Posted on 12/17/2006 4:03:30 PM PST by DAVEY CROCKETT
VEVAK learned its methodology from the Soviet KGB and many of the Islamist revolutionaries who supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini actually studied at Moscow's Patrice Lumumba Friendship University, the Oxford of terrorism. Documented Iranian alumni include the current Supreme Leader (the faqih) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, under whose Velayat-e Faqih (Rule of the Islamic Jurisprudent) apparatus it has traditionally operated. Its current head is Cabinet Minister Hojatoleslam Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ezhei, a graduate of Qom's Haqqani School, noted for its extremist position advocating violence against enemies and strict clerical control of society and government. The Ministry is very well funded and its charge, like that of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (the Pasdaran) is to guard the revolutionary Islamic Iranian regime at all costs and under all contingencies.
From the KGB playbook, VEVAK learned the art of disinformation. It's not so difficult to learn: tell the truth 80% of the time and lie 20%. Depending on how well a VEVAK agent wants to cover his/her tracks, the ratio may go up to 90/10, but it never drops below the 80/20 mark as such would risk suspicion and possible detection. The regime in Teheran has gone to great lengths to place its agents in locations around the world. Many of these operatives have been educated in the West, including the U.K. and the United States. Iranian government agencies such as embassies, consulates, Islamic cultural centers, and airline offices regularly provide cover for the work of VEVAK agents who dress well and are clean shaven, and move comfortably within our society. In this country, because of the severance of diplomatic relations, the principal site of VEVAK activities begins at the offices of Iran's Permanent Mission to the UN in New York.
Teheran has worked diligently to place its operatives in important think tanks and government agencies in the West. Some of its personnel have been recruited while in prison through torture or more often through bribery, or a combination of both. Others are Islamist revolutionaries that have been set up to look like dissidents - often having been arrested and imprisoned, but released for “medical reasons”. The clue to detecting the fake “dissident” is to read carefully what he/she writes, and to ask why this vocal “dissident” was released from prison when other real dissidents have not been released, indeed have been grievously tortured and executed. Other agents have been placed in this country for over twenty-five years to slowly go through the system and rise to positions of academic prominence due to their knowledge of Farsi and Shia Islam or Islamist fundamentalism.
One of the usual tactics of VEVAK is to co-opt academia to its purposes. Using various forms of bribery, academics are bought to defend the Islamic Republic or slander its enemies. Another method is to assign bright students to train for academic posts as specialists in Iranian or Middle East affairs. Once established, such individuals are often consulted by our government as it tries to get a better idea of how it should deal with Iran. These academics then are in a position to skew the information, suggesting the utility of extended dialogue and negotiation, or the danger and futility of confronting a strong Iran or its proxies such as Hizballah (Hezbollah). These academics serve to shield the regime from an aggressive American or Western policy, and thereby buy more time for the regime to attain its goals, especially in regards to its nuclear weaponry and missile programs.
MOIS likes to use the media, especially electronic media, to its advantage. One of VEVAK's favorite tricks is setting up web sites that look like they are opposition sites but which are actually controlled by the regime. These sites often will be multilingual, including Farsi, German, Arabic French, and English. Some are crafted carefully and are very subtle in how they skew their information (e.g., Iran-Interlink, set up and run by Massoud Khodabandeh and his wife Ann Singleton from Leeds, England); others are less subtle, simply providing the regime's point of view on facts and events in the news (e.g., www.mujahedeen.com or www.mojahedin.ws). This latter group is aimed at the more gullible in our open society and unfortunately such a market exists. However, if one begins to do one's homework, asking careful questions, the material on these fake sites generally does not add up.
Let's examine a few examples of VEVAK's work in the United States. In late October, 2005, VEVAK sent three of its agents to Washington to stage a press event in which the principal Iranian resistance movement, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK), was to be slandered. Veteran VEVAK agent Karim Haqi flew from Amsterdam to Canada where he was joined by VEVAK's Ottawa agents Amir-Hossein Kord Rostami and Mahin (Parvin-Mahrokh) Haji, and the three flew from Toronto to Washington. Fortunately the resistance had been tracking these three, informed the FBI of their presence in Washington, and when the three tried to hold a press conference, the resistance had people assigned to ask pointed questions of them so that they ended the interview prematurely and fled back to Canada.
Abolghasem Bayyenet is a member of the Iranian government. He serves as a trade expert for the Ministry of Commerce. But his background of study and service in the Foreign Ministry indicates that Bayyenet is more than just an economist or a suave and savvy businessman. In an article published in Global Politician on April 23, 2006, entitled “Is Regime Change Possible in Iran?”, Bayyenet leads his audience to think that he is a neutral observer, concerned lest the United States make an error in its assessment of Iran similar to the errors of intelligence and judgment that led to our 2003 invasion of Iraq, with its less than successful outcome. However, his carefully crafted bottom line is that the people of Iran are not going to support regime change and that hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually has achieved greater popularity than his predecessors because of his concern for the problems of the poor and his fight for economic and social justice. To the naive, Bayyenet makes Ahmadinejad sound positively saintly. Conveniently overlooked is the occurrence of over four thousand acts of protest, strikes, anti-regime rallies, riots, and even political assassinations by the people of Iran against the government in the year since Ahmadinejad assumed office. So too, the following facts are ignored: the sizeable flight of capital, the increase in unemployment, and the rising two-figure rate of inflation, all within this last year. Bayyenet is a regime apologist, and when one is familiar with the facts, his arguments ring very hollow. However, his English skills are excellent, and so the naОve might be beguiled by his commentary.
Mohsen Sazegara is VEVAK's “reformed revolutionary”. A student supporter of Khomeini before the 1979 revolution, Sazegara joined the “imam” on his return from exile and served in the government for a decade before supposedly growing disillusioned.
He formed several reformist newspapers but ran afoul of the hardliners in 2003 and was arrested and imprisoned by VEVAK. Following “hunger strikes”, Sazegara was released for health reasons and permitted to seek treatment abroad. Although critical of the government and particularly of Ahmadinejad and KhameneМ, Sazegara is yet more critical of opposition groups, leaving the impression that he favors internal regime change but sees no one to lead such a movement for the foreseeable future. His bottom line: no one is capable of doing what needs to be done, so we must bide our time. Very slick, but his shadow shows his likely remaining ties to the MOIS.
http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_27144.shtml
Govt had warnings of Chinese New Year attacks but were powerless to act
http://etna.mcot.net/query.php?nid=28089
Govt had warnings of Chinese New Year attacks but were powerless to act
BANGKOK, Feb 23 (TNA) – Thai Defence Minister Boonrawd Somtas admitted
Thursday that there were loopholes in the authorities' strategy to deal
with renewed insurgency in the deep south, and that despite receiving
intelligence information about the Sunday attacks, they were powerless
to prevent the incidents.
Gen. Boonrawd told Parliament during a session Thursday on the crisis
in the restive region that the insurgents could draw on the support of
an estimated 10,000 young people, and could threaten the security of any
city in Thailand.
The defence minister said that insurgents previously could only count
on less than 100 people. He attributed the dramatic increase to the
government's long-term neglect of the region.
He blamed the government of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
for destroying an intelligence and communication network established by
the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre, which his
administration dissolved in 2002.
The centre was reinstated by the interim Surayud government two months
ago. Authorities at present have only succeeded in neutralising about
10 out of some 200 villages suspected of being militant strongholds in
the three southernmost provinces Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat.
Militants were able to make exit after launching successful attacks
because they had far better knowledge of local areas, Gen. Boonrawd said.
It was despite substantial reinforcements in the region which include
20,000 army troops, 10,000 police personnel and 17,000 officials from
the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre.
The defence minister told parliament that it would not matter how many
security personnel were deployed, peace would not be restored without
local residents' cooperation.
"The Sunday offensive shows that we have yet to win over people's
hearts and minds. They are not cooperating with the authorities. Moreover,
entertainment venues such as karaoke bars do not heed
calls to screen customers and search them for weapons. Public distrust
and negligence have allowed insurgents to operate freely," Gen Boonrawd
said.
He added that teenagers have been targeted by militants as potential
recruits and children as young as 12 years old were indoctrinated in
school to hate the Thai state.
But he said it would be wrong to abandon the government's
peace-oriented approach in dealing with renewed insurgency in the trouble-plagued
region.
"Violence is a malaise that requires time, patience and restraint if it
is to be dealt with successfully. We will not fall into the militants'
trap by resorting to violence as it would only be used as a pretext by
foreign countries to intervene in our internal affair," Gen. Boonrawd
said.
(TNA)-E110
Thanks to Milford421, for this report:
Stepfather used cyanide to hurt family - TX
http://www.khou.com/news/local/stories/khou070223_ac_cyanide.58c9fcc.
html
Teen: Stepfather used cyanide to hurt family
06:19 PM CST on Friday, February 23, 2007
By Carolyn Campbell / 11 News
Rucks Russell's 5pm update | Click to watch video| Raw video: Teen
talks to media
Richmond home where a man reportedly tried to kill himself remains
closed Friday and authorities have launched a wide scale
investigation.
Authorities say the man, who is a licensed chemist, tried to ingest
potassium cyanide at his home on Richmond Ferry Court.
Now a clean up crew must decontaminate the home.
Thursday night's events left the man, his family and an area
hospital wondering just how many peole were contaminated.
KHOU-TV
The home has been roped off.
A female family member saw it and knocked it out of his hands,
spilling it everywhere.
Now the man's stepdaughter says the man had not only tried to kill
himself, but his family too. She said it happened after the man's
wife confronted him and tried to leave. "We were all going to go.
Leave so that we can all be in peace. Me, my grandmother and little
brother were downstairs. I guess she went upstairs and told him we
were going to go. All I hard was her screaming. No! No! stop. I just
ran as fast as I could upstairs. Ran. Ran. I as like hurry. Hurry."
Fort Bend County deputies and Pecan Grove ambulances responded,
bringing him to Oak Bend Hospital at 1705 Jackson.
Several people came into contact with the man before realizing it
was cyanide, and part of the hospital's emergency room had to be
shut down while it was decontaminated.
The 40-year-old contaminated his wife, two children, an adult female
relative and the family dog.
In all, nearly 20 people were decontaminated including a Fort Bend
deputy, several paramedics and fire personnel, five hospital
employees and three other patients that were picked up by the same
ambulance.
KHOU - TV
"We were sitting out here in the waiting room, they came up and
called her name, and we started out with them and they brought us
outside and said we had been contaminated with cyanide," Betty
McCallister said.
"Well my aunt called me and said I needed to bring me and her up
here and told me I needed to be showered," Tina Moore said. "She
called me at home, and so we came up here."
Steven Vincent: Switched Off in Basra
[This opinion piece by Steven Vincent appeared in the New York Times just days before his murder by one of Basra's a Shiite death squads who, it is believed, killed him because he had exposed them. With the British drawing down in southern Iraq and taking up mainly defensive positions around Basra, Steven's fear that "unless the British include in their security sector reform strategy some basic lessons in democratic principles, Basra risks falling further under the sway of Islamic extremists and their Western-trained police enforcers," has become reality -ed.]
July 31, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor
Switched Off in Basra
By STEVEN VINCENT
Basra, Iraq
THE British call it being "switched on" - a state of high morale and readiness, similar to what Americans think of as "gung ho" attitude. During the 10 days I recently spent embedded with the British-led multinational force in this southern Iraqi city, I met many switched-on soldiers involved in what the British call "security sector reform." An effort to maintain peace while training Iraqis to handle their own policing and security, security sector reform is fundamental to the British-American exit strategy. As one British officer put it, "The sooner the locals assume their own security, the sooner we go home."
From this perspective, the strategy appears successful. Particularly in terms of the city police officers, who are proving adept at the close-order drills, marksmanship and proper arrest techniques being drilled into them by their foreign instructors. In addition, police salaries are up, the officers have shiny new patrol cars, and many sport snazzy new uniforms. Better yet, many of these new Iraqi officers seem switched-on themselves. "We want to serve our country" is a repeated refrain.
From another view, however, security sector reform is failing the very people it is intended to serve: average Iraqis who simply want to go about their lives. As has been widely reported of late, Basran politics (and everyday life) is increasingly coming under the control of Shiite religious groups, from the relatively mainstream Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to the bellicose followers of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Recruited from the same population of undereducated, underemployed men who swell these organizations' ranks, many of Basra's rank-and-file police officers maintain dual loyalties to mosque and state.
In May, the city's police chief told a British newspaper that half of his 7,000-man force was affiliated with religious parties. This may have been an optimistic estimate: one young Iraqi officer told me that "75 percent of the policemen I know are with Moktada al-Sadr - he is a great man." And unfortunately, the British seem unable or unwilling to do anything about it.
The fact that the British are in effect strengthening the hand of Shiite organizations is not lost on Basra's residents.
"No one trusts the police," one Iraqi journalist told me. "If our new ayatollahs snap their fingers, thousands of police will jump." Mufeed al-Mushashaee, the leader of a liberal political organization called the Shabanea Rebellion, told me that he felt that "the entire force should be dissolved and replaced with people educated in human rights and democracy."
Unfortunately, this is precisely what the British aren't doing. Fearing to appear like colonial occupiers, they avoid any hint of ideological indoctrination: in my time with them, not once did I see an instructor explain such basics of democracy as the politically neutral role of the police in a civil society. Nor did I see anyone question the alarming number of religious posters on the walls of Basran police stations. When I asked British troops if the security sector reform strategy included measures to encourage cadets to identify with the national government rather than their neighborhood mosque, I received polite shrugs: not our job, mate.
The results are apparent. At the city's university, for example, self-appointed monitors patrol the campuses, ensuring that women's attire and makeup are properly Islamic. "I'd like to throw them off the grounds, but who will do it?" a university administrator asked me. "Most of our police belong to the same religious parties as the monitors."
Similarly, the director of Basra's maternity hospital, Mohammad Nasir, told me that he frequently catches staff members pilfering equipment to sell to private hospitals, but hesitates to call the police: "How do I know what religious party they are affiliated with, and what their political connection is to the thieves?"
It is particularly troubling that sectarian tensions are increasing in Basra, which has long been held up as the brightest spot of the liberated Iraq. "Are the police being used for political purposes?" asked Jamal Khazal Makki, the head of the Basra branch of the Sunni-dominated Islamic Party. "They arrest people and hold them in custody, even though the courts order them released. Meanwhile, the police rarely detain anyone who belongs to a Shiite religious party."
An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain anonymous, confirmed to me the widespread rumors that a few police officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations - mostly of former Baath Party members - that take place in Basra each month. He told me that there is even a sort of "death car": a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment.
Meanwhile, the British stand above the growing turmoil, refusing to challenge the Islamists' claim on the hearts and minds of police officers. This detachment angers many Basrans. "The British know what's happening but they are asleep, pretending they can simply establish security and leave behind democracy," said the police lieutenant who had told me of the assassinations. "Before such a government takes root here, we must experience a transformation of our minds."
In other words, real security reform requires psychological as well as physical training. Unless the British include in their security sector reform strategy some basic lessons in democratic principles, Basra risks falling further under the sway of Islamic extremists and their Western-trained police enforcers.
Steven Vincent, the author of "In the Red Zone: A Journey Into the Soul of Iraq," is writing a book about Basra.
CK: At least 15 persons detained in Moscow for participation in march for peace in Chechnya
Caucasian Knot / Memorial
23/2/2007
At least 15 persons detained in Moscow for participation in march for
peace in Chechnya
Today in Moscow, at least 15 persons have been detained by "OMON"
(special militia) during suppression of a non-sanctioned march of
anarchists against the war in Chechnya and militarism, two minors among
them. The participants of the action who remained at large and kept
contacts with their comrades by mobile phones have provided the
information to the correspondent of the "Caucasian Knot."
We remind you that today, from about 12:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., in the
centre
of Moscow, about eighty anarchists held a non-sanctioned march against
the war in Chechnya and militarism.
The events in memory of the 63rd anniversary of deportation of Vainakh
peoples started yesterday in Chechnya and Ingushetia. According to
sources of the "Caucasian Knot," apart from Moscow, today mourning and
protest actions were held in Chelyabinsk, Saint Petersburg,
Yekaterinburg, Prague, Tokyo, Warsaw, Turin, Vienna, cities of France,
Great Britain, Belgium, USA and other countries.
Author: Vyacheslav Feraposhkin, CK correspondent
http://eng.kavkaz.memo.ru/newstext/engnews/id/1178561.html
PW: Thirteen years spent in a reservation - Nura Tsutiyeva's recollections
February 23rd 2007 · Prague Watchdog
Thirteen years spent in a reservation
By Tamara Chagayeva
Sixty-three years ago, in February, the Chechen people suffered a
tragedy that only began to be talked about half a century later. The
wholesale deportation of people according to their ethnic origin, later
categorized as genocide, inflicted an irreparable loss on many later
generations. Yet exactly fifty years later, Chechens had to endure all
the horrors of genocide for a second time - during two wars that were
among the cruellest and bloodiest in the history of mankind.
That is how those events are remembered by eyewitnesses of the tragedy
who experienced them in the early years of their youth. Throughout the
whole of their lives they have carried this pain, not daring to share
it
with even their closest family members born after the deportation. And
no one knows how to explain this long silence – whether it was caused
by
a fear of traumatising their families with such tragic stories, or by a
fear of the authorities, who always tried to keep those dark pages of
history out of view.
The following are the recollections of Nura Tsutiyeva, one of the
witnesses of the deportation, who currently lives in New York. If you
find her story interesting, you can read the recollections of two more
witnesses, Satsita Magomadova from Shatoy and Adiz Astalov from
Sayasan,
in the next issue of our Russian-language magazine for Chechens,
Chechen
Society Today, which will be published shortly (see
http://journal.watchdog.cz). All of these people are approximately the
same age – the deportation took place in the early years of their
youth.
Nura Tsutiyeva's recollections (recorded by Tamara Chagayeva):
February 1944 came. I remember that at the very beginning of the month
the weather turned clear and sunny – the snow melted everywhere, the
roads and paths dried out. All the able-bodied men were now being
called
up to work on repairing the road that led through our village of Starye
Atagi into the mountain districts. In those days it was mostly the
women
and children who stayed at home. At this time, the rumour of a
forthcoming deportation passed through our village. People often talked
about the subject, but hardly anyone believed such a thing was
possible.
On February 23rd 1944, on a clear and sunny morning, I was going to the
school to give the children their lessons. As I walked, I heard a sharp
knocking at a window in one of the houses – some anxious women were
making signs to me, asking me to come inside for a moment. They were
distant relatives of ours.
When I entered the house, they kept interrupting one another as they
began to tell me conflicting stories about an impending deportation.
Someone had apparently managed to warn them in advance.
I remember saying to them: - ‘Don’t worry, after all, they can’t just
arrest everyone and send them away. Perhaps there are people who are
suspected of something... What have you got to do with it?’
At that moment three military men walked in. From their shoulder
stripes
I could see that two of them were senior in rank, and one was a
soldier.
One of the senior officers said straight off, without looking at
anyone,
in a peremptory tone: ‘Get ready quickly! You can take the most
essential clothes, and also some things from your beds. Tie up your
belongings in a bundle. The trucks will be here soon, and they must be
loaded at once. You’re being deported – there’s an official decree.’
When she grasped the sense of what had been said, the mother and her
two
daughters who were younger than me, and also her teenage son (the head
of the family had died several years ago) began to sob loudly. I tried
to reassure them, offered them my help and started to gather things in
a
bundle. When the women had calmed down a little, I told the servicemen:
‘I need to go home. I don’t live here.’
The most senior one shouted:
‘No one is going anywhere!’
After a few moments I made another attempt to explain the situation to
them calmly:
‘I was on my way to the school to give the children their lessons.
These
are their exercise books. I have a mother at home, a younger sister, a
niece – the daughter of my brother, who was killed at the front. We
have
all our documents.’
A little later the most senior officer ordered the private to escort me
to the house. There were a very large number of soldiers on the street.
Walking in at the front door of our house, and trying to remain calm, I
said to my mother:
‘It looks as though they really are going to deport everyone. Mother,
don’t worry. Your daughters are grown-up now, we’re healthy and
educated. We won’t come to any harm.’
Just then an officer aged about fifty entered our house, and introduced
himself as a captain. He was wearing a black leather raincoat. First he
asked if there were any men in the house. I began to explain that our
father had died long ago, and our brother had been killed at the front.
He sat down on a chair, took a large sheet of paper from his field bag
and read out a Decree of the Presidium the Supreme Soviet of the USSR,
according to which the entire Chechen people was to be deported. After
that he proceeded to examine our documents – our dead brother’s
letters,
his photographs, and then transferred his gaze to his daughter.
‘I think we’re going to sort you out, and you’re coming back to the
motherland,’ he said, and fell silent.
In her bewilderment, mother reached now for one thing and then for
another, went into the kitchen and back into the living room again. And
did so several times. Noticing her confusion, the captain advised her:
‘Gather up your best clothes, take some bed-linen, and food for about
ten days.’
No one could have got that much food together in those difficult days
of
wartime. We made a bundle of a few maize flat-cakes, a little cheese,
some onions, and maize flour. The captain showed us where to take the
things, and left the room. Mother lost heart completely. She looked and
listened apathetically, as though she were completely disconnected from
life.
In the afternoon the weather began to change abruptly: the sky was
overcast with grey clouds and it was much colder outside. Everywhere
there was the lowing of unfed cattle and the barking of anxious dogs.
It
seemed that nature itself was protesting against the unprecedented
crime
that was being committed.
We carried our bundles to the place that had been indicated, and then
went back to the room: there it was warmer, though the stove had not
been lit in the house since morning. We made do with a small suitcase
which contained clothes, and above all our documents and photographs,
including our brother’s letters from the front and from hospital.
I was unable to stay at home. I felt restless. When I went outside, I
heard loud weeping from the direction of the neighbours. Women were
crying in the yard of my cousin’s house. I quickly went over to them
saw
a short lieutenant who was frightening the mother and daughter with his
violent shouting.
‘Why are you shouting like that? Can’t you see that they don’t
understand you? They don’t know Russian!’
I tried to speak quietly, because I didn’t know what to expect from
him.
I didn’t listen to him, as I felt a deep hatred for him and his like.
Today he was a ‘hero’ because he could exercise his power with
impunity,
and because there were no men-folk, not only in their house, but also
in
the entire district – all the men had been taken away again, allegedly
to repair the mountain road. I tried to calm the women down, explained
what was required of them, helped them to take their belongings to
where
ours were.
The trucks that were to take us to the train had been delayed. Now we
learned from our neighbours that the soldiers were refusing to let them
take essential items with them, confiscating the women’s gold jewellery
and their family heirlooms, whether it was the chest band for a dress,
the belt of a national costume or anything else of any value.
In the afternoon a whole crowd of people with rucksacks marched through
the centre of the village. We who were being deported guessed that
these
people were going to move into our homes, and would take possession of
all it had taken us an entire lifetime to acquire. I very much wanted
to
know why such a fate had been prepared for us, what guilt had been
incurred by a whole people which was being torn away from its rightful
place in the coldest month of year, and being sent off in conditions of
penal servitude to some unknown destination. And all this was taking
place at the very time Soviet troops were moving triumphantly to the
Western borders of the Soviet Union. A people weary with all the
difficulties of war, the endless losses, the very grave material
situation, was waiting, just as all people were, for the end of the
war,
the return home of fathers, husbands, brothers, sons. And now this
people itself was being sent into the unknown.
It was getting on for evening when the open freight trucks entered the
village. The first to be lifted into the trucks were the young children
and old folk, and then the rest of the people began to climb into the
rear of the vehicles. We were driven to the railway station, where the
wagons of a goods train stood. As we got down from the truck near the
wagon in which we were to travel, large flakes of snow began to fall.
There was a sense of intolerable sadness.
My sister and I decided to leave mother with our niece not far from the
wagon, and we put the suitcase beside her, planning to take it onto the
train later. Somehow we had to find a place in the wagon: we realized
that on a goods train there couldn’t be any seats in the usual sense of
the word, but we had to find a corner for our family. Where mother was,
soldiers were constantly running to and fro, checking the proceedings.
Meanwhile mother held the little girl in her arms, anxiously observing
what was going on around her. When at last we managed to find a place
in
the wagon, I ran off to fetch the suitcase and mother and our niece.
The
suitcase was gone: taking advantage of a woman’s bewilderment and the
fact that she was attending to a small child, the soldiers had carried
our suitcase off. And we had thought that here, next to the soldiers,
it
would be safer...
We had lost the clothes, the photographs, and our brother’s letters
from
the front.
There were a hundred and twenty people in our wagon. The train stood at
the station all night, until six in the morning. When dawn arrived,
light began to penetrate the two tiny windows. People began to
investigate their belongings. When they heard about the lost suitcase,
they were worried. The men who were acting as leaders told everyone to
untie their bundles in order to make sure there wasn’t a pilferer among
the wagon’s inmates. Everyone was very sympathetic to us about what had
happened. We were finally convinced that the suitcase had been stolen
by
soldiers.
The doors were tightly closed from the outside, and only the soldiers
escorting us could open them. On the first day of our journey, when the
sun began to go behind the horizon, the train stopped somewhere in the
steppe. We were allowed to get out for one hour. When we emerged from
the wagon, we could hardly recognize one another – everyone was black
with coal dust (these wagons were normally used to carry coal). We
managed to wash ourselves somehow in melted snow, but we didn’t look
any
better – it was no simple matter to wipe the coal dust off one’s face.
As we travelled on, two or three people were allowed out of the wagon
once a day to fetch drinking water for everyone. Once a day we were
permitted to get out of the wagon. Stops of this kind lasted about an
hour. An armed guard was immediately established around the train. Of
course, at every opportunity people asked the question that was most
important to them: ‘Where are we being taken?’, to which the soldiers
invariably replied that they didn’t know anything.
People in the wagons began to fall ill, and a few days later we learned
that old people who had been overwhelmed by the journey had begun to
die. They were buried right there, in the steppe, close to the wagons.
When we had been travelling for more than two weeks, the train
sometimes
stopped on the outskirts of a village somewhere. We would hear the
medical workers shouting from outside:
‘Are there any sick people?’
They didn’t come into the wagons, of course: there, beyond the wagon’s
cramped and stuffy interior, lay another world, and hardly anyone from
that world dared to step on to ‘our’ territory. By now there were sick
people in many of the wagons. But who will abandon a family member in
the knowledge that one may never see them again, that there will no
chance of giving them a funeral or even knowing where they are buried?
So the sick relatives were kept on board the train, and later they were
joined... by the dead... I knew that in the next wagon a woman was
carrying her first child, a three-month-old baby boy, in a suitcase.
The
little one died of hypothermia.
A week before we arrived at our destination, our mother fell very
seriously ill. She lay in the corner of the wagon with a high
temperature, exhausted by the endless, incredibly difficult journey, by
all the misfortunes that had fallen to our lot, and by that uncertainty
of what awaited us in this alien land. We all understood that she was
worried not for her own life, but for us, her children and
granddaughter.
On the second day of her illness, mother was unable to speak. I looked
at her and was unable to help her. I couldn’t even hand her a mug of
hot
water, to thaw some of the arctic cold from her insides. I went down to
the other end of the wagon, wiped away my tears and returned again,
hiding my reddened eyes. I was the eldest child, and that meant I was
responsible for the others. But what could I do in that confined space?
All the women had very long hair, yet we were in conditions where it
was
not even possible to wash it. It may be imagined what happened to human
beings in the course of a journey that lasted an entire month.
At last, at 11am on March 22, we were allowed to detrain at the city of
Leninogorsk in the East Kazakhstan Oblast. It was real snowy winter,
with frost of Siberian proportions. This was a sight to behold:
deportees exhausted by the journey, hardly able to move their feet,
carrying their sick family members outside. A bed-like contraption was
set up right there on the snow, and the sick people were placed on it
with great care. The sick and dying lay outside almost every wagon of
the long train. The soldiers who had been escorting us made a leisurely
count of the deportees, then gave the lists to the officials from the
city commandant’s office. We all crowded around mother, trying to warm
her with our bodies and protect her from the piercing cold.
I remember three Russian women coming up to us and saying:
‘Tell us, girl: why have you been deported?’
‘We don’t know why we’ve been deported,’ were the very first words I
was
able to get out through my frozen lips.
The compassion in the eyes of these women and their sympathetic gaze
had
an effect: with those women I shared the thoughts that had tormented me
throughout the journey. What crimes could justify the deportation of an
entire people - not just individuals, and not even individual families,
but an entire people! At a time of vicious war, when soldiers were
needed at the front, when this long train could have served to bring
victory over the enemy closer, and these people, uprooted from their
native villages, could have been used to good purpose at the front. And
at a time when many of our men-folk were fighting bravely there – some
of them had been killed and remained on the battlefields. One example
was the only son of my mother, who at that moment lay on wretched rags
in the snow of Kazakhstan.
‘We’ve also been deported, as kulaks. Many of our people have perished
in prisons and camps or died of illness. We’ve been living here ever
since. Believe us, we greatly sympathize with you.’ Muffling themselves
up in their simple clothing, the women wiped away their tears.
The new arrivals’ first concern, which affected solely the deportees,
was to find beds for the sick people at the local hospital. With great
difficulty we succeeded in getting mother taken there. All around there
were people waiting to be admitted. Apparently another train had
arrived
before our one. Typhoid had broken out among the deportees. Many
hospitals were given the status of isolation centres. There was a
shocking lack of beds. I remember how, trying to control my sobs, I
attempted to persuade the head physician of the hospital to admit
mother. The doctor was walking quickly from another building on a
hurried visit to the hospital. I remember him saying curtly as he
passed:
‘You can’t come in here!’
I didn’t immediately realize that I was holding onto his white coat,
jumping ahead of him and explaining that we had no one left except
mother. I felt I was surrounded by a thick mist, and that there was no
way out. And all of a sudden I clearly heard the words:
‘Bring her mother inside!’
All my life I have remembered that doctor with the deepest gratitude:
at
the most difficult moment he didn’t leave mother under the open sky.
I helped to bring her into the bathroom, to bathe her, to put on her
hospital clothes, and then together with the nurses carried her up to
the second floor. As soon as we got her into bed I calmed down. She was
still very weak. Sitting down beside her, I pretended that we were all
fine, and that all she needed to do was get better.
For a day and a night we were put in a cold, empty building that had a
cement floor. We later learned that it housed a military factory which
had been evacuated from Moscow. We were shivering with cold, we were
hungry, and our new dwelling did nothing at all to make us feel that we
had in any way escaped from the difficult journey that had lasted a
whole month.
The next day, all of us, tired and exhausted, were sent to the
bathhouse. Many people were falling ill. The stress we had endured
throughout the month was evidently taking its toll. I also felt the
effect of this. Our warm clothes, which had been taken away to be
disinfected, turned out to be completely unwearable when they were
returned to us. I experienced all the events that took place after we
arrived at our destination as an oppressive, interminable dream.
Then they began to house us in the empty buildings and assign jobs to
us. No one was interested in what education we had, or what profession
we followed. One after the other, we were all given labour-intensive
and
low-paid work.
Thus our grey and monotonous life in an alien land began. Life in a
reservation. When a person could be sent to prison or into exile, or
even further, to Siberia, for the slightest offence. If one didn’t
report to the commandant’s office in time, one was punished, if one
didn’t put in enough work days, one was punished, and if one travelled
without special permission beyond the limits of the village where one
had been sent, one received a long sentence in the labour camps. Such
were our lives in the course of those thirteen long years.
Translated by David McDuff.
www.watchdog.cz
Spy reports of jounos' deaths 'destroyed'
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21275200-1702,00.html?from=public_rss
Spy reports of jounos' deaths 'destroyed'
By Belinda Tasker
February 23, 2007 06:09pm
Article from: AAP
A GOVERNMENT intelligence chief destroyed documents revealing the
deaths of Australian-based journalists in East Timor in 1975 in a bid to
stop the news spreading, an inquest has been told.
The claims made at the inquest into the death of one of the so-called
Balibo Five came amid allegations that former prime minister Gough
Whitlam and two senior ministers knew about the group's fate within days.
The inquest was told how top secret details about the five deaths began
flowing into the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) on October 17,
1975 – the day after they died in Balibo.
The Whitlam Government delayed confirming the deaths until reports
emerged in the Jakarta press on October 20, ostensibly because it had
wanted to protect the secret sources and operations of the Defence Signals
Directorate (DSD).
Former OCI senior intelligence analyst Dr Gary Klintworth told the
inquest he saw details about the deaths on October 17 in a signals
intercept picked up overnight by DSD from the Indonesian military in East
Timor.
It said: "Among the dead are four white men. What are we going to do
with the bodies?"
Dr Klintworth said he immediately assumed the intercept was referring
to the journalists because he knew they were in Balibo and the
Indonesian military was poised to attack.
He then quickly wrote a briefing note about the deaths for an internal
OCI highlights memo that day.
"Australian journalists have been killed at Balibo," the memo said.
"There was a report that four white men were killed and instructions
were sought as to what to do with the bodies".
But he told Glebe Coroners Court when he handed the memo to OCI deputy
chief John Bennetts that day he was ordered to destroy it, along with a
batch of up to 25 copies.
Dr Klintworth described the move as unprecedented.
"I think he (Mr Bennetts) indicated that wasn't the kind of information
that should be distributed around Canberra," he said.
"He didn't want this information to get out."
Dr Klintworth said OCI did not want news spreading about how the
Australian Government was eavesdropping on the Indonesian military.
He said the preservation of good relations between the two countries
was of "paramount" importance and if news got out about Australia knowing
about the journalists' deaths it could harm relations.
Official government reports since 1975 have said Brian Peters, Greg
Shackleton, Gary Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie and Tony Stewart were killed
in crossfire between Indonesian forces and Fretilin troops in Balibo.
However, the inquest has this week been told claims the Whitlam and
Fraser Governments lied about the deaths and knew the men were killed on
orders from Indonesian forces.
Earlier today, OCI's former chief Rowen Osborn said he always assumed
Mr Whitlam, his defence and foreign ministers as well as their
department heads were told within days about the DSD intercept regarding the
journalists' deaths.
"I would assume .. they (the information about the journalists) would
have been couriered by DSD ... to people like the Prime Minister, or the
Prime Minister's office and the minister for foreign affairs and the
minister for defence," Mr Osborn said.
"This was highly significant material, so I just assumed they did (pass
it on)."
Mr Osborn said he and Mr Bennetts prepared a series of three special
reports on the deaths and sent them to a highly restricted number of
people, including Mr Whitlam, his foreign and ministers and their
department heads.
The inquest resumes on Monday.
Mosnews: Chechnya stage set with Kadyrov's appointment
NEWS ANALYSIS; No. 07
CHECHNYA STAGE SET WITH KADYROV'S APPOINTMENT
By Anna Arutunyan The Moscow News
President Vladimir Putin appointed Chechen premier Ramzan Kadyrov as
acting president of the volatile southern republic,replacing President
Alu Alkhanov and ending months of speculations about a power struggle
between the two leaders. The move was sudden, but not unexpected,
especially considering the Kremlin's long-term policy that stakes the
future of Chechnya's stability onthe Kadyrov clan.
In a decree signed last Thursday, Putin accepted Alkhanov's
resignation and appointed Kadyrov, who has been seen as Chechnya's
de-facto ruler since the death of his father Akhmad Kadyrov in 2004,to
the post of acting president. The appointment was more of a formality,
which fortified Kadyrov's rule and recognized him as a leader who has
established Putin's trust.
He is a guarantor that Chechnya is finally on its way to order and
stability, as the Kremlin itself prepares for a transfer of power in
2008.
Launching the regional presidential campaign, Dmitri
Kozak,presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, of which
Chechnya is a part, traveled to Grozny this week to nominate
threecandidates for presidency. Besides Kadyrov, who's appointment is
a virtual certainty, Kozak named Muslim Khuchiyev, the leader of the
regional faction of the Spravedlivaya Rossiya (A Just Russia)party,
and Grozny administrative head Shaid Dzhamaldayev. Putin nowhas 14
days to choose his favored candidate, who will be then approved by the
Chechen parliament (public elections in the regions were done away
with in 2004). By as early as Friday, before the other candidates were
announced, United Russia, the pro-Kremlin majority, threw its support
behind Kadyrov. State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov told journalists that
his party was prepared to support the de-facto Chechen leader.
Alkhanov had stressed that his resignation was a personal decision.
However, the move contrasted starkly with previous stances where he
insisted that he had no intention of abandoning his post. Meanwhile,
despite his relative autonomy, Russian media viewed the Chechen
president as incapable of withstanding any pressure from Kadyrov. Talk
of Alkhanov's resignation has persisted throughout Kadyrov's tenure as
premier. In May 2006, the two leaders met with President Putin in the
Kremlin to mediate an apparent power struggle. The meeting ended with
Putin dismissing the idea of Alkhanov's resignation.
Meanwhile, Kadyrov has repeatedly dismissed his ownpresidential
ambitions.
"I have not yet adapted myself to the role of president, and I say
again that I am not ready to be president," Kadyrov reportedly said at
a Monday press conference in Grozny. He added, however,"Whatever Putin
decides is what will be."
Nevertheless, the new leader has pressed ahead with plans for the
future.
This week, he launched a round table discussion dedicated to
strategies for rebuilding the war-torn province. He also spoke out
against an agreement that would delimitate spheres of power between
Moscow and Grozny, allotting Grozny more control over its oil. The
Vremya Novostei daily speculated that Kadyrov made this statementas a
favor to the Kremlin, in return for his appointment as acting
president. Still, the new acting president persisted in his attemptsto
establish more control over the republic's oil. Another statement
interpreted as an attempt to placate Putin was Kadyrov's allegation
that the exiled business tycoon Boris Berezovsky was behind the
murders of crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former
intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko.
Despite being referred to as a "warlord" in the Western press,Kadyrov
elicits either respect or indifference from the general population. A
poll conducted days before his appointment by the All-Russian Public
Opinion Research Center (VTSIOM) suggests that about 43 percent view
Kadyrov positively, while about a third - 34percent - were indifferent.
Indeed, Sergei Markedonov, a political expert specializing inthe
Caucasus region at the Moscow-based Institute of Political and
Military Analysis, says that Alkhanov's dismissal came at a pointwhen
"he lost the information war," despite being elected as president
earlier.
But another view was that Moscow's dependence on Kadyrov forstability
was dangerous. Mikhail Remizov of the Institute of National Strategies
was quoted in the Kommersant daily as saying that Kadyrov's latest
programs, as well as his insistence on more leverage from Moscow,
point to Russia's "capitulation."
"We don't value loyal people like Alkhanov, who, unlike Kadyrov's
clan, was always on Moscow's side." Remizov speculated that Kadyrov
could well use the prospect of new military conflicts in the region as
a playing card.
Markedonov also had grim views on what Kadyrov's appointment entails
for Russia as a whole. "This appointment shows a serious dependence by
Russia's government on the situation in Chechnya," hesaid in an
interview. "I don't even see where the tail that wagsthe dog is."
"The whole point of the deal is that Kadyrov upholds order onhis own
terms, but demonstrates that he is loyal to Moscow," hesays. "This is
good for the Kremlin, which can show that there ispeace in Chechnya,
and it is good for Kadyrov, who gets to privatize power in Chechnya."
He called this kind of dangerous balance a "regional apartheid," and
went as far as to compare it to Moscow's 18th century deal with the
Crimean Tartars, who were paid not to overrun Russia's southern lands.
Echoing other experts, Markedonov believes that Putin's stake on
Kadyrov is a crucial factor for the future of Russia itself."The idea
of a third term for Putin rests on the Chechen issue," he said. Before
Putin can decide how he transfers power, he must be certain of a
dependable strongman in Chechnya. Putin's personal pact with Kadyrov,
moreover, could play a role in keeping the president for a third term,
despite his insistence that he has no plans to run against the
constitution. "In the Kremlin they might think that everything is
worked out with Kadyrov, everything is predictable... and insist that
Putin stays to protect that status quo".
Generally, however, Markedonov feels that Chechens are weary of war,
and that there are other mechanisms of maintaining stability besides
Putin's one-on-one "pact" with Kadyrov. MN
Inquiry & Analysis—Iraq
February 23, 2007
No. 1477
The Other Face of Iraq
By: Nimrod Raphaeli*
To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit:
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD147707
Introduction
For most people, the images of Iraq are of a country mired in sectarian
violence or civil war – a country suffering car bombs, random killing,
kidnapping, ethnic cleansing – a country in collective despair. There
is
validity to these images.
However, alongside these tragic daily occurrences Iraq has its other
face, a
face of life and a degree of normalcy. This other face of Iraq is
reflected in
a series of pictures published by Halim Salman in his two monthly
magazines
published in London. The first is al-Tab’a al-Jadida [The New
Publication]
which, in terms of layout, is close to Life magazine or to the French
“Paris
Match.” The other monthly, titled al-Hilwa [The Beautiful Woman], is a
pictorial magazine for women. Halim has a news website al-Rafidayn
(www.alrafidayn.com) which disseminates up-to-date news from Iraq in
Arabic
seven days a week.
The 19 pictures selected for publication are grouped into five
categories:
confronting terrorism (3); daily life (7); education goes on (4);
modernity
and tradition (2); and music and dance (3).
*Nimrod Raphaeli is Senior Analyst of MEMRI's Middle East Economic
Studies
Program.
TO VIEW THE FULL REPORT AND IMAGES, PLEASE VISIT
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD147707
Stand-off along Lebanon-Israel border prompts state of alert
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=79843
Stand-off along Lebanon-Israel border prompts state of alert
Daily Star staff
Saturday, February 24, 2007
SOUTH LEBANON: The Lebanese and Israeli armies were in a state of alert
Friday from both sides of the barbed-wire fence separating the
Lebanese-Israeli border, the National News Agency (NNA) reported.
Lebanese infantry soldiers were patrolling the road near the Fatima
Gate
in the border region of Kfar Kila, as part of their routine mission,
when they were surprised by an Israeli patrol on the other side of the
barbed-wire fence.
Some of the Israeli troops were pointing their weapons at the Lebanese,
the NNA said.
In response, the Lebanese Army mobilized its troops, ready for any
military action.
After 25 minutes of alertness, the Israelis withdrew to the Israeli
settlement of Metulla and Spanish troops of the United Nations Interim
Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrolled the Fatima Gate, with three
bulldozers being stationed at the location to prevent any clashes from
breaking out.
This is the third incident this month between the two armies.
Last week, the Lebanese and Israeli armies exchanged fire near Maroun
al-Ras at the border after Israeli sappers reportedly searching for
explosive devices crossed into Lebanese territory, according to a
Lebanese Army spokesman.
Israel has insisted that it remained on the Israeli side of the border.
On Thursday, Israeli overflights drew anti-aircraft fire from the
Lebanese Army after flying at a low-altitude over the South. - The
Daily
Star
U.S. missiles in Poland, Czech Republic based on Iranian threat: McCormack
http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=955266
POL-U.S.-EUROPE-MISSILES
U.S. missiles in Poland, Czech Republic based on Iranian threat:
McCormack
WASHINGTON, Feb 23 (KUNA) -- The U.S. motivation for planning to
install
missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic is based on the
threat
posed by possible missile launches from the Middle East, specifically
Iran, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Friday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a speech this month, blasted the
United States for its plans to put such missiles into Europe.
" ... We are concerned about the threat posed by possible missile
launches from some states in the Middle East," McCormack said during a
department briefing. "We have referred specifically to Iran in this
regard in the past. And so that is our motivation behind working with
friends and allies in Europe in constructing part of a missile defense
architecture there".
U.S. officials are working with a variety of different countries on
this, he added.
"This is a global effort," McCormack said. "We have recently talked to
Poland and the Czech Republic concerning actual deployment of this
architecture".
This process and system will evolve over time, he said, "so just
because
now you have systems deployed, potentially, in the Czech Republic, as
well as in Poland, that does not mean that through other avenues of
cooperation, the architecture might change and evolve over time".
"So the bottom line is, it is designed to help protect our friends and
allies, as well as our interests in the United States, from missile
launches emanating from the Middle East, as well as from other areas of
the globe," McCormack said. (end) rm.bz.
KUNA 232233 Feb 07NNNN
There are several hidden links, I have not read them..granny
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/
Thursday, 15 February 2007
TERRORIST NETWORKS: Advanced Topics
Network_diagrams The media term "amorphous terrorist network" doesn't provide much for us to work with. That changes when you apply advanced network theory to the topic. A recent paper by the student Mitch Stripling called, "Embodying Terror Networks: How Direction Creates Structure" (PDF) is a great example of this. The paper starts with a strongly written review of how network theory has been applied to this topic. This review starts with the early work by Arquilla and Ronfeldt (Networks and Netwars) and their simplistic chain, star, and all-channel network topographies and continues to the highly connected hubs (which embodies both the vulnerability and resilience of this type of network topology) and power-law distributions of scale-free networks (for more, read the brief: "Scale-Free (Terror) Networks" from May 2004).
Directed Scale-Free Networks
Directed_newtorks1
The real insight in Mitch's paper comes from the realization that terrorist networks aren't merely generic scale-free networks, but more likely an important subset: directional scale-free networks. Scale-free networks are typically depicted by a set of nodes that are symmetrically connected (I link to you, you link to me). The dynamic flows that travel through those networks, whether they be information/fluids/electricity/contagion, can travel in both directions across symmetric links. However, that doesn't actually happen in many real world networks. In these networks, links have direction (I link to a major hub, and it doesn't link back to me). Directional networks, in contrast, have links that are asymmetric and offer only unidirectional flows. A good visualization of this can be seen in Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's diagram (inset, from "Linked"). It depicts the directional flow of connections (from the left to the right):
* a central core of highly connected (via bidirectional links) nodes,
* an IN continent (links in), an OUT continent (links out),
* and various other structures (a Tube of connections between IN/OUT continents, Tendrils that feed into each continent, and islands that are clusters of affiliated but unconnected nodes).
AlQaeda.net
When you apply the directional scale-free network model to al Qaeda, you see a fairly good fit, particularly when you assume that the al Qaeda of today is more of a movement than a cohesive organization (Mitch provides some historical analysis to back this up). Here's how it works. Al Qaeda's flow starts in connections from the feeder networks within the IN continent that instill a common animating narrative (Madrasahs, etc.). This common narrative drives social clusters to seek connections with the central core (bin Laden and associates) which will eventually transition them to become operational assets (terrorist cells) in the OUT continent. Here's the likely path of al Qaeda's evolution, some of which has already been seen, given this 'movement' model:
* al Qaeda's leadership will increasingly ask groups to act on their own, without seeking direct connections to the central leadership. This will be accomplished through the production of global media messages that contain targeting recommendation (which is essentially a low bandwidth command link). If this works, recruits within the IN continent can transition (FLOW) quickly to the OUT continent without ever directly connecting to the central core.
* IF this transition can be made, al Qaeda's central leadership would become relatively immune to disruption. Nearly all of the central core could be knocked out without damaging its ability to message those groups in the operational OUT continent. In the words of Valdis Krebs, al Qaeda could look very much like a doughnut and still be able to operate.
* Finally, local groups that enjoy a level of operational success within the OUT continent can and will go international autonomously, in that they will create/distribute media messaging and operationally manage attacks on a global scale. Zarqawi's efforts and the recent plea by al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia for attacks on global oil infrastructure are good examples of this. Within the network model, these groups would be seen as clusters on the periphery that can catalyze the operation of the entire network (by acting not just as feeders and operators, but as mirrors of the central core).
Posted by John Robb on Thursday, 15 February 2007 at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack (0)
Goodness!
Thanks Granny.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54405
Friday, February 23, 2007
FROM JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN
Osama targets Prince Harry
Code-breakers say top al-Qaida leader wants Iraq-bound royal – 'dead or alive'
Posted: February 23, 2007
9:28 a.m. Eastern
Editor's note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah;s G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence newsletter published by WND's founder. Annual subscriptions are $99, and monthly trial subscriptions for credit card users are just $9.95. Both provide instant access to the premium site.
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
Prince Harry (British Army photo)
LONDON – Osama bin Laden personally has targeted Iraq-bound Prince Harry, saying he is wanted "dead or alive," says an exclusive breaking report today in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
Code-breakers for MI6, Britain's external intelligence agency, have cracked al-Qaida's secret communications system and discovered Prince Harry is named as a prime target for the terror network when he goes on active service to Iraq.
The MI6 code-breakers also have discovered the first real evidence in over a year that bin Laden is alive and personally has authorized the capture of the young prince – third in line to the throne – "dead or alive."
The phrase is a chilling echo of that used by President Bush about bin Laden after 9/11.
(Story continues below)
Bin Laden has a $40 million bounty on his head after five years of evading capture. The U.S.-led hunt so far has cost over $1 billion.
While no reward so far has been offered by al-Qaida for Harry's capture or death, the terrorist group recently published a reminder: "We do not forget that our enemies will pay well to capture our beloved Sheik Osama. When the time comes we will also reward those who kill our enemies."
Both the queen and Prince Charles have been separately told by their private secretaries of the mounting intelligence concerns after they met with MI6 chief Sir John Scarlett.
"The Royals recognize Harry is no 'ordinary soldier' and that his capture would be a priceless propaganda prize for al-Qaida. What would Blair do if they threatened to behead Harry?" asked a senior intelligence officer.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54411
Friday, February 23, 2007
INVASION USA
It's official: Mexican trucks coming
100 companies will have unlimited access to U.S. roads
Posted: February 23, 2007
2:41 p.m. Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
(TTNews.com)
One hundred Mexican trucking companies will have unlimited access to U.S. roads to haul international cargo as part of a year-long pilot program, the Department of Transportation announced today
In return, 100 U.S. trucking companies will be allowed to operate in Mexico but at a later date.
Calling for congressional hearings, Teamsters General President Jimmy Hoffa compared the announcement to the "Dubai Ports debacle," charging President Bush is "playing a game of Russian roulette on America's highways."
As WND previously reported, the Teamsters Union has strongly protested the opening up of U.S. highways to Mexican trucks, citing safety concerns.
(Story continues below)
A spokesman for Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies, told WND the senator plans to hold hearings March 8 on the DOT pilot program.
A statement from Murray's office said she wants "to find out if the administration has really met the safety requirements that the law and the American people demand before long-haul Mexican trucks can travel across all our highways."
A spokeman from the office of Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, told WND hearings will most likely be held by Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, chaired by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.
Both Oberstar and DeFazio are traveling today and a spokesman from Oberstar's office said the lawmakers have not had a chance yet to confer, so no hearings have yet been scheduled.
Oberstar and DeFazio have posted statements on the homepage of the House Transportation and Infrastructure raising questions about DOT's proposed Mexican truck pilot program.
Todd Spencer, spokesman for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, told WND that "to reach a conclusion that the safety regime in Mexico is compatible in any way, shape, or form with what we have here in the U.S. is ignoring reality. Mexico has never had hours-in-service regulations or drug testing of drivers. We still can't verify the accuracy of somebody's Commercial Driver’s License in Mexico for safety or compliance."
Spencer stressed the decision is not just a border decision.
"Once Mexican trucks are in the United States on this pilot program, they can operate everywhere in the U.S.," Spencer told WND. "If some state highway policeman in Vermont or Iowa stops a Mexican commercial truck in their state, they have absolutely no idea of deciding if that vehicle is in compliance with federal safety requirements. Who's going to provide the training or the equipment for state police to verify the legality of a commercial truck from Mexico, in terms of its cargo, its haul, its log book, or even the driver? Local police aren't going to have a clue."
Hoffa cited Mexico's inability to satisfy the DOT Inspector General's requirements for safety that have been mandated to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, or FMCSA.
WND previously reported applications of some 678 Mexican motor carriers seeking long-haul authority to operate about 4,000 vehicles was being held up pending the completed DOT Inspector General's review of proposed FMCSA rules regarding safety reviews for Mexican trucks seeking to operate in the U.S., including rules for on-site safety inspections in Mexico.
The DOT spokesman also affirmed to WND the FMCSA has now drafted regulations that the DOT Inspector General has accepted, after an audit of the enforcement mechanisms and regulations the FMCSA created.
The Teamsters Union posed to WND a series of "unanswered questions," including:
* Will the drivers be checked against the terror watch list, or will our borders be open to anyone with a Mexican driver's license?
* Will the drivers be required to carry a Mexican passport as U.S. citizens are required to present their passports when entering the country from Mexico?
* Will all U.S. standards be applied to Mexican drivers, including the requirement that U.S. drivers undergo regular physicals and meet minimum age requirements?
* Will Mexican truck drivers participating in the pilot program be required to undergo drug and alcohol testing in U.S. labs? Who will oversee the collection of random samples for drug and alcohol testing of the Mexican drivers while they are in the U.S.?
* Will U.S. wage and hour laws be enforced for Mexican drivers during the pilot program? How will DOT enforce hours of service rules and prevent false log books and fatigued drivers from entering the U.S.?
* How can DOT assure the U.S. public that all trucks will be inspected by U.S. officials in Mexico and at the U.S. border when fewer that 10 percent of all Mexican trucks entering the commercial zone are inspected today?
According to a DOT spokesman, the pilot program "is predicated on the notion that Mexican trucks operating in the U.S. under the pilot program will operate pursuant to every single requirement that pertains to U.S. trucks operating in the United States, including both safety and security requirements on both the state and federal level."
DOT has increased its inspection staff by some 270 inspectors to implement the program. Still, DOT plans to continue the on-site inspection activities in Mexico that were announced by DOT Secretary Mary Peters earlier this week in Monterrey, Mexico.
The DOT spokesman confirmed there is no limit to the number of trucks the 100 Mexican trucking companies can operate in the United States. There is no restriction on the roads within the United States that the Mexican trucks can travel once they are admitted in the pilot program at the border.
The Mexican trucks, however, will be limited to carrying international cargo, in that they will be prohibited from stopping at one point in the U.S. destined for another point within the country.
On their return home, Mexican trucks, however, will be allowed to pick up in U.S. cargo originating in the U.S. destined for delivery back to Mexico.
While in the U.S., the Mexican drivers will operate under U.S. rules and regulations, including those controlling hours of time allowed at the wheel without a break.
The DOT spokesman specified that under agreements with Mexico already in effect, Mexican and U.S. commercial driver's licenses will be consider equivalent during the pilot program.
Mexican trucks operating in the United States will be required to have U.S. insurance coverage for all liabilities, including traffic accidents.
"The intent is for the Mexican trucking operations in the U.S. to be indistinguishable from U.S. trucking operations," the DOT spokesperson affirmed, "except that the driver and the truck began their trip in Mexico."
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For a comprehensive look at the U.S. government's plan to integrate the U.S., Mexico and Canada into a North American super-state – guided by the powerful but secretive Council on Foreign Relations – read "ALIEN NATION: SECRETS OF THE INVASION," a special edition of WND's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine.
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Local road name protested over claim over terrorist ties
BY JAMIE C. RUFF / Richmond Times-Dispatch
Feb 21, 2007
CHARLOTTE COURT HOUSE- Carrying signs and chanting as they marched, 20 people turned out last night for an hourlong protest over the name of a road they say honors a terrorist.
Repeating, "Remember our heroes and ground zero," "It's about time to remove the sign" and "V-A the American way," the protesters marched around the Charlotte County administration building, waved their signs along the road and gathered on the lawn under a flagpole in front of the building.
The Forest-based Christian Action Network contends that Sheikh Gilani Lane, located in the Muslims of America enclave, was named after an international terrorist. The network has pushed to have the road sign removed.
Martin J. Mawyer, the group's president, said he hopes the protest will raise public awareness and urge the county's supervisors to change the name.
Established in the mid-1990s, the Muslim community sits on 44 acres in the western part of Charlotte County and is made up of mostly mobile homes. Sheikh Gilani Lane was named after Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarik Gilani, who founded the area and other similar sites in the United States. About 20 families were estimated to live at the Charlotte site a few years ago.
Opponents of the road name say the Muslims of America communities are hideouts for the al-Fuqra terrorist organization. They also blame Gilani for the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was reportedly on his way to interview Gilani when he was abducted Jan. 23, 2002, in Karachi.
But residents of the communities repeatedly have denied terrorist ties, insisting the areas are "a pure and safe environment for raising families and for worshipping the One Almighty Creator of all things."
This month, the county supervisors declined to change the name of the road, citing their long-standing policy against changing road names. County rules allow residents to name their private lanes.
"As citizens of the United States, these individuals have the right to name the [road] whatever they want to," Supervisor Joseph Carey said.
Mawyer said he will contact the national media about the issue. "It had been our hope that the Board of Supervisors would handle this without bringing national embarrassment to the state and the county," he said.
The Christian Action Network is a nonprofit lobbying organization that says it is dedicated to protecting traditions of the American family and defending the nation against radical Islam.
The Rev. Sam Weddington, who lives in the county, said last night's protest makes Muslim residents feel they are not welcomed.
"They are good people," he said.
Contact staff writer Jamie C. Ruff at jruff@timesdispatch.com or (434) 517-0997.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/24/wiran124.xml
Israel seeks all clear for Iran air strike
By Con Coughlin in Tel Aviv
Last Updated: 1:46am GMT 24/02/2007
# American armada prepares to take on Iran
# Con Coughlin: Ready for war
# Vicki Woods: Iraq inquiry could stop Iran war
# In pictures: On board the USS Eisenhower
# Audio: Damien McElroy on the deck of the US flagship
Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran's nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon.
A senior Israeli defence official said negotiations were now underway between the two countries for the US-led coalition in Iraq to provide an "air corridor" in the event of the Israeli government deciding on unilateral military action to prevent Teheran developing nuclear weapons.
"We are planning for every eventuality, and sorting out issues such as these are crucially important," said the official, who asked not to be named.
"The only way to do this is to fly through US-controlled air space. If we don't sort these issues out now we could have a situation where American and Israeli war planes start shooting at each other."
As Iran continues to defy UN demands to stop producing material which could be used to build a nuclear bomb, Israel's military establishment is moving on to a war footing, with preparations now well under way for the Jewish state to launch air strikes against Teheran if diplomatic efforts fail to resolve the crisis.
The pace of military planning in Israel has accelerated markedly since the start of this year after Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, provided a stark intelligence assessment that Iran, given the current rate of progress being made on its uranium enrichment programme, could have enough fissile material for a nuclear warhead by 2009.
Last week Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, announced that he had persuaded Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad for the past six years and one of Israel's leading experts on Iran's nuclear programme, to defer his retirement until at least the end of next year.
Mr Olmert has also given overall control of the military aspects of the Iran issue to Eliezer Shkedi, the head of the Israeli Air Force and a former F-16 fighter pilot.
The international community will increase the pressure on Iran when senior officials from the five permanent of the United Nations Security Council and Germany meet at an emergency summit to be held in London on Monday.
Iran ignored a UN deadline of last Wednesday to halt uranium enrichment. Officials will discuss arms controls and whether to cut back on the $25 billion-worth of export credits which are used by European companies to trade with Iran.
A high-ranking British source said: "There is a debate within the six countries on sanctions and economic measures."
British officials insist that this "incremental" approach of tightening the pressure on Iran is starting to turn opinion within Iran. One source said: "We are on the right track. There is time for diplomacy to take effect."
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Vicki Woods: Iraq inquiry could stop Iran war
Ready for war
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/24/wafg24.xml
Warlords rally to demand Afghan amnesty
By Tom Coghlan in Kabul
Last Updated: 2:00am GMT 24/02/2007
Bearing the scars of decades of war, the former leaders of Afghanistan's mujahideen militias were joined by 25,000 of their followers as they marched through Kabul yesterday to demand immunity from prosecution for war crimes.
Warlords rally to demand Afghan amnesty
Members of Afghanistan’s mujahideen march in Kabul to demand protection from prosecution
The rag-tag army's show of force was intended to bring pressure to bear on President Hamid Karzai, who is facing stern opposition from western governments and human rights groups to his expected support for an amnesty bill passed by Afghan parliament.
Once rubber-stamped as the warlords demand, the bill would protect some of the country's most blood-thirsty killers and torturers from prosecution as suspected war criminals, with the aim of promoting national conciliation.
Many of those marching to Kabul's football stadium for the rally yesterday did so without the use of all their limbs. Their number included battle-weary fighters who first fought — and defeated — Soviet forces in the 1980s and then each other in a bitter, multi-factional civil war in the 1990s before the rise of the Taliban.
Several of the senior warlords who took part in the chaotic demonstration have been accused of systematic human rights abuses and are hoping that Mr Karzai's blessing will spare them future attention by the international community.
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Western diplomats believe that Mr Karzai will endorse the amnesty bill in the coming weeks, to the dismay of human rights groups, the United Nations and many diplomats within the wider international community. The execution of Saddam Hussein is thought to have helped trigger the parliament's actions.
Burhanuddin Rabban, a former Afghan president, told the rally, which passed off peacefully: "The nation knows that the enemies of the bill are the enemies of Afghanistan. They don't want stability."
Another warlord, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, said: "Whoever is against the mujahideen is against Islam."
Human Rights Watch has alleged that fighters under Sayyaf's command killed 800 civilians from the Shia Hazara minority in a single notorious incident in the Afshar district of Kabul in Feb 1993.
A UN spokesman, Aleem Siddique, said: "There is no room for an amnesty for war crimes under international law or the new constitution of Afghanistan. True reconciliation is only achieved when the voice of the victims is heard."
The emergence of the hard-line Taliban regime owed much to Afghan people wanting an end to the anarchy.
Few of Kabul's citizens attended yesterday's event.
"Kabul people hate these factional leaders and believe they should be hanged like Saddam Hussein," said Daoud, 36, a taxi driver.
The proposed law, which includes amnesty for those Taliban to renounce violence, was passed by the Afghan parliament last month.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/24/wiran24.xml
American armada prepares to take on Iran
By Damien McElroy aboard USS Eisenhower
Last Updated: 3:06am GMT 24/02/2007
# Israel seeks all clear for Iran air strike
# Con Coughlin: Ready for war
# Vicki Woods: Iraq inquiry could stop Iran war
# In pictures: On board the USS Eisenhower
# Audio: Damien McElroy on the deck of the US flagship
It is four and a half acres of American power in the middle of the Arabian Sea but the influence of USS Dwight D Eisenhower stretches for hundreds of miles.
American armada prepares to take on Iran
Crew on board the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower are on alert in the Arabian Sea
The aircraft carrier, backed by its sister vessel, a handful of destroyers and a shoal of support ships, has placed a maritime ring of steel around an increasingly unstable region.
While the Eisenhower is ostensibly assisting US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is the looming threat of Iran that increasingly occupies its attention.
Recent tensions between America and Iran over Teheran's attempts to develop a nuclear weapon have raised the prospect of its third regional war in a decade.
The addition of a second aircraft carrier to its strike groups has fuelled the belief that America is gearing up for a fight with Iran. Not since the Iraq war in 2003 has America amassed so much fire power around the Gulf.
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As flagship of the Fifth Fleet, the Eisenhower welcomed the arrival of a second Nimitz class nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, and its accompanying destroyers on Tuesday.
Captain Dan Cloyd, the Eisenhower's commanding officer, compared the situation with the international tension of the Cold War.
"There was a time when we had two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean," he told The Daily Telegraph. "The world changes and we adapt."
The quiet-spoken Capt Cloyd embraced the suggestion that the dual deployment is at the forefront of efforts to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb, pointing out that his maritime assets have been tasked to quash any challenge to global security.
"Our presence here is an affirmation of our resolve in this area to engage with the nations of the region either where we share common goals or where we face challenges."
Every hour and fifteen minutes a handful of jets scream north across the ocean. The range of missions an aircraft carrier as big as the Eisenhower - it has more than 5,000 people onboard - can carry out is virtually limitless.
Map
The Eisenhower is not only the flagship of the carrier group that protects The Gulf through which one-fifth of the world's oil is shipped. It has also helped overthrow a hard-line Islamic regime in Somalia during a stint off the Horn of Africa.
Its fighter jets now offer close support to Nato and US forces in Afghanistan.
Lieutenant Commander Matt Pothier returned yesterday from Afghanistan having delivered air support to British soldiers. He said: "Right now I have more opportunities than I've ever had to use weapons where we know there aren't any friendly people. In combat that's very rewarding."
In the carrier's Combat Direction Centre, Warrant Officer Michael Myers can spot anything untoward in a 256 mile radius from his radar screen. He can identify objects as small as wooden boats on the open sea and small aircraft in a swathe of countries from the Arabian peninsula to the northern shore of the Sea of Arabia.
Should Lieutenant Commander Craig Stapleton, the tactical operations officer, give the order, WO Myers can put up Hawkeye, an EP2 surveillance plane with massive radar capable of establishing American air traffic control across half a continent. "Those planes alone extend our radar horizon to a huge circle of the sky. I could see for 1,000 miles if I wanted to."
As it patrols the shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, the Eisenhower ensures the safe passage of oil tankers. It also prevents the trading routes being used to transport materials that would help rogue nations build a nuclear weapon.
Capt Cloyd said: "Our maritime security mission is about denying the use of the seas to any potential spread of weapons of mass destruction."
Iran's belligerent posture has increased the challenges facing the Eisenhower since it deployed to the Middle East last October. Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, the commander of the Fifth Fleet, issued a stark warning that Iran risks triggering an "accidental war" during aggressive military maneuvres.
During the Great Prophet 2 missile test in November, the Islamic Republic fired a Shabab missile into the six mile corridor of shipping lanes in the Straits of Hormuz. In such a constricted corridor, the results could have been disastrous.
With Teheran's real strategic intentions unclear, the US takes the threats it has made very seriously.
"They threaten to use oil as a weapon. They threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz," Adml Walsh said.
"And so it is the combination of the rhetoric, the tone, and the aggressive exercises in very constrained waters that gives us concern."
US commanders ascribe the increase in instability to increasingly aggressive actions by Teheran. For that reason the deployment of the carriers in the region is designed to intensify the pressure on Iran to step back from the brink.
"In the past year and a half it [Iran] has become much more strident, more vocal and in your face," said Walsh. "What concerns me is miscalculation."
Capt Cloyd said his personnel, 70 per cent of whom have never participated in a long term mission before, are aware that the workload could grow more intense before the deployment is over.
"We're aware of the environment and the need to respond to the environment so that we can protect regional security and stability.
We're aware of what other countries could do.
"We're busy but we would move to a higher tempo if need be."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/24/nlulu24.xml
Lulu, the Belgian teen who took on the Gestapo
By Richard Savill
Last Updated: 1:10am GMT 24/02/2007
A little-known Second World War heroine who joined the Belgian resistance at 15, and was later tortured by the Gestapo, was buried near her home in Dorset yesterday.
Code named Lulu, Lucie Bruce, a Belgian national who moved to Britain in 1946, spied on Nazi troops and ammunition dumps, after joining the resistance in 1940 following Belgium's capitulation to German occupation.
She forged papers so she would appear old enough to be recruited, and by the time she was 17, she was a seasoned resistance fighter, destroying bridges, ambushing troops and repatriating airmen.
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She was involved in direct combat, and helped blow up Schaerbeek railway station in Brussels, which was packed with German soldiers going home for Christmas.
Towards the end of the war, she was arrested while working as a courier and turned over to the Gestapo. She underwent intense questioning and torture.
Paying tribute to her, her second husband, David Bruce, 86, said: "She was a remarkable woman who spent her life doing things for others. Compared with most of us she had lived 1,000 lives by the time she was 20."
He added: "She was incredibly brave in the face of the Nazis. Her hatred for them never mellowed.
"When she was caught she was horribly tortured by the Gestapo.
"They kept her in water up to her waist and left her in cold cells for days on end without food.
"They pulled all her nails off and she wore false ones for the rest of her life. She was also shot as she tried to escape and had a nasty wound on her arm."
Despite her suffering, Mrs Bruce, who was born Lucie Jeanne Vanosmael, refused to reveal information and on three occasions she was tied to a stake and threatened that she would be shot.
A German officer intervened and she was sent to a labour camp in Germany where she was put to work in a munitions factory.
She was shot trying to escape and, starving and malnourished, she was treated by sympathetic German doctors.
After a period of recovery, she escaped from a lorry while being transported for work.
She evaded capture for six weeks and made it on foot to Holland, living on raw eggs and vegetables stolen from farms along the way.
She was returned to Belgium by the Dutch resistance and continued her work. She had lost her teeth due to conditions at the camp. Her father fed her and cared for her before telling her mother she was alive.
When her country was liberated she climbed on to an allied tank and directed the troops to their rendezvous. The tank was under the command of Major Gen Sir Philip Ward, a Welsh Guards officer.
By chance she met Sir Philip in 1983 at a tea party. Her husband said: "She was a volunteer for an ex-servicemen's home in Brighton and when we were invited there for a tea party we met him.
"He had noticed a slight accent in my wife's voice and I said she was Belgian. He said he had been in Belgium during the war and had been commanding a tank.
"I called Lucie over and she told him that she had climbed on to the first tank into Belgium under enemy fire and he said it must have been his.
"When they realised they almost fell into each other's arms."
Mrs Bruce was born an only child in Brussels in 1925, and in 1946 she married her first husband, Royal Navy Petty Officer Frank Berry, and came to England. She married her second husband in 1978. She had three children, two stepchildren, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren. She died on Feb 14, aged 82. She had 14 honours for her actions.
Her father, Guillaume Vanosmael, who lost an arm in the First World War, was also a resistance member. Initially he did not know his daughter had been recruited. The pair agreed that neither would tell her mother who remained ignorant of the role of either until her daughter's internment.
After liberation she carried a standard that had been made secretly by the resistance. When Field Marshal Montgomery inspected the resistance fighters, and came to her, he pulled a small union flag from his pocket and told her to sew it on the corner of the standard as a memento.
She did this and the standard was yesterday draped over the coffin at her funeral near her home in Bridport.
Communists protest as Russia marks Army Day
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/185348
Communists protest as Russia marks Army Day
February 24, 2007
Associated Press
MOSCOW – Some Russians celebrated their military's tradition of
dedication Friday, while others protested against poor treatment of
soldiers and veterans in separate events marking the annual Defenders
of
the Fatherland holiday.
In freezing temperatures, President Vladimir Putin stood by as an
honour
guard laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier in the shadow of
the Kremlin's red brick wall. Communists, meanwhile, marched through
Moscow to protest against what they consider shameful treatment of
service members and veterans.
The Red Army's defeat of the Nazis on the eastern front is still a
source of great pride in Russia and the tradition of military service
remains strong.
For Putin, the holiday – also called Army Day – provided a chance
to
celebrate Russia's growing prosperity and strength.
Putin greeted generals and solemnly adjusted a ribbon on a wreath
placed
by the honour guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is
marked
by an eternal flame. Afterward, he held his bare hands over his ears to
protect them from the cold.
Putin has pledged to reform the military and announced an ambitious
weapons modernization plan this month.
For Communists and other leftists angry at Russia's course since the
1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the holiday is a chance to protest
against what they consider the military's decline.
A few thousand marched down a main Moscow street to a monument to Karl
Marx, where they called for better pay, pensions and benefits for
soldiers and veterans.
State-run television Friday showed Soviet-era movies and patriotic
concerts. It also broadcast a speech by Putin's new defence minister,
Anatoly Serdyukov.
He promised a "profound and thorough modernization of the armed forces,
giving them a character fully answering the demands of the 21st
century."
During ceremonies at the Kremlin wall, Patriarch Alexy of the Russian
Orthodox church – which has historic ties to the military – also
laid a
wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and said a prayer for fallen
soldiers.
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