Georgia: Terror fears over whereabouts of region's nuclear material

When the breakaway region of Abkhazia split from Georgia in 1993, the world's only known case of enriched uranium going missing was reported after up to 2kg of the potentially devastating material was stolen from a laboratory.

There are now fears that the organised criminal gangs that are rife in the region could exploit the confusion of the current conflict to loot other stocks.

Security services are worried that terrorist organisations such as al-Qa'eda could purchase weapons grade uranium and mix it with a detonator as basic as fertiliser to make a deadly device. While an estimated 15kg of uranium is needed to make a nuclear bomb just a small amount is needed for an unconventional device.

"There is no fear of a nuclear bomb coming out of this region but the bigger danger is that a small amount of uranium combined with conventional explosive terrorists could make a dirty bomb that would make an area the size of the City's Square Mile unusable for 30 or 40 years," said a security source. "The economic impact would be catastrophic." ....

DEVIL SENT DOWN TO GEORGIA

(Compiler's note: Received this material from a friend. rca)

The website is Russian so the captions are in Russian Cyrillic but the photos pretty well speak for themselves. Some gruesome pictures so be forewarned. http://www.navoine.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?p=551

RUSSIA UNLEASHES CHECHEN THUGS THE DOGS OF WAR: A ragtag group of mercenaries from this Vostok Battalion has made its ominous presence known in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.

OVER the weekend, photographic proof emerged that the Russians used
murderous Chechen mercenaries to do their dirtiest dirty work in
Georgia: The ragtag unit in question is so vicious that, last April,
Chechnya's Russian-installed "president" demanded it be disbanded.

War snaps taken by Russian photojournalist Arkady Babchenko have been
circulating among intelligence personnel. The shots reveal far more to
the West than Babchenko realized.

Amid photos of the horrors of war, grateful South Ossetians and
triumphant Russian troops, one series leapt out at me as a former intel
officer: Bearded irregulars riding atop Russian-built armored vehicles
(old BMPs, for the military-hardware buffs). The vehicles had been
splashed with white lettering.

What did the scrawls announce to the world? These thugs proudly
proclaimed that they're Chechens serving in the Vostok ("East")
Battalion commanded by Badrudin Yamadaev - who shares a reputation for gangland violence with his brother, Ruslan.

Last spring, mercenaries from the Vostok Battalion indulged in a bloody
gangland shoot-'em-up in the city of Gudermes, near their home turf. The
mafia-on-steroids brutality was too much even for the Chechens (which is
quite a standard). The province's puppet president publicly begged the
Kremlin and its generals to disband the unit.

The generals refused. At the time, their stubborn support for the outlaw
Yamadaev Brothers seemed baffling - a quiet Chechnya was a longstanding
Russian goal. But last week, it all made sense: Putin's military, which
had been planning the invasion of Georgia for many months, intended to
unleash the worst criminals in uniform it had on the Georgian people.

Why?

Two reasons: First, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants the Georgians to
suffer - to really suffer. And Chechens are the world's subject-matter
experts in atrocities.

Second, this gives the Russian army itself a veil of deniability: When
Putin's spokesmen insist that the Russian military isn't involved in the
worst savagery in Georgia, they're technically telling the truth (if we
don't count air attacks and artillery bombardments), since the Chechen
thugs on their payroll are on the job.

But why would those Chechens paint up their armored vehicles to tell the
world they'd arrived in Georgia? First, they're proud of their fearsome
reputation. Second, they didn't want Russian regulars to mistake them
for the enemy and pull the trigger.

The result?

Contrary to Russian claims that "volunteers" from the North Caucasus
rushed in to aid their South Ossetian brethren, we now have proof that
the Kremlin sent in hired guns. It's no accident that Putin's code-name
for this operation is "Scorched Earth."

And there's plenty else to be outraged about - not all of it Russia's
fault. Images of dead and disfigured Georgian soldiers show them wearing
US-surplus canteens, boots and helmets, or equipped with antique US
anti-tank weapons. After the Georgians did all their tiny country could
to support us in Iraq, all we gave them was cast-off junk - thanks to
Congress and the State Department.

Our military was only allowed to train the Georgians for peacekeeping,
anti-terrorism and small-unit tactics. The Georgians gave us all they
had, and we gave them crap. The Bush administration should hang its
wobbly head in shame.

Meanwhile, Chechen rapists and butchers are celebrating - and picking
over the US gear the Russians captured and didn't even want.

Stories of Russian Atrocities in Georgia Mount: Where's the US Media?

Rick Moran
Giving credit where credit is due, the European wire services AFP and Reuters as well as the BBC, Times of London, and even the Guardian have been giving extraordinarily good coverage on the entire Russian-Georgia conflict.

It was Reuters reporters who first uncovered the fact that the Russians were lying about Georgian attacks on the city of Tskhinvali. The Russians claimed 2000 civilians were killed and the city nearly razed to the ground by Georgia. In fact, Reuters got a couple of reporters in the city and saw immediately that Russia had wildly misstated the number of casualties while downplaying the fact that it was their artillery that did most of the damage.

The BBC has been doing a bang up job reporting on the diplomatic ins and outs - the unbelievable naivete of the French who keep getting the Russians to sign pieces of paper on a cease fire and withdrawal and then promptly ignoring what they just promised to do.

Now the Times Online informs us that Russians have been forcing the people of Gori - an extremely important rail and road junction that is the lifeline for the capitol Tblisi - to leave. And they are killing them if they stay:

"We didn't have any guns, so he shot Georgi in front of me without saying a word," she said. "A neighbour helped me to bury him in our garden and then I just fled."

Manana Galigashvili, 53, whose husband Andrei stared vacantly from a bed behind her, said that Ossetian soldiers had returned later and torched the house. They, too, had left after a soldier threatened to slit their throats.

Frightened refugees told similar stories all over the city of Gori yesterday as the Russian army extended its reach deep into Georgian territory despite a ceasefire agreement signed by President Medvedev that requires them to withdraw.

Troops and tanks moved to within 25 miles (40km) of the capital, Tbilisi, setting up roadblocks and digging in defensive positions in the hills above the highway. A line of tanks faced towards Tbilisi outside the village of Kaspi, a day after soldiers had blown up the railway line linking the capital to Georgia's main port of Poti.

It has been 48 hours since President Medvedev signed an agreement that Russian troops would stop their movements and leave Georgia. But Putin sees no need to obey what is an unenforceable agreement so he continues his threats against the Georgian capitol, putting enormous pressure on President Saakashvili while the world waits and wonders whether Putin will take it upon himself to overthrow the Georgian leader.

But this move on Gori is perhaps the biggest threat to Georgian sovereignty. It basically cuts the country in two leaving the capitol defenseless and desperately in need of relief supplies. The Russians have also apparently blown up a railroad bridge that was a major link to the Black Sea port of Poti. In effect, Tblisi is isolated and ripe for Russian plucking any time they choose.

Back in Gori, the forcible depopulation of a city under threat of death represents an escalation in Russian brutality. So where's the American media? All we are getting from the New York Times is story after story that this is our fault, or Georgia's fault, or NATO's fault - anything but face the fact that Russia is raping and pillaging a tiny neighbor.

The Washington Post is doing slightly better in that they have been on top of the diplomatic representations by the EU and pointing out how incredibly ineffective they have been in getting the Russians to stop. But when it comes to the situation on the ground, the American media is nowhere to be found.

If Reuters and AFP can get the story, one would think our own media would be capable. Instead, for the most part, they seem much more eager to parrot Russian talking points than attempt to tell what is going on in the Caucasus.

Before Salmonella Outbreak, Disease-Ridden Mexican Peppers Repeatedly Stopped at Border

(Compiler's note: Now explain this one more time why the gov't solution to this problem took so long to find. rca)

Fresno, Calif. - Federal inspectors at U.S. border crossings repeatedly turned back filthy, disease-ridden shipments of peppers from Mexico in the months before a salmonella outbreak that sickened 1,400 people was finally traced to Mexican chilies.

Yet no larger action was taken. Food and Drug Administration officials insisted as recently as last week that they were surprised by the outbreak because Mexican peppers had not been spotted as a problem before.

But an Associated Press analysis of FDA records found that peppers and chilies were consistently the top Mexican crop rejected by border inspectors for the last year. ....

U.N.-funded school honors infamous terrorist

....The Al Quds Open University dedicated the ceremony last weekend at a major campus in the West Bank city of Qalqiliya to the memory of female suicide bomber Dalal al-Mughrabi, who led an attack in March 1978 that killed a total of 36 Israelis.

According to a faculty member who helped lead the graduation, the master of ceremonies announced the year's graduation cycle was dedicated to the "hero" Mughrabi, who planned and led an attack in which she and 10 other Palestinians infiltrated Israel by sea, landed on a beach, killed an American photographer and then hijacked and blew up a crowded bus. ....

Corsi rejected '9/11 Truther' arguments

Jerome Corsi, author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," has rejected the arguments from "9/11 Truthers" who allege the U.S. government brought about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

That Corsi supported those theories was an allegation made by the campaign for Barack Obama, the Illinois senator who is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, in a 40-plus-page response to Corsi's book. Obama's campaign staff titled the treatise "Not Fit for Publication," a play on Corsi's earlier best-seller, "Unfit for Command," about John Kerry.

"That the Obama campaign has chosen to portray me as a 9/11 Truther just shows how sloppy and inaccurate the research going into their rebuttal was," said Corsi, a senior staff writer for WND. "Let me make clear that I fully accept and endorse the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission that the Islamic hijackers who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the sole cause of the attack." "There is no credible evidence that the U.S. government had any responsibility in the attack and it is irresponsible to suggest otherwise," he said.....

Court: Lesbians' desires trump doctors' religious rights

A state Supreme Court today ruled that constitutional freedom of religion does not permit doctors to refuse services to homosexual clients, even when those services would violate doctors' moral and religious convictions.

In a unanimous decision, the California State Supreme Court ruled against two Christian doctors at a San Diego area fertility clinic who refused to provide a medical procedure for artificial insemination to a lesbian couple.

According to court documents, the doctors claimed their religious convictions prohibited them from using intrauterine insemination (IUI) on any unmarried woman, regardless of sexual orientation.

The court, however, agreed with the lesbian couple that Dr. Douglas Fenton and Dr. Christine Brody had refused the treatment because of the lesbian couple's homosexuality and ruled that in doing so, the doctors violated California's Unruh Civil Rights Act.

Some lauded the decision as a victory for civil rights, while others lamented it as a loss of basic constitutional freedoms. ....

Report: Snipers sparked Russian-Georgian war

(Compiler's note: Most interesting. rca)

Sources in Georgia say the massive Russian onslaught into South Ossetia was prompted by Georgian snipers who apparently were picking off separatists in response to the killing of seven Georgian peacekeepers, then ran into a team of Russian peacekeepers and killed all but three, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

It happened in the days before Aug. 7, when Russian forces penetrated sovereign Georgian territory, the highly reliable sources said. South Ossetians, under fire from Georgian snipers, were not aware of where the shots were coming from and began shelling Georgian positions outside South Ossetia.

But the fleeing Georgians killed a number of Russian peacekeepers, triggering the conflict, according to the Georgian sources. ....

For years, Russian peacekeepers have occupied the so-called conflict areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both of which are are recognized by the international community as belonging to Georgia. Up until the latest flare-up, Georgian peacekeepers worked with Russian peacekeepers to police the conflict regions.

Knowing of the Russian troop buildup and the warnings issued the month before, the question arises as to why the Georgians responded to initial South Ossetian artillery fire with its own that hit the South Ossetian capital.

Some analysts suggest that the Georgian government did not think the Russians would go beyond South Ossetia, since there had been prior skirmishes between Georgian and South Ossetian forces.

Other analysts, however, suggest that it may have been a calculated effort to force Russia's hand and thereby draw attention from the West to Georgia's relations with Russia and desire to be part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO.

U.S. gives flak jackets to terrorist-saturated forces

Part of multimillion dollar taxpayer-funded training program

....

The U.S. flak jacket transfer is part of a larger, multimillion-dollar American training program for Fatah forces.

Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has run training bases for PA militias. The U.S. also has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid and weapons to build up the PA militias.

U.S.-run courses are currently training a new advanced police force billed as the most professional, capable Palestinian security force ever assembled. The police units are being built up to assume security control of the West Bank following the planned creation of a Palestinian state and any Israeli evacuation from the territory.

The U.S. runs training bases for the PA police in the West Bank city of Jericho and also at U.S.-operated bases in the Jordanian village of Giftlik.

Gen. Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator to the Palestinian territories, last year initiated the U.S. taxpayer-funded advanced program, which trains 500 to 600 PA cadets at a time at the American bases.

The course in Jordan lasts for three months and includes training in the use of weapons, conducting ambushes, fighting street crime, fighting terrorism and dealing with hostage situations, among other things, according to informed security officials.

After the cadets successfully complete the training in Jordan, the students continue with more advanced training courses at the U.S.-run base in the West Bank city of Jericho. ....

Shock admission: Italy made deal with terrorists

Ex-president reveals nation allowed bases, free movement for jihadists in secret pact

JERUSALEM – In an astonishing admission, the former president of Italy has confirmed his country provided Palestinian terror groups with sanctuary and the ability to establish internal bases in a secret pact in which the terrorists pledged not to target Italian interests.

"I always knew, though not by official documents and information kept from me, about the existence of an agreement based on 'don't harm me and I won't harm you' between the Italian Republic and organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the PLO," Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga revealed in a letter to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Cossiga was responding to an interview the newspaper conducted last week with Bassam Abu Sharif, a top Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, leader who claimed Italy provided his group in the 1970s with safe haven in a non-aggression pact. ....