1 July 2006
Diesel to power water supplies and sewerage plants ran out after the Israelis sealed the Gaza Strip's borders. Most electricity has already been lost after Israel attacked a power plant.
In Khan Younis, in the southern Strip, Palestinian fighters clashed with Israeli armour.
Israel purports to be taking the action to free an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shaleet, who is now said to be held in the southern Strip.
At least 66 people were killed, and 100 injured, in a car-bomb attack on a market in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. This is a poor Shi'ite district.
A message, supposedly from Osama bin Laden, warned Shias of reprisal attacks if they attack Sunnis, and commented on the "new leader" of "Qaeda in Iraq".
2 July 06
Another two British soldiers have been killed, and four injured, in a Taleban attack in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
The Gaza offices of the Palestinian prime minister have been damaged in a missile attack by an Israeli jet.
The Israelis temporarily opened the border with the Gaza Strip, allowing fuel tankers, etc, through.
3 July 06
MI5 has told the BBC that there is a hard core of 1,200 terrorists — Muslim, of course — in Britain, from a "notional" pool of 400,000 lossely sympathetic to "violent jihad".
They apparently derived the former data from background checks on people applying to join MI5, of which there are 100,000 every year (only 400 are accepted per year).
An ITV/Times survey of British Muslims found that 13 percent regard the "July 7 bombers" as martyrs, etc.
Are all empires based on violence and lies, mass killings and concentration camps? ...
Secrets & lies
While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths about the British empire
David Mehegan, Boston Globe (US), 3 July 06
'CAMBRIDGE [Mass.] — Wiry and energetic, the Hugo K. Foster Associate Professor of African Studies at Harvard University coils in her chair and speaks with rapid force about her book that recently won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize.
'"I was strongly urged by my colleagues not to undertake this project, for two reasons," Caroline Elkins said in an interview at her home, not far from the campus. "one, they felt it was too politically sensitive. Two, they said there wouldn't be enough information. So, me being me, I decided those were good enough reasons to undertake the project."
'At 37, Elkins has spent more than 10 years exhuming and writing about the long-hidden story at the heart of "Imperial Reckoning: the Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya." It's a vivid narrative — not without its critics — of oppression, torture, and cover up during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s, which shows how even a democratic government with humane values can hide the truth of its abominable behavior.
'Mau Mau was an uprising among the Kikuyu tribe of British Kenya, essentially a response to economic privation due to losses of land at the hands of British settlers. Beginning in 1951 and ending in 1959, the rebellion included an oath of loyalty among adherents, attacks on settlers, and a poorly armed movement based in Kenyan forests. Thirty-two Europeans were killed in rebel attacks. But in the British campaign that followed, thousands of Kikuyu, many of them innocent, were abused, tortured, or killed in a system of camps known as the Pipeline. By Elkins's calculations, as many as 320,000 men and women were held in the camps, and as many as 50,000 were killed.
'Elkins uncovered hundreds of stories of tortures committed in the worst of these camps, some in grisly detail: castrations, clamping of women's breasts with pliers, fatal beatings. Equally compelling is her account of the British denial of the truth, which extended from local colonial officials right up through Winston Churchill and his successors, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan.
'Though British officials lied baldly in Parliament and later burned virtually all the records of the camp system, Elkins reconstructed the story — including the names and locations of the camps — using eyewitness accounts, contemporary letters and private documents, and records of the opposition Labor [Labour] Party's futile resistance to the repression. Most of the chief architects of the camp system, including governor Evelyn Baring, retired from the colonial service with honor and were never held accountable for the abuses. Several senior participants were interviewed by Elkins, and they are unrepentant. ...'
There was a programme on British television about a year ago about the atrocities. As far as I remember, a figure about 150,000 killings altogether was given. One of the perpetrators, now apparently semi-senile, was interviewed. He denied it.
Solzhensitsyn et al have already criticized Macmillan for forcibly returning people to Stalin's Soviet Union after World War II — in exchange for British in Soviet hands — where they inevitably were killed. So it seems Kenya was the development of a character trait.
And it has recently been revealed that Churchill wanted the top Nazi leaders killed without trial. (Which may be what happened, to some extent.) ...
4 July 06
North Korea has launched six short- and medium-range missiles and one "capable" of hitting the western United States. It failed 42 seconds into the flight. (The same happened in 1998.)
5 July 06
Another British soldier killed in Helmand, Afghanistan.
Israel has "stepped up" its onslaught on the Gaza Strip after a "rocket attack" on an Israeli town.
6 July 06
Israel has re-occupied much of the northern Gaza Strip.
"MI5 Blueprint for Terror Attack Found in Ditch", reads some front-page UK newspaper headline. (BBC News 24, reviews of papers, 12:20am BST)
Appropriate.
... I didn't find anything under this particular — interesting — title, in a search of Google News. But the Press Association report, entitled "MoD [Ministry of Defence] terror documents found in ditch", is reproduced in the Daily Mail and the Guardian.
... and the BBC offers the reassuring follow-up "'No risk' from stolen terror file" (6 July 06).
"Lost" files are a standard unofficial way of releasing intelligence (not necessarily disinformation). Amazing how they're always handed to the Sun "newspaper" (=right-wing rag) by the "finders".
A video of Shahzad Tanweer, the other "MI5 7/7 bomber", has been aired on al-Jazeera. It was, according to an interviewee on BBC News 24, produced by the same company that produced the Mohammed Sidique Khan video.
Tanweer appears in the same dress as Khan, with the same "wallpaper" in the background. Like Khan, he speaks in English (with Arabic subtitles).
And, as in the Sidique video, "Qaeda no. 2" Ayman al-Zawahiri appears ... Evidence was said to show that the video had been compiled within the last five weeks.
Jazeera only played excerpts from the "9-minute tape". The only actual speech BBC News 24 allowed us to hear was, "What you have seen is only the beginning." Though the BBC News 24 report said he referred to "the attacks". The "feelings" of the public" on the 7/7 anniversary tomorrow make a good pretext for sowing the maximum outrage with the minimum exposure.
7 July 06
"The entire" Tanweer video has now emerged "on the internet". (Cf. previous item.) It is now "31 minutes long". Tanweer's comments are similar to those of Mohammed Sidique Khan in his video (see September 2005 diary, under 1 September 05). Like Khan, Tanweer is clearly following a script or notes, though not mechanically.
And, on the first anniversary of the London bombings, the FBI has chipped in, announcing it has "thwarted a plot against the New York subway system". But, like the "plot" against the Sears Tower (see June 2006 diary, under 22 June 06), it apparently hadn't got very far.
One of the targets was said to be the Holland Tunnel, a target of 1993 vintage. The "plotters" planned to drive trucks loaded with explosives into transport tunnels under the Hudson River.
(BBC news, 7 July 06)
... But according to "an ABC exclusive" (ABC World News Tonight, 7 July 06), the FBI said 15 to 20 suicide bombers intended to carry bombs in backpacks onto a single subway train, and detonate them when the train was under the Hudson. The FBI learned about the plot about a year ago, from conversations in an internet chatroom (!).
The plotters were in Canada, and led by a Lebanese, but intended to bring others over from Saudi Arabia, and carry out the plot as near to an anniversary of 9/11 as possible. About five of them are still at large, so we can't feel secure yet ~ ~ ~ ~~~~aaaargh!
An Italian judge has arraigned former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi for trial on financial misdoings and related charges.
The estranged husband of British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell will also be up for trial, for "lying under oath" to protect Berlusconi, but the Italian "statute of limitations" means that his trial must come to an end in spring 2007.
10 July 06
Email leak fuels clamour to scrap ID cards scheme
Tania Branigan, The Guardian (UK)
'Opponents of identity cards yesterday stepped up their campaign for the multi-billion pound scheme to be scrapped, after it emerged that the government is planning a scaled-down version of the project so that it can meet a 2008 deadline.
'The plans emerged in a series of emails between officials working on the project, leaked to the Sunday Times, which warn the interim version may not be "even remotely feasible". One of the civil servants involved warned that a botched introduction could delay ID cards for a generation. He added: "This has all the inauspicious signs of a project continuing to be driven by an arbitrary end date, rather than reality." ...'
"Hundreds" of British soldiers are to be sent to Afghanistan after six UK troops were killed in Helmand province in the last month.
Officers say they are impressed with the technical sophistication of some Taleban attacks. ...
11 July 06
A series of 7 bombs on the Mumbai (Bombay) rail network at rush hour has killed at least 160. They exploded within ten minutes, and appear to have been on timers. They targeted first-class carriages, and thus business commuters (Mumbai is India's business capital).
The House of Lords has voted to suspend the UK's one-way extradition treaty with the US until the Senate "signs its side of the deal". (BBC Newsnight, 11 July 06)
The US government has acknowledged that all detainees, including those in Guantanamo, are entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention.
A programme on BBC 2 about Omar Sharif, the British would-be suicide bomber in Tel Aviv. Says he brushed up against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after the US invasion. Also Mohammed Sidique Khan, the "leader" of the London suicide bombers".
12 July 06
A colleague of the "NatWest Three", who are due to be extradited to the US, has been found dead, "thought to have committed suicide", in undergrowth near his UK home. He had been interviewed by the FBI at least once, though not charged; friends say he was "harassed" by the FBI. Chakrabarti, the head of Liberty, says we are entitled to ask if the FBI is operating in the UK.
He thus joins the chief executive of Enron (to which the NatWest Bank affair is related), who recently "died of a heart attack" just before he was due to be sentenced over the Enron scandal.
The British Labour Party's chief fund-raiser, Lord Levy, was arrested for questioning in connection with "cash for peerages". He was later released on bail.
Israel has invaded Lebanon after Hezbollah "killed eight and captured two of its soldiers".
Like Gilad Shaleet "in Gaza", the Israelis are "looking for" the two soldiers, and destroying infrastructure in the process.
It thus seems more likely that all the "captures" have been staged as a pretext for dealing with Israel's enemies. Though Hezbollah appears to acknowledge that it did it.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Paris, has warned Iran and Syria in connection with this.
So that, in conjunction with the Mumbai commuter bombings (over which India has already questioned Pakistan), it looks like a renewed effort headed by the US petro-imperialists to subjugate the Middle East.
Too bad the Hindu-fascist Janata Party isn't still in power in India. Still, you can't have everything.
And at the Paris meeting, Iran has been referred back to the UN Security Council for failing to cooperate timely on the nuclear issue. Apparently the French took the lead in this.
'Foreign ministers from the major powers have agreed to refer Iran back to the Security Council for possible punishment over its nuclear programme.
The decision by the Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany could lead to economic sanctions. [You keep your nuclear programme, we'll keep your oil!] ...
'But any threats of punishment by the UN would not include military force. [Just unspecific measures to be used as invasion justification, mm?] ...
'"The Iranians have given no indication at all they are ready to engage seriously on the substance of our proposals," french foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said.
'"We have no choice but to return to the United Nations Security Council," he said, speaking on behalf of the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany. ...'
Nine hundred extra British troops are arriving in Helmand, Afghanistan, in the "fight against the Taleban" (the US's oil mercenaries, as Richard Labeviere called them). We may question whether the more sophisticated attacks at least are being staged by, or at the instigation of, "intelligence"/special forces to provide one pretext for a force build-up in aid of Iran invasion.
13 July 06
Israel imposes Lebanon blockade
BBC News online, 10:08am BST
'... as part of a major offensive over two soldiers captured by the militant group Hezbollah.
'Israeli ships have entered Lebanese water[s] to block ports, and the country's only international airport is closed after Israeli airstrikes on Thursday [today].
'Overnight air raids on targets across southern Lebanon left 27 people dead.
'The operation comes as Israel continues a separate offensive in the Gaza Strip over another captured soldier. ...'
Valerie Plame has initiated a lawsuit against US Vice-President Dick Cheney and top presidential adviser Karl Rove for "maliciously" exposing her as a CIA agent. (Supposedly this was in revenge for her husband's exposure of WMD fraud against Iraq.)
14 July 06
Israel has made 15 airstrikes on Lebanon, including the Beirut-Damascus road. Iran has said that any attack on Syria would bring a strong response from the Islamic world. (5am BST)
15 July 06
Three hundred British paratroopers (backed by 700 Canadian and American troops) occupied the town of Sangin, northern Helmand, killing "40 militants". Six British soldiers have been killed in the town in the last month, and the small British garrison was "under siege". The town was called the local "Taleban capital".
Last Wednesday, 12 July 06, the British called in an American airstrike on the nearby town of Nowzad (Nauzad). Three 500lb bombs were dropped near the market, causing many civilian casualties according to some accounts. The British commander replied, in effect, that civilians had no business in the area where Taleban fighters were firing on the British.
Yesterday Hezbollah hit an Israeli gunboat with an explosives-packed pilotless drone, severely damaging it and killing two to four crew. Today, the Israelis claim that Hezbollah used a rocket supplied by Iran.
... confirming the current flare-up is a mutual-interest agenda between Israel and the US petro-cabal for building up on excuses to invade next-oil-target Iran and also Israel's enemy Syria.
The British are sending two warships, the aircraft carrier Illusrious and the assault ship Bulwark, to "rescue British civilians from" Lebanon.
The UN Security Council has unanimously passed a resolution to impose sanctions on North Korea in response to its recent missile tests (see above, under 4 July 06. The sanctions will be against military supplies to N Korea ... A clause to allow the use of force was excluded after objections from China.
... which may be testing the water for a resolution against Iran over its nuclear programme ...
16 July 06
Hezbollah hits a rail repair shop in Haifa with a missile, killing eight Israelis. The missile was packed with ball-bearings to maximize casualties.
Israel says Syria supplied the missile. Though one general opts for Iran.
Any advance on Iran, ladies and gentlemen? Do I hear Saudi Arabia? Not yet? ... Iran going once ... going twice ... spoil! to Uncle Sam (and his Israeli sidekick).
And, at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, petro-puppet Bush and puppet's puppet Blair inveigle against Iran and Syria.
The Israelis have hit the Palestinian foreign ministry in Gaza a second time, destroying the building.
17 July 06
The "Independent Police Complaints Commission" says it won't be pursuing a criminal prosecution against individual police officers for the slaying of Jean Charles de Menezes. However, it will be bringing a corporate health and safety prosecution.
The British government is to ban al-Mujahiroun spinoff al-Ghurabaa and one other Islamist group.
Next they'll be banning MI5 and MI6. :-)
Hezbollah are using 65-mile range missiles supposedly supplied by Iran, and to have other 125-mile range Iranian missiles.
18 July 06
Five US warships and "thousands" of marines have arrived at Lebanon "to evacuate US nationals".
There are 12,000 British nationals in Lebanon, and another 10,000 of dual nationality. Also 25,000 Americans and 14,000 French. (British Channel 4 News)
And 40,000 Canadians. HMS Gloucester ferried 180 Brits to Cyprus, and the Americans 120.
Israeli PM Olmert says Hezbollah's kidnap of two Israeli soldiers was in coordination with Iran.
Mirroring the probable de facto situation of Israeli coordination with America.
19 July 06
Lebanon's PM Siniora says that 500,000 Lebanese have been displaced by the Israeli onslaught.
Many villages in southern Lebanon are said to have been flattened.
21 July 06
US marines have landed in Lebanon for the first time in 20 years. Seventy are in Beirut to help with the evacuation of US citizens. (What happened to the rest of the "thousands" of marines said to be on their way? [Cf. above, under 18 July 06.])
They are from the "Beirut Brigade", the brigade in Lebanon prior to the bombing (blamed on Hezbollah) which killed 241 of their number in 1982. They were said to find a certain irony in the current reoccupation.
(NBC News)
"Hezbollah" is proving as cabal-friendly as "Qaeda" ...
Hezbollah rockets strike U.N. post, Israel says
Army crosses border, urges Lebanese to flee ...
Associated Press, on MSNBC.com, 21 July 06, 4:22am ET
'BEIRUT, Lebanon — A barrage of Hezbollah-fired rockets aimed at northern Israel fell short of their targets and struck a United Nations observation post in Lebanon, the Israeli army said Friday [today].
'An army spokesman said it wasn't immediately clear if the United Nations Interim Force post was occupied at the time or if there were casualties. ...
'[Yesterday] U.N. chief Kofi Annan ... denounced Israel for "excessive use of force" ...'
(Sam F Ghattas, AP, "U.N. Post Hit in Israel-Hezbollah Fighting", The Guardian [UK], 21 July 06, 2:01pm)
Israeli troops and tanks are massing on the Lebanese border. Three divisions are said to be involved, and thousands of reservists have been called up.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is finally to go to "the Middle East" (read Israel) on Sunday 23 July 06.
Next stop Damascus?
Teacher under fire for his Cheney-9/11 theory
Associated Press, on CNN.com, 21 July 06
'More than 60 state lawmakers are urging the University of Wisconsin-Madison to fire an instructor who has argued that the U.S. government orchestrated the September 11 terrorist attacks.
'A letter sent Thursday [yesterday] and signed by 52 [state] Assembly representatives and nine state senators condemns a decision to let Kevin Barrett teach an introductory class on Islam this fall.
'U.W.-Madison Provost Pat Farrell launched a review after Barrett spoke last month on a talk show about his views that the terrorist attacks were the result of a government conspiracy to spark war in the Middle East. After the review, Farrell said Barrett was a qualified instructor who can present his views as one perspective on the attacks.
Barrett has said he thinks the most likely theory about the 9/11 plot is that it was an "inside job" organized and commanded by vice president Dick Cheney. [Link to CNN programme] ...'
'The organization says on its website that it is "dedicated to uniting members of the Jewish, Islamic and Christian faiths in pursuit of 9/11 truth." ...'
([Melissa Sowry,] "Lecturer Under Fire for 9/11 Conspiracy Belief [page 2]", ABC News [US] [25 July 06])
22 July 06
Israeli forces have taken the "key village" (or town) of Maroun Er-Ras in southern Lebanon.
They say they intend targeted in-and-out operations (i.e. raids), not occupation.
Israel has destroyed the transmitter masts of various Lebanese channels just north of Beirut.
The Iraqi army "foiled an attempt" on British troops in Basra "which might have caused many casualties". It "found five Katusha rockets aimed at a British base".
Them pesky Hezbollah varmints tired of supplying MI5 roadside bombs?
A "double suicide attack" (car + pedestrian) killed two Canadian soldiers and several civilians in Afghanistan. But bystanders interviewed by the BBC said some had been killed when the troops opened fire on "women and children" after the attack.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in Beirut today. Tomorrow she's due to meet Israeli PM Ehud Olmert.
World Trade Organization talks on farm subsidies have collapsed, with Europeans, Brazil and India blaming America. The talks were about US farm subsidies undermining exports from poorer countries, who can't compete.
But with a Wolf-Witch in charge of the sheep-fold, you can't expect much else.
25 July 06
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking alongside Ehud Olmert in Israel, said "It's time for a new Middle East." Creation out of destruction, as McGoohan satirically remarked in The Prisoner.
And, within hours of her departure, the creation resumes, perhaps now at a new level after receiving a green light. Five massive explosions shake Beirut, previously quiet for 24 hours during Rice's visit there. And another UN observation post is hit, by an Israeli bomb. No pretence of a Hezbollah rocket this time. Four UN personnel may have been killed in the strike.
In the UK, three coloured people were found not guilty of trying to procure radioactive materials for a terrorist attack. The case involved "the fake sheikh", who acts as agent provocateur in conjunction with the right-wing muck-rag The News of the World.
More US troops are to be sent to Iraq "to deal with rising violence in the suburbs of Baghdad".
26 July 06
The Lebanese UN post attacked by Israel yesterday (see above) suffered 14 near misses from artillery before being directly hit by a bomb. Four unarmed UN staff are confirmed dead. Rescuers subsequently came under further Israeli shellfire.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (speaking in Rome) said the attack looked deliberate. (Look out, world, we have a new Sherlock Holmes!) The Israeli ambassador denied it was intentional and expressed "deep regret". He said there will be a full investigation.
(BBC News 24 at 1am BST)
... The UN observers repeatedly contacted the Israelis after each shelling, and were each time promised that attacks would cease. And then the post was hit with a precision-guided bomb.
(Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East correspondent, on BBC TV News At One, 26 July 06)
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with representatives of Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries in Rome — for three hours. Iran and Syria were not invited at all.
27 July 06
Beckett protest at weapons flight
BBC News online
'British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has protested to the US about its use of Prestwick Airport in western Scotland to transport bombs to Israel.
'Amid the Lebanon crisis, she said it seemed the US was ignoring procedure, and she registered her concerns with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. ...
'Opposition parties have reacted angrily to a report in The Daily Telegraph newspaper that two chartered Airbus A310 cargo planes filled with laser-guided bombs landed at Prestwick en-route to Israel front he US.
'The Israelis have requested the munitions to attack bunkers being used by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. ...
'According to BBC Two's Newsnight programme, the US has lodged requests to bring two more planes through the UK carrying bombs and missiles for Israel in the next two weeks. [But the current two were apparently without British government knowledge.] ...'
28 July 06
Israeli forces fired two mortars at a convoy of news-trucks and ambulances, slightly injuring a two German newsmen.
(Reported by a Sky News reporter on Sky News [UK], 5pm BST).
Israel says it doesn't want the UN to participate in an "inquiry" on the killing of four of its personnel by the Israelis.
(British Channel 4 News, 28 July 06 at 7pm)
Two specially-certified cargo planes will stop off at Prestwick Airport, Scotland, en route from the US to Israel. The certification is for especially-dangerous cargoes — either high explosives or poisonous substances.
Several non-certified cargo planes are currently passing through Prestwick.
(Ibid.)
A Canadian major-general said that Hezbollah was using for cover the UN post attacked by Israel. But a retired general said he had no doubt the attack was deliberate targeting ...
(BBC Newsnight, 28 July 06)
"Hundreds" of Israeli troops, and dozens of tanks, are crossing into Lebanon, in "the biggest incursion yet".
While tens of thousands of Israeli troops have been, and are being, mobilized. What are they for?
The paedophile campaign may be being reignited in Britain.
Outrage after an convicted child molester in south Wales sexually assaulted a 3-year-old girl, was sentenced to "life" — and made eligible for parole after 5 years.
Then a "respected" minister of the United Reform Church was jailed for life for sexual assault on boys, including the rape of an 11-year-old. No, not a Catholic this time!
Also in the news, a 21-year-old Canadian man using British internet chatrooms to blackmail girls into internet pornography.
The latest, two child rapists have absconded from an open prison in south Wales.
An Israeli airstrike has closed the main Lebanon-Syria crossing.
Two UN personnel have been wounded.
30 July 06
An Israeli airstrike on the village of Qana, southern Lebanon has killed at least 54, including 37 children.
31 July 06
Israel has declared a 48-hour cessation of air attacks in Lebanon.
... In spite of this, air attacks in support of ground "incursions" have continued in southern Lebanon.
A British TV reporter reported that local "Hezbollah centre" town/village of Bint Jebeil had been levelled ...
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