Your mobile phone, computer and game console have a bloody past — tied to tantalum mining, which funds the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Drawing on his personal story, activist and refugee Bandi Mbubi gives a stirring call to action. (Filmed at TEDxExeter.) Bandi Mbubi would like to make sure that you are using a fair trade cell phone.
Bandi Mbubi grew up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, experiencing first hand the political unrest and oppression which have since worsened there. As a student activist, Bandi suffered persecution and fled the country, seeking political asylum in the U.K. But Mbubi has kept his home country on his radar, noting how the mining of tantalum — a mineral used in cell phones and computers — has fueled the ongoing war there in which 5 million have died.
While Mbubi sees the cell phone as an instrument of oppression for this reason, he knows that phones can also bring great freedom. And so he has formed CongoCalling.org, a campaign to inspire both the public and companies that make electronics to pay attention to how tantalum used in consumer electronics is mined and traded.
Mbubi is also the Director of the Manna Society, a center for the homeless in South London, and a Trustee of Church Action on Poverty.
Dr. Steve Pieczenik, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in three administrations, who earned his Ph.D. at MIT, has revealed that he has been told by a high-ranking general–whom I believe to have been Gen. Richard Myers–that 9/11 was a “false flag” attack, which was done by the government in order to arouse the American people to support wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. On Alex Jones, he has now asserted that Israel is going to attack Iran on Yom Kippur, which begins on Tuesday, 25 September 2011 (sic). He insists that Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu are at odds over this, where Obama and the Pentagon are opposed to any such attack. I think Pieczenik is very honest and has run risks by revealing that he was told it had been a “false flag” operation to induce the public to support wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I wish that I could believe that the US “won’t be drawn into another unpopular war”. Given the coming November presidential elections, however, where a new war in the Middle East would be overwhelmingly unpopular with the American public, Obama needs plausible deniability, which means that it must appear to the public as though this engagement was initiated by Iran, where the most likely scenario has an Israeli sub torpedo the USS Enterprise, our first nuclear-powered carrier, and blame it on Iran. This would not be the first example of monumental hypocisy by Obama.
ROME (AP) — Italy's highest criminal court on Wednesday upheld the convictions of 23 Americans in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, paving the way to possible extradition requests by Italian authorities.
The ruling by the Court of Cassation marks the final appeal in the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture is permitted.
The Americans were convicted in absentia following a three-and-a-half-year trial, and have never been in Italian custody. They risk arrest if they travel to Europe and one of their court-appointed lawyers suggested that the final verdict would open the way for the Italian government to seek their extradition.
“It went badly. It went very badly,” lawyer Alessia Sorgato said after the court announced its decision after a day of deliberations. “Now they will ask for extradition.”victed in absentia following a three-and-a-half-year trial, and have never been in Italian custody. They risk arrest if they travel to Europe and one of their court-appointed lawyers suggested that the final verdict would open the way for the Italian government to seek their extradition.
Milan Prosecutor Armando Spataro, one of Italy's top anti-terrorism magistrates who shaped the prosecution, hailed the top court's decision, saying it was tantamount to a finding that extraordinary rendition “is incompatible with democracy.”
An armada of US and British naval power is massing in the Persian Gulf in the belief that Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s covert nuclear weapons programme.
Sean Rayment
The Telegraph (UK), 15 September 2012
Battleships, aircraft carriers, minesweepers and submarines from 25 nations are converging on the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in an unprecedented show of force as Israel and Iran move towards the brink of war.
Western leaders are convinced that Iran will retaliate to any attack by attempting to mine or blockade the shipping lane through which passes around 18 million barrels of oil every day, approximately 35 per cent of the world’s petroleum traded by sea.
A blockade would have a catastrophic effect on the fragile economies of Britain, Europe the United States and Japan, all of which rely heavily on oil and gas supplies from the Gulf.
I ask readers to pay special attention to the Eiad Salameh connection, which nails the theory that Nakoula worked for spooks…
Additional added note: Or does it? I've recently received information that places the Nakoula/Salameh linkage in a new light. The claim that Eiad Salameh is a PLO terrorist comes from his cousin Walid — whom some people (including Chris Hedges) have labeled a serial hoaxer. Walid, like so many of the players in this drama, hails from what we may call the “Pam Geller ring.” His accusations against Hilarion Cappucci — an aged Greek Orthodox cleric — appear to be spurious.
Still, I have received convincing evidence that Eiad is indeed a crook.
If you're confused — well, read what follows, and the context should become clear.
Investigations by me, published yesterday on Press TV’s website, cited “Reverand” and “Doctor” Terry Jones as the source of the videos cited for instigating violence across the Middle East.
Our investigation into Jones past showed him to be a trained CIA asset with direct ties to the Mossad. He served in Germany for years as an organizer for the CIA under the highly secret “Gladio” program until expelled by the German government. You can be a CIA agent, even a terrorist bomber but in Germany, if you buy a mail order PhD, it is a crime. “Dr.” Terry Jones would have been better off had he called himself “Agent” Terry Jones.
VT offers its heartfelt condolences to the family of Ambassador Stevens and the families of the other Americans lost in Libya.
Here is an MSNBC clip covering their “day late” discovery of Jones at the heart of what is a conspiracy, not only to cause unrest but as a cover for assassinations of US diplomats by highly trained special operations teams.
The continuation of attacks on US soldiers by uniformed Afghan soldiers and policemen is an expression of popular hatred for the occupation regime and military invasion forces which brings to mind John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Moon Is Down. Steinbeck fully captures the inner agony, shame and moral guilt of the German occupying forces in Norway whereas the flies eventually conquer the flypaper ~ as they most assuredly will in Afghanistan
Click on Image to Enlarge
EXTRACT
The flies are beginning to conquer the flypaper in Afghanistan , as they did in Vietnam and Martin makes the same analogy ~ “There is a stench of decomposition over the whole US-NATO enterprise in Afghanistan. US troops are being drawn down, US equipment removed, US subsidies cut back, and the US collaborators in the Karzai regime are packing their bags—usually stuffed with cash—and checking their passports. Kabul today increasingly recalls Saigon in the final months and weeks before the collapse of the US-backed puppet regime of South Vietnam.”
ROBERT STEELE: I personally communicated to Jim Clapper, then Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, the importance of understanding “cognitive dissonance” within the minds and souls of our dedicated military and civilian personnel. There is a great deal more to the craft of intelligence than going through the motions pumping money and being complacent about policy, acquisition, and operations decisions that are at best insane and at worst criminally treasonous. Now that I have an SSBI completed by OPM on 15 March 2012 I have applied for multiple positions at the 13-15 level and I am actively seeking righteous employment in the HUMINT/CI arena. It's time we got serious about bringing US Intelligence into the 21st Century. General Mike Flynn will fail — I have seen the plans — in two years when he moves on there will be a legacy of paper and not much else. DHS and SOCOM are off the rails (based on open sources–we can only imagine what a full audit would reveal). We appear to have the makings of a very expensive global to local inter-agency cluster fuss such as I have not seen since my tour in Panama. Have brain (and integrity), will travel.
PS Please do not hold it against me that retired foreign intelligence chiefs like what I do. I am no longer in touch with them and I believe their good opinion should be considered a feature not a flaw, assuming my views on the urgency of M4IS2 are eventually accepted as the foundation for a vastly more effective US IC.
