1 August 2006
Israel has resumed its Lebanon offensive, and says it will intensify attacks.
Later:- Thousands of Israeli troops, and tanks, are reported to be crossing the Lebanese border in seven columns.
Iran has rejected a UN Security Council resolution calling for it to cease uranium production by the end of this month.
Three British soldiers have been killed, and another seriously injured, in the southern province of Helmand in Afghanistan. NATO has just taken over responsibility from the American-led coalition.
Another British soldier has been killed in a mortar attack on a UK base in Basra, Iraq.
2 August 06
Israel has made a raid on Baalbek (Balabakk), north-east of Beirut and close to Syria.
Syria has (continued to) make "threatening noises". The Syrian ambassador to the US indeed had the temerity to say that Syria would defend itself if attacked.
This is likely the Israeli strategy. To provoke Syria into attacking (unlikely that it will), or to stage a "Syrian attack", as the excuse to topple the regime.
American-supplied Israel always was able to handle anything the combined forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan could throw at it, never mind Hezbollah. The current pussy-footing is to draw Syria in. (Actual American troops are on the east, too.)
Israel now says it has 8,000 troops in action in the southern Lebanese border region.
Israel now admits that its strategy is to clear out the population of southern Lebanon, the support for Hezbollah. 750,000 have now been displaced.
3 August 06
Twin campaigns tripping over each others' feet? ...
Fresh from "exonorating" the killers of Jean Paul de Menezes, the ever-worthy "Independent Police Complaints Commission" has ruled that the shooting of one of the two brothers arrested in a massive police raid in Forest Gate, London (see June 2006 diary, under 2 June 06) was accidental.
And one of the brothers has now been charged in regard to child porn — allegedly found on the computer removed by police during the terror raid.
4 August 06
An Israeli missile strike in Lebanon, on a warehouse near the Syrian border, has killed 33 farm workers. (Sky News)
6 August 06
Syria's foreign minister says that Syria is prepared for regional war.
(Sky News ticker, giving AFP as its source)
7 August 06
One thousand Lebanese have now been killed (and about one million displaced) due to Israel's campaign.
Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has appealed for the support of Jews throughout the world. He said that Israel is fighting Syria and Iran via their Hezbollah proxy.
8 August 06
In the UK, police have arrested three people in connection with eavesdropping on royal phone conversations. One is Clive Goodman, the royal editor of the News Of The World.
"ITV has learned" that the spying extends to celebrities, government ministers and military commanders (ITV News at 10:30pm). The police's anti-terrorism branch is involved in the investigation.
Who are the other two arrestees? MI5?
9 August 06
Israeli TV stations claim that the bodies of Iranian Revolutionary Guards were found among Hezbollah corpses in south Lebanon.
10 August 06
Confirming the imminence of Iran/Syria invasion ...
'Airlines terror plot' [in UK] disrupted
BBC News online
'A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and "commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said.
'It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.
'Police are searching premises with 21 people in custody after arrests in London, High Wycombe and Birmingham.
'High security is causing delays at all UK airports. The threat level to the UK has been raised by MI5 [who else?] to critical.
'According to MI5's website, critical threat level — the highest — means "an attack is expected imminently and indicates an extremely high level of threat to the UK".
'Three US airlines are believed to have been targeted. ...
'According to BBC security correspondent Gordon Carera ... a [t]he plot is thought to have involved a series of "waves" of simultaneous attacks, targeting three planes each time.
'He also said the plan "revolved around liquids of some kind". ...
'Head of the Met's anti-terrorist branch Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said the investigation had had "global dimensions" and had seen an "unprecedented level" of surveillance. ...
'[London] Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson said the alleged plotters had intended "mass murder on an unimaginable scale". ...
'According to BBC sources the "principal characters" suspected of being in the plot were British-born. There are also understood to be links to Pakistan. ...
'The US Department of Homeland Security increased the threat level applied to US-bound commercial flights originating in the UK to "red" — the first time it has done this for flights coming in from another country.
'The Home Office confirmed there had been meetings overnight and on Thursday [today] morning of the Cabinet's emergency committee, Cobra, chaired by Home Secretary John Reid, to discuss the terror alert. ...'
11 August 06
Gordan Brown's Treasury has named 19 (they couldn't resist that figure, could they?) British Muslims (generally in their 20s) who have had their bank accounts frozen by the Bank of England in connection with the latest "terror plot". Apparently the public naming was in spite of Evil John Reid's Home Office.
Among the men are three Muslim converts, including Abdul Waleed (Walid), formerly Don Stewart-Whyte, 19, a recent convert. He apparently fast-tracked his conversion in six months. He thus joins such luminaries as Simon Sulayman Keeler, one of the members of Ahl ul-Sunnah Wa al-Jamma ("Eyes and Ears of Muslims") the vehicle for the ex-leadership of extremist group al-Mujahiroun, a probable provocateur front of MI5. (See Al-Mujahiroun and its Spinoffs".)
Many of the arrests were in Walthamstow, North-East London, not far from Forest Gate where a spectacular — and deficient — raid was staged on a house last month. (See June 2006 diary, under 2 June 06)
Pakistan says Rashid Rauf was a key figure in the plot. Rauf is supposed to have connections with Afghansitan and al-Qaeda. (Didn't we do this one, five years ago?) His arrest in Pakistan on Wednesday, 9 August 06, was the "trigger" for the arrests in Britain. A man of the same name was on the electoral roll for a house in Birmingham raided. (Later:- Rauf was on the roll until April 2002. He is then supposed to have left Britain, after a family row and killing or injury of some woman. Police wanted to question him in respect of this.)
(British Channel 4 News 11 August 06 at 7pm)
How big MI5 are those two other "royal phone tappers" questioned (and one charged) by police? Is this what the current terror flap's been timed to distract attention from?
Cf. the spectacular UK army raid on Basra central police station last September, to save two arrested SAS/SRR men "from militias". Agents who had been caught disguised as Arabs with arms and explosives in their car — a rare instance catching out deception operators at work planting roadside bombs to blame on Iran? (See "The Special Reconnaissance Regiment".)
Glenn Mulcaire has been charged in connection with the phone-tapping scandal. News of the world royal editor Clive Goodman, also charged, has been suspended from his job.
12 August 06
Royal editor suspended over phone tap case
Leigh Holmwood, The Guardian (UK)
'The News of the World yesterday suspended its royal editor, Clive Goodman, amid allegations of mobile phone hacking involving the Prince of Wales' household.
'The journalist, who has been at the paper for 20 years, was charged on Wednesday [9 August 06] with one count of conspiring to intercept voicemail messages and eight counts of intercepting voicemail messages between January and May this year.
'He was released on police bail to appear before Horseferry Road magistrates in central London on Wednesday. A former AFC footballer, Glenn Mulcaire, 35, from Sutton in south London, the director of a "crisis management company", is charged with the same offences. A 50-year-old man arrested at the same time was released on bail. [Why hasn't this man been named?] ...'
Another news item (?) said Mulcaire was accused of plotting with Clive Goodman.
And talking of phone tappers, what do we make of this story? ...
Intercepted phone call 'urged plotters to attack'
Ireland On-Line, 12 August 06, 10:57
'An intercept of a telephone call made from Pakistan to Britain that urged plotters to go ahead with attacks on US-bound aeroplanes played a crucial role in foiling the alleged terror plan, Pakistani officials said today.
'The arrest in Pakistan of a key suspect with alleged al-Qaida links, British national Rashid Rauf, prompted an unidentified associate of his to make the call from Karachi to one of the suspects subsequently arrested in Britain, the officials said. ...
'It wasn't clear exactly when the call was intercepted, but officials have said Rauf — one of at least two Britons of Pakistani descent arrested in Pakistan — was held about a week before the plot was foiled in Britain on Thursday [10 August 06].
'A British security agency's informer in Pakistan with contacts with Rauf provided a tip that helped Pakistan arrest him a Pakistani intelligence official said.
'A US official disclosed that after the first arrests in Pakistan, word went from Pakistan to the London plotters to move ahead quickly, a message intercepted by an intelligence agency [sic]. That prompted British police to move in on the conspirators, long under watch.
'... Pakistan says it played an "important role" in breaking the conspiracy in co-operation with British and US agents.
'Pakistan's government has confirmed the arrests of seven suspects, and intelligence officials [very communicative, aren't they?] say 10 other people were detained Friday [11 August 06] and were being questioned today ...
'An intelligence official familiar with the investigation confirmed the communication intercept, and said British agents had been monitoring the activities of Rauf's family since December [05].
'The official said one of the suspects caught in Britain and named by British authorities, Tayib Rauf, is a close relative of Rashid Rauf.'
The UN Security Council has unanimously passed a heavily-negotiated resolution for halting the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict (1701/2006). Israeli PM Ehud Olmert says he will recommend it to his cabinet (when it meets on Sunday, 13 August 06).
Meanwhile, bombing of Lebanon still goes on.
13 August 06
The Israeli cabinet has "unanimously" accepted the Security Council resolution, which it says it will begin to observe tomorrow.
South Beirut has come under renewed bombardment from air and sea. Up to 30,000 Israeli troops are now in south Lebanon, pushing northward. Paratroops have landed at the Litani River (20 miles north of the border), and are pushing southward.
The first intelligence of the current "airliners plot" was received soon after the July 05 London Underground bombings. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the "head of MI5", made the "plot" a main priority early this year (2006).
Right. It's MI5 that decides the exegesis and timing of such plots. And (as previously announced) the current plot has connections with "the London suicide bombers", and is a manifestation of a grand underlying unity.
14 August 06
Police have "found" arms in the Walthamstow, London, flat of one of the terror-plot "suspects". Elsewhere, they are still searching some woods.
The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has taken hold.
15 August 06
UK police want the power to dispense "instant justice", without recourse to law courts.
No! It's not about terrorism, but to deal with "yobs".
It is hoped that France will supply the backbone of the peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon. (BBC News 24)
A first step, perhaps, to France's recolonization of its old Lenanese protectorate. Which in turn may be a stepping-stone to Syria — another ex-French protectorate.
Eric Margolis suggested that, in the American-led takeover of the Middle East, France may be offered Syria back ("America's New Mideast Empire", 9 Dec. 02). Israel would probably not be interested in colonizing Syria itself; the Israelis would be glad to just see the removal of a radical Arab regime.
These "crumbs from the master's table" have little or no oil, and would be little enough to concede.
17 August 06
A federal judge in the US has ruled that the NSA's domestic phone-tapping is against the constitution.
Pentagon Medics Trained for Strike Matt Mientka, US Medicine, October 2001
'WASHINGTON — Though the Department of Defense had no capability in place to protect the Pentagon from an ersatz guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner, DoD medical personnel trained for exactly that scenario in May [2001].
'In fact, the tri-Service DiLorenzo Health Care Clinic and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic here in the Pentagon trained jointly to fine-tune their emergency preparedness, afterward making simple equipment changes that would make a difference Sept. 11 when the hypothetical became reality.
'Col. John Baxter, USAF, MC, commander of the Air Force clinic, told U.S. MEDICINE last month that at approximately 8:42 a.m. on Sept 11 he neither heard nor felt anything while training personnel in the back room of the fourth floor clinic [not surprising ....], though people in the reception area heard an "explosion" and felt a movement in the building. [The Pentagon was struck at 9:37:46 (9/11 Commission Report, chapter 1, p.10 [HTML version]. Is Baxter's remark a simple verbal/typo, or a mental slip revealing when another "exercise" began? (Cf. John Fulton's airplane-into-building "simulation", oh-so-near in space and time.)] ...'
... The above is one of the references given in Matthew Everett, "Did Military Exercises Facilitate the 9/11 Pentagon Attack?", 911 Truth, (18) July 06. Another U.S. Medicine article, "Crisis Response Puts Agencies On Path To Better Coordination", Jan. 02, is also referred to here.
18 August 06
In the UK, police have "found" martyrdom videos at the houses of some of the airlines-plot suspects. (Police are already supposed to have found guns, and a suitcase of materials for bomb-making in woods near one of the suspects' houses.)
An important Qaeda man has been detained in Pakistan, according to an ABC News "exclusive". (The CIA is waiting to confirm it.) It is hoped his arrest will lead to Osama bin Laden.
19 August 06
An Israeli commando raid into north-eastern Lebanon. The troops were helicoptered into the vicinity of Boudai, in the Bekaa Valley 16 miles from the Syrian border. Hezbollah claimed they met such resistance they were repulsed.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed "deep concern" about this evident ceasefire violation.
The Israelis say they were taking action against arms from Iran and Syria. They claimed to have specific information about a load of arms being brought across the border.
Which evinces Israel's real aim in this play-war — to provoke Syria — and, on behalf of their American big brother — Iran into war.
Former CIA Contractor Is Found Guilty ... of Assaulting Afghan Detainee Who Later Died
Estes Thompson, Associated Press, on ABC News (US) (no date on print version)
'Raleigh, [North Carolina] — a former CIA contractor accused of severely beating an Afghan detainee with a flashlight during questioning was found guilty Thursday [17 Aug. 06] of assault.
'The beaten detainee later died, but David Passaro, 40, wasn't charged with his death. The federal jury found him guilty ... of three counts of simple assault and one count of assault resulting in serious bodily injury.
'Passaro faces up to 11 1/2 years in prison. ...
'Passaro was the first American civilian to be charged with mistreating a detainee during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was accused of beating Wali while the man was being questioned in 2003 about rocket attacks on a remote base where passaro was stationed with U.S. and Afghans troops. ...
'... Pathologists testifying for the prosecution and the defense disagreed over whether photos of Wali's body and testimony from guards show that the prisoner probably died from beatings. ...
'Passaro was tried under a provision of the USA Patriot Act, which allows charges against U.S. citizens for crimes committed on land or facilities designed for use by the U.S. government. [My emphasis.]'
21 August 06
Associated Press, "Hezbollah Reportedly Had British Goggles", Washington Post online, 20 August 06, 8:18pm (EDT)
Eleven people in Britain have been charged in connection with the "airliners plot", and will appear in court tomorrow.
'... Mr [Waheed] Zaman, who lived with his parents and brother, aged 15, in Walthamstow [London], was described by a neighbour as "very pro-British" and a strong supporter of Liverpool Football Club. A bio-medical science student at London Metropolitan University, he was also head of the university's Islamic Society. He had worked at Hamley's toy shop in Regent's Street, according to reports.
'He is a follower of Tablighi Jamaat, an international missionary sect. The group's preachers regularly visited the mosque where most of those arrested in East London worshipped.
'Khamran Siddique, a student friend of Mr Zaman, said: "After 9/11 and 7/7, Waheed was sceptical about whether Muslims could have been responsible. He watched conspiracy videos on the internet. He believed them and thought they made sense." ...'
(Richard Ford, "Raids revealed bomb-making", The Times (UK), 22 August 06, p.6)
23 August 06
A video of two foxy Fox newsmen kidnapped in Gaza has surfaced. They seem relaxed, if on the serious side; one assures his wife: "Don't worry. I'll do the worrying for both of us."
An accompanying message from the "Holy Jihad Brigade" calls for the release of all Muslim prisoners in the United States within 72 hours. No-one in Palestine has heard of the group. Militant groups have condemned the kidnapping.
It is feared the "Islamist" character of the message means the group is a first Palestinian manifestation of ... al-CIA-duh.
24 August 06
After some humming and hawing, France has committed itself to supplying 2,000 troops for the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon. It says it will lead the force, scheduled to be 15,000 strong.
Italy will send up to 3,000.
26 August 06
An Israeli jet has fired on a car containing two Reuters newsmen in the Gaza Strip, causing injuries. The Israelis say the car was unidentified, and was acting suspiciously.
However, a BBC News 24 newsreader said the car was "clearly marked".
This is the second attack on newsmen in the Gaza Strip within two weeks — including the two foxy Fox newsmen (see above, under 23 August 06).
27 August 06
A series of bomb explosions in western Turkish resorts, injuring 20 tourists, including 10 Brits.
29 August 06
Several more have been charged in Britain in relation to the "airliners plot".
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that most of the Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire violations are due to Israel. He also called the continuing Israeli air and sea blockade of Lebanon "humiliating" for that country.
31 August 06
Iran resumes uranium enrichment as the UN deadline expires. (It also has a plant which can produce plutonium as a by-product. Grr grr.)
Bush has mumbled again about "consequences". He also reiterated the old rantings about the "war on terror" and the Iraqi "war", confabulating the two together and comparing the "enemy" to fascism, Nazism, communism and other 20th-century totalitarianisms.
Underlining once more the needed substitute for world war and cold war.
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