Swiss Daily: Israel Eavesdropped on UN Sessions over Hariri’s Assassination

Al - Manar TV
30/11/2009

A Swiss newspaper said that a number of UN employees in Geneva have concluded that Israel is eavesdropping on UN court sessions. The Neue Zuericher Zeitung (NZZ) added that bugging devices have been found in the organization’s deliberations room in the Swiss capital.

The newspaper pointed out that during regular maintenance procedures on the electrical network, three years ago, two bugging devices were found in a room set for the UN Disarmament Committee meetings. It added that ‘secret’ meetings were also held in the room over the Second Gulf War and the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri. NZZ revealed that other spying devices have also been found in other parts of the building, including courtrooms. The daily quoted UN employees as saying that Israel was behind planting the devices. UN security experts estimate that the planting process might have taken at least two days with the collaboration of UN employees. An expert in intelligence affairs told NZZ that the “technical level of the [spying] system and the great danger inherent in it, indicates that the planting decision was taken at the highest [Israeli] level.” The Neue Zuericher Zeitung said that only seven countries could have been behind the incident: The United States, Britain, France, Chinaa, Russia, North Korea, and Israel. “If I had to estimate which country was behind it, I would say Israel,” an intelligence officer told NZZ.

A European diplomat supported the conclusion saying: “I’ve always been amazed at the level of good information the Israeli mission posses.”

The Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, quoted Israeli diplomats as denying any connection to the issue.

Daimler Workers Protest Against Relocations to U.S.

Jobs could move to factory in Alabama, union said

By Agence France-Presse

December 1, 2009

About 12,000 Daimler workers demonstrated on Dec. 1 against the possible partial relocation of output to a plant in the U.S., a works committee spokeswoman said. "Three thousand jobs are threatened" by plans to move production from Sindelfingen, in southwestern Germany where the rally took place, to a factory in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, spokeswoman Silke Ernst said.

The Sindelfingen plant employs more than 28,000 workers.

Daimler executives might decide to move production of the Class C sedan in 2014, the works committee said.

The automaker declined to comment.

Daimler seeks to rebound from the global auto crisis in part through a cost-cutting plan that initially sought to save four billion euros (US$6 billion), an amount which could be raised before the end of the year.

Producing the car in the U.S. would also reduce foreign exchange effects that have weighed on Daimler's accounts.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2009

Canada: Redactions hamper Afghan detainee probe

Unreadable documents make meaningful inquiry ‘almost impossible’ and reflect government efforts to keep record a secret

A detainee captured by the Afghan Army on a joint patrol with Canadian troops sits by a wall at a Canadian Forward Operating Base in Howz E Madad in Zhari District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. Louie Palu/ZUMA Press

A detainee captured by the Afghan Army on a joint patrol with Canadian troops
Louie Palu/ZUMA Press

By Paul Koring
Globe and Mail
Nov. 30, 2009

The Harper government has blacked out large sections of relevant files handed over to the independent inquiry probing allegations of transfer to torture of detainees in Afghanistan, despite the fact that its investigators have the highest levels of national security clearance.

The heavily redacted documents, obtained by The Globe and Mail, underscore the sweeping nature of the government's efforts to keep the documentary record from the Military Police Complaints Commission, which is attempting to conduct an inquiry into allegations that Canada knowingly transferred prisoners to likely torturers in Afghanistan.

The MPCC's repeatedly thwarted effort to get to the heart of the detainee-transfer issue – it has faced attempts by the Harper government to gag witnesses, limit the scope of the investigation and withhold documents – prompted opposition politicians to open their own limited probe through a parliamentary committee, leading to last week's explosive testimony by diplomat Richard Colvin. But that committee's efforts have been similarly stymied, since it has no power to compel the government to deliver the documentary record and no real opportunity to cross-examine witnesses.

In the material delivered to the MPCC, government blackouts render unreadable many of the documents, some drafted by Mr. Colvin. The sweeping redactions were imposed even though everyone who works with or serves on the MPCC must have at least “secret” clearance and all of the senior investigators, as well as the panelists who would conduct the inquiry, have the highest security clearances.

“I'm not sure ‘cover-up' is the right word but someone is going to considerable lengths not to disclose what was known,” said Stuart Hendin, an expert in the law of war and international-rights issues who represented now-retired Brigadier-General Serge Labbé, one of the most senior Canadian officers embroiled in the Somalia affair 16 years ago.

“It's almost impossible for any independent authority to conduct a meaningful inquiry” with documents rendered so unreadable, Mr. Hendin added. “It all suggests someone knew there were issues.”

Some documents dating back to spring of 2006, a full year before ministers and senior officers said they first heard of abuse allegations, are entirely blacked out. Others have whole sections censored.

The redactions aren't based on freedom-of-information or privacy laws, but on an untested claim that the government can block access by the MPCC, an independent investigative body created in the wake of a high-level cover-up that was partly exposed by the Somalia inquiry before it was shut down in 1997.

The government contends that Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act gives it the latitude to withhold some documents – and heavily redact others – even through the MPCC was created by Parliament with a structure and investigators capable of dealing with highly classified issues involving the military police, who are responsible for the custody and transfer of prisoners captured on the battlefield.

Until recently, the government routinely provided documents with such classifications to the MPCC, investigators say. But when it sought to investigate allegations that Canadian military police had been ordered by ministers and senior bureaucrats to transfer detainees to Afghan authorities knowing they would probably be abused and tortured, the government claimed in Federal Court that the commission had exceeded its mandate.

Transfer to torture is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. It is also outlawed by international convention.

The Globe has only a limited number – roughly 80 documents – totalling fewer than 200 pages out of thousands sought by the MPCC. Most of the heavily redacted documents carry low-level security designations, such as “CEO,” which means “Canadian Eyes Only” – a level below secret. “Many have top secret and we have secure facilities to allow for rigorous security,” said Nancy-Ann Walker, a spokeswoman for the MPCC.

[...]

Defence Minister Peter MacKay has chosen not to renew Mr. Tinsley's appointment as chairman of the MPCC, despite the fact it is in the midst of the most complex and serious case in its 10-year history.

Full article

Lithuanian Govt. Investigation Confirms News Report on Secret CIA Prison

By MATTHEW COLE and MARK SCHONE
Nov. 30, 2009

A Lithuanian government investigation has confirmed an exclusive ABC News report that the CIA operated a secret black site prison in the country, according to a report on Lithuanian television.

According to Lithuania's LNK TV, sources have told investigators that state security was involved in coordinating the construction of the prison, and have also provided the code name of the operation to transport terror detainees to the prison.

Arydas Anusauskas, head of the parliamentary committee investigating the prison, told ABC News he would not comment on the investigation until it is completed. He has previously said the results of the probe will be made public Dec. 22.

Full article

Background:

VIDEO: CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy

Obama Approval on Afghanistan at 35%

By Jeffrey M. Jones - December 1, 2009

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans are far less approving of President Obama's handling of the situation in Afghanistan than they have been in recent months, with 35% currently approving, down from 49% in September and 56% in July.

Full article

Yen Drops After Hatoyama Says Its Strength Can’t Be Tolerated

By Lukanyo Mnyanda

Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The yen fell against all of its major counterparts after Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama was cited by the Nikkei newspaper as saying the currency’s strength can’t be left as it is.

Japan’s currency headed for its first back-to-back losses in two weeks against the dollar following the Nikkei report. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said later Hatoyama wasn’t indicating the government is ready to intervene. The dollar traded at almost a 16-month low versus the euro on increased demand for riskier assets before a report forecast to show U.S. companies cut fewer jobs last month.

“The market is quite aware that the Bank of Japan will likely intervene if the yen appreciates too much,” said Lutz Karpowitz, a currency strategist in Frankfurt at Commerzbank AG, Germany’s second-largest lender. “Risk appetite is also driving the market at the moment, and the dollar will also be under pressure due to the low financing costs.”

The yen weakened 0.6 percent to 87.18 per dollar at 7:43 a.m. in New York, from 86.68 yesterday. Japan’s currency declined 0.6 percent to 131.51 against the euro, from 130.74. The dollar was little changed at $1.5086 versus the euro, compared with $1.5081. It depreciated to $1.5144 on Nov. 25, the weakest level since August 2008.

Rapid fluctuations in the currency market are undesirable, and the government is closely monitoring the situation, Hirano told reporters in Tokyo following Hatoyama’s comments.

Intervention View

Volatility may hamper growth, and the central bank is open to taking steps to support the economy, a Bank of Japan board member, Miyako Suda, said in a speech in Kofu, west of Tokyo. Central banks intervene by buying or selling currencies to influence exchange rates.

The yen rallied 4.3 percent versus the dollar in November, helping to erode profits of exporters including Sony Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. It reached a 14-year high of 84.83 against the U.S. currency on Nov. 27.

The Australian dollar rose 0.9 percent to 80.86 yen and was up 0.2 percent against the dollar at 92.71 cents today. The New Zealand dollar gained 0.9 percent to 63.48 yen and strengthened 0.2 percent to 72.76 cents.

Benchmark interest rates are 3.75 percent in Australia and 2.5 percent in New Zealand, compared with 0.1 percent in Japan and as low as zero in the U.S., attracting investors to the South Pacific nations’ higher-yielding assets.

The so-called Aussie got a boost as gold, Australia’s third-most-valuable raw-material export, advanced to a record for a second straight day, reaching $1,217.23 an ounce.

[...]

Japan should ask the U.S. and Europe to take coordinated action to weaken the yen, Financial Services Minister Shizuka Kamei said in an interview in Tokyo today.

“We need international coordination,” Kamei said. Kamei, whose People’s New Party is a coalition partner to the Democratic Party of Japan, said he has urged Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii to seek international cooperation to halt the currency’s rise.

Full article

Iran to enrich uranium to 20 percent for needed fuel

Press TV - December 2, 2009 13:09:21 GMT

Days after Iran announced that it would start building ten new industrial scale enrichment plants, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran will start enriching uranium to a level of 20 percent.

Addressing a crowd in Iran's central province of Isfahan, President Ahmadinejad said the West has been making efforts to get in the way of Iran's nuclear progress.

"We asked for 20 percent enriched uranium fuel which according to the regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) they can provide us with. However, they refused to do so," President Ahmadinejad said.

"God willing, Iran will produce [nuclear] fuel enriched to a level of 20 percent," the Iranian president announced.

The remarks came as earlier Deputy Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Baqeri warned that should the IAEA fail to provide Iran's needed fuel, the country would move to enrich uranium to a level of 20 percent on its own.

The new nuclear development comes as Tehran's research reactor has run out of fuel after years of operation and therefore Iranian nuclear officials called on the IAEA to provide the required fuel for the medical reactor.

"Based on legal terms, we have no problem to obtain the fuel for the Tehran reactor as enrichment to a level of more than 5 percent or 20 percent is not prohibited to be carried out by different countries [that are signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)]," Baqeri, who is a deputy to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said earlier.

Obama Sells Escalation With Vague Pullout Promise

Obama Increases Total Military Outlays 10% Above Bush levels

by Jason Ditz, December 01, 2009

With the Afghan War getting worse all the time it may seem like putting the cart before the horse for the administration to start talking about a timetable for its victory and pullout, but with the war’s popularity cratering all the time it seems the president believes that selling the escalation as an “endgame” strategy is about the only viable public relations strategy possible.

So tonight, President Obama tried to sell the American public on a 30,000 man escalation of the Afghan War with vague assurances that he hopes the escalation will go so swimmingly that he can begin pulling those troops out in July 2011.

Whether this is collective amnesia amongst administration officials who failed to notice that March’s 21,000 man escalation only made matters worse or a shrewd political move designed to placate a war weary public, the comparisons to Iraq cannot possibly be avoided, and were even made directly by the president.

Particularly in length, as both those “start the pullout in July 2011″ claim and the promise to be out of Afghanistan by 2017 came after the administration’s last meeting on Afghanistan and must therefore be seen as part of the same strategy.

This likely spells a glacial pace “drawdown” in Afghanistan, even assuming the escalation can be painted as a success. America’s 2007 surge in Iraq was declared a success by Summer 2007, and only now, on the eve of 2010 are troops at pre-surge levels, with administration officials forever non-committal about meeting the August 2010 goal, let alone the 2011 deadline.

Yet the 2007 “success” in Iraq was largely a function of ethnic and religious cleansing of neighborhoods leading to a drop in violence, something which the administration won’t stumble into in Afghanistan.

Rather in this case the six year drawdown may be more aimed at quieting domestic dissent, as the public appears to have forgotten entirely about Iraq the moment the vague, multi-year drawdown strategy was said to begin, rising violence and enormous American military commitments be damned.

Source

U.S. Postpones Decision on Ethanol Blend in Gasoline

By Daniel Whitten and Mario Parker - Excerpts

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. regulators postponed a decision on raising the percentage of ethanol allowed in gasoline until mid-2010 to allow more time to assess effects on engines.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it would keep the blend at 10 percent and could expand it based on a study on higher ethanol mixes in engines for cars and equipment such as lawn mowers. Growth Energy, an ethanol industry trade group, had asked that the agency permit 15 percent, also known as E-15.

“While not all tests have been completed, the results of two tests indicate that engines in newer cars likely can handle an ethanol blend higher than the current 10 percent limit,” the EPA said today in a statement. The agency “expects to make a final determination in mid-2010 regarding whether to increase the allowable ethanol content in fuel.”

Raising the so-called blend ratio would increase demand for the fuel, benefiting producers battered by volatile corn and fuel prices. At least 10 ethanol companies have sought bankruptcy protection since last year, including VeraSun Energy Corp. and Aventine Renewable Holdings Inc. Automakers and refiners have opposed a change, saying added ethanol would damage engines.

[...]

Environmental and petroleum-industry groups aligned in opposition to a higher ethanol blend

“It’s time we recognize that ethanol has been unable to attain independent viability as a motor fuel despite lavish subsides and mandates for use, and even more important, has been unable to prove that its production and use are beneficial to the environment,” said Craig Cox, the Environmental Working Group’s Midwest vice president. He hailed the EPA decision as a sign the agency is giving the matter further scrutiny.

More Testing

The National Petrochemical & Refiners Association also supported the delay.

“In making this decision, EPA correctly recognizes that there is more study and comprehensive testing to be done to ensure that higher ethanol blends will be safe for consumers and not threaten the reliability of their fuels or operation of their vehicles, engines and outdoor equipment,” said Charles T. Drevna, the group’s president, in a statement.

[...]

ADM, Monsanto, Deere

ADM, the second-biggest U.S. ethanol producer, and agricultural companies such as Monsanto Co. and Deere & Co. stand to gain if the EPA eventually allows a 15 percent formula, Morgan Stanley analysts led by Vincent Andrews in New York said in a report yesterday. [Left unaddressed in the report is the impact that a 50% increase in the ethanol mandate would have on the world's food insecure.]

Arming Goldman Sachs With Pistols Against the Public

Commentary by Alice Schroeder

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- “I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image -- and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.”

Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.

Pistol Ready

Common sense tells you a handgun is probably not even all that useful. Suppose an intruder sneaks past the doorman or jumps the security fence at night. By the time you pull the pistol out of your wife’s jewelry safe, find the ammunition, and load your weapon, Fifi the Pomeranian has already been taken hostage and the gun won’t do you any good. As for carrying a loaded pistol when you venture outside, dream on. Concealed gun permits are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain in New York or nearby states.

In other words, a little humility and contrition are probably the better route.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that was obvious to everyone but Goldman, a firm famous for both prescience and arrogance. In a display of both, Blankfein began to raise his personal- security threat level early in the financial crisis. He keeps a summer home near the Hamptons, where unrestricted public access would put him at risk if the angry mobs rose up and marched to the East End of Long Island.

To the Barricades

He tried to buy a house elsewhere without attracting attention as the financial crisis unfolded in 2007, a move that was foiled by the New York Post. Then, Blankfein got permission from the local authorities to install a security gate at his house two months before Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.

This is the kind of foresight that Goldman Sachs is justly famous for. Blankfein somehow anticipated the persecution complex his fellow bankers would soon suffer. Surely, though, this man who can afford to surround himself with a private army of security guards isn’t sleeping with the key to a gun safe under his pillow. The thought is just too bizarre to be true.

So maybe other senior people at Goldman Sachs have gone out and bought guns, and they know something. But what?

Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and -- oh yes -- the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”

Torn Curtain

There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.

This slip-up let the other bailed-out banks happily hand off public blame to Goldman, which is unpopular among its peers because it always seems to win at everyone’s expense.

Plenty of Wall Streeters worry about the big discrepancies in wealth, and think the rise of a financial industry-led plutocracy is unjust. That doesn’t mean any of them plan to move into a double-wide mobile home as a show of solidarity with the little people, though.

Cool Hand Lloyd

No, talk of Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall- Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other. The last thing they want is to be so reasonably paid that the peasants have no interest in lynching them.

And if the proles really do appear brandishing pitchforks at the doors of Park Avenue and the gates of Round Hill Road, you can be sure that the Goldman guys and their families will be holed up in their safe rooms with their firearms. If nothing else, that pistol permit might go part way toward explaining why they won’t be standing outside with the rest of the crowd, broke and humiliated, saying, “Damn, I was on the wrong side of a trade with Goldman again.”

(Alice Schroeder, author of “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life” and a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.) To contact the writer of this column: Alice Schroeder at aliceschroeder@ymail.com.