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On August 15, 1970, Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, was born to his mother and his stepfather. Obama devotes the entire second chapter of his autobiography to his time in Indonesia, but remarkably, he makes no reference to Maya's birth.

-p. 48, Obama Nation, author, Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D

ISLAMOFILE 092208: Al Qaeda May Have An "October Surprise"

A Pakistani army soldier stands guard by the devastated Marriott Hotel following an overnight suicide bombing at Islamabad on September 21, 2008.

In the aftermath of two major terrorist attacks on Western targets, America's counterterrorism community is warning that Al Qaeda may launch more overseas operations to influence the presidential elections in November.

Call it Osama bin Laden's "October surprise." In late August, during the weekend between the Democratic and Republican conventions, America's military and intelligence agencies intercepted a series of messages from Al Qaeda's leadership to intermediate members of the organization asking local cells to be prepared for imminent instructions.

An official familiar with the new intelligence said the message was picked up in multiple settings, from couriers to encrypted electronic communications to other means. "These are generic orders," the source said — a distinction from the more specific intelligence about the location, time, and method of an attack. "It was, 'Be on notice. We may call upon you soon.' It was sent out on many channels."

Also, Yemen's national English-language newspaper is reporting that a spokesman for Yemen's Islamic Jihad, the Qaeda affiliate that claimed credit for last week's American embassy bombing in Sa'naa, is now publicly threatening to attack foreigners and high government officials if American and British diplomats do not leave the country.

Mr. bin Laden has sought to influence democratic elections in the past. On March 11, 2004, Al Qaeda carried out a series of bombings on Madrid commuter trains. Three days later, the opposition and anti-Iraq war Socialist Workers Party was voted into power.

In the week before the 2004 American presidential election, Mr. bin Laden recorded a video message to the American people promising repercussions if President Bush were re-elected. In later messages, Al Qaeda's leader claimed credit for helping elect Mr. Bush in 2004. Last year in Pakistan, Qaeda assassins claimed the life of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister who returned to her native country in a bid for re-election.

"There is an expectation that Al Qaeda will try to influence the November elections by attempting attacks globally," a former Bush and Clinton White House counterterrorism official, Roger Cressey, said yesterday.

Mr. Cressey said Al Qaeda lacks the capability to pull off an attack in the continental United States, however. "It would likely be a higher Al Qaeda tempo of attacks against U.S. and allied targets abroad," he said.

At a talk at the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs on August 12, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats said he expected to see more threat reporting on Al Qaeda as America approaches the November elections.

The terrorist attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday was a particular blow to the allied effort against Al Qaeda. The hotel's lobby in recent years served as a meeting place for the CIA and Pakistanis who would not risk being seen at the American Embassy. The bombing, which targeted one of the most heavily fortified locations in Pakistan's capital, will likely claim close to 100 lives after the dead are pulled from the rubble.

President Zardari, who had just given his first major address as Pakistan's head of state, on fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, was the target of Saturday's attack, the vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, said.

"He was expected to attend the iftar dinner at the Marriott," Mr. Gartenstein-Ross said "Think of the symbolic value if they were able to kill Zardari after his first address as president of Pakistan in a speech announcing his fight against the terrorists. The symbolic effect of the attack on the same day would be devastating."

An adviser to Senator McCain and a former director of central intelligence under
President Clinton, James Woolsey, said Al Qaeda has a "history of doing three things at least related to elections. One is to attack before elections, such as in 2004 in Spain, and of course the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. They also have a history of attacks when new leaders take over, like Gordon Brown in Britain and the new leader in Pakistan, with the attack over the weekend. Also Al Qaeda sends messages to populations in elections. You really don't know which one of these they are going to implement."

Earlier this summer, another McCain campaign official mused in an interview that an attack could benefit his candidate in the polls. But whether that statement is true is unclear: At the Republican National Convention this month, Mr. McCain praised the president's counterterrorism policies for preventing an attack in America since September 11, 2001. The Bush administration has deliberately refrained from pointing to this success in light of the many plots that the president has said have been aborted on American soil since September 11.

The deputy communications director for the McCain campaign, Michael Goldfarb, said: "There is no doubt that Al Qaeda is still dangerous and still desires to strike at America and our allies. But Americans will not be intimidated and their votes will not be swayed by terror."

A spokeswoman for the Obama campaign, Wendy Morigi, said, "Last week's attacks demonstrate the grave and urgent threat that Al Qaeda and its affiliates pose to the United States and the security of all nations. As Senator Obama has said for some time, we must refocus our efforts on defeating Al Qaeda around the world." (source)

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Interestingly, Obama did not dedicate Dreams From My Father to his mother, or to his father, Barack Senior, or to his Indonesian stepfather. Missing from the dedication are the grandparents who raised him in Hawaii, especially during the years his mother abandoned him to return to Indonesia to be with Lolo.

Revealingly, the autobiography opens with an epigraph from the Bible, 1 Chronicles 29:15. The words seem to capsulize Obama's experience of life as expressed in the book. "For we are strangers before them, and sojourners, as were all our fathers." Strangers in strange lands, if we adapt the title from Robert Heinlein's novel, is a phrase that somehow seems to sum up what Obama Junior is telling us about his life experience through his thirty-fourth year, when the autobiography first was published.

-p. 50, Obama Nation, author, Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D

Islamofile 092108: Pakistan Blames Al Qaeda For Marriott Bombing

Pakistan blames Al-Qaeda linked Taliban militants for the massive suicide truck bombing at the Marriott Hotel that killed at least 60 people and injured more than 260.

Pakistani investigators are hunting an Al-Qaeda cell based in Islamabad that is believed to have carried out the bombing of the Marriott Hotel security officials said Monday.

Investigators said they believed the attackers constructed the massive 600-kilo (1,300 pound) truck bomb at a safe house in the capital, since all lorries entering the heavily-guarded city are searched at checkpoints.

Dramatic footage of Saturday night's attack showed the attacker failed to get through a barrier when he crashed his explosives-laden truck into the hotel's security gates. At least 60 people were killed.

"Our focus at the moment is to track down the network in Islamabad which must have facilitated the movement and construction of the bomb," a senior official involved in the investigation told AFP.

"Carrying 600 kilos of explosives over long distances and through checkpoints is not possible, so our immediate suspicion is that the bomb was loaded in Islamabad," the official said.

It was likely, however, that the explosives were smuggled into Islamabad in small consignments from militant strongholds in the rugged tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, the official added.

Pakistan is fighting a bloody campaign against Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists based near the border, who have launched dozens of suicide attacks over the past year, often using small cells in major cities.

Another senior Pakistani security official said the explosives used in the bombing were like those used in two other major militant attacks, including one on the Danish embassy in Islamabad in June.

"We are collecting evidence. The explosives were similar to those used in the Danish embassy, which was claimed by Al-Qaeda, and the attack on the ISI camp in Rawalpindi last year," the official said.

One of Al-Qaeda's leaders, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, said that the Danish embassy attack, which killed six people, was "in revenge" for Danish newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

No group claimed responsibility for the bombing of a bus near a facility of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Rawalpindi in November last year, which killed at least 15 people. (source)

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Obama writes of his recollections after moving to Indonesia: "On some nights, she [Stanley Ann] would hear him [Lolo] up after everyone else had gone to bed, wandering through the house with a bottle of imported whiskey, nursing his secrets." Obama also tells us that the last time he saw his stepfather was some ten years after he left Indonesia, "when my mother helped him travel to Los Angeles to treat a liver ailment that would kill him at the age of fifty-one." What Obama omits is that the liver disease that killed his stepfather was brought on by acute alcoholism, much as his father had committed what some would see as a car-assisted suicide.

-p. 48, Obama Nation, author, Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D

COLD WAR 21: Russia Sends Cruisers To Venezuela

Russia's cruiser Pyotr Veliky -- the flagship of the Nothern Fleet -- is moored at Severomorsk in 2007. A fleet of Russian warships set off from their Arctic base headed for Venezuela for exercises unprecedented since the Cold War and seen as a rebuff to the United States.

A fleet of Russian warships set off from their Arctic base on Monday headed for Venezuela for exercises unprecedented since the cold war and seen as a rebuff to the United States, a navy spokesman said.

"They left at 10:00 am (0600 GMT). It's the nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky, the anti-submarine warship Admiral Chebanenko and other accompanying ships," Russian navy spokesman Igor Dygalo told AFP.

Dygalo said he could not reveal exactly how many ships were going to Venezuela or when they would arrive. He said only that the ships would travel 15,000 nautical miles to reach their destination.

The ships are from Russia's Northern Fleet and are based in Severomorsk. (source)

COLD WAR 21: Venezuela Buys Chinese Combat Planes

Venezuela will buy combat and training aircraft from China this week, leftist Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, pictured on September 19, confirmed in a television broadcast Sunday.

Venezuela will buy combat and training aircraft from China this week, leftist Venezuela President Hugo Chavez confirmed in a television broadcast Sunday.

The purchases will be made as part of a six-country tour, Chavez said in his broadcast of the "Alo President" television program from the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, hours before leaving on a "strategic interest" trip to Cuba, China, Russia, Belarus, France and Portugal.

Chavez, a staunch foe of the US government, confirmed that during his stay in Beijing he will purchase 24 K-8 aircraft "to train fighter pilots." The planes could be part of Venezuela's air force by next year.

The president also confirmed that while in Beijing he will arrange the construction of tanker vessels in Chinese shipyards, with the aim of installing a shipyard in Venezuela in the near future.

These plans come in addition to the construction of a refinery in China to process oil from Venezuela, and plans to create a bi-national company to install a refinery in the remote oil-rich Orinoco region in eastern Venezuela.

Caracas provides 500,000 barrels of oil per day to Beijing, a trade which is expected to increase to one million barrels a day by 2012.

Chavez, who describes China as a strategic ally, will move forward with a six billion dollar bilateral investment fund. China will contribute four billion dollars to the fund, and Venezuela two billion dollars.

Caracas will use the fund for "socialist productive projects."
"Before we had to go to Washington to beg for money. Not now. Now we negotiate with the Chinese," said Chavez.

Chavez announced that during his visit to Beijing the investment fund will benefit from an additional four billion dollars for further "development" in Venezuela.
After China, Chavez will head to Moscow.

Venezuela in recent years has been broadening its military ties to Moscow, and Chavez backed Russia in the recent Georgian conflict.

Last week, Russian supersonic Tu-160 bombers for the first time flew training runs with Venezuela in an area of the Caribbean traditionally considered the US military's sphere of influence.

Chavez's trip is expected to last until September 27. (source)

ISLAMOFILE 092108: Iran Vows To "Stop Any Attempt"

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives at the presidential office to attend a welcoming ceremony for his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in Tehran August 2, 2008, file photo.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will stop any attacker before he can "pull the trigger" and sanctions intended to isolate the Islamic Republic have not worked, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a military parade on Sunday.

The United States and its allies are seeking to step up U.N. sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear plans, which the West says a bid to build nuclear arms. Iran denies this.

There has been persistent speculation Washington or Israel might launch strikes on Iran's nuclear sites, as neither country has ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to end the row.

"If anybody dares to offend the boundaries of the Iranian nation, the Iranian nation's holy land and Iran's legal interests, our armed forces ... will break his hand before he can pull the trigger," Ahmadinejad said.

He was speaking at a parade broadcast live on state television to mark the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September 1980. Hundreds of troops then marched in formation in front of the president's podium.

"Today, Iran is not in a position to show even the smallest flexibility against the bullying of the enemies. History has shown that those who wish ill for Iran will gain nothing but regret," he said.

"The enemies of humanity ... had imagined that by military attack and economic and scientific sanctions they could break down our revolution and our nation," he said, adding that Iran's enemies had "lost hope".

Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, says it wants to master nuclear technology to make electricity so it can preserve more of its vast oil and gas reserves for export.

But its failure to convince world powers of its peaceful intentions has prompted three rounds of limited U.N. sanctions. Washington is pushing for a fourth, but China and Russia -- two of the five veto-wielding council members -- are reluctant.

Iran has dismissed reports of possible U.S. or Israeli plans to strike Iran, but says it would respond by attacking U.S. interests and Israel if any such assault was made. (source)

Baracktoid 021

Shortly after Obama Junior and his mother move to Lolo's home of Indonesia, Lolo and his mother no longer talked with enthusiasm about their future. "That was what had drawn her [Stanley Ann] to Lolo after Barack had left," Obama Junior wrote of his stepfather and father, "that promise of something new and important, helping her father rebuild a country in a charged and challenging place beyond her parents' reach."

-p. 47, Obama Nation, author, Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D

ISLAMOFILE 092008: Pakistan's 9/11

Pakistan's army troops arrive to conduct a rescue operation at the site of Saturday's massive truck bombing at Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008. Investigators are combing for evidence at the scene of a massive truck bombing that devastated a luxury hotel in Pakistan's capital, killing some 40 people and injuring more than 250. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Taliban militants based near the Afghan border and their al-Qaida allies are the most likely suspects behind a massive truck bombing at Islamabad's Marriott Hotel, officials and experts said Sunday. At least 53 died in the explosion, including two U.S. Defense Department employees and the Czech ambassador.

The truck sat burning and disabled at the hotel gate for at least 3 1/2 minutes as nervous guards tried to douse the flames before they, the truck and much of the hotel forecourt vanished in a fearsome fireball on Saturday night, according to dramatic surveillance footage released Sunday.

The attack on the American hotel chain during Ramadan, among the deadliest terrorist strikes in Pakistan, will test the resolve of its pro-Western civilian rulers to crack down on growing violent extremism which many here blame on the country's role in the U.S.-led war on terror.

While no group has claimed responsibility, the scale of the blast and its high-profile target were seen by many as the signature of media-savvy al-Qaida.
Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said "all roads lead to FATA" in major Pakistani suicide attacks - referring to Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where U.S. officials worry that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri are hiding.

Mahmood Shah, a former government security chief for Pakistan's tribal areas, said that while the attack had "all the signatures" of an al-Qaida strike, homegrown Taliban militants probably had learned how to execute an attack of such magnitude.
Al-Qaida was providing "money, motivation, direction and all sort of leadership and using the Taliban as gun fodder," he suggested.

A Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on the record to media, said investigators were examining just that theory.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the attack was an attempt to "destabilize democracy" in Pakistan, which this year emerged from nine years of military rule, and destroy its already fragile economy.

Gilani also claimed that the bomber attacked the hotel only after tight security prevented him from reaching Parliament or the prime minister's office, where President Asif Ali Zardari and many dignitaries were gathered for dinner.
However, the owner of the hotel accused security forces of a serious lapse in allowing a dump truck to approach the hotel unchallenged and not tackling the driver more clinically.

"If I were there and had seen the suicide bomber, I would have killed him. Unfortunately, they didn't," Sadruddin Hashwani said.

The bomb went off close to 8 p.m. Saturday, when the restaurants inside would have been packed with Muslim diners breaking their daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

The explosion wrecked a favorite spot for foreigners as well as the Pakistani elite that has been targeted twice before by militant bombings. The building - one of the few places outside the diplomatic district where U.S. diplomats were permitted to socialize - was still smoldering 24 hours after blast, which also wounded more than 260 people.

Anti-American feeling is running particularly high following a series of strikes by U.S. forces based in Afghanistan on Islamic militants nested in Pakistan's tribal belt.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said there was no evidence that Americans were the target.

Still, he confirmed that two Defense Department employees were among the dead and that a third American - a State Department contractor - was missing.

Three U.S. Embassy employees and an embassy contractor were injured, Fintor said.
IntelCenter, a group which monitors and analyzes extremist communications, said senior al-Qaida leader Mustafa Abu al-Yazid threatened attacks against Western interests in Pakistan in a video timed to the recent anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Malik, the interior minister, declined a reported offer of U.S. assistance in the investigation, saying Pakistani agencies could cope.

Rescue teams searched the blackened hotel room by room Sunday, finding several more bodies, and Gilani said the death toll had risen to 53. A Danish diplomat was also listed as missing and rescue workers said they expected to find more human remains.
Officials confirmed that Czech Ambassador Ivo Zdarek was also among the dead. Zdarek, 47, only moved to Islamabad in August after four years as ambassador to Vietnam.

Malik said one Vietnamese citizen was also killed. The wounded also included Britons, Germans, and several people from the Middle East.

Malik told a news conference that the bomb contained an estimated 1,300 pounds of military-grade explosives as well as artillery and mortar shells and left a crater 60 feet wide and 24 feet deep in front of the main building.

The government released footage from a hotel surveillance camera showing the heavy truck turning left into the gate at speed, ramming a metal barrier and jolting to a halt about 60 feet away from the hotel.

Guards nervously came forward to look, then scattered after an initial small explosion.

Several guards tried repeatedly to douse flames spreading through the cab of the truck as traffic continued to pass on the road behind. There was no sign of movement in the truck and the footage played didn't show the final blast.

Officials said vehicles carrying construction materials are allowed to move after sunset, meaning the sight of a dump truck near the government quarters might not have aroused suspicion.

The bombing came just hours after Zardari made his first address to Parliament since becoming president, less than a mile away from the hotel.

It drew condemnations from around the world, including from Bush, whose administration has pressured Pakistan to do more to put more pressure on militants using Pakistani soil to support the increasingly deadly insurgency in Afghanistan.

A recent series of suspected U.S. missile strikes and a rare American ground assault in Pakistan's northwest have signaled Washington's impatience with Pakistan's efforts to clear out militants. But the cross-border operations have drawn protests from the Pakistani government, which warned they would fan militancy.

The Marriott blast could prompt diplomats and aid groups in Islamabad to re-evaluate whether nonessential staff and family members should stay. U.N. officials met Sunday to discuss the security situation and, for now, made no decision to change their measures, said Amena Kamaal, a spokeswoman.
Zardari, who on Sunday was headed to New York to lead a delegation to the United Nations and was expected to meet with Bush during the week, spoke out against the cross-border strikes in his speech to Parliament. He condemned the "cowardly attack" afterward in an address to the nation.

Pakistan's powerful army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, joined the condemnation Sunday, calling the attack "heinous" and saying the army stands "with the nation in its resolve to defeat the forces of extremism and terrorism."

The army has staged offensives against insurgents in the nation's northwest that have drawn revenge attacks by Taliban militants.

The country's deadliest suicide bombing was on Oct. 18, 2007, and targeted ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto - Zardari's wife - who survived. It killed about 150 people in Karachi during celebrations welcoming her home from exile.

Bhutto was assassinated in a subsequent attack on Dec. 27, 2007.

The last big attack in Islamabad was a suicide car bombing in June outside the Danish Embassy that killed six people in apparent revenge for the publication in Denmark of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Al-Qaida took responsibility. (source)

ISLAMOFILE 091708: US Embassy in Yemen Car Bombed

Soldiers patrol a street near the embassy.

The dead were six Yemeni soldiers, four civilians, one of whom was Indian, and six attackers - one wearing an explosives belt, the country's interior ministry said.

Local sources told Sky News explosives had been hidden in a car disguised as an army vehicle which got as far as the compound's main gate before being detonated.

Several rocket-propelled grenades were fired and a gun battle broke out that is believed to have killed and wounded both guards and attackers.

"Our information is that because the attackers were in army dress in army vehicles they probably got waved through the first checkpoint," said Sky News foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall.

"It was a well-organised and well-planned attack."

A senior US official said there had been up to five explosions and that the Yemeni authorities who first responded were ambushed by snipers.

He said it appeared some of the attackers were dressed as Yemeni troops, and that the first emergency personnel to arrive on the scene were hit by heavy sniper fire from riflemen laying in wait across the street from the embassy.

Sky News can reveal that the US and British embassies in Sanaa had received a threat from the Yemen branch of the Islamic Jihad Organisation on September 14.
It demanded the release of wounded prisoners and threatened the use of suicide car bombers.

"We will strike against all foreign interests, especially American and British interests, accurately and quickly," it said.

After the attack, the group claimed responsibility and threatened to target the British, Saudi and Emirati missions in Sanaa.

The White House denounced the violence and offered condolences to the relatives of Yemeni victims.

"The United States condemns this attack," a spokesman said.
"This attack is a reminder of the continuing threat we face from violent extremists both at home and abroad."

Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, has been hit by a series of al Qaeda attacks this year.

One targeted the embassy, another took place near the Italian mission and others were aimed at Western tourists.

The Yemeni government joined the US-led war against terrorism in the wake of 9/11.
The government of the poor Arab country has also been fighting Shi'ite rebels in the northern province of Saada since 2004 and faced protests against unemployment and inflation.

Cold War 21: Russia's Arctic Land-Grab Heats Up

The expedition to plant a Russian flag on the seabed beneath the ice of the North Pole last August Photo: REUTERS

"We must finalise and adopt a federal law on the southern border of Russia's Arctic zone," Mr Medvedev told a meeting of the Security Council, in remarks carried by Interfax news agency.
"This is our responsibility, and simply our direct duty, to our descendents," he said. "We must surely, and for the long-term future, secure Russia's interests in the Arctic."

Global warming has stepped up the fight for the disputed Arctic, believed to be laden with vast reserves of oil and gas. Russia has pitted itself against Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States to fight for a greater part of the region, arguing that most of it is Russian territory since an underwater ridge links Siberia to the North Pole's seabed.

Last August, a Russian mini-submarine carrying politicians and scientists plunged to the depths of the Arctic and claimed to plant a Russian flag to mark Moscow's stake in the territory.
Footage of the alleged planting was widely broadcast on Russian television – but later turned out to be images taken from the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic.

Under international law, each of the five countries that lay claim to the Arctic own a 320-kilometre zone that extends north from their shores. That arrangement is up for UN review in May next year.

Vladimir Putin, now Russia's prime minister, has said global warming is good for Russia – melting its vast icy territories to reveal previously inaccessible oil and gas reserves.
With oil production declining – and Russia's oil-fuelled power rising – it is keen to grab ever more.

"This region has strategic significant for us. Its development is directly tied to solving the long-term tasks of the state and its competitiveness on global markets," Medvedev said.

Russia's leaders have not held back on stoking issues sure to rile the West in recent days, despite a drastic drop in its markets, fuelled by the global credit crisis and compounded by loss of investor confidence in Russia after its war with Georgia.

Medvedev's statements on the heated Arctic issue came one day after Putin said that Russia's defence spending would rise 27 per cent next year to nearly $100 billion (£30 million). (source)

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Stanley Ann passed away in 1995 from ovarian cancer at the age of fifty-two, the year Obama's autobiography was published.
-p. 46, Obama Nation, author, Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D

Russia To Help Cuba Build Space Center

Moscow is ready to help Cuba develop its own space center, Russia's space agency chief said on Wednesday after talks in Caracas with Venezuelan and Cuban officials, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Russia has stepped up efforts to develop closer links with both countries, which are ideological enemies of Washington, including sending Russian strategic bombers on a mission to Venezuela this month.

"We have held preliminary discussions about the possibility of creating a space centre in Cuba with our help," the chief of Russia's Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass in Caracas.

"With our Cuban colleagues, we discussed the possibilities of joint use of space equipment ... and the joint use of space communications systems," Perminov was quoted as saying.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin visited Cuba this week and together with representatives from several Russian ministries and large Russian companies looked at ways to help Cuba recover from hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

Renewed Russian links to the Caribbean island will stir memories in Washington of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the United States and Soviet Union almost went to war over Soviet missile bases on Cuba, which is 90 miles from U.S. shores.

Russian officials have said they want to renew Cuban ties that were neglected after the Soviet Union's collapse.(source)

ISLAMOFILE 091508: Barack Tries To Stall US Withdrawl From Iraq

Barack Obama tours Iraq with Gen. David Petraeus in July, when he sought to stall any agreement for US troop withdrawal until President Bush left office.

While campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.
Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.
Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.
Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.

Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still. (source)

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Two years after her divorce from Obama Senior, Stanley Ann married Lolo Soetoro. Like Obama senior, Lolo was a Muslim sent to the United States to study, in order to return to Indonesia with necessary skills to help this developing nation. They met, once again, at the East-West Center on the University of Hawaii campus, where Stanley Ann had met Obama Senior in a Russian class. Although Soetoro's age is disputed, he appears to have been about thirty-five when he married the twenty-two year-old Stanley Ann.
-p. 45, Obama Nation, author, Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D

ISLAMOPHILE 090908: "Irreversible" Nuclear Iran, Says A Proud Russia

Iran's Parliament Speaker Gholamali Haddadadel and his delegation look at construction at the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, 1215 km (754 miles) south of Tehran June 27, 2006.

Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant is nearing completion and the start-up of its reactor will soon become "irreversible", the Russian state-owned company that is building the power station said on Tuesday.

Russia has already delivered nuclear fuel under a $1 billion contract to build the Bushehr plant, on the Gulf coast in southwest Iran, and Iranian officials say the reactor is likely to be started up soon.

The head of Atomstroyexport, the company building the plant, said on Monday it was nearing completion, according to a company spokeswoman.

"Atomstroyexport in December 2008 - February 2009 will carry out technological work at Bushehr which will put the Iranian atomic station on the irreversible final strait," the spokeswoman quoted company President Leonid Reznikov as saying.

Russia signed a contract to build the plant in 1995 on the site of an earlier project begun in the 1970s by German firm Siemens. Siemens's project was disrupted by Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Russia, using Bushehr as a lever in relations with Tehran, has repeatedly put back the start-up date. Moscow had said it expected the plant to be started up some time this year. (source)

Cold War 21: Russia Deploys More Troops To Georgia

A Russian peacekeeper is seen at the checkpoint in the village of Khobi, September 8, 2008.

Russia announced plans on Tuesday to station about 7,600 troops in Georgia's separatist regions, more than twice the number based there before last month's war and a level likely to alarm the West.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said troops would stay in South Ossetia and Abkhazia for a long time to prevent any "repeat of Georgian aggression".

Moscow's intervention in Georgia last month, in which its forces crushed an attempt by Tbilisi to retake South Ossetia, drew widespread international condemnation and prompted concern over the security of energy supplies.

Russia agreed on Monday to withdraw its soldiers from areas outside South Ossetia, and the second breakaway region of Abkhazia, within a month, but troops inside the two regions were not explicitly mentioned in the French-brokered deal.

Briefing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on talks with the separatist leaders, Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said: "We have already agreed on the contingent -- in the region of 3,800 men in each republic -- its structure and location."

Russia angered the West last month by recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which threw off Tbilisi's rule in separatist wars in the 1990s, as independent states. Nicaragua is the only other state to have recognized their independence.

Lavrov also met the two separatist regions' foreign ministers on Tuesday to formally establish diplomatic ties, a step likely to further irritate Western governments.

Asked at a news conference how long Russian forces would stay in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Lavrov said: "They will be there for a long time, at least for the foreseeable period. That is necessary to not allow a repeat of Georgian aggression." (source)

ISLAMOPHILE 090808: Ramadan Starts, Iran Plays Wargames

Iran's armed forces will begin three days of war games on Monday involving anti-aircraft defense systems, Iranian media said on Sunday.

The exercises will be held amid persistent speculation about a possible U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, which the West and Israel say are part of a clandestine bid to build atomic bombs, despite Tehran's denials.

The ISNA news agency said both Iran's Revolutionary Guards and its regular army would take part in the drills.

"Maneuvers with the participation of anti-aircraft defense systems will be held for three days starting Monday," it said, without giving further details.

The English-language Iran Daily said the aim was to maintain and upgrade the combat readiness of relevant units as well as to "test new weapons and defense plans."

Speculation about a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities has risen since Israel staged an air force exercise in June which was reported to be a simulation of a strike against Iran. Iran says it would hit back if attacked.

An Iranian commander last week said the Iranian air force would hold exercises during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began in Iran on September 2, but it was not immediately clear whether he was referring to the same drills as the ISNA report.

Alongside the regular army, Iran has a Revolutionary Guards force viewed as guardians of the Islamic ruling system. The Guards have a separate command and their own air, sea and land units, but often work with the regular military.

Iran has dismissed reports of possible U.S. or Israeli plans to strike Iran, but says it would respond by attacking U.S. interests and Israel if any such assault was made.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman last week denied reports, based on comments from Israeli defense sources, that Iran had bought Russia's advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile system and would get it this year.

There have been conflicting reports about whether Iran was buying the S-300 system. Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said last year Russia had agreed to deliver the missiles to Iran under a signed contract. Russia denied such plans.

Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, says its nuclear program is aimed at making electricity, not bombs. The United States says it wants diplomacy to end the row but has not ruled out military action if that fails. (source)

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To provide cover for his father's shameful actions in leaving his mother and him early on in their relationship, Obama Junior tries to cast an oppressive cloud over the fact that they were an interracial couple. "In 1960, the year that my parents were married, miscegenation still described a felony in over half the states in the Union," he wrote in his biography. Even though the law was unenforced in the US for many generations, plus the fact that Obama Senior was a Kenyan [not a US citizen], he noted that in many parts of the South, "my father would have been strung up from a tree for merely looking at my mother the wrong way." Then he questioned about his grandparents, "Sure--but would you let your daughter marry one?"

He notes in passing, without explaining fully, that his grandfather had experienced his own form of discrimination, which Obama suggests made his grandfather more sympathetic to Obama's father's courting his mother. "The condition of the black race, their pain, their wounds, would in his mind have become merged with his own," Obama wrote about Stanley Armour Dunham, "the absent father and hint of a scandal, a mother who had gone away, the cruelty of other children, the realization that he was no fair-haired boy--that he looked like a 'wop'."

What Obama neglects to bring forward anywhere in the book is the real crux of his grandfather's tragedy, namely, that his grandfather's father had been a philanderer who abandoned his wife, and that in 1926, Stanley Dunham came home to discover his mother's dead body. Obama's grandmother had ended her life by committing suicide, at least in part as a result of her abandonment by her husband.
-p. 45, Obama Nation, author, Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D

Cold War 21: Russia Deploys Nuclear Ship To Carribean

The Russian Navy's 19,000-ton nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great is seen in this June 2003 file photo.(Stringer/Reuters)

Russia will send a nuclear-powered battleship to the Caribbean for a joint naval exercise with Venezuela, Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

The maneuvers later this year will be the first Russia has conducted in Washington's traditional sphere of influence since the end of the Cold War.

Russia has heavily criticized the United States for sending a sophisticated command ship and two other naval vessels to Georgia, on its southern border, to deliver aid and show support for President Mikheil Saakashvili after Moscow sent troops into Georgia.

Kremlin leader Dmitry Medvedev asked on Saturday how Washington would feel "if we now dispatched humanitarian assistance to the Caribbean...using our navy."

Later that day, a Venezuelan naval official said four Russian warships would visit the Caribbean in November.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said on Monday that the naval mission to Venezuela would include the nuclear-powered battle cruiser "Peter the Great," one of the world's largest combat battleships. (source)

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There is uncertainty concerning the marriage of Obama Senior and Stanley Ann. No marriage license exists. In discussing their marriage, Obama Junior says: "In fact, how and when the marriage occured remains a bit murky, a bill of particulars that I've never had the courage to explore. There's no record of a real wedding, a cake, a ring, a giving away of the bride." Obama then suggests there was a small civil ceremony with a justice of the peace. Other sources say divorce papers confirm that a civil ceremony was held on Maui, on February 2, 1961, when Ann was three months pregnant with Obama.
-p. 44, Obama Nation, author, Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D

Cold War 21: US Ships Advance

The USS Mount Whitney, pictured here in the Bosphorus, today made a controversial landing at the port of Poti

A US navy flagship has steamed into a Georgian port where Russian troops are still stationed, stoking tensions once again in the tinderbox Caucasus region.

A previous trip by American warships was cancelled at the last minute a week ago amid fears that an armed stand off could erupt in the Black Sea port of Poti.

The arrival of the USS Mount Whitney came as Moscow accused Dick Cheney, the hawkish US vice-president, of stoking tensions during a visit to Tbilisi yesterday, in which he vowed to bring Georgia into the Nato alliance. Russia sees any such move as a blatant Western encroachment on its traditional sphere of influence.

Russia’s leadership has already questioned whether previous US warships that docked at the port of Batumi, to the south, were delivering weapons to rearm the smashed Georgian military, something Washington has denied. (source)

Cold War 21: France Warns Of Israeli Bombs

French President Nicolas Sarkozy addressing Middle eastern summit.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned Iran on Thursday that its determination to press on with its controversial nuclear drive risked an Israeli strike that would be a "catastrophe."

"Iran is taking a major risk by continuing the process of seeking nuclear technology for military ends," Sarkozy said at a four-way summit in Damascus with the leaders of Syria, Qatar and Turkey.

"Because one day, no matter which Israeli government is in power, one morning we will awake to find Israel has attacked," Sarkozy said on the second day of a landmark visit to Syria.

"It's not a question of whether it is legitimate or intelligent or not... It would be a catastrophe, and we must avoid such a catastrophe."

Iran has consistently denied that its nuclear programme is aimed at building an atomic bomb and says it wants only to generate energy for its growing population.

But Tehran risks a fourth round of UN sanctions over its failure to abide by international calls to freeze uranium enrichment, a process which makes nuclear fuel but can also be used to build the core of a nuclear weapon. (source)

Cold War 21: Israeli-Georgian Alliance

ASSOCIATED PRESS Sonya Kagloyeva of South Ossetia carries a branch past homes destroyed in the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali, the provincial capital. European leaders will meet Monday to discuss the conflict.

For Russia, the geopolitical stars were in perfect alignment. The U.S. was badly overstretched and had no plausible way to talk tough without coming across as empty rhetoric. American resources have been drained by the Iraq and Afghan wars, and the war on terror. The European Union is still a military dwarf that swings no weight in the Kremlin. And the ineptitude of Georgia's leadership gave Russian leaders a huge new window of opportunity.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili evidently thought the U.S. would come to his side militarily if Russian troops pushed him back into Georgia after ordering an attack last Aug. 8 on the breakaway province of South Ossetia. And when his forces were mauled by Russia's counterattack, bitter disappointment turned to anger. Along with Abkhazia, Georgia lost two provinces.

Georgia also had a special relationship with Israel that was mostly under the radar. Georgia's Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili is a former Israeli who moved things along by facilitating Israeli arms sales with U.S. aid. "We are now in a fight against the great Russia," he was quoted as saying, "and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House because Georgia cannot survive on its own."

The Jerusalem Post on Aug. 12 reported, "Georgian Prime Minister Vladimir Gurgenidze made a special call to Israel Tuesday morning to receive a blessing from one of the Haredi community's most important rabbis and spiritual leaders, Rabbi Aaron Leib Steinman. "I want him to pray for us and our state," he was quoted.

Israel began selling arms to Georgia seven years ago. U.S. grants facilitated these purchases. From Israel came former minister and former mayor of Tel Aviv Roni Milo, representing Elbit Systems, and his brother Shlomo, former director-general of Military Industries. Israeli UAV spy drones, made by Elbit Maarahot Systems, conducted recon flights over southern Russia, as well as into nearby Iran.

In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli fighter bombers in the event of preemptive attacks against Iranian nuclear installations. This would sharply reduce the distance Israeli fighter bombers would have to fly to hit targets in Iran. And to reach Georgian airstrips, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) would fly over Turkey.

At a Moscow news conference, Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Russia's deputy chief of staff, said the extent of Israeli aid to Georgia included, "eight types of military vehicles, explosives, landmines and special explosives for clearing minefields." Estimated numbers of Israeli trainers attached to the Georgian army range from 100 to 1,000. There were also 110 U.S. military personnel on training assignments in Georgia. Last July 2,000 U.S. troops were flown in for "Immediate Response 2008," a joint exercise with Georgian forces.

Details of Israel's involvement were largely ignored by Israeli media lest they be interpreted as another blow to Israel's legendary military prowess, which took a bad hit in the Lebanese war against Hezbollah two years ago. Georgia's top diplomat in Tel Aviv complained about Israel's "lackluster" response to his country's military predicament, and called for "diplomatic pressure on Moscow." According to the Jerusalem Post, the Georgian was told "the address for that type of pressure is Washington." (source)

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Neil Abercrombie, Democratic congressman from the first District in Hawaii, was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune for research into Obama's life. He was part of the crowd of friends surrounding Obama Senior and Stanley Ann while they were attending the University of Hawaii. After Obama Senior was accepted at Harvard, Abercrombie told the Tribune, Stanley Ann disappeared from The Univ. of Hawaii student gatherings. He excused Obama Senior's departure, saying, "I know he loved Ann, but I think he didn't want the impediment of being responsible for a family. He expected great things of himself and he was going off to achieve them."

Years later, Abercrombie caught up with Obama Senior during a trip to Africa. "He was drinking too much; his frustration was apparent," he recalled. To Abercrombie's surprise, the paper noted, Obama Senior never asked about his ex-wife or son. Abercrombie himself evidently found it so hard to explain this omission that he felt obliged to mention it to the interviewer.
-p. 43, Obama Nation, author, Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D

Cold War 21: Iran Cuts Oil Production

The price of crude oil tumbled yesterday in the futures markets as the destructive force of Hurricane Gustav dwindled.

Traders are focused again on the weakening global economy and panicky behaviour is being detected within Opec, suggesting that some cartel members fear that the oil price could crash. The gloom in the commodities markets pushed the price of US light crude as low as $105.46 per barrel yesterday, a $10 fall. Iran, the most hawkish member of the oil cartel, called for agreement next week on a cut of 1.5 million barrels per day in output.

Crude oil has lost more than a quarter of its value since the price peak in July of $147 per barrel. Stock markets surged in Europe and North America yesterday, with big boosts for bank shares and airlines, whose profits have crumbled under the heavy cost of fuel. The weakening of Hurricane Gustav raised hopes that oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico and Texan refineries had been spared serious damage. US light crude recovered after its initial fall to $109, down $6 per barrel, while Brent fell to $104 per barrel at one stage, recovering to $107.

Opec's more aggressive members are already speaking of production cuts. Venezuela and Iran have said that $100 per barrel is a benchmark they will defend and an Iranian official said yesterday that as a first step the cartel's members must stop exceeding production quotas, which would imply an immediate cut of about half a million barrels per day. (source)

ISLAMOPHILE 090208: Anbar Province Is Secure

Iraqi security forces carrying Iraqi flags during the handover ceremony in Ramadi, Anbar Province, on Monday. (Pool photo by Wathiq Khuzaie, via Reuters)

RAMADI, Iraq: Two years ago, Anbar Province was the most lethal place for American forces in Iraq. A U.S. marine or soldier died in the province nearly every day, and the provincial capital, Ramadi, was a moonscape of rubble and ruins. Islamic extremists controlled large pieces of territory, with some so ferocious in their views that they did not even allow the baking of bread.

On Monday, U.S. commanders formally returned responsibility for keeping order in Anbar Province, once the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, to the Iraqi Army and police. The ceremony, including a parade on a freshly paved street, capped one of the most significant turnabouts in the country since the war began five and a half years ago.

Over the past two years, the number of insurgent attacks against Iraqis and Americans has dropped by more than 90 percent. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has been severely degraded, if not crushed altogether, in large part because many local Sunnis, including former insurgents, have taken up arms against it.

Since February, as the security situation improved, U.S. commanders have cut the number of marines and soldiers operating in the province by 40 percent.

The transfer of authority codified a situation that Iraqi and American officers say has been in effect since April: The Iraqi Army and police operate independently and retain primary responsibility for battling the insurgency and crime in Anbar. The United States, which had long done the bulk of the fighting, has stepped into a backup role, going into the streets only when accompanied by Iraqi forces. (source)