Category: World

One World Government? Globe may not be big enough.

By Dana Milbank

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

It arrived at the Capitol, until that moment the seat of American government, in the form of the stooped and bespectacled figure of Ban Ki-moon, who as U.N. secretary general is the de facto leader of what conspiracy theorists call the One World Government. One floor beneath the Senate chamber, Ban, a South Korean national, took his place behind a lectern bearing the Senate seal and spelled out his demands.

“I would certainly expect the Senate to take the necessary action; that’s what I have encouraged the senators,” he told reporters as a trio of lawmakers stood at his side. He added an admonition for the chamber to deliver “as soon as possible.”

The One World Government has specific requirements, Ban added, namely a “legally binding” commitment to “25 to 40 percent greenhouse gas reduction . . . as recommended by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Uh-oh. A U.N. official standing in the Capitol telling U.S. lawmakers what binding commitments intergovernmental authorities expect from them? Glenn Beck was going to burst a blood vessel.

But the man who orchestrated this putsch by the New World Order, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Switzerland), did not appear concerned by the imagery. He called the secretary general “Your Excellency.” Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana (a Republican, but he drives a Prius) was equally deferential as he spoke of “the privilege of this distinguished visitor.”

And Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) hailed Ban for “the accelerated leadership role” that the United Nations has taken. “Your vision, that in Copenhagen there can be a politically binding agreement that will lead to a legally binding agreement to follow . . . is a very reasonable, sensible and hopeful course.”

Somewhere in Manhattan, Sean Hannity was tearing up his script for the night’s broadcast.

Kerry invited Ban to lecture the Foreign Relations Committee, but it’s not clear what the chairman hoped to gain from the photos of him standing with Ban in the Capitol’s Brumidi Corridors. Indeed, it seemed quite possible that a U.N. endorsement of Kerry’s climate efforts would embolden its foes, who like the world body even less than they like cap-and-trade. In the pantheon of conspiracy theories, the United Nations is right up there with the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, the Federal Reserve and the Council on Foreign Relations — which, as it happens, Kerry addressed a couple of weeks ago.

Even Americans who don’t come from the grassy-knoll tradition tend not to regard the United Nations with great confidence. A Gallup poll earlier this year found that 65 percent of respondents thought it was doing a bad job, compared with 26 percent who think it is doing a good job. Ban himself is not terribly nefarious, if only because he is unknown. A Wall Street Journal poll found that 81 percent of those surveyed didn’t know who he was. The others may have confused him with the Unification Church’s Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Ban’s profile could become much higher, and not in a good way, if Americans start to perceive him as meddling in Senate consideration of climate legislation. Even before he stormed the Capitol, Fox News was drawing a connection between global warming talks in Copenhagen next month and One World Government.

“America, if you believe this country is great but you’re not really into that whole One World Government thing, watch out,” Fox News Channel’s Beck warned a couple of weeks ago. His guest, Lord Christopher Monckton of Britain, told Beck that “at Copenhagen, a treaty will be signed that will, for the first time, create a world government with powers to intervene directly in the economy and in the environmental affairs of individual nations.” Earlier on Fox News, Dick Morris informed Hannity that President Obama “believes in One World Government.” And author Jerome Corsi went on Hannity’s show to warn about a One World Government in which “our sovereignty would be subject to the dictates” of the United Nations and other international organizations.

The One World Government was on open display at the Capitol on Tuesday, as international U.N. staffers waited outside the room where Ban spoke to the senators. The secretary general had come with his own world government (armed?) security detail, who stood alongside the Capitol police.

Ban, wearing a gold U.N. lapel pin, unfolded his speech. “Less than a month from now, the leaders of the world will gather in Copenhagen,” he said. “They must conclude a robust global agreement,” that is “comprehensive, binding, equitable and fair.”

Speaking softly but firmly, the South Korean cautioned the Americans that “the world is not standing still,” and that “all the eyes of the world are looking to the United States.”

After a few minutes, Kerry cut off questioning. “Folks, the secretary general has to get to the airport.”

Ban needed to catch the U.S. Airways shuttle to New York. The One World Government Air Force isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

The Washington Post

December 14, 2009
Turkish top court bans pro-Kurdish party

Turkey’s Constitutional Court has voted to ban the country’s largest pro-Kurdish party on charges of connections to a terrorist organization PKK[1].

Turkey’s chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya argued that the Democratic Society Party (DTP) took orders from the [2] (PKK).

The DTP is the latest in a series of pro-Kurdish parties to have been closed down in Turkey.

The case has been criticised by the EU, which Turkey hopes to join.

The 11 judges in the Constitutional Court ruled that the DTP had become a “focal point of activities against the indivisible unity of the state, the country and the nation”, court president Hasim Kilic told reporters.

He said DTP leaders Ahmet Turk and Aysel Tugluk had been stripped of parliamentary immunity and banned from politics for five years along with 35 other party members.

All party assets would be seized by the treasury, Mr Kilic added.

The DTP holds 21 seats in Turkey’s 550-member parliament.

Some 40,000 people have died since the PKK launched an armed campaign in 1984. However, the government has recently sought to improve ties with the Kurdish minority.

Analysts say the court’s ruling could derail the government’s initiative.

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*edited

BBC

December 11, 2009
45-minute WMD claim ‘came from an Iraqi taxi driver’

Tory MP and defence specialist Adam Holloway says MI6 got information from a taxi driver who had heard Iraqi military commanders talking about weapons

An Iraqi taxi driver was the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.

Adam Holloway, a defence specialist, said MI6 obtained the information indirectly from a taxi driver who had overheard two Iraqi militarycommanders talking about Saddam’s weapons.

The 45-minute claim was a key feature of the dossier about Iraq‘s weapons of mass destruction that was released by Tony Blair in September 2002. Blair published the information to bolster public support for war.

After the war the dossier became hugely controversial when it became clear that some of the information it contained was not true. An inquiry headed by Lord Butler into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war revealed that MI6 had subsequently accepted that some of its Iraqi sources were unreliable, but his report did not identify who they were.

Today, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Holloway said the key piece of information about 45 minutes came from an Iraqi officer who was using a taxi driver as his own sub-source.

“[MI6] were running a senior Iraqi army officer who had a source of his own, a cab driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border,” said Holloway, a former Grenadier Guardsman and television journalist.

“He apparently overheard two Iraqi army officers two years before who had spoken about weapons with the range to hit targets elsewhere in the Middle East.”

Holloway made his comments to coincide with the publication of a report he has written claiming that MI6 always had reservations about some of the information in the dossier but that these reservations were brushed aside when Downing Street was preparing it for publication.

According to the Mail, Holloway says in his report: “Under pressure from Downing Street to find anything to back up the WMD case, [MI6] were squeezing their agents in Iraq for anything at all.

“In the [MI6] analysts’ footnote to their report, it flagged up that part of the report describing some missiles that the Iraqi government allegedly possessed was demonstrably untrue. The missiles verifiably did not exist.

“The footnote said it in black and white. Despite this the report was treated as reliable and went on to become one of the central planks of the dodgy dossier.”

Holloway claims that MI6 was not to blame for the fact that the footnote was ignored. “It seems that someone, perhaps in Downing Street, found it rather inconvenient and ignored it lest it interfere with our reasons for going to war,” his report says.

The report is due to be published on the first defence website.

Butler concluded that, although the claims in the Iraq dossier went to the “outer limits” of what the intelligence available at the time would sustain, there was no evidence of “deliberate distortion”.

Today Sir John Scarlett, the key figure responsible for the preparation of the dossier, will give evidence to the Iraq inquiry. Scarlett was chairman of the joint intelligence committee at the time and he went on to become head of MI6.

He is expected to be asked about the dossier, although he is unlikely to provide detailed information about MI6 sources in public. The inquiry has said that, if witnesses want to discuss confidential issues relating to national security, they can do so in private.

The September dossier did not specify what weapons Iraq could deploy within 45 minutes. Intelligence officials subsequently revealed that it was meant to be a reference to battlefield weapons, not long-range missiles.

But, when it was published, some British papers interpreted the dossier as meaning that British troops based in Cyprus would be vulnerable to an Iraqi attack. At the time the government did not do anything to correct this error.

Guardian

December 8, 2009
Ahmadinejad says US planning to prevent coming of Mahdi

US wants to stop mankind’s savior: Iran leader

DUBAI (Al Arabiya)

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he has documented evidence that the United States is doing what it can to prevent the coming of the Mahdi, the Imam that Muslims believe will be ultimate savior of mankind, press reports said Monday.

“We have documented proof that they [U.S.] believe that a descendant of the prophet of Islam will raise in these parts [Middle East] and he will dry the roots of all injustice in the world,” the hard-line president said, addressing an audience of families of those killed during the 1980’s war against Iraq.

“They have devised all these plans to prevent the coming of the Hidden Imam because they know that the Iranian nation is the one that will prepare the grounds for his coming and will be the supporters of his rule.”

Iranian news website Tabnak said Ahmadinejad further revealed plots by both the East and the West to wipe out the Islamic Republic.

“They have planned to annihilate Iran. This is why all policymakers and analysts believe Iran is the true winner in the Middle East,” he went on to proclaim, adding that they were after Iranian oil and other natural resources.

“In Afghanistan, they are caught like an animal in a quagmire. But instead of pulling their troops out to save themselves, they are deploying more soldiers. Even if they stay in Afghanistan for another 50 years they will be forced to leave with disgrace — because this is a historical experience.”

The president said on his last visit to New York he asked officials “Is there not one sane person in your country to tell you these things?”

“They know themselves that they need Iran in the Middle East, but because of their arrogance they do not want to accept this reality. They are nothing without the Iranian nation and all their rhetoric is because they don’t want to appear weak,” he added.

Enemy hype

Referring to his disputed June reelection, Ahmadinejad said, “The enemy… was hyping the issue as if the Iranian nation has been weakened and as if this was the best opportunity to get concessions from them. But your humble son stood in front of the oppressive powers and shouted: You are dead wrong! The Iranian nation will put you in your place.”

“In the recent [post-election] incident, they claimed that they had devised a plan that could bring hundreds of governments to their knees,” he continued. “But he who is on the righteous path will always be victorious and will never see defeat.”

The June 12 presidential election sparked Iran’s worst unrest since the Islamic revolution three decades ago and exposed deep divisions in the establishment. Authorities have denied all allegations of vote-rigging.

On Monday Iran commemorates the killing of three students in 1953 under the former Shah. The opposition is expected to try to use the state-organized rallies to revive opposition protests.

ALARABIYA

December 8, 2009
Riots break out in Greece on anniversary of police shooting

Greek police clash with students in Athens as thousands march on anniversary of death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos

Police fired teargas at rioters who threw rocks and firecrackers in central Athens as thousands gathered to mark the first anniversary of the police shooting of a teenager.

Clashes broke out as about 3,000 people, mostly students, anarchists and leftists, began a march to parliament. More protests were expected tomorrow. An evening memorial service was planned in the Exarchia district, where 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead.

Violence also broke out in Thessaloniki, Greece‘s second-largest city, where demonstrators threw petrol bombs at police and smashed the front of a Starbucks cafe.

More than 6,000 police were deployed across greater Athens amid fears that the demonstrations under way in the capital and other Greek cities would turn increasingly violent. Concern was heightened by reports that far-left groups and anarchists from other European countries have travelled to Greece for the protests.

Grigoropoulos was shot by a policeman on the evening of 6 December 2008, in Exarchia, a central Athens neighbourhood of bars and cafes popular with anarchist groups. Within a few hours of his death, riots spread from the capital to several cities, taking the government by surprise. An embattled police force took a passive approach as rioters looted and burned shops in violence that lasted two weeks.

The new socialist government, which has faced a spate of attacks by far-left and anarchist groups, since coming to power in October, has vowed not to tolerate any violence during today’s anniversary.

Police yesterday detained about 160 youths and raided what they described as a firebomb-making hideout in the district of Keratsini, near the port of Piraeus. A memorial gathering last night at the spot where Grigoropoulos was killed began peacefully, although clashes broke out in the area later between rock-throwers and riot police. Police arrested 14 people, including five Italians and three Albanians.

Dozens of police, some in riot gear and others on motorbikes, stood guard throughout the district on Saturday night. Apart from the brief clash, the area was quiet, with heavy rain helping keep people off the streets.

Greece’s civil protection minister, Michalis Chrisochoidis, who is also in charge of the police, said earlier this week that people had been right to demonstrate against the teenager’s death, but further riots would not be tolerated.

“Without doubt (Grigoropoulos’s death) was an act of extreme police violence and misconduct that has scarred our collective memory,” Chrisochoidis said. “Young people were right to take to the streets to express their outrage. But we will not tolerate a repeat of the violence and terror in the centre of Athens and other cities. We will not surrender Athens to vandals.”

The Guardian

December 6, 2009
Protesters and police clash in Nottingham

Police have clashed with members of the English Defence League during a protest in Nottingham, with 11 people arrested.

Some 300 demonstrators from the EDL marched through the city centre shouting: “We want our country back.”

Earlier there was a stand-off between the EDL and Unite Against Fascism, who held a counter protest in the city.

Mounted police held back demonstrators with batons and punches were thrown at police. One female officer and a protester suffered minor injuries.

Many of the EDL demonstrators had their faces covered with hooded tops and scarves and shouted anti-Islamic slogans.

‘Kicked police dog’

Other protesters had Union Jacks and St George’s flags which they either waved or wrapped around their shoulders as a police officer shouted instructions at the crowd from a helicopter circling overhead.

Some of the group waved placards with slogans such as “Protect Women, No To Sharia” and “No Surrender”.

The EDL insists it is not a racist organisation and has no links to the BNP and is simply standing against the threat of Islamic extremism.

A spokesman said they had planned the demonstration for Saturday as the Second Battalion the Mercian Regiment was holding a homecoming parade in Nottingham following a recent tour of Afghanistan.

The EDL and UAF exchanged hostile words in the city’s Old Market Square but large numbers of police officers managed to keep the rival demonstrators apart.

Nottinghamshire Police said they had deployed more than 700 officers, including some drafted in from Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and Humberside.

The force said a 29-year-old Nottinghamshire officer received an arm injury while policing the cordon and was taken to Nottingham’s Queens Medical Centre for treatment but the injury was not thought to be serious.

One of the 11 men arrested on suspicion of minor public order offences was also taken to hospital, with police saying it was believed he kicked a police dog, which then bit him.

The BBC’s Ben Ando said the arrests came when a small number of EDL protesters clashed with police who were containing them near the city’s main railway station.

‘Anti-British’

Thousands of Christmas shoppers gathered to watch 500 troops from the Mercian Regiment parade through the city in the morning.

The homecoming parade followed a six-month tour of duty in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan, where the regiment lost five soldiers and dozens of its men were injured.

A 43-year-old EDL member, a serving soldier who did not want to be named, said: “We came here to support our lads, and the UAF and other militants have turned up.

“I think it’s disgusting. I look at their protest and there’s a Pakistani flag flying with a Muslim symbol. Their protest isn’t against the EDL, they’re protesting against the troops and it’s anti-British.

“They haven’t got one Union Jack or St George’s Flag. I’m not a fascist, I’m not a Nazi but I am British.”

Michael Vickery, from the UAF, said: “It’s not good enough not to have any kind of a response (to the EDL presence) because basically, if we don’t have a protest then it’s letting them come into town and say ‘this is our place for the day’, which it isn’t, it belongs to everyone in Nottingham.”

After the rally missiles were thrown at a breakaway group of the EDL but no-one was hurt.

The EDL marchers were led to the railway station by police and began boarding trains back to their homes at around 1630 GMT.

Nottinghamshire’s Assistant Chief Constable Ian Ackerley said the force had faced a series of complex events but had achieved “a successful outcome to a very challenging day”.

BBC

December 6, 2009