Category: Archive

ARIANE WEBSTER, SUSPECT’S GRANDMOTHER: I’m — truly down in my heart I believe that’s a stone lie. I been knowing Nassir (ph) better than five years. I never know him to get in any trouble. I never know him to have any problem with anybody. I always know him, he taught my son how to do karate. I have a son that is 18 years old. When he first met my son, my son was only about …

ANDREWS (reporter) : So you don’t think he’s a terrorist, as the government’s alleging?

WEBSTER: No, I don’t. I really don’t believe that.

MASTER G.H.G. ATHEA, SUSPECT’S FRIEND: Someone along the line offered to him some funds to do whatever he wanted to do if that’s what he wanted to do. As far as some subversive work. And said they would give him whatever he needed.

ANDREWS: So somebody had approached him to give him money to blow up buildings?

ATHEA: To do whatever he wanted to do. But that was far from his mind. So he had no desire to interact with these men to accept anything they had to offer.

ANDREWS: So bottom line here, is your friend a terrorist?

ATHEA: No, he’s not. Absolutely not.

The key comment here is from the suspects friend. It clearly looks as if the "someone" who tried to bend his ear and convince him to join Al-Qaeda was acting on behalf of the US government and running an entrapment sting.

Entrapment is the primary method used to expose supposed Al-Qaeda cells, the evidence of which they were dangerous terrorists later dissolves into thin air in every single instance. It was used in the Canadian scare earlier this month and also recently in the Toledo arrests.

Attorney General Gonzales said that "the individual they thought was a member of al-Qaida was present at their meetings and in actuality he was working with the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force."

This is classic entrapment and the artificial manufacture of an Al-Qaeda boogeyman to wave in front of the American people.

Batiste was most likely told that he was part of an anti-terror drill to test the security of Chicago landmarks and that he had to recruit a mock group of followers. Either that or he was a hand-picked idiot who had severe mental deficiencies and couldn’t spot and obvious set-up.

One of the repeating elements to emerge from every major terror sting or forged terror alert is the use of retarded individuals as patsies, informants and go-betweens. The terror raid in Forest Gate three weeks ago in which an innocent man was shot by the police was conducted on the whim of information provided by a man with an IQ of just 69.

Similarly, it was reported today that the informant who sparked interest in alleged Ottawa terrorist Mohamed Harkat was "certifiably insane."

The group used by the FBI to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993 were also clinically retarded. It’s easier to frame people who lack any credibility and don’t have any means to eloquently defend themselves.

Don’t be surprised to learn of a connection to a retarded individual over the next few days.

We shouldn’t be lapse in our understanding that the Sears Tower is indeed the target of deranged terrorist masters who want to destroy America. Internet speculation that the landmark would be attacked on April 19, 2004 was rubbished by many and yet a derailing of the plot was quietly announced that very day yet given no play in the establishment media.

In March 2004, Silverstein Properties bought the tower in an $800 million deal. Larry Silverstein’s penchant for large insurance pay outs, coupled with the strange coincidence of buildings only owned by him collapsing on 9/11, makes for a dangerous combination.

The Sears Tower is indeed under threat – not from government created patsies, but the elite itself.

Planners have designed cities as if resources such as land, fuel and concrete were unlimited, and waste has been something to dump as cheaply and as distantly as possible, according to an article in New Scientist (17/6/2006, p.38). Full Story  

Nevertheless, politics should not be the greatest international concern. For over in Gaza, one appalling act must now eclipse all thoughts of "road maps" or "mutual gestures": on Wednesday, Israeli war planes repeatedly bombed and utterly demolished Gaza’s only power plant. About 700,000 of Gaza’s 1.3 million people now have no electricity, and word is that power cannot be restored for six months.

It is not the immediate human conditions created by this strike that are monumental. Those conditions are, of course, bad enough. No lights, no refrigerators, no fans through the suffocating Gaza summer heat. No going outside for air, due to ongoing bombing and Israel’s impending military assault. In the hot darkness, massive explosions shake the cities, close and far, while repeated sonic booms are doubtless wreaking the havoc they have wrought before: smashing windows, sending children screaming into the arms of terrified adults, old people collapsing with heart failure, pregnant women collapsing with spontaneous abortions. Mass terror, despair, desperate hoarding of food and water. And no radios, television, cell phones, or laptops (for the few who have them), and so no way to get news of how long this nightmare might go on.

But this time, the situation is worse than that. As food in the refrigerators spoils, the only remaining food is grains. Most people cook with gas, but with the borders sealed, soon there will be no gas. When family-kitchen propane tanks run out, there will be no cooking. No cooked lentils or beans, no humus, no bread ­ the staples Palestinian foods, the only food for the poor. (And there is no firewood or coal in dry, overcrowded Gaza.)

And yet, even all this misery is overshadowed by a grimmer fact: no water. Gaza’s public water supply is pumped by electricity. The taps, too, are dry. No sewage system. And again, word is that the electricity is out for at least six months.

The Gaza aquifer is already contaminated with sea water and sewage, due to over-pumping (partly by those now-abandoned Israeli settlements) and the grossly inadequate sewage system. To be drinkable, well water is purified through machinery run by electricity. Otherwise, the brackish water must at least be boiled before it can be consumed, but this requires electricity or gas. And people will soon have neither.

Drinking unpurified water means sickness, even cholera. If cholera breaks out, it will spread like wildfire in a population so densely packed and lacking fuel or water for sanitation. And the hospitals and clinics aren’t functioning, either, because there is no electricity.

Finally, people can’t leave. None of the neighboring countries have resources to absorb a million desperate and impoverished refugees: logistically and politically, the flood would entirely destabilize Egypt, for example. But Palestinians in Gaza can’t seek sanctuary with their relatives in the West Bank, either, because they can’t get out of Gaza to get there. They can’t even go over the border into Egypt and around through Jordan, because Israel will no longer allow people with Gaza identification cards to enter the West Bank. In any case, a cordon of Palestinian police are blocking people from trying to scramble over the Egyptian border–and war refugees have tried, through a hole blown open by militants, clutching packages and children.

In short, over a million civilians are now trapped, hunkered in their homes listening to Israeli shells, while facing the awful prospect, within days or weeks, of having to give toxic water to their children that may consign them to quick but agonizing deaths.

One woman near the Rafah border, taking care of her nephews, spoke to BBC: "If I am frightened in front of them I think they will die of fear." If the international community does nothing, her children may soon die anyway.

The astonishing scale of this humanitarian situation is indeed matched only by the deafening drizzle of international reaction. "Of course it is understandable that [the Israelis] would want to go after those who kidnapped their soldier," says Kofi Anan (while the Palestinian population cowers in the dark listening to thundering explosions demolish their society), "but it has to be done in such a way that civilian populations are not made to suffer." Even as Israel bombs smash Gaza’s roadways, the G-8 stands up on its hind-legs to intone, "We call on Israel to exercise utmost restraint in the current crisis." How about the Russians, now angling for position in the new "Great Game" of the Middle East? "The right and duty of the government of Israel to defend the lives and security of its citizens are beyond doubt," says Russia’s foreign ministry, as though poor Corporal Shalit warrants any of this mayhem, "But this should not be done at the cost of many lives and the lives of many Palestinian civilians, by massive military strikes with heavy consequences for the civilian population."

And what says noble Europe, proud font of human rights conventions, architects of the misión civilizatrice? "The EU remains deeply concerned," mumbles the mighty defenders of humanitarian law, "about the worsening security and humanitarian developments." Seemingly soggy phrases like "deeply concerned" are diplomatic code for "We are seriously unhappy." But under these circumstances, "remains deeply concerned" suggests that this staggering crime is just one more sobering moment in the failed "road map."

Diplomatic bubbles of unreality in the Middle East are the norm rather than the exception, but at some point the international community must face the very unwelcome fact that it needs to change gear. A country that claims kinship among the western democracies of Europe is behaving like a murderous rogue regime, using any excuse to reduce over a million people to utter human misery and even mass death. Plastering Corporal Shalit’s face over this policy is no more convincing that South African newspapers emblazoning the picture of one poor murdered white doctor over their coverage of the 1976 Soweto uprising.

Israel has done many things argued to be war crimes: mass house demolitions, closing whole cities for weeks, indefinite "preventative" detentions, massive land confiscation, the razing of thousands of square miles of Palestinian olive groves and agriculture, systematic physical and mental torture of prisoners, extrajudicial killings, aerial bombardment of civilian areas, collective punishment of every description in defiance of the Geneva Conventions–not to mention the general humiliation and ruin of the indigenous people under its military control. But destroying the only power source for a trapped and defenseless civilian population is an unprecedented step toward barbarity. It reeks, ironically, of the Warsaw Ghetto. As we flutter our hands about tectonic political change, we must take pause: in the eyes of history, what is happening in Gaza may come to eclipse them all.

Dr. Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, currently working in South Africa. She can be reached at tilley@hws.edu.

Unprecedented number of Israeli websites hacked: Hundreds of websites were damaged by hackers in recent hours, following IDF activity in the Gaza Strip. The hackers are members of the Moroccan “Team Evil” group, responsible for most of the website damage in Israel in the past year. This is the largest, most concentrated attack on Israeli websites in recent years.

A Ynet investigation revealed that more than 750 Israeli websites, on a number of different domains, were hacked into and damaged in recent days. Prominent among them were the Soldier’s Treasury Bank, Bank Hapoalim (not the main page), Rambam Hospital, the Society for Culture and Housing, BMW Israel, Subaru Israel, Jump Fashion, non-profit organization “Yedid,” Kadima’s youth website, and the Globus Group ticket center. Many of these sites have not yet returned to normal.

Hackers left the message: You’re killing Palestinians, we’re killing servers.

Early on Wednesday, the IDF began operation “Summer Rains” in Gaza: Forces entered the southern end of the strip, adjacent to the point of Cpl. Gilad Shavit’s kidnap. The air force attacked a power station and blacked out areas of Gaza. Three bridges were bombed in central Gaza, in order to prevent movement of the kidnapped soldier.  

Many Israeli websites are hacked every day – most of these are small sites, with inadequate information security. It is significantly different when the sites are ones of large companies, who have adequate defenses from this sort of attack.

Past success of Team Evil

In the past, Team Evil succeeded in hacking into several sites of medium-sized but recognized Israeli companies. In April, they hit tens of sites, including those of the “Shilav” children’s store, “The Blue Square” supermarket and McDonald’s.

The group’s spokesman previously told Ynet that “we are a group of Moroccan hackers that hack into sites as part of the resistance in the war with Israel. We attack Israeli sites every day. This is our duty…hacking is not a crime.”

Added another group member: “We want Israel to stop fighting. Stop killing children and we’ll stop hacking.” According to the spokesman, the group’s members are all Moroccan youths, under the age of 20.

The increase in hacking of websites following military operations is a well-known phenomenon, in Israel and in the rest of the world. A similar increase was seen in attacks on both Israeli and Arab websites in the first days of the second intifada, pursuant to military operations that took place in Gaza, Judea and Samaria at that time.