunisia: The Frustrations of the Arab World Boil Over

'US Wars to Continue Until its Economy Busts'

Press TV panel on Tunisia revolution 2011: Osman Bakhach, Central Media Office Hizb ut-Tahrir

Abu Adnan - Izza for Islam

Arab rulers use handouts to ward off unrest

Wednesday, Jan 19, 2011

Arab governments have launched a wave of financial handouts since the start of the Tunisia crisis, in what analysts see as an effort to pre-empt opposition from restive publics. States across the region have announced a series of extra subsidies and tax breaks both before and after last week's departure of President Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali.

The rash of perks is viewed as a sign of concern among Middle Eastern autocrats about the potential for Tunisia's landmark uprising to embolden the peoples of other countries. Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian publisher and commentator, says repressive regimes, long dependent on pacifying their publics with largesse, were injecting "a big dose of the drug". "There is serious concern in countries with similar circumstances [to Tunisia]," says Mr Kassem. "The measures we have seen are buying time."

Yemen said on Tuesday that it was slashing taxes on businesses and individuals, while Jordan last week cut duties on petrol, kerosene and diesel. Libya has announced measures to help reduce the impact of rising food prices, while Egypt has signalled that it might increase subsidies to combat surging wheat, sugar and vegetable costs. The moves have focused attention on the precarious dependence of governments across the Middle East on handouts, either to try to quell public support for existing opposition or prevent the emergence of campaigns for greater political participation.

Analysts are questioning the durability of this approach, particularly in countries that have large populations and no, or relatively modest, revenues from oil. Sultan Al Qassemi, a prominent Emirati commentator, says: "As populations increase, many governments won't be able to subsidise all these goods. There will obviously be a tipping point when the subsidies cannot continue, as there is a difference between what the governments want to do, and what they can do." This is not the first time living costs have triggered demonstrations in the Arab world that have either promised or precipitated political change.

Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Jordan - exactly the countries most under scrutiny now - all saw protest and sometimes riots in the 1970s and 1980s over food prices, particularly for bread.

The Tunisian uprising against Mr Ben Ali this month - and more modest demonstrations elsewhere in the Arab world - have highlighted the important role that rising living costs continue to play in bringing people on to the streets.

Experts say some subsidy-reliant countries in both North Africa and the Levant are locked into a pattern of social control that could become increasingly tough to finance in the absence of either national resource windfalls or rapid economic growth.

Marios Maratheftis, regional head of research at Standard Chartered Bank, says: "From an economic point of view the sensible thing to do is to cut subsidies to reduce fiscal drains on the governments and economic distortions.

"But beyond the Gulf, countries in the Middle East have low gross domestic product per head ratios, and cutting subsidies at times when economic conditions are challenging carries risks of unrest."

Subsidies are becoming more contentious even in the oil-rich Gulf, where they have traditionally been seen as part of the price paid by unelected hereditary rulers for their continued authority. Kuwait this week said all citizens would receive a KD1,000 ($3,550) grant and free food staples for 13 months to celebrate the 50th anniversary of independence and also mark two other anniversaries. On energy, while Europeans often pay about $6 for a gallon of petrol, residents of the United Arab Emirates pay only $1.57 a gallon, Saudis $0.91 and Kuwaitis $0.78, according to a survey in June by AirInc, an expatriate packages consultancy. Water and electricity are similarly cheap.

The six main Gulf states have also kept a lid on prices of electricity, water and some foodstuffs, but some countries are now looking to scrap or peg back the subsidy regimes amid soaring demand for power and water.

The UAE has increased the price of petrol since AirInc's survey, while officials in several other countries have recently warned that current spending on subsidies - and the rampant, unrestrained usage it encourages - is unsustainable.

These cuts will be unpopular with Gulf nationals, experts warn, given the tacit compact between rulers and subjects in which patronage and government largesse are traded for curbs on political participation.

"Power is consolidated by distributing out jobs, rents and wealth," says one economist. "As long as the sheikhs control the oil wealth, people expect something in return."

By Michael Peel and Robin Wigglesworth

American officials don't care about civilian casualties !

The Crusade Continues: Blackwater Founder Is Said to Back African Mercenaries

source

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, the founder of international security giant Blackwater Worldwide, is secretly backing an effort by a controversial South African mercenary firm to insert itself intoSomalia’s bloody civil war by protecting government leaders, training Somali militias, and battling pirates and Islamic militants there, according to Western and African officials.

The disclosure comes as Mr. Prince sells off his interest in the company he built into a behemoth with billions of dollars in American government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, work that mired him in controversy and lawsuits amid reports of reckless behavior by his operatives, including the deaths of civilians in Iraq. His efforts to wade into the chaos of Somalia appears to be Mr. Prince’s latest endeavor to remain at the center of a campaign against Islamic radicalism in some of the world’s most war ravaged corners. Mr. Prince moved to the United Arab Emirates late last year.

According to a report by the African Union, an organization of African states, Mr. Prince provided initial funding for a project by Saracen International to win contracts with Somalia’s embattled government. The Somali government has been cornered into a small patch of Mogadishu by the Shabab, a Somali militant group with ties to Al Qaeda.

Saracen International is a private security company based in South Africa, with corporate offshoots in Uganda and other countries. The company was formed with the remnants of Executive Outcomes, a private mercenary firm composed largely of former South African special operations troops that operated throughout Africa in the 1990s.

The company makes little public about its operations and personnel, but it appears to be run by Lafras Luitingh, a former officer in South Africa’s Civil Cooperation Bureau, an apartheid-era internal security force notorious for killings of opponents of the government.

With its barely functional government and a fierce hostility to foreign armies since the hasty American withdrawal from Mogadishu in the early 1990s, Somalia is a country where Western militaries have long feared to tread. This has created an opportunity for private security companies like Saracen to fill the security vacuum created by years of civil war.

Saracen International has yet to formally announce its plans in Somalia, and there appear to be bitter disagreements within Somalia’s fractious government about whether to hire the South African firm. Somali officials have said that Saracen’s operations — which would also include training a anti-piracy army in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland — are being financed by an anonymous Middle Eastern country.

Several people with knowledge of Saracen’s operations confirmed that the country is the United Arab Emirates.

Mr. Prince could not be reached for comment.

According to a Jan. 12 confidential report by the African Union, Mr. Prince “is at the top of the management chain of Saracen and provided seed money for the Saracen contract.” A Western official working in Somalia says he believes that it was Mr. Prince who first raised the idea of the Saracen contract with members of the Emirates’ ruling families, with whom he has a close relationship.

American officials have said little about Saracen since news reports about the company’s planned operations in Somalia emerged last month. Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, said in December that the American government is “concerned about the lack of transparency” of Saracen’s funding and plans.

Mr. Prince for years has tried to spot new business opportunities in the security world. In 2008, he sought to capitalize on the growing piracy endemic off the Horn of Africa to win Blackwater contracts from companies that that frequent the shipping lanes there. He even reconfigured a 183-foot oceanographic research vessel into a pirate hunting ship for hire, complete with drone aircraft and .50-caliber machine guns.

In an interview in the November Men’s Journal, Mr. Prince expressed frustration with the wave of lawsuits filed against Blackwater, which developed a reputation in Iraq and Afghanistan for reckless behavior.

Mr. Prince, who said that moving to Abu Dhabi would “make it harder for the jackals to get my money,” said he intended to find business opportunities in “the energy field.”

Despite all of Blackwater’s legal troubles, Mr. Prince has never been directly accused of criminal activity.

Hu Jintao to Donald Trump -Try to Implement that Lip and "You're Fired"

LINK TO VIDEO

This is some loud lip from those that seem to see the most of the "unseen hand"... when free-traders and capitalists start to pronounce protectionism you know some things are wrong. Looks like that war of attrition is really starting to stress out the warfare state. Perhaps the Business Class wants war with the Red Dragon, LOL! - I just thought some of you would like to hear these wimps wine... Donald Trump wants to run against Obama... a guaranteed victory for the genius behind the cesspole that is Atlantic City, but really just a little bit of showboating. We hope the Chinese are seriously considering offing that $2 trillion in US debt they hold, so that we can get rid of America. However, it looks more like they are more interested in playing Bonnie to Clyde, of course the Petro-Shaykhs are in and here we go...

Kissinger's globalist plan is in action....

And we're all slaves now...

As the world pretends that China and America are at odds.... and China looks more like America with corporate logos all over the boulevards of the rich and the average American paycheck looks a lot more like their Chinese counterparts... freedom, productivity growth, open markets, cooperation, all of the slogans are in place, all the actors are ready and we all have our part in the final play? Its trillions for the banks and nothing for the poor,  and the empire's a brand with flags no more...  

It was all 30 years ago... and you can thank Kissinger for most of these messes... We should all celebrate when this man dies, a true criminal and friend of the shaytan. However, he seems to have correctly identified the  utility of Obama as tool during the crisis. People are waking up all over, but most of them are buying silver and gold and throwing fits like Max Keiser getting to "profit from the crash".  We continue to implore the Muslims everywhere to wake up and smash these scoundrels, implement Islam, and stop supporting their system. Just a familiar reminder to... Wake Up Ya Muslimeen!!!   

NYPD Cops' Training Included an Anti-Muslim Horror Flick Experiments in Terror

source By Tom Robbins

published: January 19, 2011

This month, when a group of New York City police officers showed up for their required counter-terrorism training, they got to watch a movie.

And not just some diddly 20-minute educational film, either. It was a full-length color feature, with more explosions than a Transformers sequel and more blood-splattered victims than an HBO World War II series.

The bad news was that it was a spectacularly offensive smear of American Muslims. The film is called The Third Jihad. It is 72 minutes of gruesome footage of bombing carnage, frenzied crowds, burning American flags, flaming churches, and seething mullahs. All of this is sandwiched between a collection of somber talking heads informing us that, while we were sleeping, the international Islamist Jihad that wrought these horrors has set up shop here and is quietly going about its deadly business. This is the final drive in a 1,400-year-old bid for Muslim world domination, we're informed. And while we may think there are some perfectly reasonable Muslim leaders and organizations here in the U.S., that is just more sucker bait sent our way.

"Americans are being told that most of the mainstream Muslim groups are moderate," says the narrator, "when in fact if you look a little closer you'll see a very different reality. One of their primary tactics is deception."

The message here is that lurking behind those veils and prayer caps is a secret plan to impose a religious order out of the Dark Ages here in the U.S. The favorite image in The Third Jihad—shown over and over—is an enormous black-and-white Islamic flag flying over the White House.

This is pretty toxic stuff, the kind of film likely to spark a picket line at a local theater. In this case, however, the impact is somewhat more sinister, since the audience was law enforcement officers attending a mandatory prep session on what to know about the terrorist threat.

"After it was over, I was thinking, 'What was that?' " said a cop who saw the movie at a training facility used by the department in Coney Island. "It was so ridiculously one-sided. It just made Muslims look like the enemy. It was straight propaganda."

As it happens, police officials agree that this is a "wacky movie," as deputy commissioner Paul Browne said, that never should have been shown to officers. Browne initially insisted that cops had never seen the flick. "It was reviewed and found to be inappropriate," he said. Further checking revealed that the movie had been aired for officers. It was a mistake, Browne said. "It was not approved for the curriculum. It's not shown for any purpose now."

Browne said his information is that The Third Jihad was shown only "a couple of times when officers were filling out paperwork before the actual coursework began." The cop who spoke to the Voicesaid it was a bit more formal than that: "The instructor introduced it with a warning that some people found it offensive," he said.

As for how many police officers saw it, leaders at the New York office of CAIR—the Council on American-Islamic Relations and one of the movie's primary targets—say they got their own complaint last summer from a police cadet who was also shown the movie.

Zead Ramadan, president of CAIR's New York board, said he raised the matter with police commissioner Ray Kelly when he saw him at a Gracie Mansion celebration of Eid, the Muslim holy day. "I told him we'd had this report about a disturbing movie being shown to police officers. The commissioner seemed concerned, but said he knew nothing about it, that a consultant company handled that part of the training. I said, 'You should review who your consultants are because this is potentially damaging to the city.' He said he would take care of it."

As it happens, Kelly is one of those seen interviewed in The Third Jihad, although he appears to be there just so movie makers can invoke his name and authority. "Our nightmare scenario is nuclear detonation," Kelly says in the film, "and second rung down from that, you might say, is a dirty bomb." Browne thinks this footage was scraped from another source, though producers claim in their promo material that they interviewed him. Also appearing alongside clips of Glenn Beck are former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge and ex–Clinton CIA director James Woolsey. They merely state that there are indeed bad people out there intending us harm. On the other hand, the movie's DVD version gets a full-throated endorsement from another of its stars, Rudy Giuliani, who calls it "a wake-up call for America."

The movie is the product of a nonprofit company called the Clarion Fund, whose chief business appears to be stoking the flames of religious war. Just before the 2008 presidential election, the fund sent copies of Obsession, an earlier film also depicting murderous Muslim conspiracies afoot in the U.S., to some 28 million swing-state voters. No one has ever confirmed who footed the bill for this mass mailing, but Clarion's tax filings show that sugar-daddies unknown anted up $18 million to do so.

The producer of both films is a man named Raphael Shore, who has also worked with an Orthodox Jewish Israeli group called Aish HaTorah that regularly cites the threat of radical Muslims. Calls to Clarion didn't bring a response last week, but the film's narrator, a Muslim-American doctor named Zuhdi Jasser, was reached at his office in Phoenix. "It's a hard-hitting film," he said, although he voiced a couple regrets with the final product. "I would have given more time to the solutions," said the doctor. "That the solutions can come from within."

trobbins@villagevoice.com

Sean Hannity - Tax The Arabs For their Oil

CNN - Continuous Mouthpiece for War

Peter Bergen, promotes his new book here via tranny-lover Elliot Spitzer @ CNN.  Perhaps Bergen would like that live interview that Anderson Cooper and Drew Griffin are incapable of conducting due to idiocy. Check out this warmongering HERE with a nice excerpt from his new book, taking a liberal stance and backing the Right's call for indefinate occupation of Afghanistan. As CNN, the home of the centrist imperialist, prepares for the long war so should you... this one's gonna last a while...Bergen says,

 If you could give Mr. Obama advice on what he needs to do in Afghanistan in the next few years, what would you tell him?

Obama has made a very significant significant shift in Afghanistan policy which has barely registered with the commentariat: that the US will be in Afghanistan in force until Dec 2014 and even beyond.
This is a far more significant decision than the "surge: decision of the fall of 2009, yet since it doesn't comfortably fit the narrative of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning president, this large shift has barely registered.

My advice would be that this is absolutely the right approach and the next step would be a status of forces agreement or even treaty with the Afghan government to solidify the fact of our long term presence in the country.

What are the most important lessons of the War in Iraq that Mr. Obama should pay attention to?

Signaling American determination to stay can work wonders in the context of the Afghan War, which is what Bush did with the surge decision of the fall of 2006.

The rest of the interview responses are equally as absurd... apparently nothing less than absolute defeat and annihilation will get the Americans off Muslim land... First, they assaulted his decision for withdrawal in 2011 and now with NATO and Obama committed to 2014, the pressure is being put on the centrist compromiser Obama already, either you alter course or the media will elect a Republican. However, commentary like this gives CNN a perfect oppurtunity to "confront us on our extremist rhetoric" and this time we can do it live with the experts.

More INFO HERE about CNN's smut propaganda 

Blackwater neo-crusaders sent to protect Western puppet in Palestine

A Palestine group led by Mahmood Abbas, who is considered by the West as a "president of the Palestinian Authority", has invited to the area under its control on the Western Bank of the River Jordan a notorious gang of mercenary killers Blackwater.

The HAMAS Movement said that the appearance of the American mercenary group Blackwater in the occupied West Bank pursues two goals: maintaining the occupation status-quo and training Abbas' hit squads so that they become more sadistic.

The HAMAS statement said that Palestine cannot be the area of activity of this gang of neo-crusaders who committed horrendous crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan by killing thousands of peaceful Muslims.

The permission by the PA to allow the mercenaries to operate in Palestine is regarded by the HAMAS as a new political defeat of the Abbasites and an abuse of the honor and dignity of the Palestinian people.

It is to be mentioned thereupon that, according to an American opposition paper The Nation, the US armed gang, the "private security firm Blackwater", which is widely used by the US army and the CIA against Muslims in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, received a task to murder Muslims throughout the world.

This has been testified under the oath before a federal court in Virginia by former employees of this organization and a former US marine.

After that, the U.S government even announced a formal investigation into the activities of the Blackwater "for murder or complicity in murder of former employees of this organization, U.S citizens, by its leader.

The witnesses said that the leader of the Blackwater, Erik Prince, "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith on the globe" and that the Prince's companies "encouraged the destruction of Iraqi life"

In their testimony to the court, they stated:

"Prince intentionally deployed in Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis.

Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, who fought the Crusades (against Palestine - KC).

Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game".

It is to be recalled that on June 10, 2009, Pakistani Taliban destroyed the base of Blackwater terrorists in Peshawar in a martyrdom operation. The terrorists' base was located in a luxurious five-star hotel.

Dependent mainstream Western press lied, as usual, that "terrorists killed innocent civilians and UN employees".

Department of Monitoring

Kavkaz Center

Who Lost the Middle East?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

January 18, 2011 "Creators" -- -- Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, especially today in the Maghreb and Middle East.

For the ouster of Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has sent shock waves from Rabat to Riyadh. Autocrats, emirs, and kings have to be asking themselves: If rioters can bring down Ben Ali with his ruthless security forces, what prevents this from happening here?

Millions of militant Muslim young who have never shared in the wealth produced by the oil and gas must be asking: If Tunisians can take down a detested regime, why cannot we?

America had no role in this uprising, and our diplomats had been appalled at the corruption. Yet Ben Ali was an ally in the war on terror, and what happened in Tunisia could trigger a series of devastating blows to the U.S. position in the Middle East.

For when autocrats fall, it is not always democracy that rises. And in the Middle East, democracy is not necessarily America’s ally.

The fall of King Farouk in 1952 led to Col. Nasser in Egypt. The ouster and murder of King Faisal in Iraq in 1958 led to Saddam. The fall of King Idris in Libya in 1969 led to Gadhafi. The fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia in 1974 led to the rise of the murderous Col. Mengistu. And the fall of the shah of Iran in 1979 led to the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Often the old saw applies: “Better the devil we know…”

And should a new wave of revolts sweep the region, we might see the final collapse of the neoconservative foreign policy of George W. Bush.

That Mideast policy rested on several pillars: uncritical support of Israel, invasions to oust enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq, and U.S. occupations to rebuild and convert these nations into democracies.

Well before he left office, these policies had made the region so anti-American that Bush was himself, in opinion surveys, viewed less favorably by the Muslim masses than Osama bin Laden.

And when Bush, having declared at his 2005 inaugural that his goal was now to “end tyranny in our world,” called for elections in the Middle East, he got the results his policies had produced.

In Palestine, Hamas swept to power. In Lebanon, Hezbollah made such gains it was brought into the Lebanese government it has just brought down. When Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak allowed some electoral districts to be contested, the Muslim Brotherhood won most of them.

In Iran in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected and became an instant favorite of the Arab masses because of his hostility toward Israel. The trend continued in the Iraqi elections of 2010, which enhanced the prestige and power of the anti-American Muqtada al-Sadr.

The message from the Mideast has been consistent and clear: When elections are held, or monarchs and autocrats overthrown, the masses will turn to leaders who will pull away from America and stand in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Turkey is a case in point. Before he invaded Iraq, Bush asked Ankara for permission to attack from its territory in the north, as well as Kuwait in the south. The parliament of this NATO ally of 50 years refused permission.

Since then, Turkey has been moving away from America, away from Israel, and closer to the Islamic peoples of a region Ottoman Turks ruled for centuries.

George H.W. Bush abjured “the vision thing.” But George W. had a road-to-Damascus experience during 9/11. He became a true believer that the security of his country and the peace of the world depended on a global conversion to democracy. And he would do the converting.

This is the ideology of democratism. Bush’s zealotry in pursuing his new faith blinded him to the reality that whatever their failings, the kings of Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and Mubarak are more reliable friends than any regime that might come out of one-man, one-vote elections.

Why, other than ideology, would a leader demand that a friendly regime hold elections if it were a near certainty the regime to come out of those elections would be more hostile to one’s own country?

Dwight Eisenhower preferred the shah to Mohammad Mossadegh, though the latter had been elected. Ike backed the coup. Richard Nixon preferred Gen. Augusto Pinochet to Chile’s pro-Castro President Salvador Allende, who was elected. The general was with us.

Yet this raises anew the question: Why do they hate us?

In the 19th century, European monarchs disliked our republic, but their people loved us. Through World War II and much of the Cold War, the peoples of the Middle East saw America as the champion of liberation from imperial rule. We were first to throw the British out.

Perhaps we have lost the people of the Middle East, while winning the allegiance of their autocratic rulers, because we, too, have become an empire – and no longer see ourselves as others see us.

New statement from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan “How the 1,400 Troops Re-enforcement Could Uplift the Sagging Morale of 120,000 American Troops"

According to a report in the New York Times, Pentagon is intending to send 1,400 more soldiers to Afghanistan in the current year 2011, presumably to fill up the vacuum existing in the ranks of the American army— a vacuum which is the result of the tips-and-runs attacks of the Mujahideen and increase in their strength during the previous year.

The Pentagon claims that the surge of the troops in Afghanistan will carry out special raids and effective operations against the Mujahideen in the current year but it is not true. The fact is that the Americans faced huge material and life casualties last year, reaching an unprecedented level in the past nine years period. It was expected that the Americans would try to replenish the vacuum to an extent by resorting to a fresh surge.

As to the Pentagon’s claim that the new 1,400 troops will take part in special operations against the Mujahideen, we could only say, it is futile and meaningless. During the past nine years, Pentagon has not left any stone unturned in using all tactics and stratagems which their brutal imagination could envisage. They have not spared committing any crime including battles against the Mujahideen; torturing them; engineering surreptitious conspiracies; launching political ploys; perpetrating genocide against the Afghanis people; detaining the common Afghans and destroying their plantations, properties, hearths and homes. So we can say, the fresh surge by the Pentagon is not a new initiative but aimed at replenishing the void that has been created by the fatalities and injuries of the American troops during the past year. There seems no other rationale behind the re-enforcement.

If we look at facts, we know that Pentagon will not be able to fill up the vacuum of the troops casualties by a fresh surge of 1,400 troops. Every one knows the fact, that during the past year, some undeniable events took place and even American sources and the American spokesmen at Bagram Airbase have confirmed them. Furthermore, some sources put the American troop’s fatality during the last year at 3,000 soldiers. However, other substantiated evidence on hand and the Mujahideen’s data show the casualties were many times higher than the ones revealed.

Granted, if even they are able to fill up the vacuum by the miniscule 1,400 troops surge, then what about another vacuum that the American troops in Afghanistan are grappling with right now, and that is the problem of sagging morale; the descending psychological conditions and the fear of war. What does Pentagon think that, will the re-enforcement of 1,400 troops prove to be an effective panacea to fill the gap and what breakthrough they are going to make during 2011? Contrarily, these extra 1,400 troops will suffer from low morale when they join the American troops stationed there and hear their stories and accounts of armed clashes with the Taliban. The war of Afghanistan and the Jihad environ prevailing there will teach them exemplary lessons that it will be difficult to tell their condition from the already stationed troops which have been crumbled at the hands of the Mujahideen.

The troops of the fresh surge and the previous ones will be quashed thanks to the well-known Afghan willpower that their war specialties and tactics of special operations will be of no use any more. By then, they themselves will seek the way of escape from Afghanistan if Allah willing.

Make the effort and leave the rest to Allah

In order that they taste some of what we tasted...


French floods: rescuers search houses as death toll rises
Rescuers searched mud-filled cars and houses for bodies above the French Riviera on Thursday as the death toll in the region's worst floods in two centuries rose to 25 people

2010–2011 Queensland floodsA series of floods hit Australia, beginning in December 2010, primarily in the state of Queensland including its capital city, Brisbane. The floods forced the evacuation of thousands of people from towns and cities. At least 70 towns and over 200,000 people were affected. Damage initially was estimated at around A$1 billion. The estimate of lost revenue from Australia's GDP is about A$30 billion. Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser said it was not possible to put a figure on the damage; "other than to say the damage bill is going to start with a b and not an m".

Three-quarters of the state of Queensland was declared a disaster zone. The 2010–2011 floods killed at least 31. As of 14 January, an additional 40 are missing in or around Grantham. The Queensland floods were followed by the 2011 Victorian floods which saw more than 50 communities in western and central Victoria also grapple with significant flooding

In the wake of the floods we have decriptions of ground zero floods , scenes equivilant to a battle field and likened to post war reconstruction

No one but a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes himself believe he will be secure. Whereas thinking people when disaster strikes make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent it happening again.

Uniting the Ummah

"I'm for Arabic the official language of the Caucasus Emirate"

Published: November 21, 2010, 9:44

With the name of Allah, Most Gracious Most Merciful

Recently I read an article on the website of KC which said the "official language of the Caucasus Emirate", and on this occasion decided to express their opinions, because this issue has become relevant for today. I ask Allah that he did this article written just for the sake of His Noble Face. And all that the article is correct - it is from Allah, and all that is wrong - something from me or from Satan.

Praise be to Allah, who said: "I swear by the clear Scripture! Verily, We made it a Quran in Arabic, so you can understand. Truly, he is with us in the Mother of Scripture (the Preserved Tablet). He - the Exalted, the Wise "/ 43. Jewelry, 2-3-4 /

Today's Muslims have forgotten about the situation, which should occupy in their lives Arabic. So, with Allah's help, will try to tell about its importance and how to give him his due. Arabic language was in the Caliphate mandatory discipline in general education. All research on the major sciences such as mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, physics, etc. (Not to mention the Shariah sciences), were carried out in Arabic.

In a large scale were translated into Arabic scientific works of the Europeans. Wealth of scientific, artistic and religious polemical literature in Arabic is rapidly accumulating, consolidating the position of the language. In a word, the Arabic language for the first generations of Muslims, regardless of their nationalities, was the language in which they understood their religion and learn about the world. On it, they talked, were public and government affairs, created literary works.

This historical reality testifies to the high importance attached to the same Arabic Muslims. Reasons that are clear for all that were developed in the context of strengthening Sharia state, has a priority position in Islam. No longer a single language, in which with only three letters can make the offer with great value and is present in Arabic, where with the help of only three letters are the greatest sentence of Islam is: "There is no god but Allah." Because sounds in Arabic "La ilaha illa-Allaah, and it is repeated three Arabic letters: Lam, Alif, and Ha '.

However, today the Muslims have forgotten about the situation, which should occupy in their lives Arabic. At first, I would like to emphasize that an undeniable advantage for the followers of any religion is a language proficiency, which were described and recorded its primary sources.

US-NATO Killings of Civilians in Afghanistan

by Prof Marc W. Herold - Global Research, January 14, 2011

The Obama administration’s effort to persist in carrying out a deadly war in Afghanistan outside the public’s eye has been succeeding. Three means are employed: tight control over news flowing out of Afghanistan; vastly greater reliance upon secretive night raids by U.S. Special Forces; and a stepped-up use of private contractors/mercenaries on the ground in Afghanistan. The latter effort is crucial in helping reduce reported U.S. military casualties in Afghanistan, the primary factor which affects domestic U.S. politics.
Every now and then, the mainstream media reports upon a particularly egregious incident which took place in Afghanistan. Nowhere can a reader get a sense of the overall level of pain inflicted upon average Afghan civilians by the actions of U.S. and NATO occupation forces. This brief essay paints a picture of ground reality in Afghanistan during the month of December 2010. The United Nations’ UNAMA releases overall figures, but the data is simply presented in aggregate fashion and we are asked to believe. A skeptic cannot fact check the numbers. We are simply asked to believe these faith-based numbers. As I have noted many times, the UNAMA figures for civilians killed by U.S/NATO actions are at best around 70% of the actual numbers killed. For example, for 2009, the UNAMA captured less than 60% of the civilians who perished.

Graph 1. Cumulative total of civilians killed during December 2010

The graph above plots the cumulative total of Afghan civilians killed in U.S/NATO military actions during December 2010. The total is 68-69 persons, a greater December toll than in the previous two years:

	Civilians killed	Foreign occupation forces from hostile action*	Ratio civ to occupation forces
December 2008	42	26 (US @ 2)	1.58
December 2009	57-61	32 (US @ 15)	1.84
December 2010	68-69	39 (US @ 32)	1.77

*Data from the Web-based compilation at http://www.icasualties.org/oef/

The data for 2010 is a serious undercount because of the dramatic increase of deadly night raids by U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) forces whose raids are clandestine and about which only limited reporting exists.

A comparison (Table 1) indicates the level of Afghan civilian deaths at the hands of the foreign occupation forces has oscillated around 900 per year since 2007. On the other hand, the level of foreign occupation soldiers’ deaths caused by hostile action has soared since 2007. The share of U.S occupation soldiers’ deaths of the total foreign occupation toll has risen from 35% in 2007 to 70% in 2010. The Table demonstrates the crucial role NATO forces played in fighting America’s Afghan war during the earlier years. In 2007, NATO casualties accounted for 55% of the total, but by 2010 the figure was a mere 30%.

Table 1. Civilian and Occupation Force Deaths in Afghanistan, 2006-2010

Year	Civilian casualties	Occupation force deaths (@ U.S.)	Ratio of civ deaths to occup. force deaths
2006	660 - 782	130 (65)	5.1 – 6.0
2007	1010 - 1297	184 (83)	5.5 - 7.0
2008	864 - 1017	263 (133)	3.3 - 3.9
2009	936 - 1087	451 (266)	2.1 - 2.4
2010	807 - 915	632 (440)	1.3 – 1.4
Total….	4277 - 5098	1660 (987)	2.6 – 3.1

Everyday life in Afghanistan was dangerous for children, women, Afghan Army and Police forces, clerics, road workers, public officials, saying night-time prayers, sleeping, driving to lunch, etc. The relative lethality for Afghan civilians versus U.S/NATO occupation forces is captured by the ratio in the last columns above which derives the ratio of Afghan civilians killed per foreign occupation soldier death. In 2006-7, five Afghan civilians died for every dead occupation soldier, but by 2010 this ratio was only 1.3, reflecting the shift in U.S. tactics towards using ground attacks as opposed to aerial bombing. On the other hand, ground attacks can be very deadly. For December 2010, 19 Afghan civilians died from air attacks, 45-46 from ground strikes and 4 from drone strikes (in the Pakistan border region). The numbers who were killed in secretive night-time SOCOM force strikes are no doubt mostly omitted from the reported totals above.
The following Table 2 presents a summary of the twenty-five U.S/NATO attacks which resulted in Afghan civilians being killed.

Table 2. Deadly Attacks by U.S/NATO forces during December 2010

Date	Place	# victims and details	Type of attack
Dec 1-7	Maidan Wardak	1	1 AM night raid
Dec 4	Ghazni	1 girl injured who died	air
Dec 4	Paktia	7 road laborers	ground attack
Dec 6	North Waziristan	2	drone
Dec 7	Logar	2 Afghan Army soldiers	air
Dec 8	Helmand	3 women	air
Dec 8	Kunar	2	ground
Dec 10	Kandahar	7-8 clergy men	ground
Dec 11-13	Kunar	Estimated 7 killed	ground
Dec 11	Paktia	7	ground
Dec 14	Marja, Helmand	1	air
Dec 14	Kunduz	2	ground
Dec 15/16	Helmand	4 Afghan Army soldiers	air
Dec 17	Nangarhar	2	night raid
Dec 18/19	Helmand	2 men (Abdul Aziz and Eid Gul)	night raid
Dec 19	Nangarhar	3	air
Dec 21	Helmand	2 children	ground
Dec 21	Helmand	3 women	ground
Dec 22	Ghazni	1	air
Dec 23	Faryab	2 men (incl Mohammad Aminuddin)	air
Dec 24	Kabul city	2 night guards	night raid
Dec 27	Kapisa	2 sons of Mosafir (Walid and Khan)	mortar fire
Dec 28	North Waziristan	Estimated 2	drone
Dec 30	Maidan Wardak	Injured girl dies	ground

The provinces with the highest civilian toll were Helmand (15), Paktia (14), and Kunar (9).

Details beyond those mentioned in the Table are hard to come by for many of the attacks. The raid carried out on December 18, 2010 in the Lashkari bazaar area by NATO forces accompanied by the notorious soldiers of the Afghan National Security directorate, all of a sudden arrived by helicopter as the guests Eid Gul and Abdul Aziz, both aged over 50, were preparing for evening prayer. The attackers stormed into the home, killing both guests, injuring another man and abducting two other people.

At 11 A.M., on December 23rd, a NATO helicopter opened fire on a convoy of five cars driving 5 kms outside the provincial capital, Maymana of Faryab province. The travelers were going to a luncheon event hosted by a local council head. The NATO helicopter strafed one vehicle killing a police officer and Mohammad Aminuddin, brother of former Afghan parliament member Sarajuddin Mozafari. Two other policemen and a civilian were wounded.

Conclusion

The death tolls for Afghan civilians killed by U.S/NATO actions were 54-61 for November and 149-165 for October 2010. Nothing suggests a change in this daily slaughter. As Hornberger asserted in the “The Banality of Killing,” average Americans place no value upon the lives of Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis. Killing them has been normalized and trivialized. Any ways, “they” hide amongst civilians or are terrorists or enemy combatants. As Hornberger put it,

Never mind that our public officials have had 10 years to kill terrorists and enemy combatants to their hearts’ content but apparently still haven’t gotten them all. Never mind that the terrorists and enemy combatants might well now consist primarily of people who are simply trying to oust their country of a foreign occupier, like people did when it was the Soviet Union that was doing the occupying. Never mind that the number of terrorists and enemy combatants continues to rise with each new killing. It’s all just part and parcel of the new normality for American society.