The Origins of the “Global Warming” Scare

Notsylvia Night - October 30, 2009

Did you know, that the “Human caused Global Warming” hypothesis didn´t originate in the 1980s, but actually in the 1880s? Although, until the late 1970s, the hypothesis was considered “a curiosity”, since it contradicted observed events.

Did you further know, that at first this hypothesis wasn´t publicly promoted by scientists or even environmentalists, but by a UN ambassador and a very ambitious British Lady politician?

It’s snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever. And that’s just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours – and all over our global warming alarmists.

Time’s up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week.

- wrote Andrew Bolt in the Australian Herald Sun last April.

Then he goes on to debunk many of the main claims most “Global Warming” (renamed “Climate Change”) believers will cite in public:

-like the claim that
the earth is rapidly warming at the moment.
The facts, however, are
that according to data from Britain’s Hadley Centre, NASA’s Aqua satellite and the US National Climatic Data Centre
the fall in temperatures from just 2002 (until 2009) has already wiped out half the warming our planet experienced last century.
(See also: Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered)

-or the claim that
the polar ice is rapidly melting.
The facts, however, are
that a British Antarctic Survey, working with NASA, last (April) confirmed
ice around Antarctica has grown 100,000 sq km each decade for the past 30 years.

-or the claim, that
the oceans are warming up
The facts, however, are
according to Josh Willis, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who evaluated
a five years study (done using) a network of 3175 automated bathythermographs deployed in the oceans by the Argo program, a collaboration between 50 agencies from 26 countries:
“There has been a very slight cooling”…

-or the claim that
sea-levels are rising dramatically.
The facts, however, are
according to the Jason-1 satellite mission monitored by the University of Colorado, that
for almost three years, the seas have stopped rising,

-or the claim,
that world-wide devastating storms (cyclones) are getting worse.
The facts, however, are
according to Ryan Maue of Florida State University, who
recently measured the frequency, intensity and duration of all hurricanes and cyclones to compile an Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index.()
The energy index is at its lowest level for more than 30 years.

-or the absolutely ridiculous claim by World Vision boss Tim Costello that Asia was a “region, thanks to climate change, that has far more cyclones, tsunamis, droughts”.
The facts are
(besides that Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes)
according to a 2006 study by Indur Goklany, who represented the US at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
“There is no signal in the mortality data to indicate increases in the overall frequencies or severity of extreme weather events, despite large increases in the population at risk.”

Most of the myths, which are now slowly being debunked by scientists through intensive research, have once been created by “scientists”.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has for several decades now employed “scientists” who claim

that human activities are responsible for nearly all earth’s recorded warming during the past two centuries.

writes David R. Legates in “Breaking the “Hockey Stick”

A widely circulated image used by the IPCC dramatically depicting these temperature trends resembles a hockey stick with three distinct parts: a flat “shaft” extending from A.D. 1000 to 1900, a “blade” shooting up from A.D. 1900 to 2000, and a range of uncertainty in temperature estimates that envelops the shaft like a “sheath.”

This image was produced by Michael Mann, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes

(other colleagues working with Mann on his subsequent “climate change” research-papers were Philip D. Jones and Gavin Schmidt)…..

However, five independent research groups have uncovered problems with the underlying reconstructions by Mann and his colleagues in their 1998 and 1999 work that have persisted through his most recent collaborative efforts, calling into question all three components of the “hockey stick.”…

Mann and Jones indicate that globally- and hemispherically-averaged air temperatures from A.D. 200 to 1900 were nearly constant. Missing from their timeline, however, are the widely recognized Medieval Warm Period (about A.D. 800 to 1400) and the Little Ice Age (A.D. 1600 to 1850).
Most proxy records from around the globe show these climatic events, as Willie Soon, Sallie L. Baliunas and I concluded in a 2003 paper published in Energy and the Environment.

For instance:
* In such widely disparate regions as Argentina, Chile, southern Peru, southern Africa and northern China, records indicate a marked warming at the beginning of the last millennium followed by extreme cold during the middle centuries.

* Historical proxies for temperature – such as tree rings, ice cores and bore holes – in New Zealand, Australia and California also confirm widespread, significant warming and cooling trends…..

(Scientists) Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick..().. contend that Mann and his colleagues in their 1998 and 1999 papers unjustifiably truncated or extrapolated trends from source data, used obsolete data, made incorrect calculations, and associated data sets with incorrect geographical locations….

More recently,(scientists) David Chapman, Marshall Bartlett and Robert Harris identified methodological problems in a 2003 Geophysical Research Letters study by Mann and G. Schmidt.

Specifically, Mann and Schmidt eliminated specific proxy records (data from bore holes) they thought were inaccurate. Chapman et al. showed that Mann and Schmidt had unjustifiably excluded the bore-hole data and concluded that their methods were “just bad science” and that they presented a “selective and inappropriate presentation” of results..….

Jan Esper, David Frank and Robert Wilson () further argued that the fatal flaw with Mann, Bradley and Hughes’ temperature reconstruction is its incorrect representation of longer-term trends.

They observed that the statistical methods used inappropriately remove trends over long time periods..…

But the meteoric rise of the “Global Warming – bad science” into a global dogma and from there into the legislation of, by now, most nations on earth, did not originate with scientists at all.

Richard Courtney, founding member of the European Science and Environment Forum and technical adviser to several members of the British Parliament as well as to some British members of the European Parliament wrote the 1999 article “Global Warming: How It All Began” in which he explores the history of this particular pseudo-science.

The hypothesis of man-made global warming has existed since the 1880s. It was an obscure scientific hypothesis that burning fossil fuels would increase CO2 in the air to enhance the greenhouse effect and thus cause global warming. Before the 1980s this hypothesis was usually regarded as a curiosity because the nineteenth century calculations indicated that mean global temperature should have risen more than 1°C by 1940, and it had not.

Then, in 1979, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher (now Lady Thatcher) became Prime Minister of the UK, and she elevated the hypothesis to the status of a major international policy issue…..

Courtney goes on to explain, that in 1979 Thatcher actually did not yet have a much stature abroad or at home. In Britain her only claim to fame as an Education Secretary in the Heath administration that collapsed in 1974 was as ‘Milk Snatcher Thatcher’ due to her policy of ending distribution of milk to British school-children.

It was Britain´s Ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Crispin Tickell, who suggested she should use the issue of “Global Warming” as a means to gain national and international credibility.

He also suggested, that Thatcher with her education, a degree in chemistry, could easily win debates on scientific subjects, since most other politicians were “scientifically illiterate” .

As an aside, there are quite interesting parallels between the British “Iron Lady” of the 1980s and the German “Iron Lady” of today.

Like Thatcher, Angela Merkel was not widely known before she was put into office by her party.
(Why they chose her is rather a mystery. Merkel was actually loosing votes for her conservative Christian Democratic Party, with her pro-Iraq-war position, when practically the whole German nation was opposed to it, and the seeming inability to produce a single genuine smile reaching the eyes, which gave her a definite lack of public charisma.)

Like Thatcher, Merkel also has degree in science, a doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) for her thesis on quantum chemistry.

Like Thatcher, Merkel is busy cutting down on workers´ rights and on the German social safety net. Merkel, the pro-corporate and anti-union German chancellor, is also a strong supporter of carbon tax legislation, both in Germany and in Europe, as well as a mandated global reduction in CO2 to combat “Global Warming”.

Margaret Thatcher went for Ambassador Tickell´s “Global Warming” to strengthen her prominence. Her Conservative Party went for it, to weaken the British coal-miners labor union. “Global Warming” would then give the nuclear industry a push, since now coal-fueled power-stations could be replaced by nuclear power-stations for “environmental” reasons. Britain´s nuclear industry urgently needed that kind of a push since the Three Mile Island accident had damaged public confidence in nuclear technology.

The other rationale for why nuclear power should be used instead of coal, the alleged cost benefit, was being destroyed, when privatization of the Britain’s electricity supply industry exposed that British nuclear power was produced at four times the cost of electricity produced in coal-fueled power plants.

And, writes Courtney,

the Conservative Party wanted a large UK nuclear power industry for another reason. That industry’s large nuclear processing facilities were required for the UK’s nuclear weapons programme and the opposition Labour Party was then opposing the Conservative Party’s plans to upgrade the UK’s nuclear deterrent with Trident missiles and submarines.

Subsequently the “Global Warming” issue was promoted by large government grants and funds. Scientists fell in line through peer pressure and for fear of losing their research funding and not because they actually were convinced by the argument.

In 1992 Greenpeace International conducted a survey of the world’s 400 leading climatologists. Greenpeace had hoped to publicize the results of that survey in the run-up to the Rio summit, but when they completed the survey, they gave very little publicity to its results. In response to the survey, only 15 climatologists were willing to say they believed in global warming, although all climatologists rely on it for their employment.

Though not all scientists sold out their integrity for funds:

Following the Leipzig Climate Conference in November 1995,

the Leipzig Declaration disputes the IPCC assertions about man-made global warming. It was drafted and has been signed by over 1,500 scientists from around the world.

Today the “Global Warming” and “Climate Protection” issue is being sold to the public as being a liberal or even a left-wing concern. Forgotten is it´s very much right-wing, anti-union corporate and militarist origin.

Green and environmental minded people also seem to have forgotten the connection between “Global Warming” and the nuclear power-industry, and anti-war activists never seem to register, that “Global Warming” was actually used to create more weapons of mass-destruction.

The fact that the “Global Warming” or “Climate Change” issue isn´t really about environmental protection is clearly shown, for instance, by the US Climate Change Bill, promoted by the new US Obama Administration and his “progressive” Democratic Party.

Atheo News writes about the bill in Dr. Chu’s Energy Bait and Switch

The congressional mandates “are very weak and really will not require any additional renewables beyond what states already are doing,” says Mark Sinclair of Clean Energy States Alliance. “It will be meaningless. It’s just a gesture.”

Marchant Wentworth of the Union of Concerned Scientists came to a similar conclusion, seeing that absolute requirements for renewables, after allowances, would be as low as 8 percent of total electric power generation for each utility. This is hardly a challenge for most utilities in a nation that in 2006 generated almost 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, including hydro power.

In other words, the proposed renewable sources requirements amount to little more than shallow symbolism. The current public subsidies and underwriting for nuclear power already make the nuclear choice more economically viable for utilities to maximize return on utility investment. The legislation is, in fact, a thinly veiled mandate for building new nuclear power plants, or to increase output from existing ones.

Republicans are offering a different plan that simply calls for building 100 new nuclear plants within the next twenty years.

These plans mirror similar policies across the Atlantic where the government in Britain is rushing a new generation of nuclear power plants, with a goal to begin construction within four years. Both ‘energy independence’ and climate change were cited as rationales by policy makers there as well.

Obama’s Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is a staunch advocate of nuclear power, citing it as “essential” due to global warming while at the same time ignoring the carbon emissions of the “nuclear cycle” that are produced from the mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication and disposal of spent fuel. The new appointee described nuclear power as “carbon free” at his confirmation in January.

While the “Global Warming” or “Climate Change” skeptics (sometimes called “deniers”) are often accused of being paid assets of the oil industry, the economical and political advantages of the “Global Warming” pseudo-science for the nuclear power industry cannot be denied any longer.

There is, however, an even stronger and even less publicly known connection of the “Global Warmers” with another industry, as Aletho News reports:

The new Democratic climate change bill , introduced in the Senate by Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, contains more advantages for nuclear power than even the legislation which passed in the House of Representatives last June. Included are waste management, financing and loan guarantee arrangements, regulatory risk insurance, as well as R&D and training programs. Joseph Lieberman is understood to be preparing the fine print for the bill which is presently “short on details”…..

As with other major pieces of legislation under consideration by the current Congress, the financial industry is a central actor, venture capitalists “are ready to pour multibillions of dollars into clean energy” if Congress passes “some kind of bill that talks about energy independence and climate change,” Boxer said.

How deep the connection between the “Climate Change” movement and the financial industry actually is, and how important the matter is for the elite of this industry, and how this even is connected to the issue of Iran´s civilian nuclear energy program, will be the subject of part two of this report.

Part Two:

Where "Global Warming" and "Peak Oil" meet

News and resources for the UK BDS Movement

Boycott Israeli Goods

The PSC and BIG call for a comprehensive boycott of Israeli Goods

A personal boycott of Israeli products helps remove consumers from complicity with Israeli apartheid. As ethical consumers we can conduct our boycott ‘where we are at’, in whatever town or country. International networks and co-ordinated activities are proliferating. PSC branches engage in regular boycott activities across the UK.

Vegetable exports to the European market are crucial to the Israeli economy, amounting to some 80 per cent of total exports. The UK continues to be the largest market, taking 60 per cent share of export volume. Potatoes, capsicum, fresh herbs, dates and cherry tomatoes, generated the highest returns to Israel’s growers in 2004-5. Companies such as Carmel Agrexco were the beneficiaries. Raising questions about labelling and sourcing at supermarket AGMs has become a feature of our boycott campaign. DEFRA and the Office of Fair Trading have faced demands for clarity and legality on labelling. Department stores such as Selfridges have taken cosmetics produced in Israel’s illegal settlements off their shelves, only to replace them under duress from the Israeli Embassy.

The BIG campaign aims to promote a consumer boycott and to actively campaign against corporations selling Israeli goods.

BIG aims to store files on corporations selling Israeli goods on Who Sells Israeli Goods page.

Some common Israeli goods:

• Tivall (Sainsbury's Meatfree Hot Dog Sausages and Vegetarian Sausages)
• Carmel (West Bank) (Organic Fruit and Veg sold in most Supermarkets)
• Tomer (West Bank) (Organic Fruit and Veg sold in most Supermarkets)
• Beigel and Beigel (West Bank) (Sweets and Pretzels etc)
• Agriver/Flowersdirect (West Bank) (strawberries sold in Aldi), but also other berries, cut herbs, pomegranates, figs, peppers, passion fruit, plums, carrots, cut melons, cut mangos and many other products.

Wines

• Galil Wines (The Golan Heights) (Waitrose, Sainsbury's)
• Palwin Wine (West Bank) (Sainsbury's, Tesco, Waitrose)
• Carmel Wine (West Bank) (Smithfield Wines, Manchester)
• Tishbi (Smithfield Wines, Manchester)
• Binyamina (West Bank/Golan) (John Lewis, Waitrose)

These are just a small selection of the illegal goods exported from Israel, feel free to add to this, it is just our attempt at increasing awareness.. Distribute to as many as possible and if you're looking for fresh produce, Always Buy Local.

More information on who profits from the occupation.

• About Palestine
• Why Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
• The Palestinian Call for BDS
• Links
• Resources
• Contact - BIG

Please sign the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign's e-petition to the Scottish Parliament which calls "the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Executive and individual MSPs to cancel all contract(s) they have with Eden Springs Israeli water company.

Three Ohio Men Convicted of Being Muslims at the Wrong Time in America

By Stephen Lendman - October 30, 2009

In an October 22 press release, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced another victory in its Global War on Terrorism, renamed the Overseas Contingency Operation to continue its jihad on Muslims, abroad and at home.

By now the charges are familiar, always bogus, and announced earlier about three Ohio men in a Justice Department February 2006 press release as follows:

"Three (Toledo, Ohio men) have been charged with conspiring to commit acts of terrorism against persons overseas, including US military personnel serving in Iraq, and with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists...."

On February 16, 2006, a Cleveland federal grand jury returned a five-count indictment against Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman El-Hindi, and Wassim I. Mazloum alleging they conspired, together and with others, "to kill or maim persons outside of the United States, including US military personnel serving in Iraq, and with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Amawi is also charged, individually, with distributing information regarding explosives and two counts of making verbal threats against the President of the United States."

Amawi holds both US and Jordanian citizenship. El-Hindi is also a US citizen, and Mazloum is a permanent legal resident.

The indictment further alleges that these men "engaged in activities in furtherance of their common goal to wage violent jihad, or 'holy war,' against American soldiers and Coalition allies serving in Iraq. Such activities included training and target shooting, receiving instructions in the construction and use of explosives - including improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and 'suicide bomb vests,' - recruiting others to participate in jihad training, attempting to raise funds to finance the training and to support violent jihad activities, and attempting to acquire and deliver materials - including explosives and computers - to others engaged in violent jihad in the Middle East. The indictment alleges that the conspiracy began sometime prior to November 2004."

Amawi was accused of traveling to Jordan on August 22, 2005 to deliver five laptop computers to the "co-conspirators." They were never delivered. No explanation was given why. Perhaps there were none in the first place, but, no matter. Carrying, transporting, or delivering computers isn't a crime.

Amani also "allegedly downloaded a video from a 'mujahideen website' which depicted the step-by-step construction and use of a bomb vest, and then copied it on a disk and distributed (it) to an individual who was going to be providing jihad training to the defendants. That individual - identified in the indictment as 'the Trainer' - has been cooperating since the beginning of this investigation (as a paid informant) and acting on behalf of the government" to entrap innocent men with no plans to commit terrorism. More on him below.

Other charges alleged "that in October 2004 and again in March 2005, Amawi made verbal threats to kill or inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States. The maximum sentence....of conspiring to kill or maim persons in a foreign country is 35 years in prison, or life in prison if the conspiracy is to kill."

The maximum sentence for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists is 15 years; for distributing information on explosives, 20 years, and for making verbal threats against the President, five years.

In a prepared statement, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said:

"This case stands as a reminder of the need for continued vigilance. We are committed to protecting Americans - here and overseas, particularly the brave men and women of the US Armed Forces who are serving our country by striving valiantly to preserve democracy and the rule of law in Iraq."

FBI Director Robert Mueller added:

"These arrests in indictments are examples of how, through close cooperation with our partners and enhanced intelligence capabilities, we are able to detect terrorist planning and prevent acts of terrorism before they occur."

Members of Toledo's Muslim community were shocked, saddened, and angered over the arrests. They also feared growing anti-Muslim sentiment against its 6,000 members that once included former mayor Michael Damas (1912 - 2003), perhaps the first Arab-American elected (in 1959) to high office in a large US city.

After their arrest, Amawi's (unnamed) brother told CNN he had nothing against the president, just the war. Mazloum's brother, Bilal, said his brother didn't own a gun or know how to use one. "He liked to help people. He never tried to hurt (anyone). I mean, he never (did) anything bad."

El-Hindi's lawyer at the time, Stephen Hartman, said:

"Let's face it. The atmosphere in America now, if there is an allegation of terrorism, and you are Middle Eastern, (or) Muslim, people are going to assume you're guilty" because prosecution charges and media reports imply the worst.

On February 23, 2006, the Toledo Blade reported that a year before his arrest, El-Hindi "offered spiritual nourishment to Muslim prisoners at the Toledo Correctional Institution as an 'imam,' or religious leader." Yet according to FBI Director Mueller:

"Prisons continue to be fertile ground for extremists who exploit both a prisoner's conversion to Islam while still in prison, as well as their socioeconomic status and placement in the community upon their release."

That said, warden Khelleh Konteh, explained that federal agents never asked him about El-Hindi's work, and expressed surprise about his arrest. Before his appointment was approved, a routine background check showed no prior arrests and a clean record.

On June 13, 2008, a jury convicted the defendants on all counts:

-- Amawi and El-Hindi on conspiring to kill or maim persons outside the United States, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, and two counts of distributing information on explosives; and

-- Mazloum on conspiring to kill or maim persons outside the United States and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

At the time, the DOJ claimed these "convictions represented the nation's first successful trial of a 'homegrown terror cell' for terrorism related crimes."

On October 22, a DOJ press released announced: the "Three (men were) Sentenced for Conspiring to Commit Terrorist Acts Against Americans Overseas:"

-- for Amawi, 20 years in prison, followed by life on supervised release;

-- for El-Hindi, 13 years, including 12 years for "terror violation(s)" and 18 months on fraud; and

-- for Mazloum, 100 months or 8.3 years, followed by life on supervised release.

At trial, Amawi's lawyer, Edward Bryan, said his client hated the Iraq war, cheered US soldier deaths, admired suicide bombers' courage, but isn't a terrorist and talk of going to Iraq was just talk.

"He doesn't have the courage to be like them," said Bryan. "It's fantasy. It's stuff going on in (his and other) people's minds, but not what they're really going to do. (He had no) plan to go out and murder American soldiers." He wanted to learn how to defend himself because he feared he and his family were threatened like other Muslims. "This is defensive Islam. Do they not have the right to defend themselves" without being charged with terrorism or conspiracy to commit it?

El-Hindi's lawyer, Charles Boss, said despite the "quantity" of evidence, its "quality....wasn't there." In other words, for his client and the others, it was the usual circumstantial claptrap, most gotten from the paid informant who egged on the three men, gave them money and gifts, including a cell phone and laptop, and got them to vent the way millions of Americans do about an illegal war and the millions of lives it cost.

Lawyers for all three said, over a two year period, the undercover informant manipulated their clients by suggesting jihadi tactics and entrapped them in recorded conversations.

According to Amawi, he took them to a shooting range and encouraged them to act violently. He's "the one (who) put a real gun in my hand," he said in his first public comment since his 2006 arrest. The informant lied, he said, about his wanting to travel to Iraq to become a martyr. "I'm against suicide bombing. I made this very clear."

Former Army Special Forces soldier Darren Griffin was the paid informant (referred to above as "Trainer") and key prosecution witness. He testified that by posing as a disgruntled Islam convert, he won their trust, then manipulated them through holy war training talk, secretly recorded on conversations to entrap them. However, he admitted that the men were only together once during his involvement, and he never saw emails from them about wanting to kill soldiers.

Defense attorneys said the men never bought weapons or terrorist supplies, never planned an attack, and never carried one out. They merely expressed anger, not terror plans or conspiracy to commit them. But clever prosecutors can intimidate juries to believe it, so innocent Muslims, like the defendants, are easily entrapped, convicted, and sentenced to long prison terms, even though there's no plot, no weapons, no crime, nor intention to commit one.

Talk is talk, not a crime, and, in this case and others like it, manipulated to sound incendiary, but that's not proof of intent. No matter, if juries believe it, innocent victims are punished for being Muslims at the wrong time in America.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

Iran Deal on Brink of Collapse as West Condemns Compromise

Europeans Uninterested in Deal Unless Iran Exports Most of Its Uranium

by Jason Ditz, October 29, 2009

Just a few hours after the Iranian government submitted a compromise proposal on the third party uranium enrichment deal with the P5+1, European diplomats quickly, and angrily, rejected it.

“This is completely unacceptable,” one EU diplomat declared, saying the union was in the process of penning its common response, a rejection that may spell the end to the promising negotiations that have gone on all month.

In September, Iran proposed a system of third party enrichment which would allow the nation to create medical isotopes without having to enrich any uranium to levels higher than needed for its energy generation program. After intense negotiation the draft agreement had Iran exporting much of its existing low-enriched stockpile to Russia and eventually France.

The “eventually France” part was a stalling point for Iran however, as France had previously reneged on Uranium Hexafluoride shipments to them and Iranian MPs expressed concern that the French might simply keep the uranium once it got to them.

This led Iran to propose today’s compromise deal, the chief aspect of which was that they would ship the uranium out in stages rather than all at once. This would have limited the potential losses to their stockpile in the event the deal fell apart.

But for Europeans, getting Iran to hand over the bulk of its uranium all at once was the best part of the deal, and they appear uninterested in continuing negotiations without that, which will likely also make Iran all the more suspicious that France will ever give back the uranium once they get their hands on it.

Iran’s current uranium is enriched to 3.8%, but Western officials have speculated that if they chose to, the nation might be able to further enrich this uranium to the level needed for weaponization, and eventually could produce a single atomic bomb. This would require a lot of luck on Iran’s part, and since their enrichment facilities are under IAEA surveillance would also require them to make their intentions obvious before they could even begin the mad dash for a bomb.

Source

Taliban in Pakistan blame U.S. Blackwater for deadly blast

2009-10-29 22:24:06

ISLAMABAD - (Xinhua) - Chief of Taliban movement in Pakistan Hakimullah Mehsud has blamed the controversial American private firm Blackwater for the bomb blast in Peshawar which killed 108 people, local news agency NNI reported Thursday.

The bomb exploded at a crowded market at Chowk Yadgar on Wednesday, also injured 150 people.

Hakimullah Mehsud told media that if Taliban can carry out attacks in Islamabad and target Pakistan army's headquarters, then why they should target general public.

He claimed that American security agency Blackwater and Pakistani agencies are involved in attacks in public places to blame the militants.

When asked that the people also think that the militants are involved in such attacks, the Taliban leader was quoted as saying, "Our war is against the government and the security forces and not against the people. We are not involved in blasts."

Azam Tariq, the Taliban spokesman, who was accompanying Hakimullah, warned that those media organizations could be targeted which are defaming Taliban.

Information Minister in Northwest Frontier Province Mian Iftikhar Hussain and the Pakistani army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas had blamed militants for the Peshawar blast, saying that the militants are facing defeat in South Waziristan tribal region and are now targeting the people.

The day the bulldozers came…

28 October 2009, 12:31PM - Amnesty International

A Palestinian farmer's vegetable crops and irrigation network are destroyed by an Israeli army bulldozer while soldiers surround the field in Jiftlik, Jordan Valley, in March 2008

West Bank farmer Mahmoud al-'Alam won't forget the day Israeli army bulldozers cut off his water supply... and destroyed his livelihood.

The village of Beit Ula, where Mahmoud lives, is not connected to the Palestinian water network. Instead the community, located north-west of Hebron, relies on rainwater, which it collects and stores in pots dug in the ground, known as cisterns.

The nine new cisterns built in 2006 as part of a European Union-funded project to improve food security became the pride of the village. The cisterns were vital to the survival of the nine families that used them... until the bulldozers arrived.

"[The Israeli army] destroyed everything; they went up and down several times with the bulldozer and uprooted everything," recalls Mahmoud al-'Alam.

In a few hours, years of hard work had been undone. The cisterns had been built with the help of two local nongovernmental organizations, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees and the Palestinian Hydrology Group.

The cisterns provided water for 3,200 newly planted trees including olive, almond, lemon and fig trees. The farmers had also contributed a significant portion of the overall cost of the project.

"We invested a lot of money and worked very hard," said Mahmoud al-'Alam. "This is good land and it was a very good project. We put a lot of thought into how to shape the terraces and build the cisterns in the best way, to make the best use of the land, and we planted trees which need little water... the saplings were growing well..."

The story of Beit Ula is one of many cases where Israeli forces have targeted Palestinian communities in the region.

On 4 June 2009, the Israeli army destroyed the homes and livestock pens of 18 Palestinian families in Ras al-Ahmar, a hamlet in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank.

More than 130 people were affected, many of them children. Crucially, the soldiers confiscated the water tank, tractor and trailer used by the villagers to bring in water. They were left without shelter or a water supply at the hottest time of the year.

On 28 July 2007, Israeli soldiers at a military checkpoint confiscated the tractor and water tanker of Ahmad Abdallah Bani Odeh, a villager from the hamlet of Humsa.

An Israeli army official told Amnesty International that the vital items were being confiscated in an attempt to force the villagers from the area, which the army had declared a "closed military area".

In another village, a rainwater harvesting cistern belonging to Palestinian villagers was destroyed by the Israeli army under the pretext that it was built without a permit. Permits for water projects have to be obtained from the Israeli authorities but are rarely granted to Palestinians.

In recent years the homes of Palestinians living in the Jordan Valley have been repeatedly destroyed and their water tankers confiscated.

Each time, the homes - tents and simple shacks made of metal and plastic sheets - are rebuilt. Because of the villagers’ determination to remain on their land despite extremely harsh living conditions, the Israeli army has increasingly restricted their access to water as a way of forcing them to abandon the area.

In’am Bisharat, a mother of seven from the village of Hadidiya, told Amnesty International: "We live in the harshest conditions, without water, electricity or any services.

"The lack of water is the biggest problem. The men spend most of the day...[going] to get water and they can’t always bring it. But we have no choice. We need a little bit of water to survive and to keep the sheep alive. Without water there is no life.

"The [Israeli] army has cut us off from everywhere...We don’t choose to live like this; we would also like to have beautiful homes and gardens and farms, but these privileges are only for the Israeli settlers... we are not even allowed basic services."

The lack of water has already forced many Palestinians to leave the Jordan Valley and the survival of the communities is increasingly threatened. In Beit Ula, Mahmoud al-'Alam's livelihood is similarly at risk.

"It is very painful for me every time to come here and see the destruction; everything we worked for is gone. Why would anyone want to do this? What good can come from [it]?" he asks.

Israel breaking up Palestinian families

Testimony given by Alaa Abu Sultan, 23

I am married and have three children: a son, Riad, who is three, and two daughters, Raja, who is six, and Riwa, who is two years old.

In 2001, I married Muhammad Riad Shhadeh Abu Sultan. My husband is from the Rimal neighborhood in the Gaza Strip. He came to the West Bank in 1996 and lived in the Tulkarm area until 2008.

I met him while he was working at my parents’ clothing store. In August 2001, we prepared a marriage contract, and we got married in March 2002. We lived in our house in the Tulkarm refugee camp, and he worked at my parents’ store and also in construction.

My husband had a Gazan resident identity card. A few years ago, the Palestinian Authority announced that residents of Gaza living in the West Bank could exchange their identity cards for West Bank identity cards. Muhammad went to the Palestinian Population Administration office in Ramallah and on 1 October 2007, he was issued a West Bank identity card. He did it too feel safer, even though he used to travel to Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin, and Jericho and never had any problems or trouble at checkpoints.

On 12 January 2008, we went to Nablus on a visit. We entered the city from the west, via the Beit Iba checkpoint, and crossed without any problem. At noon, on the way home, the soldiers detained Muhammad at the checkpoint. I waited for him there until midnight.

I begged the soldiers to release him. My sisters, who also live in the Tulkarm refugee camp, came to find out from the soldiers what had happened, but it didn't help.

Around midnight, the soldiers told us that my husband would be sent to the Gaza Strip. I begged them and explained that we’d been married for six years and had small children who needed their father, but nothing helped.

A little while later, while my brother and I were waiting by the checkpoint, two soldiers came over with Muhammad, to let him say goodbye to us. They said they were sending him to Gaza because he is a resident of Gaza. I was in terrible pain and cried a lot. Muhammad cried as well, because all we had done was go together to Nablus in the morning, and now I had to return to the Tulkarm refugee camp alone with my brother.

My baby daughter was born on 12 November 2007, and was only two months’ old at the time. Because of my suffering after the separation from Muhammad, the milk in my breasts dried up, and I couldn’t breastfeed her any more.

My pain over the deportation of Muhammad, who is now living in the Rimal neighborhood in Gaza, grew during the war in the Gaza Strip. I constantly worry about him. He calls me daily to ask how the children and I are. But Riwa is already two years old and my husband hardly had time with her. My children don’t get a father’s hug, and they call their grandfather “daddy.”
In addition to missing Muhammad, I also suffer from the restrictions society places on women who live without their husband, especially since I’m young.

I hope that my family will be united and that my husband will return to live with me and our children in the Tulkarm refugee camp.

Alaa Hassan Muhammad Abu Sultan, 23, married with three children, owns a clothing store and lives in the Tulkarm refugee camp. She gave her testimony to ‘Abd al-Karim Sa’adi at her store on 11 October 2009.

Source

Student expelled to Gaza Strip by force

Palestinian's involuntary return is the sixth in 10 days, says human rights group

By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem - Friday, 30 October 2009

Berlanty Azzam, 21,was handcuffed and blindfolded

A Palestinian student has been handcuffed, blindfolded and forcibly expelled to the Gaza Strip by Israeli troops just two months before she was due to graduate from university.

Berlanty Azzam, 21, who was studying for a business degree at Bethlehem University, said she was coming home in a shared taxi from a job interview in Ramallah on Wednesday when soldiers at the "Container" checkpoint took her identity card and that of another passenger with a Gaza address.

After six hours of waiting, soldiers told her she would be taken to a detention centre in the southern West Bank, and she was handcuffed and blindfolded, she said.

"The driving took longer than it should have and I started to think something was wrong. I started to wonder, what are they doing to me?" After the car stopped and the blindfold was lifted, Ms Azzam saw she was at the Erez crossing to Gaza.

It was the sixth known forced return to Gaza of Palestinians stopped at the "Container" checkpoint – which is between Bethlehem and Abu Dis – in 10 days, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha. Israel has also been preventing family reunifications in the West Bank for Palestinians with relatives living in Gaza, in effect forcing people to relocate to the Strip.

The steps are part of an Israeli policy of treating Gaza and the West Bank as two separate entities, thereby undermining the coherence of Palestinian claims for a state encompassing both territories. The 1993 Oslo agreement stipulates that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are to be treated as one territorial unit.

Major Guy Inbar, an Israeli defense ministry official, said the reason for Ms Azzam's deportation was that she was "staying illegally" in the West Bank.

"We are talking about a Gaza citizen who requested permission to study in the area of Judea and Samaria and received a negative answer," he said.

"In 2005, she was given a permit to visit Jerusalem for four days and she remained afterwards [in the West Bank] without any permit. Her entire period as a student was based on deceit and was against the law."

Sari Bashi, head of the Israeli Gisha human rights group, who tried to intervene on Ms Azzam's behalf, said she was assured by military lawyers on Wednesday that the student would not be deported to Gaza and that the rights group could seek a judicial review in the morning.

"The military misled us," Ms Bashi said. "There is a violation here of the right to access education, the right to freedom of movement and the right to choose one's place of residence within one's own territory."

The army did not respond to a request for comment.

Brother Jack Curran, vice president for development of Bethlehem University, termed the expulsion "a disgrace". "This is not about politics. It's about a young person finishing her degree. Since 2005 she has been studying as a good student. No one is a winner from this."

Source

Cluster bomb trade funded by world's biggest banks

HSBC earned more than £650m in fees from work for Textron, US manufacturer of cluster weapons

By Nick Mathiason - guardian.co.uk - October 29, 2009

The deadly trade in cluster bombs is funded by the world's biggest banks who have loaned or arranged finance worth $20bn (£12.5bn) to firms producing the controversial weapons, despite growing international efforts to ban them.

HSBC, led by ordained Anglican priest Stephen Green, has profited more than any other institution from companies that manufacture cluster bombs. The British bank, based at Canary Wharf, has earned a total of £657.3m in fees arranging bonds and share offerings for Textron, which makes cluster munitions described by the US company as "leaving a clean battlefield".

Campaigners maintain the deadly weapons can explode years after combat, killing or maiming innocent people.

HSBC will face protests outside its London headquarters today. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan and UK-based Barclays Bank are also named among the worst banks in a detailed 126-page report by Dutch and Belgian campaign groups IKV Pax Christi and Netwerk Vlaanderen.

Goldman Sachs, the US bank which made £3.19bn proft in just three months, earned $588.82m for bank services and lent $250m to Alliant Techsystems and Textron.

Of the banks named, only Barclays was prepared to comment. It said: "Barclays group provides financial services to the defence sector within a specific policy framework. It is our policy not to finance trade in nuclear, chemical, biological or other weapons of mass destruction.

"Our policy also explicitly prohibits financing trade in landmines, cluster bombs or any equipment designed to be used as an instrument of torture." A spokeswoman added that Barclays had supplied money to Textron, which makes cluster bombs, but that the US firm was a broad-based weapons manufacturer.

Last December 90 countries, including the UK, committed themselves to banning cluster bombs by next year. But the US was not one of them. So far 23 countries have ratified the convention. The UK has yet to do so, but the Foreign Office confirmed that it would form part of the government's legislative programme before the next election.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the tightest export control order had been placed on cluster bombs, which extended to banks supplying money to manufacturers. The government was aware the control order was not working and "is working on it".

Esther Vandenbroucke, of Netwerk Vlaanderen and one of the report's authors, said: "The responsibility to ban cluster munitions is a shared responsibility. It requires courage, and it requires an effort. We are just months away from an international treaty entering into force and it is time for signatory states to the Convention on Cluster Munitions for non-signatory states and for financial institutions to act now."

Last December, the New Zealand government's pension fund sold shares in Lockheed Martin because of its link to the manufacture of cluster bombs. Similar actions have been taken by the Irish and Dutch governments.

Millions of people will be endangered by up to tens of millions of cluster bomblets that have not yet exploded, causing lasting economic and social harm to communities in more than 20 countries for decades to come, campaigners have warned. The vast majority of cluster bomb casualties occur while victims are carrying on their daily lives.

On Monday, a Lebanese 20-year-old man had his leg amputated after a cluster bomb exploded in southern Lebanon Houla village. A security source said he was collecting wood in his border village when the explosion occurred.

The Israeli army made extensisve use of cluster bombs during the war in south Lebanon three years ago. Cluster bombs were most recently used by both the Georgians and the Russians in the dispute over South Ossetia. They were also used in the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions.

Women, elderly among those beaten with Israeli rifle-butts in Hebron

Ma'an Images

October 29, 2009

Hebron – Ma’an – Ten Palestinians including a 70-year-old woman, seven women and two journalists were attacked by Israeli forces south of Hebron on Thursday, local sources said.

The incident began when Israeli soldiers and armored vehicles demolished a water reservoir belonging to Al-Baqa'a resident Mohammad Mustafa Jaber. Reports from the right-wing Israeli Arutz Sheva said the infrastructure was built by Oxfam and funded by the EU. Oxfam representatives said the claim was being investigated.

During the course of the demolition, the family said the bulldozer also destroyed irrigation networks used for crops.

In an attempt to stop the demolition, the family notified the press, and tried to block the way of the demolition crew as it approached the lands. Soldiers responded by beating the family members and two journalists who responded to the scene.

The two journalists, identified by medics as Abed Al-Hafith Al-Hashlamun, with the European Press Agency (EPA) and Najeh Al-Hashlamun said he works with a news agency called "ABA" were injured as they attempted to document the demolition and violent actions of the Israeli soldiers.

An eyewitness said soldiers "hit the residents and the journalists with the rifle butts, batons and feet."

Seven of the injured residents were identified as:

Mari Jaber
Najah Jaber
Kawkab Jaber
Rudeina Jaber
Najah Fadel Jaber
Ibtesam Rashed Jaber
Izdehar Falah Jaber
Amenah Jaber, 70