First Edition of Wolves In The City Daily

Read edition one here. More to follow.

Evicting Yemen's Drone Base - James Gundun

Ultimately The Washington Post added little to previous reporting fromThe Wall Street Journal and Associated Press. By the time this “secret” base was outed in June, MQ-9 Reapers had already increased their patrols over Yemen and begun to search for targets after a year-long slowdown. U.S. Hellfire missiles had terminated the deputy governor of Marib in May 2010, killed while allegedly meeting an informant from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). CIA Director David Petraeus, then CENTCOM commander, negotiated these joint-strikes under Ali Abdullah Saleh’s table, only for Yemen’s strongman to flip after a tribal revolt.

When U.S. warplanes and drones again increased their activity "to exploit" the power vacuum opened by Saleh, the besieged president had actually begun passing new information to Washington, starting with AQAP cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Saleh’s tactics haven’t changed before 

or after Yemen’s revolution and neither has U.S. policy.

FROM HERE.

Rise

Good positive vibe here.

Libya - Tripoli Rocked By Blasts On 7th August

William Hague On Libya

'The Libyan people can be assured that we will remain on their side for as long as it takes"

As long as what takes?

Sadr Warns US

Late on Tuesday, the Iraqi political leaders agreed in a meeting to give green light to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to start talks with the United States about keeping some of its troops in Iraq beyond the end of 2011 deadline only for training the Iraqi security forces. However, Qussai al-Shuheil, deputy parliament speaker and representative for Sadr parliamentary bloc, walked out of the meeting which was held in the residence of President Jalal Talabani in Baghdad, protesting the discussion of U.S. troops' presence after the end of 2011.
Bahaa al-Araji, a lawmaker from Sadr bloc, said after the meeting that his bloc declared its reservation on the talks over keeping U.S. trainers in Iraq after the end of 2011 and vowed to reject any government move in this regard. More.

How Israel Bankrupted America By Paul Balles

The real evidence of who the terrorists are comes from several studies done on the roles played by Israel from its beginning through six decades to 9/11 and beyond.

A  video clip from a British-made documentary from 2002 titled “The age of terror” examines the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 by Zionists.

The south wing of the hote, then occupied by British civil-military authorities, was bombed, killing 91 people. Twenty-eight of the victims were British, 41 Arab, while 17 were Jewish.

The Zionists who carried-out the attack, known as the Irgun, were led by a future prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin. The King David Hotel bombing was an act of terrorism widely-considered to be the first real incidence of 20th century terrorism.

Since that time, Zionists, with the complicit intelligence gathering and plots of Mossad, have engaged in more terrorist acts against Israel's perceived enemies than those committed by the world's celebrated terrorists combined.

In January of this year, Washington DC-based investigative journalist, author and reputed syndicated columnist Wayne Madsen made a revelation that completely discredited the official story of 9/11.

Madsen revealed that "British intelligence reported in February 2002 that the Israeli Mossad ran the Arab hijacker cells that were later blamed by the US government's 9/11 Commission for carrying out the aerial attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. WMR [Wayne Madsen Report] has received details of the British intelligence report which was suppressed by the government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair." Full article.

Charles Graner, Abu Ghraib Ringleader Freed

'Graner was convicted of offenses that included stacking the prisoners into a pyramid, knocking one of them out with a head punch and ordering prisoners to masturbate while soldiers took pictures.He maintained that the actions were part of a plan directed by military intelligence officers to soften up prisoners for interrogation.Graner, who received the longest sentence, is the last Abu Ghraib defendant to be released from prison. Calls and emails to Graner's father and lawyer were not immediately returned.During his deployment, Graner fathered a son with former Pfc. Lynndie England. England was given a three-year sentence for her role in the scandal.After his conviction, Graner married another member of his unit, former Spc. Megan Ambuhl. She was discharged from the Army after pleading guilty to dereliction of duty for failing to prevent or report the maltreatment.'Read More.

Jon Stewart Censored In UK

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Iraq - Bungled US Raid Kills Child And Police Officer

Local officials in Iraq have said that US troops in the country have killed an Iraqi child as well as a policeman in the Salahuddin province north of Baghdad.

Officials say the two were killed during an apparent 'mistaken raid.'

Reports on further casualities remain sketchy so far, Press TV reported.

Nato's Libya War Crumbling

Bomb Damage In Tipoli In July.

On August 2, London Guardian writer Simon Jenkins headlined, "Nightly Britain bombs Tripoli. Bar death, what do we achieve?" saying:
"Britain's half-war against Libya is careering onward from reckless gesture to full-scale fiasco....Every sensibly pessimistic forecast has turned out true and every jingoistic boast false."
"There remains no sign that the terror bombing of civilian areas is contributing to military victory any more effectively than when Bomber Harris (infamous for fire-bombing Dresden in 1945 and other sites) advocated it."

"Now each night (British and other) pilots fly over Tripoli and drop bombs on it, achieving nothing but death and destruction. Yet Libya represents no threat to Britain or its people. Daily bombings are a mistake. But who will say so? Moreover, Parliament fiddles while Libya burns."
READ MORE.

Security Incidents In Iraq 4th August

04 Aug 2011 20:49

Source: Reuters // Reuters

Following are security developments in Iraq at 2330 GMT on Thursday.

* Denotes new or updated item.

* BAGHDAD - A sniper attacked a police checkpoint and killed a policeman in the Zayouna district of eastern Baghdad, an interior ministry source said.

* BAGHDAD - A sticky bomb attached to a car killed the driver and wounded two passersby in Amiriya district of western Baghdad, a security source said. Another sticky bomb wounded two passersby in another part of Amiriya district.

MOSUL - A parked car bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol killed a 6-year old child and wounded another 12 people, including six policemen, when it went off in western Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, a police source from Nineveh police operations room said.

US Clinging On In Iraq

The ostensible justification for the Americans to still have their boots on the Iraqi soil is that the Iraqi security forces are, as yet, not quite ready to guarantee that the country will not slide into anarchy and lawlessness once the Americans disappear.  A US government report released on July 30 said the security situation was deteriorating amid a wave of assassinations and Iranian-backed militia attacks. Up to 1,000 al-Qaeda militants remain in Iraq, the special inspector for Iraq reconstruction warned. June was the bloodiest month since April 2009 for US troops in Iraq, with 14 soldiers killed in attacks. Another five died in July. Powerful and influential voices within the Iraqi coalition led by Maliki have been expressing concerns about the readiness of the Iraqi security forces with impunity. These voices have lately become more agitated as the deadline for US withdrawal nears. Encouragement for their alarm has come from the likes of Admiral Mike Mullen, the soon-to-retire chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who "urged" the Iraqis to make up their minds and take a "quick decision" barely hours before the Iraqi leaders, bending to his pressure, threw in the towel. The US has a vested interest in continuing in Iraq to run it as a vassal state and access its natural resources of course.

War On Iraq - Overt Dictionary Definition

@OvertDictionaryThe Overt Dictionary

The War On Iraq: a war that has killed at least 500,000 Iraqi kids and enriched at least a dozen U.S. oil companies.

Torture - Exposing British Complicity

By Peter Oborne Politics Last updated: August 4th, 2011

Binyam Mohamed after his release from Guantanamo Bay (Photo: AP)

In the autumn of 1990, in the immediate aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, British intelligence sought a special kind of permission from Downing Street. They wanted the prime minister to make it clear that they could, in defiance of international law, make use of information which they knew to have been acquired as a result of torture.Margaret Thatcher, then in the last few weeks of her magnificent premiership, carefully considered this request. She consulted her conscience and pondered what was the right thing to do. Within a very short space of time, a clear and magisterial instruction was issued from Downing Street and dispatched around Whitehall: Mrs Thatcher wanted it known that the British state was not, in any circumstances, to make use of intelligence that might have come from victims of torture.Thirteen years later, another prime minister, with a lower set of standards, ordered British troops to invade Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. As far as can be told, Tony Blair – who had unveiled an “ethical” foreign policy when he came to power in 1997 – felt few of the qualms that beset his predecessor.Under his premiership, Mrs Thatcher’s wise and principled instruction was forgotten, and the British secret state seems, for a time, to have badly lost its way. As we know from the Butler inquiry, the Secret Intelligence Service abandoned its usual rigorous methods of intelligence gathering and assessment. Much worse, for a period during the past decade, both MI5 and MI6 became party to the perpetration of physical cruelty and punishments which were medieval in their sadism and barbarity.It is important to be clear what they did not do. There is no evidence at all that British intelligence has been directly involved in any kind of physical abuse. Our chaps seem to have been too well-mannered. They would withdraw when the punishment sessions began, and only return after the last screams had died away.Evidence of the latter behaviour, unfortunately, is very strong indeed. Let us take as an example the case of Zeeshan Siddiqui, a British citizen and suspected al‑Qaeda operative who was detained by Pakistani authorities in 2005. According to Human Rights Watch, Siddiqui “reported being repeatedly beaten, chained, injected with drugs and threatened with further torture and sexual abuse”. He says that British intelligence officers interviewed him while all this was going on, and that they can hardly have been unaware that he was being tortured.Here is another example, also courtesy of Human Rights Watch. It concerns Salahuddin Amin, another British citizen, who was later found guilty of plotting attacks on British targets, including the Ministry of Sound nightclub (Amin continues to deny any part in the plot). According to Human Rights Watch, Amin was “repeatedly tortured by Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) and forced into a laundry list of false confessions”.

While this was happening, claimed Amin, “he was met by British intelligence officials on almost half a dozen occasions”. Amin added that “he would be tortured, then forced back to his cell to do ‘homework’, wherein he would provide a written confession at ISI instruction, then meet British interrogators the next day, who would ask questions on the same subjects. If the ISI felt his answers to the British agents were unsatisfactory, he would be told that he had embarrassed them ‘in front of our friends’ and be punished with further torture.”The case of Rangzieb Ahmed – exposed by David Davis, the Tory MP, using parliamentary privilege – shows a disturbingly similar pattern. “There is a dispute between Ahmed and British intelligence officers about exactly when his fingernails were removed,” noted Davis, “but an independent pathologist employed by the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that it happened during the period when he was in Pakistani custody.”The same pattern fits the now notorious torture of the terrorist suspect Binyam Mohamed, who was reportedly visited by an MI5 officer after being tortured in a Pakistan jail (later, he said, he was secretly transported to Morocco, where among other atrocities his penis was cut open with a scalpel). Mohamed, like all those mentioned above, may or may not have been a very bad man – I cannot say for certain, partly because the techniques apparently used to extract confessions badly cloud the truth. But his treatment shames Britain, which ought to be a stronghold of fairness and decency.

For a long time, the British government went out of its way to cover up its complicity with torture. It tried to suppress documents and made a series of misleading statements. David Miliband, the former foreign secretary, repeatedly refused to admit our involvement, a self-sacrificing decision because the worst abuses seem to have taken place well before he entered the Foreign Office. Unfortunately, David Cameron is now in danger of making the same mistake as Mr Miliband.Shortly after last year’s election, Mr Cameron seemed to usher in a new era when, in a step which put his predecessor Gordon Brown to shame, he announced in Parliament a full-scale and judge-led inquiry that would get to the bottom of these terrible charges.But there were doubts about the inquiry from the very beginning. The choice of Sir Peter Gibson, a 76-year-old retired judge, to lead the inquiry was particularly disturbing. Gibson had been the Intelligence Services Commissioner for the previous four years, charged with providing statutory oversight of MI5 and MI6.During Sir Peter’s period as commissioner, many of the allegations about British complicity in torture had come to light. Yet did he ever ask tough and pertinent questions of intelligence bosses? His annual reports gave the security and intelligence services a clean bill of health.If Sir Peter should have had any role at all in the inquiry, it would have been as a witness and not as an impartial inquisitor. Meanwhile, his fellow panellist Peter Riddell is a former political commentator for theTimes, a cuddly establishment journalist who is not known for asking tough or probing questions. There is every reason to speculate that this was the reason for his appointment.But the main reason for alarm concerns the terms of reference of the Gibson inquiry. It has stealthily emerged over the past few months that it will have no powers to compel witnesses to attend, while Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, rather than the inquiry panel, will have the final say over what information is made public.

Worst of all, those who claim they were victims of torture will not be able to question MI5 and MI6 officers, and will therefore be unable to challenge evidence with which they disagree. This is the reason, above all, why lawyers for the alleged victims, as well as human rights groups such as Liberty, Reprieve and Amnesty International, yesterday announced that they will boycott the inquiry.I am told that there were two principal reasons Margaret Thatcher was so strongly opposed to torture. The first was simply pragmatic: she understood that information extracted from terrified victims under duress could never be relied on or trusted.But more importantly, she instinctively knew that complicity with torture was an affront to everything that Britain stands for – above all, our respect for tolerance, decency and the rule of law.We still need to fight for these values, and our international reputation. So it is time to close the Gibson inquiry down and appoint a new and genuinely independent panel with serious powers to investigate and, if necessary, expose what appears to have been one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of the British state.

Guantanamo Payments Exceed £12M

It is thought that around £12million is likely to have been paid to the Guantánamo Bay suspects.

This is because the agencies have on average spent £1.5 million a year on losses and special payments over the past five years. The total compensation figure paid to 16 Britons who were suing the Government is likely to be around £14 million, and will have been swelled by payments from other government departments.

The former detainees have denied wrongdoing. In April, The Daily Telegraph disclosed for the first time details of the US accusations against the men, which were contained in files compiled about them in Guantánamo Bay. More Here.

This at a time when the Government are cutting back the armed forces and all public services due to being 'cash-strapped'. This is truly Orwellian now. Reduce the securocracy while paying compensation to those tortured by them and while expanding  already failed military campaigns (Iraq and Afghanistan) by joining new ones (Libya and...............?)

BP And Iraqi Oil

Oil industry watchdogPLATFORM London gained access to a leaked copy of a contract between BP and the Iraqi government which reveals the extent to which the company has gained control over Iraq’s resources. New Left Project writes: 

BP was awarded the 20-year deal at an auction in June 2009, but suspicions were raised when the company did not sign the contract until four months later. The Iraqi government said nothing had changed in the interim, only “clarifications” – claims that the leaked contract show not to be true.

PLATFORM obtained from a reliable source a version of the Rumaila contract with BP/CNPC dated 8 October 2009. This leaked version was compared with the official model contract, dated 23 April 2009, which formed the basis of the first bid round.Several key changes were made, including:

> BP could opt to be paid for oil not produced as a result of OPEC quotas or Iraqi infrastructure bottlenecks. In the model contract for which companies bid at the auction, the cost of such scenarios would have been shared by both sides.

> The threshold for BP’s project expenditure at which Iraqi approval was required was raised from $50m to $100m and tight time limits applied to Iraqis’ ability to check such expenditures are legitimate and not inflated.
The changes that took place behind closed doors at first look like technical details. But look more closely and you see their real meaning: BP, not the Iraqi government, will effectively control future rates of production. This gives the company a stranglehold on the Iraqi economy.

Also revealed today:
In April 2009, just two months before the auction at which BP won the contract, Iraqi Ministry of Oil officials sought training on commercial and negotiating skills – from BP, the very company with which it would be negotiating.
When parliamentarians called the Oil Minister in for questionning on the contract, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wrote privately to the speaker of parliament calling for him to block the it, on grounds that the questionning would hold back Iraq’s progress, in a way that would be “in harmony” with recent terrorist bombings in Baghdad.

My Favourite Mistake - Madeleine Albright

Newsweek has a feature called "My Favorite Mistake," where a famous person talks about something they've done wrong.http://www.fair.org/blog/wp-admin/edit.php
Two weeks ago (7/24/11) it's former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The mistake she cited was when she wore the wrong pin to a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and then said something critical about his Chechnya policy. (The best mistakes are the most self-serving ones, apparently.)
When I saw the headline, I was half-wondering if she'd talk about her famous defense of killing Iraqi children on 60 Minutes (5/12/96):
Leslie Stahl asks Albright: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
To which Albright replies: "I think this is a very hard choice. But the price--we think the price is worth it."
Iraq did come up in the Newsweek piece, when Albright wrote, "We had sanctions on Iraq then, and I was instructed to keep saying terrible things about Saddam Hussein."
I would agree that she said something terrible.

Saleh Will Not Transfer Power

The embattled president, who has faced six months of protests demanding an immediate end to his 33-year rule, vowed to return to power and lead a national conciliation dialogue with his opponents soon.

A close aide to Saleh told Xinhua that "doctors treating Saleh' s injuries in the Saudi military hospital could allow him to come back to Sanaa by the end of the first week of August to resume his presidential duties." Read More.

Security Developments Iraq and Afghanistan 1st August

Monday, August 1, 2011

War News for Monday, August 01, 2011

NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldier from an IED attack in an undisclosed location in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, July 31st.
NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldier from an insurgent attack in an undisclosed location in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, July 31st.
NATO is reporting the deaths of three ISAF soldier from an non-combat related incident in an undisclosed location in western Afghanistan on Sunday, July 31st.
Reported security incidents
Hilla:
#1: Gunmen using silenced weapons killed a taxi driver late on Sunday in middle of Hilla, 100 km (62 miles) south of Baghdad, a local police source said.
Iskandariya:
#1: An Iraqi soldier was wounded when a bomb attached to his vehicle exploded in Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, a local police source said.
Afghanistan:
#1: An air strike by foreign forces overnight killed four Afghan policemen, a governor in the country's troubled east said Monday. The incident happened at a police post in rugged and insurgency-hit Nuristan, the province's governor Jamaluddin Badr said, adding the strike was based on "wrong intelligence". A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul could not confirm any details but said it was "looking into the matter". Badr said foreign forces detained police officers at the post in Wama district after the strike. "NATO coalition helicopters bombed our police post. Four policemen were killed, two were injured and the remaining 12 police were detained and taken to Bagram," the governor told AFP, referring to the giant international military base near Kabul.
#2: American drone-fired missiles slammed into a car near the Afghan border on Monday, killing four suspected Islamist militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said. The missile strike took place in the Nargusa area of South Waziristan, which like much of the rugged border region is home to al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, the officials said on condition of anonymity in line with their agency's rules. The officials identified the dead men as Pakistani militants, but said they were not from the border region. Two other fighters were wounded in the strike.
#3: Two people have been killed when a bomb planted in a garbage dump exploded in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, provincial officials say. The blast took place in Hazar Ganji area, some 20km (12 miles) west of the city centre. Officials said three others were wounded in the attack.
#4: Gunmen torched several NATO oil tankers Monday in Pakistan's Sindh province as the convoy was proceeding to Afghanistan, authorities said. Geo News reported at least 10 trucks were set ablaze by the attackers as the vehicles traveled on the National Highway near Khairpur. The province's capital is the port city of Karachi where the NATO supplies arrive to be taken by road across Pakistan to Peshawar and then across the border to Afghanistan. Geo News reported four people, including three drivers, were seriously injured in the attack. The flames also spread to a nearby hotel and three shops, police said.
#5: Suspected Taliban militants attacked members of a Shi'ite Muslim tribe in the Kurram tribal region, killing at least five and wounding one. Taliban, who are radical Sunni Muslims, consider Shi'ites heretics

Tony Blair's Tapestry Of Deceit

Tony BLAIR’S “tapestry of deceit” over the Iraq war is “unravelling”, it was claimed yesterday.

MP Angus Robertson welcomed reports that the Chilcot Inquiry would deliver damning criticism of the former Prime Minister when its findings are published in the autumn.

The SNP’s Westminster defence spokesman also warned the report would raise “difficult questions” for MPs who backed the invasion.

He said: “The tapestry of deceit woven by Tony Blair over the past decade has finally unravelled. More Here.