1. UKRAINIAN PARTISANS

From 1945 to 1952, the CIA trained and aerially supplied Ukrainian partisan units which had originally been organised by the Germans to fight the Soviets during WWII. For seven years, the partisans, operating in the Carpathian Mountains, made sporadic attacks. Finally, in 1952, a massive Soviet military force wiped them out.

2. CHINESE BRIGADE IN BURMA

After the Communist victory in China, Nationalist Chinese soldiers fled into northern Burma. During the early 1950s, the CIA used these soldiers to create a 12,000-man brigade which made raids into Red China. However, the Nationalist soldiers found it more profitable to monopolise the local opium trade.

3. GUATEMALAN REBEL ARMY

After Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz legalised that country’s Communist party and expropriated 400,000 acres of United Fruit banana plantations, the CIA decided to overthrow his government. Guatemalan rebels were trained in Honduras and backed up with a CIA air contingent of bombers and fighter planes. This army invaded Guatemala in 1954, promptly toppling Arbenz’s regime. (more…)

There’s no such thing as al Qaeda, or al Qaida, or however you want to spell it. It’s a fraud perpetrated on the American people by our own government to scare us into submission. This is a clip from the excellent three-part BBC documentary “The Power of Nightmares”. You can watch the whole thing on Google Video or download it at scholarsfor911truth.org.

The first vote is still more than a year away, but the campaign to replace President George W Bush in the White House is already throwing up surprises.

Unfortunately for Senator Hillary Clinton, long the front-runner in the Democratic drive to retake the presidency, most of them are coming at her expense.

A brace of Christmas opinion polls has left Clinton with a political hangover after a year that had appeared to cement her status as the Democrats’ best-organised, best-financed and best-connected contender for her party’s presidential nomination.

Despite winning re-election to the US Senate by a handsome margin in mid-term voting last month, Clinton has had little to celebrate as polls from the presidential primary battlegrounds signalled early trouble for her historic bid to become America’s first woman president.

In Iowa, the Midwestern state that will once again open the primary season with its caucus votes on January 14, 2008, Clinton slumped to fourth place with only 10% of the vote in a survey of 600 likely Democratic voters. (more…)

Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington.

By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.

The extent of the demands were disclosed in “undertakings” given by the US Department of Homeland Security to the European Union and published by the Department for Transport after a Freedom of Information request.

About four million Britons travel to America each year and the released document shows that the US has demanded access to far more data than previously realised.

Not only will such material be available when combating terrorism but the Americans have asserted the right to the same information when dealing with other serious crimes. (more…)

Powers allowing police forces to keep the DNA of people accused of sexual or violent offences have come into force.

The measure will allow the police to store such information on a database, even if there is no conviction.

Currently, DNA must be destroyed if it belongs to an accused of sexual or violent crimes if there is no conviction obtained.

The changes are contained in the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2006.

They will allow police to retain DNA samples for up to three years and apply for an extension if deemed necessary. (more…)

North Korea on Monday hailed 2006 as a “year of great victory” thanks to its first ever nuclear weapons test and vowed to keep putting its military first in the coming year.
A joint New Year editorial in the hardline communist state’s major newspapers also vowed to restructure the creaking economy and called for unbending loyalty to leader Kim Jong-Il.

“Our access to a nuclear deterrent was an auspicious event in the national history as it meant the realization of the Korean people’s centuries-old desire to have national strength no one could dare challenge,” said the editorial carried jointly by the party, military and youth newspapers.

“Our nuclear deterrent serves as a powerful force for defending peace and security in Northeast Asia and guaranteeing the victorious advance of the cause of independence,” it added, referring to the nuclear test on October 9.

The editorial termed 2006 a “year of great victory” and made no mention of the international condemnation or UN sanctions which were sparked by the nuclear test and by earlier missile tests in July. (more…)

Experiments that claim to ‘cure’ homosexual rams spark anger

Scientists are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of “gay” sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.

The technique being developed by American researchers adjusts the hormonal balance in the brains of homosexual rams so that they are more inclined to mate with ewes.

It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the “straightening” procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the skin like an anti-smoking nicotine patch.

The research, at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, has caused an outcry. Martina Navratilova, the lesbian tennis player who won Wimbledon nine times, and scientists and gay rights campaigners in Britain have called for the project to be abandoned. (more…)

Iran’s influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warned Western powers Sunday that pressuring Iran to halt its controversial nuclear work would have consequences for the whole region.

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on December 23 that imposes sanctions on Iran for its refusal to freeze nuclear enrichment — a process that can make nuclear fuel or the fissile core of an atom bomb.

“This is a dangerous resolution, they are creating problems for themselves and the region … many will suffer from the smoke of this fire,” Rafsanjani said in a prayer sermon carried live on state radio.

“Sanctions cannot make Iran surrender,” the former president said, while pledging cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency to “clear allegations that Iran wants to go towards nuclear military work”.

“We are ready to cooperate with international organizations with all their rules of inspection,” he said, calling on Iranian officials to seek to resolve the nuclear standoff with “prudence and patience”. (more…)

With Congress back in session on January 3, the federal “hate crimes” bill could be reintroduced any time. The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith introduced the same legislation last January 6, three days after Congress convened.

This is the most dangerous legislation ever to come before Congress. It leads directly to an end of free speech. Once free speech is gone, there is little to prevent the loss of all our other freedoms. The new Democrat-controlled Congress has all the votes it needs to quickly run this Orwellian bill through committee in the House and Senate and pass it. Unless they lose their nerve, thrown back by massive protest from the American people.

Extraordinary action must be taken NOW to back down ADL and intimidate them from even introducing the hate bill in this session. (more…)

With his plain pine coffin strapped into an American military helicopter for a predawn journey across the desert, Saddam Hussein, the executed dictator who built a legend with his defiance of America, completed a turbulent passage into history on Sunday.

Like the helicopter trip, just about everything in the 24 hours that began with Mr. Hussein’s being taken to his execution from his cell in an American military detention center in the postmidnight chill of Saturday had a surreal and even cinematic quality.

Part of it was that the Americans, who turned him into a pariah and drove him from power, proved to be his unlikely benefactors in the face of Iraq’s new Shiite rulers who seemed bent on turning the execution and its aftermath into a new nightmare for the Sunni minority privileged under Mr. Hussein.

The 110-mile journey aboard a Black Hawk helicopter carried Mr. Hussein’s body to an American military base north of Tikrit, Camp Speicher, named for an American Navy pilot lost over Iraq in the first hours of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. From there, an Iraqi convoy carried him to Awja, the humble town beside the Tigris River that Mr. Hussein, in the chandeliered palaces that became his habitat as ruler, spoke of as emblematic of the miseries of his lonely and impoverished youth. (more…)

An international trade union, working in at least three countries, could be created within a decade, the leader of one of Britain’s biggest unions has predicted.

Amicus, which has 1.1 million members and is soon to merge with the T&G, has forged solidarity agreements with IG Metall in Germany and two American unions, the Machinists and the United Steel Workers. The T&G also has links with the SEIU, the US service industry union.

Derek Simpson, general secretary of Amicus, said: “Our aim is to create a powerful single union that can transcend borders to challenge the global forces of capital. I envisage a functioning, if loosely federal, multinational trade union organisation within the next decade.”

One of Amicus’s predecessor unions, the AEEU, held merger talks with IG Metall seven years ago but the idea was put on ice.

Unions are increasingly keen to forge international links in an attempt to match up to globalised industry. Their intention is to force multinational companies to deal with one union rather than be able to make changes in one country and not consult unions elsewhere. (more…)

Hundreds of supporters of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein have been protesting in the cities of Baghdad, Tikrit and Samarra against his hanging.

Many of the protesters vowed revenge for Saturday’s execution, describing it as a criminal act of cowardice orchestrated by American overlords.

The Sunni Arab demonstrations came a day after celebrations in Shia areas.

Saddam Hussein’s eldest daughter, Raghad, joined hundreds of people in a protest in Jordan’s capital Amman.

“God bless you! I thank your for honouring Saddam the martyr,” she told the demonstrators, in a surprise public appearance.

The former president’s two older daughters sought refuge in Jordan four months after the US-led invasion in April 2003.

Further protests were reported around the Muslim world, including in the Palestinian territories and Indian-administered Kashmir. (more…)

Ending the occupation will reduce violence, immediately save more than $100 billion and respect the wishes of the American people. Why is Washington, DC ignoring the obvious?

If the election results did not make the message clear, polls since the election have done so. Support for sending additional troops to Iraq is at 11% according a December 15-17 poll by CNN. The same poll found that 54% of Americans want the troops home by the end of 2007 and 67% oppose the war. Yet in the Capitol there is talk of adding new troops and almost no talk of getting out of Iraq. Representative government is failing to represent the voters.

Why is the leadership of both parties in Washington, DC failing to discuss getting out of Iraq—rapidly? They say a U.S. exit will lead to an escalation of violence, a blood bath or civil war. But the truth is we can design a rapid exit from Iraq that reduces the risk of violence. How? (more…)

A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain’s leading climate experts has warned.

As the new year was ushered in with stormy conditions across the UK, the forecast for the next 12 months is of extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia and leave California under a deluge.

The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity.

Professor Jones said the long-term trend of global warming - already blamed for bringing drought to the Horn of Africa and melting the Arctic ice shelf - is set to be exacerbated by the arrival of El Niño, the phenomenon caused by above-average sea temperatures in the Pacific.

Combined, they are set to bring extreme conditions across the globe and make 2007 warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record. It is likely temperatures will also exceed 2006, which was declared in December the hottest in Britain since 1659 and the sixth warmest in global records. (more…)