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Locked on 11/17/2004 9:45:25 PM PST by Admin Moderator, reason:
Thread #22: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1282666/posts |
Posted on 11/03/2004 12:20:59 AM PST by nwctwx
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Arafat "assassination"
Good point, British chick. I've been looking for that assassination "go signal". Arafat's sudden "illness" certainly is suspect. It's something to think about.
Apparently it is a "newbie" filter. They may have been having bandwidth issues the last couple days.
UPDATED - Thursday November 04, 2004 5:54pm from our sister station WJLA-TV
Washington (AP) - The government said Thursday it is purchasing 75 million doses of a new generation anthrax vaccine under an $877.5 million contract - the first awarded through a federal program to develop and stockpile antidotes to biological and chemical weapons.
The five-year contract with VaxGen Inc. will provide enough vaccine to treat roughly 25 million people. The company expects to begin delivery by 2006. According to the contract, the first 25 million vaccine doses would be delivered within two years and the balance within three years, said Lance K. Gordon, the company's president.
The doses will be added to U.S. reserves to protect against a terrorist attack using anthrax spores.
Excerpted
ON THE NET...
http://www.itshappening.com/member.php?s=06eb919f26920c666c4f11d10e3db5c8&userid=8434
http://www.itshappening.com/showthread.php?s=06eb919f26920c666c4f11d10e3db5c8&t=60748
Ok.
Well, thanks.
I got in on your link.
We certainly don't have any high rises or anything else of interest in the tip of Maine - except maybe as an entry point?(Lot's of wide open sea, islands and coves, sparse population...easy entry?
Mohammad Attar was caught on tape leaving the Portland Airport - on his way to his infamous deed on 9-11...but where did he enter Maine?
further - I don't believe it was ever in print, but just before he and his companion left Portland, they had been further north in Maine - in Brunswick, where they had dinner in a local restaurant (and had beer, so against their belief - but part of their "fit in" training) and Brunswick is the home of BNAB (Naval Air Base)...very easy to case - and take photos just by standing on the highway. (Done it myself as son-in-law is P3 pilot)
So, I wonder if Maine isn't used primarily as an entry point - then they filter on down?
SOBERING
and exciting.
Watching!
THANKS.
Mrs. Arafat keeps husband on life support
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_10.html
RAMALLAH — Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has died. He was 75 years old.
Israeli and Palestinian officials said Arafat died on Thursday in a military hospital in Paris. They said Arafat was deemed clinically dead, but is still attached to life support systems on the insistence of his wife, Suha.
"He is dead, but neither Arafat's wife nor the Palestinian leadership is ready to announce this," a PA official said. "The announcement could take place on Friday."
The problem is that Arafat is still the only Palestinian official who can pay the bills. And it is unclear who, if anyone, has access to the estimated $2-3 billion in his personal Swiss bank accounts, according to a report in the current edition of Geostrategy-Direct.com. Even his wife is said to be unaware of how to access the funds.
Arafat continues to hold the purse strings to the Palestinian finances. For the last decade, he has been the final, and often only word on payment to everybody from the suicide bomber to the janitor. Not a dime was paid without Arafat's okay.
Before he left for Paris, Arafat approved a three-member emergency committee to operate the PA and PLO in his absence. Officials said Ahmed Qurei was meant to run the PA's daily affairs while Mahmoud Abbas was appointed acting chairman of the PLO.
Palestine National Council chairman Salim Zaanoun, the third member of the committee, was said to be a symbolic figure.
Abbas and Qurei sought to acquire Arafat's power to allocate money during the absence of the PA chairman. But as he boarded a Jordanian Air Force helicopter for Amman, Arafat refused.
"I'm still alive, thank God, so don't worry," Arafat was quoted as saying.
Israeli officials confirmed that Arafat died on Thursday, Middle East Newsline reported. They said Arafat was termed brain dead and physicians have stopped attending to him.
For Palestinians, the main question is where is Arafat's money?
Issam Abu Issa knows how Arafat appropriated and concealed money. Abu Issa was the founder and chairman of the Palestine International Bank from 1996 until he fled to Qatar in 2000.
"Rather than use donor funds for their intended purposes, Arafat regularly diverted money to his own accounts," Abu Issa said in a report for Middle East Quarterly. "It is amazing that some U.S. officials still see the Palestinian Authority as a partner even after U.S. congressional records revealed authenticated PLO papers signed by Arafat in which he instructed his staff to divert donors' money to projects benefiting himself, his family and his associates."
Arafat controls billions of dollars meant for the Palestinian people. In a word, he stole it, intelligence sources said, according to the Geostrategy-Direct report.
His personal fortune has been estimated at between $2 and $3 billion, most of it in Swiss bank accounts.
In 1997, the PA auditor's office said in its financial report that $326 million, or 43 percent of the annual budget, was "missing."
The United States has been supporting former PA security chief Mohammed Dahlan as Arafat's successor. To his friends in the Bush administration, Dahlan, 43, has all the qualities for Arab leadership: a smooth talker and brutal cop. Arafat asked Dahlan to accompany him to Paris in a move designed to keep him out of the Gaza Strip and any coup plot.
Another challenger has been Fatah Secretary-general Marwan Barghouti, sentenced to life in prison for a series of terrorist attacks. Barghouti, 44, has followers in the West Bank but does not appear to have the iron will necessary to face Arafat loyalists.
Neither Israeli nor PA officials have been told much about Arafat's condition, and the only one authorized to issue information from his hospital bedside is the chairman's wife, Suha.
NEW DELHI - Speculation is rife in India that Osama bin Laden, who has gate-crashed the United States elections with the release of his latest video, is holed up in eastern Pakistan, in the northern regions of the country's portion of Kashmir, with even the possibility that he might have already ventured into Indian territory
SNIP
Hideaway in Kashmir? Reports of the bin Laden sighting, even if speculative, come on the back of news of heightened activity in the Ladakh region (northern part of Indian-administered Kashmir) by the Aviation Research Center (ARC), a specialized reconnaissance agency of India's Research and Analysis Wing, which looks after external intelligence. Highly placed defense sources have been quoted as saying that the Ladakh region has seen an unusual number of sorties by ARC aircraft. While there is little information about the purpose of such missions, the ARC's sudden activities could trigger further speculation that bin Laden may be lurking in what India refers to as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Excerpted
My, my, what a cheery fellow. Thanks for the links Cindy.
Ukraine to set up register with U.S. funds to track radioactive material
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/041104/w110447.html
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukraine will set up a central register to track radioactive materials throughout the country in a U.S.-funded effort to prevent the materials from getting into the hands of terrorists, officials said Thursday.
A memorandum signed last week by Ukrainian and U.S. officials proposes $250,000 US in U.S. government funding to develop the Ukrainian State Register for Radiation Sources and train personnel.
The project should help Ukraine prevent terrorists from acquiring material for a so-called "dirty bomb," said Tetyana Kutuzova, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Nuclear Regulatory Committee.
"Our border service each year prevents a number of people who are attempting to cross the border with radiation sources that could be used for a dirty bomb," Kutuzova said.
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited a vast number of nuclear radiation sources - including substances intended for medical or other technical purposes and spent nuclear fuel. Most of the materials are unregistered.
The setting up of a central register will "play a critical role in consolidating and securing radiological sources," said Sheila Gwaltney, deputy chief of U.S. mission to Ukraine, in a statement.
Ukraine has no weapons grade nuclear material since its independence, having transferred some 1,300 nuclear warheads to Russia for decommissioning. Ukraine's last missile silo was destroyed two years ago. The country also runs five nuclear power plants, including now-defunct Chornobyl, site of the world's largest nuclear incident in 1986.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian authorities arrested several people for allegedly trying to purchase cesium-137, a highly radioactive material seen as a likely ingredient in a "dirty bomb." Earlier this year, they arrested a man trying to take half a kilogram of uranium into neighbouring Hungary.
Although the government has the State Register for Radiation Sources, the nationwide registration of radioactive materials became mandatory only this year.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, concerns have grown that terrorists might try to acquire material for a dirty bomb - a device that uses conventional explosives to scatter low-level radioactive material over wide areas. Instead of using highly enriched uranium or plutonium - which are kept under tight security and difficult to obtain - the radioactive components are usually lower-grade isotopes, such as those used in medicine or research.
The International Atomic Energy Agency - the UN nuclear watchdog - estimates as many as 110 countries do not have adequate controls over radioactive devices that could be used to build a dirty bomb.
KARACHI - Pakistan came tantalizingly close this week to presenting President George W Bush with the perfect election present and a major coup in the "war on terror". But at the last minute the suspect apparently got away.
On Tuesday, Pakistan and US security forces launched a major operation in Karachi, which different sources based in Washington and Karachi told Asia Times Online was aimed at catching Abu Faraj al-Libi, a Libyan believed to be the No 3 in al-Qaeda and from al-Qaeda's North African cell, appointed as al-Qaeda's chief of South Asian operations.
After four hours, though, only a few people were rounded up, and Faraj was nowhere to be found.
Excerpted
Suspected Assassin May Have Links to Al-Qaida
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3715556
An Islamic radical suspected of shooting and slitting the throat of renowned Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh has been quizzed by police who suspect he has ties with al-Qaida.
The 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan suspect, identified only as Mohammed B, was arrested minutes after Van Gogh’s murder in an Amsterdam street. The suspect had a pistol in his pocket and was shot in the leg by police during a chase through a park.
Van Gogh had received death threats after the release of his latest film Submission which criticised the treatment of women in Islam.
Eight other suspects aged 19-27, believed to be Islamic fundamentalists plotting a terrorist attack, remain in custody, said prosecution spokeswoman Dop Kruimel.
The main suspected has a record of violent offences, and moved in a circle of radical Islamic fundamentalists, police said.
Kruimel said evidence retrieved from the crime scene and raids of five Amsterdam homes supported accusations of fundamentalism.
Van Gogh was shot several times with a pistol at close range, his throat was slit, and a five-page note was jammed to his chest with a second knife.
Dutch media reported it was written in Arabic and was a call for Jihad against non-Muslims. The attacker also reportedly had a testament in his pocket, indicating he anticipated being killed in the attack.
Investigations have not ruled out the possibility that Mohammed B has links to the Salafia Jihadia group, held responsible for a Casablanca bombing, or al-Qaida, she said.
Well it's about time. I hope it's money well spent and doesn't end up lining pockets. Thanks for the info nwctwx.
Sheesh. All your "suspicious packages/substances" links make me oh-so-joyous to work at the post office. Not.
Protest in San Francisco : November 3, 2004
Infuriating...
We've had three Japanese exchange students from Kagoshima and they were a credit to their parents and their nation. Hosting exchange students widened our knowledge of Japan and its people. Our students were extremey mannerly, thoughtful and respectful of their families and others. Would do it again in a heartbeat.
With his latest video sally, Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist, has repositioned himself as the only leader willing to confront the world's sole superpower. Bin Laden has been hiding in Pakistan for almost three years, evidently with high-ranking protection. SNIP
Bin Laden now knows that certain countless millions of Muslims, surveyed by the Pew Foundation two years in a row, trust him more than George W. Bush. In Muslim countries with a combined population of 450 million, bin Laden was a clear winner as a "freedom fighter" over the U.S. president. In Morocco and Jordan, two traditionally pro-Western countries, at least at the regime-to-regime level, Mr. Bush was trusted by fewer than 10 percent in either country.
Bin Laden also scored majorities among the 6 million, mostly poverty-stricken, North Africans living in slums on the outskirts of France's major cities. Similar paeans echoed among 1 million South Asians in the greater London region.
Pakistani denials notwithstanding, Osama bin Laden has been in Pakistan since Dec. 9, 2001, when he escaped from the Tora Bora mountain range. Countrywide, bin Laden feels secure with 66 percent of Pakistanis, which moves up to plus 80 percent in the Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan, the two provinces bordering Afghanistan and governed by bin Laden admirers who consider Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar a personal friend.
This reporter and a multilingual UPI team, tipped by a major tribal leader about bin Laden's progress as he exited the Tora Bora mountain range through the Tirah Valley, arrived at the location Dec. 11, 2001. Local villagers confirmed that bin Laden, on horseback, accompanied by some 50 fighters, had come out of the Tirah Valley two days before. They were close to a main road that led from Pakistan's FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) to Peshawar, capital of the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). Bin Laden left in the direction of Peshawar in an SUV with darkened windows.
Bin Laden could be sheltered in any of Pakistan's major cities. The sprawling port of Karachi on the Arabian Sea, surrounded by miles of slums, has some 15 million people. In Peshawar, a city of 3.5 million, many Pathans, like bin Laden, are over six feet tall. In FATA, rickety local buses display posters of bin Laden captioned "Freedom Fighter." Bin Laden also enjoys the protection of renegade members of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).
Conventional wisdom among the al-Qaida watchers in Pakistan says President Pervez Musharraf's regime is reluctant to launch a countrywide crackdown to find bin Laden. If bin Laden were captured, dead or alive, Mr. Musharraf would feel obligated to turn him over to the United States. And Pakistan might then face a disinterested U.S. administration and lose billions in aid.
Three months before the release of the September 11 Commission report, commission chief of staff Phil Zelikow asked a prominent Pakistani if he could "fill in the gaps about what was happening behind the scenes in Pakistan in the period immediately preceding the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington." He traveled the length and breadth of Pakistan working his sources, which included many former ranking government officials, retired senior officers and former ISI personnel.
The requested report arrived in Washington too late to be included in the commission's 567-page report, which mentioned Pakistan 311 times. Even if it had arrived in time, it probably would have been left out. The material turned over to Mr. Zelikow, a former member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-2003), could prove even more embarrassing to Mr. Musharraf than the information supplied by U.S. intelligence about the international nuclear black market arms bazaar that was run for the benefit of America's enemies (North Korea, Iran and Libya).
The unpublished addendum to the September 11 report said:
(1) Former senior ISI officers knew about the September 11 plot before the attacks occurred.
(2) Osama bin Laden has not left Pakistan since he escaped from Tora Bora.
(3) Bin Laden was treated for renal problems at a military hospital near Peshawar.
Mr. Musharraf will, of course, deny all this. Though he was army chief before his military coup in October 1999 gave him absolute power, Mr. Musharraf told the United States he knew nothing about A.Q. Khan's activities. This stretched credulity to the breaking point. He pardoned Mr. Khan and allowed him to keep his ill-gotten nuclear fortune. Future denials about bin Laden will ring as hollow.
Snipped and excerpted for brevity's sake. Interesting read in it's entirety IMO.
http://www.worldthreats.com/al-qaeda_terrorism/Pakistan%20Hiding%20OBL.htm
I love that one too.
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