FALLUJA, Iraq, July 12 – Transformed into a police state after last winter’s siege, this should be the safest city in all of Iraq.

Thousands of American and Iraqi troops live in crumbling buildings here and patrol streets laced with concertina wire. Any Iraqi entering the city must show a badge and undergo a search at one of six checkpoints. There is a 10 p.m. curfew.

But the insurgency is rising from the rubble nevertheless, eight months after the American military killed as many as 1,500 Iraqis in a costly invasion that fanned anti-American passions across Iraq and the Arab world.

Somewhere in the bowels of Falluja, the former guerrilla stronghold 35 miles west of Baghdad, where four American contractors were killed in an ambush, and the bodies of two were hanged from a bridge, in March 2004, insurgents are building suicide car bombs again.
Full: nytimes.com

BAGHDAD – A tidal wave of corruption may ensure the Iraqi army and police will be too few and too poorly armed to replace American and British forces fighting anti-government insurgents. That could frustrate plans in Washington and London to reduce their forces in Iraq.

The Iraqi armed forces are full of “ghost battalions” in which officers pocket the pay of soldiers who never existed or have gone home. “I know of at least one unit which was meant to be 2,200 but the real figure was only 300 men,” said a veteran Iraqi politician and member of parliament, Mahmoud Othman. “The US talks about 150,000 Iraqis in the security forces but I doubt if there are more than 40,000.”
Full: commondreams/independent uk

Did White House political adviser Karl Rove deliberately reveal the identity of an undercover CIA operative? Only two people can answer that question, and neither one is talking: Rove himself and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the question.

Sooner or later, we probably will get an answer. Fitzgerald has been so aggressive in this investigation — to the point of jailing a New York Times reporter who refused to reveal her confidential sources — that indictments are reasonably likely.

In the meantime, it’s important to look beyond the immediate political spectacle in Washington — White House spokesman Scott McClellan finally confronted by reporters who feel abused and lied to — to the reason Rove was talking to a reporter about ex-diplomat Joseph Wilson at all.

The real issue, more serious and less glitzy than whether Bush will stand by his political adviser, is the extraordinary efforts the Bush administration made to protect a case for war in Iraq from all contradictory evidence — in effect, as the British spymaster Sir Richard Dearlove put it, to “fix” the facts and intelligence so they would support a decision already made.
Full: commondreams/star tribune

…To truly help America heal from its present spiritual disease, liberals are going to have to dig down deeper into their souls to find the place from which the real thing comes.
commondreams.org

What a load of crap. The ‘liberal tradition’ was born at the height of imperialism in Europe, and bought into it unquestioningly like everybody else. Liberalism has nothing to say to the world that’s worth hearing

Suspect in London attack arrested in Cairo
CAIRO, Egypt – A well-liked Egyptian with an American college degree and no apparent interest in politics has been arrested as part of the investigation into the London bomb blasts. In Pakistan Friday, security forces investigating connections with the suicide bombings detained four suspects, a police office said.
…Meanwhile, the BBC, citing sources close to the investigation, said the explosive used was the highly unstable TATP (triacetone triperoxide), made from freely available ingredients.
…It said the explosives, found in raids in the city of Leeds, are thought to be similar to materials used by British “shoe bomber” Richard Reid who tried to blow up a transatlantic flight in 2001 with explosives concealed in his shoes. what happened to the ‘military grade’ explosives?

Chemistry student held in Cairo
…”Elnashar denied having any relation with the latest events in London. He pointed out [to questioners] that all his belongings remained in his apartment in Britain,” a statement said.”It is difficult to believe such things,”
…Dr Nazer said. “When I asked his colleagues, they didn’t mention anything bad thing about him, saying only that he was clever and calm. His colleagues said he had no behaviour of violence or no ideological issues.”

Family mourns bomb victim Shahara
The first of the funerals for the victims of the London bomb attacks was today held for Shahara Islam.
In a statement, Ms Islam’s parents said the 20-year-old had been in “the wrong place at the wrong time” when she was killed on her way to work at an Islington bank branch last Thursday morning.
“Today our dear daughter, cause of our joy and light of our eyes, our Shahara is returning to her Lord – an innocent and blood-stained martyr. She was an East Ender, a Londoner and British, but, above all, a true Muslim and proud to be so,” the statement said. (Just in case anybody thinks they just chose random Muslims among the dead to blame) It turns out miraculaously that the 2nd funeral is for a woman named Susan Levy! I’m surprised her last name was not reported as ‘Israel’ lest the symbolism escape anyone..

Police say fourth bomber born in Jamaica
…Counter-terrorist officials said last night that the investigation was starting to enter the covert “intelligence phase” which, by definition, would be much less visible than the events of recent days. The overt “operational phase” was running down, they said, adding that it was unlikely there would be any arrests in the near future.
…A senior anti-terrorist official also denied claims that the explosives originated from the Balkans, and said it was far from clear that they were of military grade – claims made by French anti-terrorist officials earlier this week. Well a couple days ago some ‘official’ said it was very clear they were military grade explosives. A little Malvo (DC ‘sniper’) action thrown in for good measure.

Loving father, bad neighbour, Piccadilly line bomber Everyone knows bad neighbors make good ‘terrorists’, like MOVE in Philly 1986.

‘Father figure’ inspired young bombers
…””The Lodge Lane centre was used for youth work,” said Reverend Neil Bishop. “I have never had any concerns about the work Hamara do. That centre has been doing youth work for seven or eight years. The people I knew there are all perfectly regular people.”

Far right and football gangs plot ‘revenge’

ah yes and we must not forget the picture of ‘the bomber’ with the ‘bomb’, we are assured, tucked into his rucksack:

Police appeal for clues on London bus bomber

Hunt for terror cell widens with fresh raid

Anti-terrorist police were on Thursday carrying out a forensic search at a semi-detached house in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, in the strongest signal yet that investigators believe the bombers may have had connections with the area just north of London. Aylesbury is 22 miles from Luton where a car, said to have been used by the suicide bombers, was found.

…Evidence that at least two of the men had travelled to Pakistan raised the possibility that they originally received instructions and may have been trained by al-Qaeda there.

…The uncle of one of the bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, blamed “forces behind” his nephew for the attacks. Bashir Ahmed said his nephew, who came from Leeds, was “proud to be British”. He said it was hard for the family to accept their son had caused such loss of life. “It wasn’t him. It must have been forces behind him.”

The other bombers were named as Hasib Mir Hussain, 18, also from Leeds, and Mohammed Sadique Kahn, 30, a father-of-one who lived in nearby Dewsbury. The fourth man has not been named, but is believed to match the profile of the other three. Security camera footage and other intelligence suggest the four knew each other well.

…As police hunted for a “fifth man” and possible mastermind behind western Europe’s first suicide bomb attacks, the prime minister also took fresh steps to increase dialogue with the British Muslim community and called for an international effort to mobilise the “moderate and true voice of Islam”.

…Building on the strong cross-party consensus since the attacks, Mr Blair said the government would shortly meet with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to get prompt backing for legislation aimed at preventing another terrorist strike.

Mr Blair has already said he wants to enact legislation to allow the prosecution of people caught preparing an act of terrorism. The prime minister on Wednesday said legislation would also be aimed at allowing prosecution of those involved in “incitement and instigation” of such acts.
Full: ft.com

THE TEACHER BOMBER
One of the bombers who brought carnage to London taught disabled children, it has emerged.

Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, of Dewsbury, was a supply teaching assistant who taught disabled children in Beeston, it has been revealed.

A picture of him carried on the front page of The Times shows the bearded bomber caring for young children at the school.

The news came as police told Sky News they were hunting a fifth man involved in the plot to kill 52 people in Britain’s first suicide strikes.

Sky News’ crime correspondent Martin Brunt said: “Police have to assume that there were others working with these four.”
Full: www.sky.com

Hasib Hussain: The boy who grew up to bomb the No 30 bus
…He was the tallest boy in his class. Hasib Hussain, aged 10, in his final year at Ingram Road Primary School in Holbeck, Leeds, was already showing signs of being a promising athlete and had ambitions to be a professional cricketer. But he was always an unassuming child.

A few years later, however, Hussain was to become one of Britain’s first home-grown suicide bombers at the age of 18. One week ago yesterday, he told his mother he was going to London with friends for the night. Once there, he boarded a No 30 bus and detonated the last of the four bombs that shook the capital.

…”He was really into cricket and football. We would get together every weekend, then they closed the pitch down. I never saw him much after that until six to eight weeks ago,” said a friend.

It seems he thought he had found Islam. He grew a beard and began dressing in traditional Muslim clothes. When he was last spotted by the friend he had shaved off his beard. Al-Qa’ida analysts have claimed that may be a sign of a radicalised Muslim’s intention to become a terrorist.
Full: independent.co.uk

On the BBC this morning I heard one of Hussein’s friends who had played cricket with him the day before he died. Maybe that’s how a suicide bomber prepares for heaven. The dead can’t defend themselves.
Pakistanis going to Pakistan…hmm…now that’s suspicious. A few days ago they said the bombs had timers which were synchronized, and now they’ve found a bunch of sorry fall guys, a most unlikely lot, but certain to ramp up the anxiety level in England to a nearly intolerable degree, prompting people to accept the end of civil government. Blaming kids and positing a shady ‘mastermind’ conveniently disappeared to parts unknown. It’s a load, and the tragic thing is that people will believe it, because the alternative is unthinkable for most. 9-11 has taught those who suspect the unthinkable. Thousands of them.

A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.

On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a ‘crisis management’ advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.

Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.

Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.

…The exercise fulfils several different goals. It acts as a cover for the small compartamentalized government terrorists to carry out their operation without the larger security services becoming aware of what they’re doing, and, more importantly, if they get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence they can just claim that they were just taking part in the exercise.

This is precisely what happened on the morning of 9/11/2001. The CIA was conducting drills of flying hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning.

It is clear that at least five if not six training exercises were in operation in the days leading up to and on the morning of 9/11. This meant that NORAD radar screens showed as many as 22 hijacked airliners at the same time. NORAD had been briefed that this was part of the exercise drill and therefore normal reactive procedure was forestalled and delayed.

The large numbers of ‘blips’ on NORAD screens that displayed both real and ‘drill’ hijacked planes explain why confused press reports emerged hours after the attack stating that up to eight planes had been hijacked.

The Anglo-American establishment that controls the military-industrial complex of the West has been caught over a hundred times carrying out bombings and other terrorist attacks around the world to further their corporate aims and to blame their enemies.

The US government has been caught planning to carry out attacks and carrying out attacks. The British government has been caught red-handed as well. Members of Vladimir Putin’s FSB were caught planting bombs in a Russian apartment building in 1999 by the Moscow police.

This is not speculation. Kermit Roosevelt admited on NPR radio that in 1953 the CIA and British intelligence carried out a wave of bombings and shootings in Iran. He then went on to brag about how they subsequently blamed the bombings on Iran’s President, Mossadegh. Do you understand, these people brag about what they do 40 years later?

The London bombings have the same signature as the Madrild bombings of 3/11. Both of these bombings are almost indistinguishable from the Bolognia bombing in 1980 that killed over 80 people.

The bombing in Bolognia was part of a CIA operation code named Gladio, where the US government would pay right-wing terrorists to carry out bombings to be blamed on leftists in Europe. All of this was blown wide open when two of the Bolognia bombers were convited in an Italian court, forcing them to spill their guts admitting that they were neo-fascists contracted by the CIA. Operation Gladio documents have since been declassified.

The London terror alert level was lowered before the bombings took place. This gave the purpotrators extra cover to plan and execute the attack without having to evade the most stringent security.

In any crime you look at history and motive, The British government has been caught in multiple examples of carrying out bombings in London which were then blamed on the IRA. They even had one of their own MI5 agents wihin the Omagh bomb squad. Click here for an archive of this evidence.

The wider agenda will become clearer when Blair firmly points the finger at the selected patsies designated to take the fall. But for the moment he’s happy to grandstand as the courageous leader who immedately returned to London to take control of the chaos.

BBC polls that were showing 80 per cent plus opposed the ID card will now likely flip back in the opposite direction. Support for the European Union and increased globalization through the G8 will rise. Who stands to gain from all this? Who has the motive?
Full: prisonplanet.com

by M. Swathy Margaret
In this issue of Insight on gender and caste, many articles raise the question of alliance-building among various movements, especially between the Dalit movement and the feminist movement. Dalit feminists share a definite sense of identification with many basic articulations raised by both these movements. We have gained a lot from them. While it is important and strategically wise to form coalitions and build solidarity with other marginalized groups, it should be considered only when a movement is armed with a clear understanding of its own historicity based on the experience of oppression and discrimination. It is productive to have in mind the historical dialogue between different marginalized sections of people. Otherwise, there is the danger of Dalit women, their self-definition and their peculiar positioning in the society being rendered invisible. For example, the Dalit ideologues like Katti Padma Rao, Gopal Guru and Gaddar seem to be less sensitive to the internal patriarchy of Dalit communities. They maintain that all women are Dalits. Since the upper caste women are not allowed to enter into their kitchens and are treated as impure during their menstrual periods, they are also untouchables! Here “untouchability” is the ideal framework to fight against caste oppression, claims Gopal Guru. What Guru overlooks is that untouchability is a phenomenon that evokes various notions and images of bodies–bodies that are marked by their caste, gender, class, age, sexual orientation and other identities. And different bodies are ascribed different cultural meanings. Not all bodies possess even identities. Not all Dalit bodies are one, not all female bodies are one. They interact with each other being caught in a complex web of intersecting identities. Dalit men, even those identified with the movement, do not want to see us as intellectuals. “You are a Dalit body, a Dalit female body. Why can’t I possess it. Why can’t I just come near you”. It is threatening. This happens at a very physical level. To prevent this, one of the strategies that I use, is to stay with upper-caste women as Dalit men will not dare do express and behave in the same manner with them. In such a situation who am I closer to? The Dalit men, or the upper-caste women? Neither.
Full: countercurrents.org

He said: “For me [Blair and Brown] are not the Lennon and McCartney of world development issues.

“They are the Status Quo and it’s a mangy status quo which will do nothing to resolve the ocean of misery and poverty that exists in the world.”

He said the privatisations and the IMF, World Bank, venture capitalists and the “robber barons” of globalised corporations had left poor countries strangled by free market reforms.

“We won’t make poverty history until we make the G8 and their system history,” he said, pointing to unfair trade rules.

Mr Galloway added: “The poor countries are poor because the rich countries became rich in part through making them and keeping them poor.

“Until a seismic shift of wealth is transferred to the people we robbed then justice will not be done.”
Full: bbc.co.uk

SHANGHAI, July 10 – Goldman Sachs and Allianz of Germany are in talks to acquire a $1 billion stake in China’s largest state-owned bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, according to a person briefed on the discussions.

The talks come at a time when some of the world’s biggest financial institutions are rushing into China to acquire stakes in some of the country’s large but troubled state-owned banks ahead of planned initial public offerings in the next few years. The Bank of America said last month that it would pay $3 billion for a 9 percent stake in the nation’s third-largest lender, the China Construction Bank, which is expected to offer shares to the public late this year.

And UBS said last month that it was considering investing as much as $500 million in the Bank of China, another huge state-owned bank.

“All the big financial institutions want a piece of the action,” said Jack J. T. Huang, who oversees China coverage for the law firm Jones Day in Taipei, Taiwan. “This is not necessarily a rational decision when you look at the numbers. But these institutions believe the government won’t allow these banks to fail. They will step in to help them succeed.”

I.C.B.C. has nearly 400,000 employees, more than 100 million customers and about $500 billion in assets. It is unclear how large a stake in the bank Goldman and Allianz may get. The negotiations were reported by the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong on Saturday.

Goldman and other large investment banks may be positioning themselves to help take the banks public in the next few years in deals that could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in investment banking fees.

Citigroup was initially expected to help take China Construction Bank public, but bankers said that deal is now likely to be handled by Morgan Stanley and its Chinese joint venture partner, the China International Capital Corporation, after Citigroup passed on buying a stake.
Full: nytimes.com