9/07/2011
Another Heartwarming Story From Iraq
Hayward's return to the top of the oil industry was finalised on Wednesday as his new investment vehicle, called Vallares, agreed a merger with Genel Energy International of Turkey. The deal will deliver an estimated £176m windfall for Hayward and his fellow backers of Vallares, including Nat Rothschild.
Hayward said the deal would allow Vallares to exploit "one of the last great frontiers in the oil and gas industry".
"Arguably, it [Kurdistan] is the last big onshore 'easy' oil province available for exploration by private companies anywhere in the world," he added.
The combined company will be named Genel Energy PLC, and aims to join the FTSE 100 by early 2012.Hayward, who quit BP 14 months ago following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, will be chief executive of the combined company, sealing his return to the ranks of major oil firm bosses. On a conference call with reporters he refused to discuss how the transformation of his fortunes over the last year contrasted with the ongoing struggle faced by those affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Genel holds proved and probable reserves of 356m barrels of oil. It is well-placed to tap Kurdistan's huge reserves of hydrocarbons, with an estimated 40bn barrels of oil still to be discovered. Hayward compared the region's potential to that of the North Sea.
Vallares will issue $2.1bn (£1.3bn) worth of new shares, and use the proceeds to buy Genel in a 50:50 merger that will see the Turkish firm merge with Vallares and take its share listing through a "reverse takeover".
Vallares was created by Hayward, Rothschild and two other businessmen earlier this year, raising £1.35bn through a stock market flotation.
Under the terms in which Vallares was created, the four co-founders will share a windfall worth 6.67% of the group's value once it has completed its first major deal, in return for injecting a total £100m at its creation. That means the quartet will share around £170m, depending on their original stakes. The split of the £100m was not made public, but Hayward reportedly contributed £8m.
Mehmet Sepil, the current CEO of Genel, was hit with a record fine of almost £1m for insider trading in February 2010. The Financial Services Authority imposed the penalty after Sepil, and two colleagues, bought shares in Heritage Oil following confidential test results that revealed that Heritage and Genel had made a major oil discovery. Sepil insisted that he had not realised that this breached insider dealing rules.
Sepil will become president of the new company, but will not serve on its board. Some analysts have questioned whether, given this fine, Genel would have been allowed to list in London with Sepil at the helm.
City grandee Rodney Chase will chair the company. He insisted on Wednesday that Genel Energy will show "total adherence" to City rules. Chase added that the merger with Genel showed that companies from around the world could be attracted to list in London.(Guardian).
9/06/2011
Thierry Meyssan - A French Take On Libya and The Israeli Dimension
Interview with Thierry Meyssan, French journalist in Tripoli. From the francophone IRRB radio station (English Subtitles).
9/05/2011
Blair Was Godfather To Murdoch's Daughter
They certainly kept quiet about this one:
The information was not made public and its disclosure in an interview with Mrs Murdoch in Vogue will prove highly embarrassing for Mr Blair.His close ties to the Murdochs could explain his reluctance to condemn the News International phone hacking scandal.In July, it was reported that he asked Gordon Brown to put pressure on Tom Watson, the Labour MP who helped expose the scandal, to drop his investigation.I wonder how many Palestinian guests were at the ceremony on the banks of the Jordan.
UK Collaborated With Gaddafi On Rendition
This makes liars of Blair, Milliband, Straw, Brown and all the other prominent New £abour hypocrites:
FULL STORY HERE
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On Sunday, one of the victims, Abdul Hakim Belhaj – now commander of the anti-Gaddafi militia in Tripoli – demanded an apology from London and Washington and said he was considering suing over his rendition to Tripoli and subsequent torture.
For several years, senior MI5 and MI6 officers have sought to deny that their agencies have been guilty even of complicity in the rendition operations mounted by the US after 9/11, and the subsequent torture of the victims.
The discovery of the papers suggests that on one occasion, at least, the British ran their own "rendition to torture" operation. The victim was named by the CIA as Abu Munthir. He is thought to have been a man who used this nom de guerre while living in the UK, where he is said to have encouraged a group of British Muslims to mount a bomb attack on an unspecified target in the south-east of England. The plotters were under surveillance by MI5 and counterterrorism detectives at the time that Abu Munthir was detained in Hong Kong in March 2004 before being sent toLibya.
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| Which One Is The Waxworks Dummy? |
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9/04/2011
Steppin' Out
A clip from this track is the background music to the apocalyptic final scene in Martin Scorsese's film 'Mean Streets'. It is wrongly attributed in the credits to Eric Clapton playing Hideaway. It's the same number though.
The Narcissism Of 9/11
The US response to the terror attacks have clarified three things: the limits to what its enormous military power can achieve, its relative geopolitical decline and the intensity of its polarised political culture. It proved itself both incapable of winning the wars it chose to fight and incapable of paying for them and incapable of coming to any consensus as to why. The combination of domestic repression at home and military aggression abroad kept no one safe, and endangered the lives of many. The execution of Osama bin Laden provoked such joy in part because almost every other American response to 9/11 is regarded as a partial or total failure. More.
Iraqi Government To Probe US Massacre
Ammar Tu'uma, a member of the Iraqi Parliament's Security-and-Defense Committee, said the panel would take up the incident that left 10 people dead during the next session of politics.Tu'uma told Iraq's Aswat al-Iraq news agency the probe would be aimed at bringing the involved soldier to trial in Iraq.
The investigation will look into the deaths of the family in Balad township. Aswat al-Iraq said a U.N. report sent to the U.S. government detailed the allegations, including an airstrike on the home allegedly called in to cover up the slayings. We say - why did it take Wikileaks to trigger such an inquiry and that after such a lapse of time. This will turn out to be another sham 'investigation' as carried by Nato, Isaf, the Iraqi Government, The Afghanistan 'Government' and US puppets generally.
Gaza Demonstration Re Israeli Detention Of Journo
AFP - About 150 journalists, photographers and cameramen demonstrated in Gaza City on Saturday for Israel to release the Palestinian head of Al-Jazeera's Kabul bureau.
They held a sit-in in front of UN offices to demand "the immediate release" of Samer Allawi.
Israeli authorities arrested Al-Jazeera's Kabul bureau chief on August 10 as he left the West Bank after a visit to his family.
He was arrested trying to cross to Jordan through the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge, according to Al-Jazeera.
An Israeli military court in the northern West Bank has extended his detention, accusing him of "membership of Hamas" and having "contact with members in Hamas's military wing."
The demonstrators called on the United Nations to intervene against Israel's "arbitrary" detention which "violates the freedom of the press." Al-Jazeera has also urged his immediate release.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), based in New York, has demanded Israel "clarify the legal reasons why Samer Allawi remains in detention."
Tom Shields On Gaddafi, Saddam, Gordon Brown, Goodwin and Other Despots
But not dispose of an in-house tyrant.
This thought occurs on reading the leaks from Alistair Darling’s book Back From The Brink: 1000 Days At Number 11. Mr Darling tells us a few things we had already guessed at. Gordon Brown’s behaviour could be “brutal and volcanic”. Many British bankers are “arrogant and stupid”. Sir Fred Goodwin “deserves to be a pariah”.
Why were both tinpot dictators (a fair description of Brown and Goodwin on available evidence) not deposed in very British coups?
Senior Labour MPs attempted a revolt against Prime Minister Brown but failed in a manner reminiscent of the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.
Darling will no doubt be accused of culpability in supporting the Brown regime. But when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he spoke realistically of the dire state of the economy and was subjected to Brown’s “forces of hell”, Darling stood his ground.
Sir Fred led the Royal Bank of Scotland down a path to perdition without interference from his board. But then non-executive directors are not there to execute the boss, merely to collect their remuneration.
Back in Downing Street, there was a man who could have put an end to Brown’s “brutal” ways: Tony Blair, his superior officer at least in name.
As writer of a small Scottish column which occasionally tapped into the darker side of politics, I was struck by the regularity and vehemence with which the Blair camp attempted to drum up bad publicity for Brown in his own back yard.
It seems that Tony Blair was just too scared to take on Gordon and his weapons of New Labour destruction. He went for Saddam instead.
9/03/2011
Blair, The CIA and Gaddafi Conspired In Renditions
Two documents from March 2004 appear to be American correspondence to Libyan officials to arrange the rendition of Belhaj, the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a now-dissolved militant group with links to al-Qaida.
Referring to him by his nom de guerre, Abdullah al-Sadiq, the documents say he will be flown from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Libya, and asks for Libyan government agents to accompany him. They also request US "access to al-Sadiq for debriefing purposes once he is in your custody".
Belhaj has said he was tortured by CIA agents at a secret prison before being returned to Libya. VIDEO HERE.
9/11 And The Continuing Lies - Robert Fisk
There have been movies, too. Flight 93 re-imagined what may (or may not) have happened aboard the plane which fell into a Pennsylvania wood. Another told a highly romanticised story, in which the New York authorities oddly managed to prevent almost all filming on the actual streets of the city. And now we're being deluged with TV specials, all of which have accepted the lie that 9/11 did actually change the world – it was the Bush/Blair repetition of this dangerous notion that allowed their thugs to indulge in murderous invasions and torture – without for a moment asking why the press and television went along with the idea. So far, not one of these programmes has mentioned the word "Israel" – and Brian Lapping's Thursday night ITV offering mentioned "Iraq" once, without explaining the degree to which 11 September 2001 provided the excuse for this 2003 war crime. How many died on 9/11? Almost 3,000. How many died in the Iraq war? Who cares? Full Article.
9/02/2011
CIA - One Helluva Killing Machine
9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean judged Tenet’s admission “one of the most appalling comments we heard.” But as it turned out, Tenet’s timetable was prescient. A remarkable Washington Post story explores the rejuvenated CIA, which one veteran calls “one hell of a killing machine.” Full article.
9/01/2011
Wikileaks - Iraqi Child Victims of US Raid
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This cell phone photo was shot by a resident of Ishaqi on March 15, 2006, of bodies Iraqi police said were of children executed by U.S. troops after a night raid there. Here, the bodies of the five children are wrapped in blankets and laid in a pickup bed to be taken for burial. A State Department cable obtained by WikiLeaks quotes the U.N. investigator of extrajudicial killings as saying an autopsy showed the residents of the house had been handcuffed and shot in the head, including children under the age of 5. McClatchy obtained the photo from a resident when the incident occurred. | Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/08/31/122789/wikileaks-iraqi-children-in-us.html#ixzz1WibNtpnL |
Torture - UK Complicity
Special investigation: a charter for torture
Published 01 September 2011
In Afghanistan, British forces hand over prisoners with only flimsy guarantees they will not be abused. Now, Nato countries want to formalise the process – undermining 60 years of the Geneva Convention.
What is striking about the history of torture in Afghanistan is that no matter which regime is in power - the communists, the mujahedin, the Taliban and now Hamid Karzai's western-supported government - the methods remain the same. From the 1980s to the present day, electrocution and beating have been the principal weapons used against those the state deems dangerous or undesirable.
A former jihadi recently told the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism about the similarity in treatment between his arrests in the 1980s and in late January 2009. "In Afghanistan, some types of torture are common and these are beating and electric shocks, given twice a day," he said. "I was tortured at nine in the morning and again from two to three o'clock in the afternoon.
“They kept me in a toilet, kept me thirsty and hungry, and used to hang me upside down for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. I was frequently threatened with death. I was not allowed to meet my family during either imprisonment."
He was released after 25 days, once the elders of his tribe had paid the equivalent of £2,000 in Pakistani rupees.
In another case we investigated, a father was forced to listen to the torture of his 20-year-old son and 16-year-old nephew. The family's ordeal began at 3am one day in early March this year, after a team of Afghan and foreign intelligence operatives broke down the door to his home in a village in eastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. They took Shamsuddin (not his real name) and his son and nephew, put black hoods on their heads and accused them of being insurgents. Shamsuddin told us that his brother, the father of his nephew, had been killed by a Taliban bomb just eight months earlier. He said it was "impossible" to have the idea that they could be Taliban fighters.
The three men were taken to the area of Kabul where most foreign agencies and missions are sited, including the US embassy, the centre for Nato forces and CIA headquarters.Read More.
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