Archive for August, 2008
I don’t read Dutch well enough to do a translation, but this site has the gist of it at least…
Source; Daily Kos
The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf is reporting that an attack on Iran is expected. Apparantly, the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD has conducted an ultra secret operation in Iran with the purpose of infiltrating and sabotaging the weapons industry in Iran. They have cancelled the operation, apparantly because of an imminent attack on Iran.
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Source: The Raw Story
 Thirteen Nepali men were recruited and held against their will for thirteen months in a human trafficking scheme engineered and perpetrated by Halliburton and its Jordanian contractor, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in California federal court.
The Nepali men, each between the ages of 18 and 27, were allegedly hired as kitchen staff by the then-Halliburton subsidiary KBR and its Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners. Once they arrived in Jordan, however, their passports were seized and they were dispatched to Iraq.
“Tragically, as the men were being transported to Iraq, a car containing twelve of the men was stopped by members of the Ansar al-Sunna Army, an insurgent group,” the Washington lawfirm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll writes. “The 12 men in the car were taken hostage and executed by the insurgents. The executions were filmed and posted on the Internet. The Inspector General for the United States Department of Defense investigated and confirmed the facts related to the fate of the 12 men, which led to increased enforcement of anti-trafficking measures by the United States.”
Only one man survived. After he was released by Iraqi rebels, he said he was assigned to work as a loader/unloader in a US military warehouse facility supervised by KBR. He asserts that he was held for 15 months against his well, before the firm finally allowed him to return home to Nepal.
Cohen, Milstein is suing on behalf of their families and the remaining survivor, Buddi Prasad Gurung. According to the law firm, their families went deep into debt to pay recruiting fees to Halliburton’s contractor in order to get promised jobs.
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Source: FT.com
Dmitry Medvedev, Russian president, failed on Thursday to win support from China or the former Soviet republics of central Asia in his deepening dispute with the west over military action in Georgia. At a central Asian summit in Tajikistan, Mr Medvedev was unable to persuade Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, or other regional leaders to give explicit backing to Russia’s intervention or its decision to recognise the independence of the two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. While the leaders refrained from criticising Russia, their joint statement gave the Kremlin only modest comfort. “[We] express grave concern in connection with the recent tensions around the South Ossetian issue and urge the sides to solve existing problems peacefully, through dialogue, and to make efforts facilitating reconciliation and talks,” said a final statement from the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which groups Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The leaders welcomed the French-brokered ceasefire deal that ended the fighting between Russia and Georgia and acknowledged Russia’s role in the Caucasus, saying they supported “Russia’s active role in contributing to peace and co-operation in the region”. Before the summit China had expressed its “concern” about “the latest changes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia”, an unusual move for Beijing which generally refrains from negative comment about Russia. Chinese officials declined to comment on Thursday but western diplomats in Beijing said the summit statement fitted closely with Chinese views. China had avoided any anti-western flourishes and – an absolute priority – any support for separatism. China, with restless ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang province, is concerned about precedents that might be set in Georgia, as are the central Asian states. Full Story…
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Source: This is London
Moscow has issued an extraordinary warning to the West that military assistance to Georgia for use against South Ossetia or Abkhazia would be viewed as a “declaration of war” by Russia.
The extreme rhetoric from the Kremlin’s envoy to NATO came as President Dmitry Medvedev stressed he will make a military response to US missile defence installations in eastern Europe, sending new shudders across countries whose people were once blighted by the Iron Curtain.
And Moscow also emphasised it was closely monitoring what it claims is a build-up of NATO firepower in the Black Sea.
Enlarge Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (right) meets with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - the ‘real architect’ of the Georgia conflict - and the Security Council (unseen) in Sochi yesterday
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (right) meets with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - the ‘real architect’ of the Georgia conflict - and the Security Council (unseen) in Sochi yesterday
The incendiary warning on Western military involvement in Georgia - where NATO nations have long played a role in training and equipping the small state - came in an interview with Dmitry Rogozin, a former nationalist politician who is now ambassador to the North Atlantic Alliance.
“If NATO suddenly takes military actions against Abkhazia and South Ossetia, acting solely in support of Tbilisi, this will mean a declaration of war on Russia,” he stated.
Yesterday likened the current world crisis to the fevered atmosphere before the start of the First World War.
Rogozin said he did not believe the crisis would descend to war between the West and Russia.
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Source: guardian.co.uk
US and Russian warships took up positions in the Black Sea today in a risky war of nerves on opposing sides of the Georgia conflict.
With the Russians effectively controlling Georgia’s main naval base of Poti, Moscow also dispatched the Moskva missile cruiser and two smaller craft on “peacekeeping” duties at the port of Sukhumi on the coast of Abkhazia, the breakaway region that the Kremlin recognised as independent yesterday.
The Americans, wary of escalating an already fraught situation, cancelled the scheduled docking in Poti of the US Coast Guard vessel, the Dallas, and instead sent it to the southern Georgian-controlled port of Batumi, 200km (124 miles) from the Russian ships, where it delivered humanitarian aid.
“Let’s hope we don’t see any direct confrontation,” said Dmitri Peskov, the spokesman for the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, as the Russians challenged the US policy of using military aircraft and ships to deliver relief supplies.
“The decision to deliver aid using Nato battleships is something that hardly can be explained,” said Peskov. “It’s not a common practice.”
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