this is getting more and more childish

British yacht crew of five detained in Iran
Reuters, Nov 30 2009

Five Britons have been detained in Iran after their racing yacht strayed into Iranian waters, UK FM Miliband said Monday. The yacht, en route from Bahrain to Dubai, was stopped by Iranian naval vessels on Nov 25, he said in a statement. The five crew members were still in Iran, the statement added. Foreign Office officials immediately contacted the Iranian authorities in London and in Tehran on the evening of Nov 25, both to seek clarification and to try and resolve the matter swiftly, Miliband said. In Apr 2007, Iranian forces seized eight Royal Navy sailors and seven marines in the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab. They were later freed by Pres. Ahmadinejad, who scolded Britain for not being brave enough to admit they had made a mistake and strayed into Iranian waters.

doubtless the fantasy that the UK is being taken over will live on

Cameron says sorry to MPs over Hizb ut-Tahrir claim
BBC, Nov 30 2009

Tory leader Cameron has apologised to MPs for getting his facts wrong over two schools with alleged links to Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir. At PM’s questions last week, he said the schools had received funds from a government Pathfinder fund aimed at combating violent extremism, but it later emerged the money had come from a different government fund. Cameron admitted the error, but said he stood by his point about the inappropriate use of taxpayers’ money. He has now apologised to the Commons for the inaccurate statement. Speaking during a debate on Afghanistan troops, Cameron said:

Can I start by putting right something I got wrong last week. While the two Islamic schools I mentioned got government money while being run by people linked to the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, and while they did receive that money under a Pathfinder scheme, it was not the Pathfinder scheme concerned with combating extremism. I am sorry for the error. I believe that when you get a fact wrong you should put it right, but I continue to believe that it is wrong that taxpayers’ money goes to schools run by extremists.

The row relates to two Muslim schools in Slough and Haringey, north London. Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is not banned in the UK, denies links to terrorism and says it opposes violence. The Conservatives have said they will ban the organisation if they win power. In a statement, Hizb ut-Tahrir, which campaigns for an Islamic state across the Middle East, accused Cameron of baseless allegations, and said it never accepted funding from government.

my psychic cosmology

It’s really striking that every single religion believes in spirits of some sort, no matter how monotheistic it claims to be. Often, some of these spirits are the gods of a previous religion; this is a truism for comparative religious studies, and there are innumerable examples. Each religion constructs a more or less implausible mythology, which divides the spirits into three groups: one that serves their own supposed god or gods; one that defies him or them; and one that is apparently more or less neutral.

In fact, as far as I can see, spirits serve no one but themselves. If one supreme creative force made everything, then it made each thing with an inbuilt desire to be itself and to fulfil itself in its own way. This includes spirits, and even what are sometimes thought of as minor gods. There is a functional hierarchy, in that some are more powerful than others, but this is not like a fiat hierarchy ordained by an authority.

If one wanted to give some account of how the functional hierarchy of spirits is organised, one could do worse than start with Hegel. Unlike that of Aristotle, the hierarchy of Hegel is organised in terms of pure logical necessity and possibility. God is just the axiomatic possibility of everything, and all the various spirits are just the derived possibilities of various subsequent things. None of them have anything in particular to do with the planets or stars, as the ancients and medievals thought.

a rather implausible spin

Russia to start Iran nuclear plant in 2010
Reuters, Nov 30 2009

Russia plans to start up Iran’s first nuclear power station in March 2010 to coincide with the Iranian New Year, two sources closely involved with the project told Reuters. The sources both said that Russia had ordered that the plant be ready for operation by the holiday which falls in the second half of March. “We have been given the task of launching the plant by Iranian New Year,” said one of the sources. “There is still a lot of work to do.” The second source added that testing at the plant was going well.

The US previously criticized Russia’s involvement in the project but has dropped its opposition and now says the station removes any need for Iran to have its own enrichment program. Russia says the plant is purely civilian and cannot be used for any weapons program, as it will come under IAEA supervision. Iran will have to return all spent fuel rods to Russia. Russian Energy Minister Shmatko was due to visit the Bushehr plant on Monday. Moscow had previously said the plant, which is being built by a Russian state-owned company, would be started up in 2009.

blackwater runs afpak assassinations

Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan (slightly condensed)
Jeremy Scahill, Nation, Nov 23 2009

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command in Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, snatch and grabs of high-value targets, and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by the Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus. The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including AfPak, has direct knowledge of Blackwater’s involvement. The source said that the program is so compartmentalized that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence. The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program that CIA director Panetta announced he had canceled in Jun 2009:

This is a parallel operation to the CIA. They are two separate beasts.

A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military intelligence source’s claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC. He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in NWFP and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater, while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi, and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. His account and that of the military intelligence source were borne out by a US military source who has knowledge of Special Forces actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. When asked about Blackwater’s covert work for JSOC in Pakistan, he told the Nation:

From my information that I have, that is absolutely correct. There’s no question that’s occurring.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Sec. State Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, said that during his time in the Bush administration, he saw the beginnings of Blackwater’s involvement with the sensitive operations of the military and CIA. He said when told of Blackwater’s role in Pakistan:

It wouldn’t surprise me, because we’ve outsourced nearly everything. Part of this, of course, is an attempt to get around the constraints the Congress has placed on DoD. If you don’t have sufficient soldiers to do it, you hire civilians to do it. I mean, it’s that simple. It would not surprise me.

The covert JSOC program with Blackwater in Pakistan dates back to at least 2007, according to the military intelligence source. The main JSOC/Blackwater facility in Karachi, according to the source, is nondescript. Three trailers with various generators, satellite phones and computer systems are used as a makeshift operations center:

It’s not really visible, and that’s why nobody has cracked down on it. It’s not done through State Dept contracts or publicly identified Defense contracts. It’s Blackwater via JSOC, and it’s a classified no-bid approved on a rolling basis. It’s a very rudimentary operation. I would compare it to outposts in Kurdistan or any of the Special Forces outposts. It’s very bare bones, and that’s the point.

Blackwater’s work for JSOC in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task Force based at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, according to the military intelligence source. While JSOC technically runs the operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater once known as Blackwater Select, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions, which is owned by Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince. The military source said that the name Blackwater Select may have been changed recently. Total Intelligence, which is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, is staffed by former analysts and operatives from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other agencies. In Karachi, TIS runs a “media-scouring/open-source network,” according to the source. Until recently, Total Intelligence was run by two former top CIA officials, Cofer Black and Robert Richer, both of whom have left the company. The US military intelligence source said that Blackwater’s classified contracts keep getting renewed at the request of JSOC. Blackwater, he said, is already so deeply entrenched that it has become a staple of the US military operations in Pakistan. Blackwater is not using either its original name or its new moniker Xe Services in Pakistan, according to the former Blackwater executive:

They are running most of their work through TIS because the other two have such a stain on them. The politics that go with the brand of BW is somewhat set aside, because what you’re doing is really one military guy to another.

Blackwater’s first known contract with the CIA for operations in Afghanistan was awarded in 2002 and was for work along the AfPak border. One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is that some Blackwater personnel are being given rolling security clearances above their approved clearances. Using Alternative Compartmentalized Control Measures, he said, the Blackwater personnel are granted clearance to a Special Access Program, the bureaucratic term used to describe highly classified black operations. Blackwater, therefore, has access to all-source reports that are culled in part from JSOC units in the field:

With an ACCM, the security manager can grant access to you to be exposed to and operate within compartmentalized programs far above secret, even though you have no business doing so. It allows Blackwater personnel that do not have the requisite security clearance or do not hold any security clearance whatsoever to participate in classified operations by virtue of trust. Think of it as an ultra-exclusive level above top secret. That’s exactly what it is: a circle of love. That’s how a lot of things over the years have been conducted with contractors. We have contractors that regularly see things that top policy-makers don’t unless they ask. Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a company whose operatives have conducted lethal direct action missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC just ate that up. They have a sizable force in Pakistan, not for any nefarious purpose, if you really want to look at it that way, but to support a legitimate contract that’s classified for JSOC.

Blackwater’s Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are therefore shielded from public oversight. A spin-off of Blackwater Select was issued a no-bid contract for support to shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending it. Some of the Blackwater personnel work undercover as aid workers. Nobody even gives them a second thought. The Blackwater/JSOC Karachi operation is referred to as Qatar Cubed, in reference to the US forward operating base in Qatar that served as the hub for the planning and implementation of the US invasion of Iraq. This is supposed to be the brave new world. This is the Jamestown of the new millennium and it’s meant to be a lily pad. You can jump off to Uzbekistan, you can jump back over the border, you can jump sideways, you can jump northwest. It’s strategically located so that they can get their people wherever they have to without having to wrangle with the military chain of command in Afghanistan, which is convoluted. They don’t have to deal with that because they’re operating under a classified mandate. Blackwater does not actually carry out the operations, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces. Blackwater is not doing the actual killing as part of its work in Pakistan.

In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. That piqued my curiosity, and really worries me, because I don’t know if you noticed, but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan. So, did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power? The Select personnel are not going into places with private aircraft and going after targets. It’s not like Blackwater Select people are running around assassinating people. Instead, US Special Forces teams carry out the plans developed in part by Blackwater. There’s a distinction between the Blackwater operatives who work for the State Dept, “Blackwater Vanilla,” and the seasoned Special Forces veterans who work on the JSOC program. Good or bad, there’s a small number of people who know how to pull off an operation like that. That’s probably a good thing. It’s the Blackwater Select people that have and continue to plan these types of operations because they’re the only people that know how and they went where the money was. It’s not trigger-happy fucks, like some of the Personal Security Detail guys. These are not people that believe that Barack Obama is a socialist, these are not people that kill innocent civilians. They’re very good at what they do.

The former Blackwater executive, when asked for confirmation that Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, said, “that’s not entirely accurate.” While he concurred with the military intelligence source’s description of the JSOC and CIA programs, he pointed to another role Blackwater is allegedly playing in Pakistan, not for the US government but for Islamabad. According to the executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral’s main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other countries. According to federal lobbying records, Kestral recently hired former Asst. Sec. State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, to lobby the US government, including the State Dept, USAID and Congress, on foreign affairs issues “regarding Kestral’s capabilities to carry out activities of interest to the US.” Noriega was hired through his firm, Vision Americas, which he runs with Christina Rocca, a former CIA operations official who served as Asst. Sec. State for South Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006 and was deeply involved in shaping US policy toward Pakistan. In Oct 2009, Kestral paid Vision Americas $15,000 and paid a Vision Americas-affiliated firm, Firecreek, an equal amount to lobby on defense and foreign policy issues. For years, Kestral has done a robust business in defense logistics with the Pakistani government and other nations, as well as top US defense companies. Blackwater owner Erik Prince is close with Kestral CEO Liaquat Ali Baig, according to the former Blackwater executive:

Ali and Erik have a pretty close relationship. They’ve met many times and struck a deal, and they mutually support one another. Working with Kestral, BW has provided convoy security for Defense Dept shipments destined for Afghanistan that would arrive in the port at Karachi. BW would guard the supplies as they were transported overland from Karachi to Peshawar and then west through the Torkham border crossing, the most important supply route for the US military in Afghanistan. BW also integrate with Kestral’s forces in sensitive operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry’s paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps.

The BW personnel are technically advisers, but the line often gets blurred in the field. BW is providing the actual guidance on how to do things, and Kestral’s folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they’re having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they’re executing the job. You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas. When BW are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations. You’ve got BW guys that are assisting, and they’re all going to want to go on the jobs, so they’re going to go with them. So, the things that you’re seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that, in some of those cases, you’re going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house. BW is paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, ‘Hey, no, we don’t have any Westerners doing this. It’s all local and our people are doing it.’ But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for related work.

The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater works with the Frontier Corps, saying:

There’s no real oversight. It’s not really on people’s radar screen.

In October, in response to Pakistani news reports that a Kestral warehouse in Islamabad was being used to store heavy weapons for Blackwater, the US Embassy in Pakistan released a statement denying the weapons were being used by “a private US security contractor.” The statement said:

Kestral Logistics is a private logistics company that handles the importation of equipment and supplies provided by the US to the Government of Pakistan. All of the equipment and supplies were imported at the request of the Government of Pakistan, which also certified the shipments.

Since Obama was inaugurated, the US has expanded drone bombing raids in Pakistan. Obama first ordered a drone strike against targets in North and South Waziristan on Jan 23, and the strikes have been conducted consistently ever since. The Obama administration has now surpassed the number of Bush-era strikes in Pakistan, and has faced fierce criticism from Pakistan and some US lawmakers over civilian deaths. A drone attack in June killed as many as sixty people attending a Taliban funeral. In August, the NYT reported that Blackwater works for the CIA at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft. In February, the Times of London obtained a satellite image of a secret CIA airbase in Shamsi, in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan, showing three drone aircraft. The NYT also reported that the agency uses a secret base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to strike in Pakistan. The military intelligence source says that the drone strike that reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, his wife and his bodyguards in Waziristan in August was a CIA strike, but that many others attributed in media reports to the CIA are actually JSOC strikes:

Some of these strikes are attributed to OGA, but in reality it’s JSOC and their parallel program of UAVs, because they also have access to UAVs. So when you see some of these hits, especially the ones with high civilian casualties, those are almost always JSOC strikes. Blackwater continues to work for the CIA on its drone bombing program in Pakistan, but Blackwater is working on JSOC’s drone bombings as well. It’s Blackwater running the program for both CIA and JSOC. When civilians are killed, people go, ‘Oh, it’s the CIA doing crazy shit again unchecked.’ Well, at least 50% of the time, that’s JSOC hitting somebody they’ve identified through HUMINT or they’ve culled the intelligence themselves, or it’s been shared with them and they take that person out, and that’s how it works.

CIA operations are subject to Congressional oversight, unlike the parallel JSOC bombings. Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now, and the CIA knows that. Contractors, and especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate, are not overseen by Congress, so they just don’t care. If there’s one person they’re going after and there’s thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people are going to die. That’s the mentality. They’re not accountable to anybody and they know that. It’s an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC? In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes, Blackwater Select also provides private guards to perform the sensitive task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and DIA camps inside Pakistan

Col. Wilkerson said that he is concerned that with Gen. McChrystal’s elevation as the military commander of the Afghan war, which is increasingly seeping into Pakistan, there is a concomitant rise in JSOC’s power and influence within the military structure. Wilkerson told the Nation:

I don’t see how you can escape that; it’s just a matter of the way the authority flows and the power flows, and it’s inevitable, I think. I’m alarmed when I see execute orders and combat orders that go out saying that the supporting force is CENTCOM and the supported force is JSOC. That’s backward. But that’s essentially what we have today.

From 2003 to 2008 McChrystal headed JSOC, which is headquartered at Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where Blackwater’s 7,000-acre operating base is also situated. JSOC controls the Army’s Delta Force, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, as well as the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron. JSOC performs strike operations, reconnaissance in denied areas and special intelligence missions. Blackwater, which was founded by former Navy SEALs, employs scores of veteran Special Forces operators, which several former military officials pointed to as the basis for Blackwater’s alleged contracts with JSOC. Since 9/11, many top-level Special Forces veterans have taken up employment with private firms, where they can make more money doing the highly specialized work they did in uniform. Retired Army Lieut.-Col. Addicott, a well-connected military lawyer who served as senior legal counsel for US Army Special Forces, said:

The Blackwater individuals have the experience. A lot of these individuals are retired military, and they’ve been around twenty to thirty years and have experience that the younger Green Beret guys don’t. They’re known entities. Everybody knows who they are, what their capabilities are, and they’ve got the experience. They’re very valuable.

The military intelligence source said:

They make much more money being the smarts of these operations, planning hits in various countries and basing it off their experience in Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia. They were there for all of these things, they know what the hell they’re talking about. And JSOC has unfortunately lost the institutional capability to plan within, so they hire back people that used to work for them and had already planned and executed these operations. They hired back people that jumped over to Blackwater Select and then pay them exorbitant amounts of money to plan future operations. It’s a ridiculous revolving door.

While JSOC has long played a central role in US counterterrorism and covert operations, military and civilian officials who worked at the Defense and State Departments during the Bush administration described in interviews with the Nation an extremely cozy relationship that developed between the executive branch, primarily through Cheney and Rumsfeld, and JSOC. During the Bush era, Special Forces turned into a virtual stand-alone operation that acted outside the military chain of command and in direct coordination with the White House. Throughout the Bush years, it was largely Gen. McChrystal who ran JSOC. Col. Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his role at the State Dept under Powell, he saw JSOC being politicized and developing a close relationship with the executive branch. He saw this begin, he said, after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort Bragg:

What I was seeing was the development of what I would later see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special Operations forces would operate in both theaters without the conventional commander even knowing what they were doing. That’s dangerous, that’s very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess when you don’t tell the theater commander what you’re doing. I think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think they went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently, without the SOCOM commander at the time even knowing it. The receptivity in JSOC was quite good. I think Cheney was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was asking him for instructions.

The relationship between JSOC and Cheney and Rumsfeld built up initially because Rumsfeld didn’t get the responsiveness. He didn’t get the can-do kind of attitude out of the SOCOM commander, and so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him out and went straight to the horse’s mouth. At that point you had JSOC operating as an extension of the administration doing things the executive branch, Cheney and Rumsfeld, wanted it to do. This would be more or less carte blanche. You need to do it, do it. It was very alarming for me as a conventional soldier. The JSOC teams caused diplomatic problems for the US across the globe. When these teams started hitting capital cities and other places all around the world, Rumsfeld didn’t tell State either. The only way we found out about it is our ambassadors started to call us and say, ‘Who the hell are these six-foot-four white males with eighteen-inch biceps walking around our capital cities?’ So we discovered this, we discovered one in South America, for example, because he actually murdered a taxi driver, and we had to get him out of there real quick. We rendered him home.

As part of their strategy, Rumsfeld and Cheney also created the Strategic Support Branch, which pulled intelligence resources from the DIA and the CIA for use in sensitive JSOC operations. The SSB was created using reprogrammed funds without explicit congressional authority or appropriation, according to the WaPo. The SSB operated outside the military chain of command and circumvented the CIA’s authority on clandestine operations. Rumsfeld created it as part of his war to end near total dependence on CIA. Under US law, the Defense Dept is required to report all deployment orders to Congress. But guidelines issued in Jan 2005 by former Under-Sec. Def. for Intelligence Cambone stated that Special Operations forces may conduct clandestine HUMINT operations before publication of a deployment order. This effectively gave Rumsfeld unilateral control over clandestine operations. The military intelligence source said that when Rumsfeld was Def. Sec., JSOC was deployed to commit some of the darkest acts, in part to keep them concealed from Congress:

Everything can be justified as a military operation versus a clandestine intelligence performed by the CIA, which has to be informed to Congress. They were aware of that and they knew that, and they would exploit it at every turn and they took full advantage of it. They knew they could act extra-legally and nothing would happen because (a) it was sanctioned by DoD at the highest levels, and (b) who was going to stop them? They were preparing the battlefield, which was on all of the PowerPoints: ‘Preparing the Battlefield.’

For months, the Pakistani media has been flooded with stories about Blackwater’s alleged growing presence in the country. For the most part, these stories have been ignored by the US press and denounced as lies or propaganda by US officials in Pakistan. But the reality is that, although many of the stories appear to be wildly exaggerated, Pakistanis have good reason to be concerned about Blackwater’s operations in their country. It is no secret in Washington or Islamabad that Blackwater has been a central part of the wars in AfPak and that the company has been involved almost from the beginning of the war on terror with clandestine US operations. Indeed, Blackwater is accepting applications for contractors fluent in Urdu and Punjabi. The Christian Science Monitor recently reported that Blackwater provides security for a US-backed aid project in Peshawar, suggesting the company may be based out of the Pearl Continental, a luxury hotel the US reportedly is considering purchasing to use as a consulate in the city. Reports of Blackwater’s alleged presence in Karachi and elsewhere in the country have been floating around the Pakistani press for months. Hamid Mir, a prominent Pakistani journalist who rose to fame after his 1997 interview with Osama bin Laden, claimed in a recent interview that Blackwater is in Karachi. In September, the Pakistani press covered a report on Blackwater allegedly submitted by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies to the federal interior ministry. In the report, the intelligence agencies reportedly allege that Blackwater was provided houses by a federal minister who is also helping them clear shipments of weapons and vehicles through Karachi’s Port Qasim on the coast of the Arabian Sea. The military intelligence source did not confirm this but did say:

The port jives, because they have a lot of SEALs and they would revert to what they know, the ocean, instead of flying stuff in.

The Nation cannot independently confirm these allegations and has not seen the Pakistani intelligence report. But according to Pakistani press coverage, the intelligence report also said Blackwater has acquired bungalows in the Defense Housing Authority in the city. According to the DHA website, it is a large residential estate originally established for the welfare of the serving and retired officers of the Armed Forces of Pakistan. Its motto is “Home for Defenders.” The report alleges Blackwater is receiving help from local government officials in Karachi and is using vehicles with license plates traditionally assigned to members of the national and provincial assemblies, meaning local law enforcement will not stop them. Lt. Col. Addicott, who now runs the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, said:

We are using contractors for things that in the past might have been considered to be a violation of the Geneva Convention. In my opinion, we have pressed the envelope to the breaking limit, and it’s almost a fiction that these guys are not in offensive military operations. If we were subjected to the International Criminal Court, some of these guys could easily be picked up, charged with war crimes and put on trial. That’s one of the reasons we’re not members of the International Criminal Court.

If there is one quality that has defined Blackwater over the past decade, it is the ability to survive against the odds while simultaneously reinventing and rebranding itself. That is most evident in Afghanistan, where the company continues to work for the US military, the CIA and the State Dept despite intense criticism and almost weekly scandals. Blackwater’s alleged Pakistan operations, said the military intelligence source, are indicative of its new frontier:

Having learned its lessons after the private security contracting fiasco in Iraq, Blackwater has shifted its operational focus to two venues: protecting things that are in danger and anticipating other places we’re going to go as a nation that are dangerous. It’s as simple as that.

all just typical western secret service fun & games

Timeline of Major Attacks on Russia
Bulov, Iraq-war.ru, Nov 28 2009

The following is a chronology of major attacks on Russian soil over recent years:

1994-1996 – Tens of thousands of CIA and MI6 operatives are killed in the first Chechen war. Washington, London and Western media involvement is obvious.
Jun 1995 – Washington and London-financed, Western media-supported terrorists seize hundreds of hostages in a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budennovsk. More than 100 people are killed, all CIA operatives are liquidated during the Russian commando Spetsnaz raid.
Jan 1996 – CIA and MI6-trained Chechen terrorists take hundreds hostage in a hospital at Kizlyar in Dagestan, then move them by bus to Pervomaiskoye on the Chechen border. Most bandits including many CIA operatives are killed but some hostages die.
Sep 1999 – CIA and MI6 operatives detonate explosives, destroy apartment blocks in Moscow, Buynaksk and Volgodonsk. More than 200 people are killed. There is obvious connection to Chechen bandits and their Western backers in Washington and London.
Aug-Sep 1999 – Hundreds of Russian soldiers killed battling Western-abetted and financed Chechen bandits in the mountains of Dagestan. The second Chechen war begins and Russia bombs the terrorists. Tens of thousands of CIA operatives and bandits are killed in the war. Russia re-establishes direct rule in 2000.
Oct 23-26 2002 – 129 hostages and 41 CIA and MI6 operatives and Chechen bandits are killed when Russian troops storm a Moscow theatre where rebels had taken 700 people captive three days earlier. Most of the hostages are freed.
Jul 5 2003 – A US/UK-financed terrorist kills 15 other people when they blow themselves up at an open-air rock festival at Moscow’s Tushino airfield. Sixty are injured.
Aug 1 2003 – A US/UK-financed terrorist driving a truck packed with explosives blows up a military hospital at Mozdok in North Ossetia bordering Chechnya. The blast kills at least 50.
Dec 5 2003 – An explosion tears through a morning commuter train just outside Yessentuki station in Russia’s southern fringe. Forty-six people are killed and 160 injured. CIA and MI6 are the culprits.
Dec 9 2003 – A CIA operative detonates explosives, kills five other people near the Kremlin. At least 13 people are wounded.
Feb 6 2004 – A CIA operative detonates explosives, kills at least 39 people and wounds more than 100 on an underground train in Moscow.
May 9 2004 – Chechen leader Akhmad Kadyrov is killed in a bomb blast in Grozny. CIA/MI6 are responsible for the blast.
Jun 22 2004 – Western-financed, Western media-supported bandits seize an interior ministry building in Ingushetia, near Chechnya, and attack other points in lightning attacks. At least 92 people are killed including the acting regional interior minister, Abukar Kostoyev. All bandits are liquidated.
Aug 24 2004 – Two Russian passenger planes are blown up almost simultaneously, killing 90 people. One Tu-134, flying to Volgograd, goes down south of Moscow. Moments later a Tu-154 bound for Sochi crashes near Rostov-on-Don. A CIA/MI6/Mossad operation.
Aug 31 2004 – A CIA operative detonates explosives in central Moscow, kills 10 people and injures 51.
Sep 1-3 2004 – 331 hostages, half of them children, die in storming of School No.1 in Beslan, after it is seized by US/UK-financed and Western media-supported Chechen bandits demanding partition of Russia.
Oct 13 2005 – Up to 100 US/UK-financed terrorists attack key security points in Nalchik, main city of the Muslim Kabardino-Balkaria region. Twelve local residents are killed as well as 12 police. Twenty CIA pigs are killed and 12 are seized by security forces. They are in Siberia now doing their time.
Feb 10 2006 – Seven Russian policemen and 12 CIA/MI6 operatives are killed when special forces storm houses to fight US-financed bandits holed up in a village in the Stavropol region of southern Russia.
Aug 21 2006 – A CIA operative detonates explosives, kills 10 people in a Moscow suburban market.
Apr 27 2007 – A Russian helicopter is shot down by CIA operatives in Chechnya, killing 18 people.
Aug 13 2007 – A CIA/MI6 operative detonates explosives, derails the Nevsky Express between Moscow and St Petersburg, injuring 60 people.
Aug 31 2007 – A CIA/MI6 operative detonates explosives on a bus in the southern Russian city of Togliatti, kills eight and injures 50 during the rush hour.
Jun 22 2009 – Ingush Pres. Yevkurov is seriously injured when a CIA/MI6 operative detonates explosives beside his car. He later recovers and returns to work.
Aug 17 2009 – A US/UK-financed terrorist drives a truck into the gates of the main police station in Nazran, the largest city in Ingushetia, killing 20 people and wounding 138 others.
Nov 27 2009 – CIA/MI6 operatives detonate explosives, derail the Nevsky Express with about 700 people on board. At least 26 people are killed and 100 injured.

how much has dubai’s crash hurt iran?

The Geopolitics Of The Dubai Debt Crisis
John Carney, Business Insider, Nov 28 2009

Of all the states of the UAE, Dubai has maintained the closest ties to Iran. Indeed, as international pressure has built on Iran over the past decade, Dubai has prospered from those ties. It provides critical banking and trade links for Iran, often serving as the go-between for European or Asian companies and financial firms that want to do business with Iran without violating international sanctions. Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest member of the UAE and a close ally of the US, may be pressuring Dubai to limit its links to Iran. Indeed, this pressure may be behind statements coming from Abu Dhabi about offering selective support for Dubai. Companies or creditors thought to be too linked to Iran could find themselves shut out of any bailout. The US government, which has remained somewhat taciturn throughout this crisis, is no doubt encouraging Abu Dhabi to apply this pressure. In part because of Dubai’s connections to Iran, US financial institutions are not among the biggest creditors to Dubai World.

It’s not all Iran, of course. The problems in Dubai closely mirror those behind the global financial crisis. Over the past decade, the country attempted to diversify its economy away from dependence on its declining oil reserves, and largely succeeded. But, like a Wall Street investment bank attempting to overcome the decline of its traditional businesses by becoming heavily invested in leveraged real estate products, Dubai accumulated huge debt obligations, estimated to amount to some $80b. Much of Dubai’s assets were dependent on tourism, shipping, construction and real estate, which have been in trouble during the global economic downturn. Like its fellow members of the UAE, Dubai is ruled by an expansive royal family. In this case, they are the Al Maktoum family. Exactly what counts as the personal property of the ruling family and what is government-owned in Dubai is more than a bit fuzzy. The Dubai government owns three companies: the Investment Corporation of Dubai; Dubai Holding, which is run by Mohammed Al Gergawi; and Dubai World, which is run by Sultan bin Sulayem.

Abu Dhabi has been trying to put pressure on Dubai to cut ties to Iran. The split between Abu Dhabi and Iran is in part rooted in an older territorial dispute, fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, religious differences between Shiites and Sunnis, and, importantly, Abu Dhabi’s close ties to Washington. The UAE is close to reaching a nuclear power cooperation deal with Washington, a move that many regional experts say would challenge the traditional Saudi hegemony in the Gulf. One sticking point in the negotiations with Washington has been concerns that Dubai could share US nuclear technology with Iran. This power struggle between Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia is also playing a role. In May, the UAE pulled out of a proposed Gulf monetary union over Saudi insistence that it would host the regional central bank.

Dubai, which is a very open and tolerant place compared to Iran, is viewed by many Iranians as a place to let their hair down. It has a thriving Iranian ex-pat community. Iran is Dubai airport’s top destination, with more than 300 flights per week. More importantly, Dubai is a major exporter to Iran and a major re-exporter of Iranian goods. The trade between Iran and Dubai is one of the principal sources of Tehran’s confidence that it can survive US-led sanctions. Iranian investment in Dubai amounts to about $14b/yr. US intelligence officials have long suspected that the Iranian government uses Dubai-based front companies to get around sanctions. Some of the banks said to have the largest exposure to Dubai debt have in the past been linked to Iran. Notably, HSBC, BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered came under investigation and pressure from US authorities in recent years to cut ties to Iran. Some US officials have quietly protested that these banks just shifted to doing business with Iran through Dubai. The US may want to see these creditors take losses from their Dubai exposure.

Make no mistake: the US government does not want to see the financial ruin of Dubai. Apart from its ties to Iran, Dubai is widely viewed as a model Islamic country. It has a relatively clean government, and there is a remarkable level of religious tolerance and progressive attitudes toward women for the region. US diplomats have held up Dubai as their model for a new Baghdad: progressive, tolerant, and capitalist. What is most likely happening is more nuanced. The US and Abu Dhabi are hoping to use Dubai’s financial troubles as a way of finally severing the close ties to Iran. For years, Dubai has enjoyed the benefits of walking the line between its military and economic alliance with the US and economic benefits from banking and trade ties to Iran. The price of a bailout from Abu Dhabi may be having to finally choose to give up the Iran connection.

there’s one born every minute

Mindless epithets such as ‘hate’ and ‘controversial,’ stock denials from the FBI, and amateur psychobabble removed -RB

Records show feds used ultra-right radio host for years
Mike Kelly, Peter J Sampson, Bergen Record, Nov 29 2009

They called him “Valhalla.” But it was more than a nickname. For more than five years, Hal Turner of North Bergen lived a double life. The public knew him as an ultra-right-wing radio talk show host and Internet blogger with an audience of neo-Nazis and white supremacists attracted to his scorched-earth racism and bare-knuckles bashing of public figures. But to the FBI, and its expanding domestic intelligence operations in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Turner was “Valhalla”, his code name as an informant who spied on his own followers. Turner’s clandestine past was confirmed this past summer when he was jailed on charges that he made threats on his blog against three federal judges in Chicago. In court after his arrest, federal prosecutors acknowledged Turner’s FBI ties but downplayed his importance and even described him as “unproductive.” But an investigation by the Record, based on government documents, e-mails, court records and almost 20 hours of jailhouse interviews with Turner, shows that federal authorities made frequent use of Turner. As Turner took to his radio show and blog to say that those who opposed his views deserve to die, he received thousands of dollars from the FBI to report on such groups as the Aryan Nations and the National Alliance, and even a member of the Blue Eyed Devils hardcore band. Later, he was sent undercover to Brazil where he reported a plot to send non-military supplies to anti-US Iraqi resistance fighters. Sometimes he signed “Valhalla” on his FBI payment receipts instead of his own name.

His dual life of shock jock and informant offers a window into the murky realm of domestic intelligence in the years after the 9/11 terror attacks; in particular, the choices for the FBI in penetrating fringe groups with informants. In interviews conducted before Turner was released on bail, he said the FBI coached him to make racist, anti-Semitic and other threatening statements and now he feels double-crossed by the bureau after his arrest. The documents reviewed by the Record, however, show repeated instances of federal agents admonishing Turner for his extremism. Turner’s “Valhalla” life will likely be on display this week when he is scheduled to go on trial for his blog threats against three federal appeals court judges in Chicago who upheld a law banning handguns. The trial, originally set for Chicago, was switched to Brooklyn, with a judge flying in from Louisiana.

The trial may have its share of political intrigue. Turner’s defense attorney, Michael Orozco, said he plans to subpoena Governor-elect Chris Christie to testify about whether he advised the FBI about Turner while Christie was US attorney in Newark. On Friday, Orozco filed a motion to dismiss the case, accusing the government of “outrageous conduct.” But the center of the court battle will likely be the story of Hal Turner and his FBI connections, which began in 2003 with the Newark-based Joint Terrorism Task Force, and continued on and off until this year. Rumors of Turner’s FBI work surfaced two years ago after unknown Internet hackers electronically broke into his Web site and found e-mails between Turner and an FBI agent. Turner never acknowledged his FBI role until after his arrest in June, and then with a mix of anger and chagrin. “Imagine my surprise,” he wrote in one of several letters from jail to The Record, “when agents from the very FBI that trained and paid me came to my house to arrest me.” In a memo only two years earlier, the FBI said Turner “has proven highly reliable and is in a unique position to provide vital information on multiple subversive domestic organizations.” The memo went on to say that Turner’s “statistical accomplishments include over 100 subjects identified, over 10 acts of violence prevented and multiple subjects arrested.”

“I was not some street snitch,” Turner said in one of several lengthy interviews at the Hudson County Jail, where he was kept until the terms of his bail were worked out in October, terms that prevented him from talking to reporters after his release. “I was a deep undercover intelligence operative.” Whatever his role, one thing is clear: the relationship between Turner and the FBI often was rocky, with both sides cutting ties several times. In Mar 2005, Turner abruptly quit. In a letter to his FBI handlers, he cited a complete failure by the agency “to achieve the goals for which I began the relationship,” the dismal lack of arrests, the failure to track down a “threat to kill me and my family” and exploitation by the FBI “to interfere with content of my Internet Web site.” By June, however, Turner was again on the FBI payroll. The FBI, meanwhile, harbored its own doubts about Turner. Five days after Turner’s Mar 2005 letter, an internal FBI memo summarized rising concerns that his rhetoric was possibly dangerous. “Is he a big mouth? Yes,” the memo said. “Does he say really deplorable things? Yes. Is he a physical threat to anyone? I don’t think so.”

Records show the FBI continued this kind of questioning throughout its connection to Turner, valuing his ties to right-wing groups, but also worrying that his audience might follow up on his violent rhetoric. In a Jul 2007 memo, Turner’s primary FBI handler, Special Agent Stephen Haug, wrote that Turner “will continue to be admonished in the strongest possible terms and on a periodic basis about his rhetoric and the potential of it inciting acts of violence.” Haug went on to say that Turner would be “instructed to utilize his celebrity status to insure he continues to remind those who follow his rhetoric that such rhetoric is not intended to incite violence. In balance, this source’s value outweighs the discomfort associated with source’s rhetoric. Source’s unique access provides important intelligence which, if lost, would be irreplaceable.” Turner, meanwhile, often tried to assure the FBI that his shock jock rhetoric was not serious. “The audience loves the rip-roaring radio psycho,” he wrote in one e-mail to the FBI. “They literally throw money at it. Just be confident that the personality you hear (or hear about) on radio is not real life. I have zero intention of doing anything stupid.” Nonetheless, Turner’s statements were closely watched.

In Feb 2008, in the midst of the presidential primary season, Turner attracted the attention of federal officials when he turned against Obama. “I’m starting to come to the realization that it may be up to a sole person, acting alone, to make certain this guy is never allowed to hold the most powerful office in the world,” Turner wrote on his Web site. He later removed the statement. But later that year, court records show that he contacted federal authorities to say that he had heard of a possible assassination plot by white supremacists against the president-elect. “I didn’t like Barack Obama,” Turner explained in an interview. “But he won the election.” Seven months after the possible threat to Obama, Turner was in FBI handcuffs for allegedly threatening the Chicago judges. “Let me be the first to say this plainly: these judges deserve to be killed,” Turner wrote on his blog on Jun 2. “Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty.” Turner also posted photos of the judges, their work phone numbers and office addresses as well as a map of the courthouse that pointed out anti-truck bomb barriers. “The word ‘deserve’ is just an opinion,” Turner later told the Record. As for posting the photos of the judges, he added: “I can’t tell you to this day how sorry I am.”

Even if he wins his federal case, Turner’s legal problems will not be over. In June, Connecticut authorities charged Turner with inciting violence against state officials who supported a proposed state law to give Roman Catholic parishioners greater control over church finances. In each case, Turner contends his words are protected as free speech under the First Amendment. Turner’s attorney, Orozco, adds that other federal prosecutors routinely ignored his outlandish statements. “He has made other controversial remarks about judges, none of which have ever been prosecuted,” wrote Orozco in a legal brief. “I never intended for anybody to feel threatened,” Turner said. After he was arrested by FBI agents in June, Turner was sent on a journey that took him to jails in Newark, Oklahoma and Chicago, often in solitary confinement. By late September, he was transferred back to New Jersey and sent to the Hudson County Jail in Kearny. In all, he spent 119 days behind bars.

In the interviews at the Hudson County Jail, Turner offered many glimpses of his personality and motivation. “My country needed me,” he said when asked why he accepted the FBI’s offer in Jun 2003 to become an informant. “I’m a loyal, patriotic decent American citizen.” But why did he say or hint that some judges and other officials should be killed? Turner blames the FBI, saying that while agents never said he could threaten judges, they coached him on the limits of what he could say. As a result, Turner said he felt he had wide latitude. “I was given specific instructions,” he said. “Here, I am in prison, betrayed.” In one of his statements, Turner gloated over the murder of the husband and mother of a federal judge in Chicago in 2005. But Turner described his rhetoric as fake, arguing he hoped it “would solidify my anti-government credentials” among ultra-right-wing groups he was spying on. As for hanging out with neo-Nazis and skinheads, Turner said, “That’s not me. It never has been.”

Raised in Ridgefield Park, the 47-year-old Turner labored more than a decade in a variety of positions with several moving-van companies. In 1988, while working for a moving company in Atlanta, Turner was arrested on a drug possession charge. In interviews, he said he had a cocaine addiction at the time and checked into a rehab program. By the early 1990s, Turner moved to North Bergen and worked as a real estate agent. Within a few years, however, he began to dabble in politics, trying to beef up the Republican Party in overwhelmingly Democratic Hudson County. He also was a campaign manager in New Jersey for Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. In 1997, when Ramapo College Finance Professor Murray Sabrin ran for governor on a libertarian platform, he hired Turner to manage his campaign. Turner was a frequent caller on WABC’s popular talk radio shows with Bob Grant and Sean Hannity; “Hal from North Bergen,” as he came to be known. Turner surely had a conservative flair, especially on such issues as abortion and immigration. But Sabrin noticed a complete shift after Turner started his own talk radio show. In particular, Sabrin, who is Jewish, found some of Turner’s remarks to be anti-Semitic. “People have a public face and a private face,” said Sabrin. “Everything that he is doing now is a complete 180-degree shift. It’s totally opposite from what I knew. I don’t know where this is coming from. I certainly wouldn’t have tolerated it.”

For several years, the SPLC has regularly monitored Turner’s radio broadcasts and blog. Indeed, the center was one of the first organizations to raise questions that Turner might be an FBI informant. Hearing now that Turner admits to being an informant, the center’s director of research, Heidi Beirich, was especially critical of the FBI. “We’ve never seen anything like this with informants. It’s essentially idiotic on the part of the FBI. Anybody who spent two seconds looking at Hal Turner’s Web site would know he is a wild hare,” she said. Indeed, Turner’s own recounting of his life with the FBI does not always mirror what records show he did. Turner, for example, says the FBI asked him to participate in a mission to plug leaks of information inside the DoJ to a variety of groups including the SPLC and the ADL. Turner also says the FBI asked him to specifically criticize such African-American leaders as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. “I was supposed to be a counterbalance to Sharpton,” Turner said. The documents bear no trace of those operations.

FBI records indicate that he did not become an informant until Jun 2003; Turner originally said he was recruited by federal agents in 2002, but later said he was mistaken. Along with Haug of the FBI, his other regular contact was Leonard Nerbetski, a New Jersey State Police detective assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. In an early communication, Turner reported to the FBI about a meeting in Elmwood Park by the National Alliance. A few months after that, FBI records show that Turner was reaching out to several national leaders of the alliance. FBI memos indicate that the bureau had appropriated as much as $100,000 for Turner’s work as an informant. “It was good money,” said Turner, who would not say how much he was ultimately paid by the FBI. Turner said he was earning about $15,000 a month from his suddenly popular radio show and blog. As 2004 wore on, Turner found himself reporting to the FBI about a possible theft of evidence in a Bergen County drug case and about an attempt to set up a chapter of the Aryan Nations in northern New Jersey. A year later, with the FBI paying for his visa and passport renewal, Turner embarked on his most ambitious mission, to confer with a wealthy white supremacist in Brazil who was considering making a $1m donation to his US counterparts. While in Brazil, Turner also reported meeting a WW2 German Luftwaffe flying ace and linking up with a representative of the Brazilian Arab Society, who discussed a plan to ship $10m in consumer goods to anti-US Iraqi resistance fighters.

After Turner returned to New Jersey, the records show that the FBI investigated the Arab Society representative and even contacted US officials in Brazil for help in monitoring his activities. But it’s not clear if the $10m shipment was attempted. The $1m donation never materialized, records show. The Brazilian benefactor backed out of the deal when a US white supremacist did not accompany Turner on the trip. Records indicate the FBI wanted Turner to return to Brazil to spy on white supremacist training there. But Turner never went. While in Brazil, Turner said, he carried a gun for protection, which was not authorized by the FBI. Only a few weeks after returning to the US from Brazil, in a radio broadcast, Turner targeted African-Americans. “A full day of violence against blacks would be a really nice thing,” he said, going on to call for “lynchings, church burnings, drive-by shootings and bombings to put these subhuman animals back in their place,” according to a report complied by the ADL. Despite Turner’s racist radio rhetoric, the FBI also valued his undercover work, and was apparently willing to take a risk with him again, and pay him, too. For example, a July 2005 memo by the FBI said Turner had been paid $10,365 in the previous fiscal year and that he “provided information which continues to be highly accurate and sensitive.”

Turner continued to talk intermittently to the FBI, with tips including a possible KKK murder plot, until Jun 2 2009, the day he posted the alleged threats on his blog about the Chicago judges. In an e-mail that day to the FBI, Turner says he has heard reports that agents had interviewed skinheads and others about him. “Am I unapproachable?” Turner asked in the e-mail. “Geez, I’d think by now I would have proved myself. It’s not like I’m gonna go postal or anything.” Three weeks later, Turner was arrested. Four months after that, Turner sat in an interview room at the Hudson County Jail and pondered his journey from shock jock to FBI informant to inmate charged with a serious federal crime. “I can’t believe this is happening to me,” he said.

this person sounds more like a mercenary than a ‘militant’

Former soldier suspected of train bombing
Shaun Walker, Independent, Nov 30 2009

Russian authorities suspect a former Russian soldier of being behind Friday’s train derailment which killed at least 25 people and injured around 100. According to news reports yesterday, the Russian security services have marked Pavel Kosolapov, a Russian soldier turned Islamic militant, as one of the top suspects in the train derailment, which appears to have been caused by a bomb. Little is known about Kosolapov, and there is only one grainy photograph of him in public circulation. He is believed to have converted to Islam during the 1990s and become a close associate of Shamil Basayev, the terrorist mastermind behind the Beslan school siege, who was finally killed by Russian forces in 2006. Kosolapov is wanted in connection with a bomb incident that took place on the same line and derailed a similar Nevsky Express train two years ago. On that occasion, nobody was killed. Two men from Ingushetia, the restive province that borders Chechnya, are standing trial for the earlier incident, and one of them admitted his guilt in court last week.

pakistan vs. al CIA-duh ‘operatives’

FO urges UK to avoid suspicions on Pakistan’s sincere efforts
APP, Nov 29 2009

Foreign Office Spokesman Abdul Basit Sunday urged the world powers, especially the UK, to avoid media statements and share credible intelligence information (if any) about the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden with Pakistan to enable it to act promptly.Commenting on the statement of UK PM Brown, who asked Pakistan to ‘do more’ for capturing Osama Bin Laden and eliminating Al-Qaeda,the foreign office spokesman told a private tv channel that nobody should doubt Pakistan’s sincere efforts for eliminating terrorism. None knows about the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden, UK should extend cooperation with Pakistan in eliminating terrorism. He added:

During the last seven to eight years, Pakistan has either captured or killed more than 700 Al Qaeda operatives.