The Gates of Hell

“Not since 1967 is it so obvious there is going to be a war in the Middle East that will send gold and oil well past this year’s highs,” said Ralph Preston, a commodity analyst at Heritage West Financial Inc. in San Diego.

Source: Pakistan moves troops to India border - CNN.com

Pakistani troops have been moved to the Indian border amid fears of an Indian ground incursion, two Pakistani military officials told CNN on Friday.

The troops were deployed from Pakistan’s western border with Afghanistan, where forces have been battling Taliban and al Qaeda militants in North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Pakistan’s armed forces have been on high alert in anticipation of a possible conflict with India following last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which killed 160 people.

India believes the 10 men who carried out the attacks were trained at a terrorist camp in the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir.

A senior official said the troops had been moved from areas where there are no active military operations, and emphasized that troop levels have not been depleted in areas where soldiers are battling militants, such as the Swat Valley and near Peshawar, capital of the North West region.

In addition to the move, leave for all military personnel has been restricted and all troops were called back to active duty, the senior official said.

Asked for a reaction to the development, Husain Haqqani, Pakistani ambassador to the United States, said, “Pakistan does not seek war, but we need to be vigilant against threats of war emanating from the other side of our eastern border.”

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Technorati Tags: Pakistan, India

Source: Reuters

“In all these cases they have created the blast using timer devices,” Bangalore Commissioner of Police Shankar Bidari told reporters at the site of one of the blasts. “Explosives have also been used, in quantity equal to one or two grenades.”

Bangalore, known as India’s Silicon Valley, is one of the world’s most prominent centers for software development and is also the capital of its outsourcing industry.

Also nicknamed the “world’s back office”, it is home to more than 1,500 top firms, including India’s Infosys Technologies and Wipro and offices of global firms such as Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp.

Some IT firms, as well as schools, colleges and cinemas, closed after news of the blasts broke. Phone lines were jammed.

Via: Wikileaks

CIA Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS) threat assessment for Jacksonville Navy base, written at the SECRET//NOFORN//FISA level in 2005, 1 pp. The assessment forms part of a more general threat assessment prepared for the Marines, seen by Wikileaks. After several months Wikileaks was able to verify the document with military sources.

The document is written at a high level and outlines the intelligence threats to the United States and in particular threats to Florida and Jacksonville. The countries listed as a prime concern for United States and in particular its navel and nuclear technologies are:

China, Russia, France and India and Cuba.

Details are given, including a bumbling 2004 surveillance operation against Russian diplomat and “Suspected Intelligence Officer” Igoy Y. Kochetkov.

Cuba is listed as specific intelligence threat for Florida, having recently acquired from Panama an ability to monitor mobile phone calls in Cuba and Florida. In addition, “imagery has revealed that nine additional satellite dishes, which will likely collect againt U.S. assets, were installed at a SIGINT facility near Havanna”.