196 U.S. Intelligence says Iran Nuke Document was Forged - probably by Israel

U.S. Intelligence says Iran Nuke Document was Forged - probably by Israel

(1) Egyptian police attack Gaza relief convoy
(2) Israel to issue gas masks to population; a precursor to war?
(3) Neocons welcome Afghan surge: The Source of America's Wars, by Maidhc Ó Cathail
(4) U.S. Intelligence says Iran Nuke Document was Forged - probably by Israel
(5) Las Vegas gym teacher told to stay home for denying Nazi Holocaust
(6) Israel seeks another 1b Euros in Holocaust reparations from Germany
(7) Underwear Bomb: a packet of powder sewn into the crotch

(1) Egyptian police attack Gaza relief convoy

From: WVNS <ummyakoub@yahoo.com> Date: 06.01.2010 01:29 AM

LA VOZ DE AZTLAN
Los Angeles, Alta California
January 5, 2010

Egyptian police attacks Viva Palestina aid volunteers

http://www.aztlan.net/egyptian_police_attacks_viva_palestina.htm

[PHOTO] Just a few hours ago approximately 2,000 Egyptian riot policemen attacked and injured volunteers of the Viva Palestina aid convoy that were inside the port of Al Arish preparing to drive the convoy vehicles to Gaza to deliver medical supplies and other humanitarian supplies.

Reports through Twitter from convoy participants say that there were serious injuries to some of the volunteers who suffered blows to the head by baton wielding policemen. Some were taken out of the port compound in stretchers and many of the victims are being attended at a mosque at the port. There are reports that some of the Viva Palestina volunteers are missing.

[PHOTO] One convoy member reported, "Tear gas, water cannons, rock throwing, they are under full attack… whole thing happened when convoy members were still locked inside this gated compound, then suddenly a very large group of plain clothes 'people' arrived at the compound with sticks and stones… 20 members were injured in the attack and there are some people from the convoy who are missing
and cannot be found."

[PHOTO] Another convoy member stated, "I was coming back from dinner with 8 brothers and sisters. . . approximately 30 riot police approached us & started harassing pushing and hitting us. the situation escalated. We tried to lock arms and hold each other and get to the gate. There were too many of them. Two meters from the gate they separated us and beat the shit out of us. I got dragged under and into a group of the riot police and was being beaten. Managed to get to the wall. as I was being beaten one of the brothers grabbed me from across the wall and put me into the compound. Of the nine of us, four are missing I don't know what has happened to them."

This aid convoy that came under attack is the third Viva Palestina humanitarian effort organized and led by Member of the British Parliament George Galloway. A fourth convoy called the Hugo Chavez Viva Palestina Aid Convoy is planned from Venezuela around September of this year.

[VIDEO] ===

URGENT ALERT: Viva Palestina faced with 2,000 Egyptian Riot Police! ...

Press TV Report On Viva Palestina Convoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04EcEb4eMEM&feature=player_embedded  ==

From: alice@vivapalestina .org
To: information@ vivapalestina. org
Subject: Viva Palestina are faced with 2,000 riot police in the port of Al-Arish!

Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 20:04:54 +0000

To all friends of Palestine

Our situation is now at a crisis point! Riot has broken out in the port of Al- Arish.

This late afternoon we were negotiating with a senior official from Cairo who left negotiations some two hours ago and did not return. Our negotiations with the official was regarding taking our aid vehicles into Gaza.

He left two hours ago and did not come back. Egyptian authorities called over 2,000 riot police who then moved towards our camp at the port.

We have now blocked the entrance to the port and we are now faced with riot police and water cannons and are determined to defend our vehicles and aid.

The Egyptian authorities have by their stubbornness and hostility towards the convoy, brought us to a crisis point..

We are now calling upon all friends of palestine to mount protests in person where possible, but by any means available to Egyptian representatives, consulates and Embassy's and demand that the convoy are allowed a safe passage into Gaza tomorrow!

Kevin Ovenden
Viva Palestina Convoy Leader ==

Alice Howard
Viva Palestina UK - Administration Manager
Tel: 07944 512 469
Email: alice@vivapalestina .org
Website: http://www.vivapale stina.org/

(2) Israel to issue gas masks to population; a precursor to war?

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com>  Date: 03.01.2010 04:39 PM

Israel to issue gas masks to population
by Tina Redlup on December 28, 2009

http://www.bioprepwatch.com/news/211421-israel-to-issue-gas-masks-to-population

Israel will begin distributing its entire population with gas masks in two months, though no reason has officially been given by the Israeli government.

No indication or threat has been made against Israel from any country that an attack is planned. No country in the Middle East is believed to be likely to engage in chemical or biological warfare with Israel, either.

The gas mask distribution has, however, raised questions as to Israel's potential plans to launch an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Such an attack could cause an unconventional response from Iran. Iran's chemical and biological weapons capabilities are currently not known.

Rumors in the Middle East abound that Israel is preparing to rein in Hezbollah through another war on Lebanon. Hezbollah, however, is also not believed to hold any chemical or biological weapons.

The only country in Israel's region currently believed to have access to a major chemical or biological weapons program is Israel itself, though the country unlikely to utilize them in an attack.

Despite the lack of a viable threat, Israel will begin issuing the gas masks to each of its residents in February. The Israel Defense Forces will manage the distribution. The IDF have engaged the Israel Postal Company to aid in the distribution, a departure from the use of Home Front Command for previous distributions.

In addition to the gas masks, children eight years and younger will receive, for the first time, the Mamtek gas mask.

"We are the only country in the world that produces gas masks for children, and the children's gas mask we produce is the only one in the world that supplies prime defense for this age group," Col. Yosi Sagiv,head of the Gas Mask Administration of the Home Front Command, told bacelonanews.net. "All that is left is to hope that it will not be necessary to experience first hand how well these gas masks work," he said.

(3) Neocons welcome Afghan surge: The Source of America's Wars, by Maidhc Ó Cathail
From: Ken Freeland <diogenesquest@gmail.com> Date: 01.01.2010 12:49 PM

The Source of America's Wars

{caption} The 'Saddam must go' campaign, begun in a Kristol and Kagan editorial. {end}

By Maidhc Ó Cathail

2009 12 17

http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2009/12/17/kristol-clear-the-source-of-americas-wars/

'One reason neocons have been able to sow so much mischief is that they feed into deeply embedded American beliefs about democratism and 'chosenness.'" -- Paul Gottfried.

Americans feeling let down by Barack Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan should take careful note of those who welcomed yet another "surge." It might help them to identify the source of their seemingly endless wars.

For instance, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, William Kristol described Obama's West Point speech as "encouraging." It was "a good thing," he said, that Obama was finally speaking as "a war president."

But if the comments on the Post website are anything to go by, few ordinary Americans take Kristol's armchair warmongering seriously anymore. After all, as one poster quizzically asked, "A column by William Kristol the neocon that was wrong about everything from 2000-2008?"

Although Kristol, like the rest of the neocons, "erred" about Iraq's WMDs and Saddam's links to Al Qaeda and 9/11, it would be a fatal error indeed to dismiss him as a fool.

In order to understand what motivates Bill Kristol's professed hyper-patriotism, with its consistently disastrous prescriptions, it's worth recalling how his father, Irving Kristol, reacted to Vietnam War critic Senator George McGovern. The presidential contender's proposed cut in U.S. military expenditure would, according to the "godfather" of neoconservatism, "drive a knife in the heart of Israel."

"Jews don't like big military budgets," the elder Kristol explained in a Jewish publication in 1973. "But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States ... American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don't want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel."

American Greatness

Following his father's advice, William Kristol has been a fervent supporter of massive U.S. military spending. In 1996, he co-authored with Robert Kagan an influential neocon manifesto titled "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy." It recommended that "America should pursue a vision of benevolent hegemony as bold as Reagan's in the 1970s and wield its authority unabashedly.

"The defense budget should be increased dramatically, citizens should be educated to appreciate the military's vital work abroad, and moral clarity should direct a foreign policy that puts the heat on dictators and authoritarian regimes."

In response, another influential opinion-maker, Charles Krauthammer, hailed Kristol and Kagan as "the main proponents of what you might call the American greatness school." It is hardly a coincidence, however, that all three advocates of "American greatness" care passionately about what Irving Kristol euphemistically referred to as "the survival of the state of Israel." Or that many of those "dictators and authoritarian regimes" just happened to stand in the way of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.  

The following year, Kristol and Kagan co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a pressure group which sought to advance their "neo-Reaganite" vision. In the late 1990s, they did this mainly by writing letters to Bill Clinton, urging him to oust Saddam Hussein.

In September 2000, PNAC published "Rebuilding America's Defenses," in which they famously acknowledged that "the process of transformation ... is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

One year later, they got their wished for "new Pearl Harbor" on September 11. The mass murder of almost 3,000 Americans was, as Benjamin Netanyahu indelicately put it, "very good" for Israel.

Kristol's War

Immediately, Kristol's Weekly Standard began linking Iraq to the attacks. Writing in The American Conservative, Scott McConnell explained the strategy: "Their rhetoric – which laid down a line from which the magazine would not waver over the next 18 months – was to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in virtually every paragraph, to join them at the hip in the minds of readers."

The "Saddam must go" campaign, begun in a Kristol and Kagan editorial as far back as 1997, became so relentless that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen dubbed it "Kristol's War."

The Iraq War has, of course, also been called "Wolfowitz's War." But it could just as aptly have been named after Perle, Feith, Libby, Zelikow, Lieberman, or any of the other pro-Israeli insiders who took America to war by way of deception.

In "Irving Kristol RIP," Antiwar.com editor Justin Raimondo described Kristol's legacy as "war, war, and yet more war, as far as the eye can see."

Unless Americans soon realize that they've been deceived by those for whom "American greatness" is merely a means to advance "the survival of the state of Israel," that legacy promises to be an enduring one.

- Maidhc Ó Cathail is a freelance writer. He has written for Antiwar.com, Dissident Voice, Foreign Policy Journal, Khaleej Times, Palestine Chronicle and many other publications. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com

(4) U.S. Intelligence says Iran Nuke Document was Forged - probably by Israel

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 31.12.2009 05:20 PM

http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=2758

U.S. Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged

Gareth Porter*

Inter Press Service
Thursday, December 31, 2009   3:07 GMT

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49833

WASHINGTON, 28 Dec (IPS) - U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.

Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however.

The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the source of the document. But it quoted "an Asian intelligence source" - a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials - as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007.

The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran and reminders of Israel's threats to attack Iranian nuclear programme targets if diplomacy fails.

U.S. news media reporting has left the impression that U.S. intelligence analysts have not made up their mind about the document's authenticity, although it has been widely reported that they have now had a full year to assess the issue.

Giraldi's intelligence sources did not reveal all the reasons that led analysts to conclude that the purported Iran document had been fabricated by a foreign intelligence agency. But their suspicions of fraud were prompted in part by the source of the story, according to Giraldi.

"The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government," Giraldi said.

The Times is part of a Murdoch publishing empire that includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant.

The document itself also had a number of red flags suggesting possible or likely fraud.

The subject of the two-page document which the Times published in English translation would be highly classified under any state's security system. Yet there is no confidentiality marking on the document, as can be seen from the photograph of the Farsi-language original published by the Times.

The absence of security markings has been cited by the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as evidence that the "alleged studies" documents, which were supposedly purloined from an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related programme early in this decade, are forgeries.

The document also lacks any information identifying either the issuing office or the intended recipients. The document refers cryptically to "the Centre", "the Institute", "the Committee", and the "neutron group".

The document's extreme vagueness about the institutions does not appear to match the concreteness of the plans, which call for hiring eight individuals for different tasks for very specific numbers of hours for a four-year time frame.

Including security markings and such identifying information in a document increases the likelihood of errors that would give the fraud away.

The absence of any date on the document also conflicts with the specificity of much of the information. The Times reported that unidentified "foreign intelligence agencies" had dated the document to early 2007, but gave no reason for that judgment.

An obvious motive for suggesting the early 2007 date is that it would discredit the U.S. intelligence community's November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had discontinued unidentified work on nuclear weapons and had not resumed it as of the time of the estimate.

Discrediting the NIE has been a major objective of the Israeli government for the past two years, and the British and French governments have supported the Israeli effort.

The biggest reason for suspecting that the document is a fraud is its obvious effort to suggest past Iranian experiments related to a neutron initiator. After proposing experiments on detecting pulsed neutrons, the document refers to "locations where such experiments used to be conducted".

That reference plays to the widespread assumption, which has been embraced by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran had carried out experiments with Polonium-210 in the late 1980s, indicating an interest in neutron initiators. The IAEA referred in reports from 2004 through 2007 to its belief that the experiment with Polonium-210 had potential relevance to making "a neutron initiator in some designs of nuclear weapons".

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the terrorist organisation Mujahedeen-e Khalq, claimed in February 2005 that Iran's research with Polonium-210 was continuing and that it was now close to producing a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon.

Sanger and Broad were so convinced that the Polonium-210 experiments proved Iran's interest in a neutron initiator that they referred in their story on the leaked document to both the IAEA reports on the experiments in the late 1980s and the claim by NCRI of continuing Iranian work on such a nuclear trigger.

What Sanger and Broad failed to report, however, is that the IAEA has acknowledged that it was mistaken in its earlier assessment that the Polonium-210 experiments were related to a neutron initiator.

After seeing the complete documentation on the original project, including complete copies of the reactor logbook for the entire period, the IAEA concluded in its Feb. 22, 2008 report that Iran's explanations that the Polonium-210 project was fundamental research with the eventual aim of possible application to radio isotope batteries was "consistent with the Agency's findings and with other information available to it".

The IAEA report said the issue of Polonium-210 – and thus the earlier suspicion of an Iranian interest in using it as a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon - was now considered "no longer outstanding".

New York Times reporters David Sanger and William J. Broad reported U.S. intelligence officials as saying the intelligence analysts "have yet to authenticate the document". Sanger and Broad explained the failure to do so, however, as a result of excessive caution left over from the CIA's having failed to brand as a fabrication the document purporting to show an Iraqi effort to buy uranium in Niger.

The Washington Post's Joby Warrick dismissed the possibility that the document might be found to be fraudulent. "There is no way to establish the authenticity or original source of the document...," wrote Warrick.

But the line that the intelligence community had authenticated it evidently reflected the Barack Obama administration's desire to avoid undercutting a story that supports its efforts to get Russian and Chinese support for tougher sanctions against Iran.

This is not the first time that Giraldi has been tipped off by his intelligence sources on forged documents. Giraldi identified the individual or office responsible for creating the two most notorious forged documents in recent U.S. intelligence history.

In 2005, Giraldi identified Michael Ledeen, the extreme right-wing former consultant to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, as an author of the fabricated letter purporting to show Iraqi interest in purchasing uranium from Niger. That letter was used by the George W. Bush administration to bolster its false case that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons programme.

Giraldi also identified officials in the "Office of Special Plans" who worked under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith as having forged a letter purportedly written by Hussein's intelligence director, Tahir Jalail Habbush al-Tikriti, to Hussein himself referring to an Iraqi intelligence operation to arrange for an unidentified shipment from Niger.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

(5) Las Vegas gym teacher told to stay home for denying Nazi Holocaust

From: Josef Schwanzer <donauschwob@optusnet.com.au> Date: 19.12.2009 07:17 AM
Subject: The Associated Press: Report: Vegas teacher accused of denying Holocaust

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hsfLvGUoOTl0h4cyqXeYwA2mSuagD9CM1PN84

Report: Vegas teacher accused of denying Holocaust

(AP) – 10 hours ago

LAS VEGAS — A Las Vegas teacher has been told to stay home while district officials investigate a claim that she denied in class the Holocaust happened, a newspaper reported Friday.

Clark County schools spokesman Michael Rodriguez said Northwest Career and Technical Academy teacher Lori Sublette was assigned to remain home, and appropriate action would follow an investigation.

Student Katie Piranio told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Sublette said during a Nov. 25 class that history books were inaccurate and Nazis in World War II lacked the technology to kill millions of Jews.

Sublette did not immediately return a message left by The Associated Press seeking comment.

The Review-Journal said she did not answer when a reporter reached her Thursday and asked if she had denied the Holocaust happened.

Sublette said she was not in a position to respond and would have to talk to her principal.

Sublette is a full-time gym teacher. The district says she was teaching a 30-minute weekly class designed to prepare students for life after high school.

(6) Israel seeks another 1b Euros in Holocaust reparations from Germany

From: FJA <fja0527@bellsouth.net> Date: 21.12.2009 07:47 AM

Last update - 23:43 20/12/2009

Israel to seek another 1b Euros Holocaust in reparations from Germany

By Moti Bassok, TheMarker

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz will demand between 450 million to 1 billion Euros in reparations from Germany on behalf of Jews forced into slave labor during the Holocaust, it emerged on Sunday.

Minister Steinitz will reportedly present German government with the demand on behalf of 30,000 Israeli survivors of forced labor in wartime ghettos, during a joint session scheduled to take place in early 2010 in Berlin.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1136383.html

(7) Underwear Bomb: a packet of powder sewn into the crotch

From: Paul de Burgh-Day <pdeburgh@harboursat.com.au> Date: 31.12.2009 11:37 AM

Stranger Than Fiction:  Underwear Bomb

EXCLUSIVE: Photos of the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 Bomb

Accused Bomber Abdulmutallab's Underwear, Explosive Packet and Detonator

By RICHARD ESPOSITO and BRIAN ROSS
Dec. 28, 2009 ABC News

A singed pair of underwear with a packet of powder sewn into the crotch, seen in government photos obtained exclusively by ABC News, is all that remains of al Qaeda's attempt to down an American passenger plane over Detroit.
As seen in these photos, the alleged bomb consisted of a packet of powder sewn into the briefs of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian. Al Qaeda took credit Monday for the attempted bombing, boasted of its ability to overcome U.S. intelligence and airport security, and promised new attacks.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/abc_a_PETN_underwear_091228_mn.jpg

The first photo, to the left, shows the slightly charred underpants with the bomb packet still in place. All photos include a ruler to provide scale.
 The underwear with the explosive worn by alleged Northwest 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is shown in this undated photo.
(ABC News)

Posted December 29, 2009