German intel.: Qaeda behind terror in Syria

PressTV

The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has revealed that al-Qaeda is responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in Syria, including the Houla massacre.

The BND estimates that al-Qaeda has carried out “about 90 terrorist attacks” in Syria between late last December and early July, German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote in an article on July 16.

The revelation was made public by the German government in response to a parliamentary question.

The German government also confirmed that it had received numerous reports from the BND on al-Qaeda’s involvement in the May 25 massacre in the Syrian town of Houla in the central province of Homs, in which 108 people, including dozens of children and women, were killed execution-style.

However, the German government stated that the reports were supposed to remain classified "by reason of national interest."

The West and the Syrian opposition blamed the Syrian government for the carnage, but a Syrian government-appointed fact-finding mission had said that armed groups had carried out the massacre to frame the government and foment sectarian strife.

The intelligence reports raise several questions about the terrorist nature of the self-proclaimed Free Syrian Army, and even more so about the fact that many of the armed terrorists, killed in clashes with Syrian security forces, carried foreign passports.

On Thursday, The New York Times published an article, stating that “the evidence is mounting that Syria has become a magnet for Sunni extremists, including those operating under the banner of al-Qaeda.”

Syria has been the scene of violence by armed groups since March 2011. The violence has claimed the lives of hundreds of people, including many security forces.

Damascus blames “outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups” for the unrest, asserting that it is being orchestrated from abroad. The West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of killing the protesters.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and most western countries have supported and funded the violence in Syria by providing logistics, arms, and intelligence to anti-government elements.

MHB/HN

World Collapse Explained in 3 Minutes

German States Block Carbon Capture Law

Der Spiegel

The German government had hoped to push through a new law allowing the testing of underground greenhouse gas storage, in hopes of slowing climate change. But on Friday the country's states blocked the plans by rejecting the proposed bill. Germany could now face action by the European Union.

Plans in Germany to test underground carbon dioxide storage to combat global warming have been blocked by the country's upper legislative chamber. The Bundesrat, which represents the 16 federal states, rejected a bill on Friday that had already been passed by the German parliament , the Bundestag, in August. The law would have allowed testing for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at former gas storage facilities. The federal government wanted to put the technology to the test until 2017 in two or three locations, with a maximum capacity of three million tons of CO2 a year.

CCS works by liquefying the environmentally-unfriendly gas emitted by power plants and pumping it into underground cavities. The technology is considered a prerequisite for allowing coal-fired power stations to continue operating economically in Germany in the long run, as extra CO2 emission permits would otherwise have to be purchased on the open market.

The failure to pass the law in the Bundesrat means that Germany could now be subject to proceedings by the European Union, where CCS directive stipulates that the technology should have been made national law by June.

But there was also no majority in the Bundesrat for invoking the arbitration panel, which means the law can only be saved by a government initiative to bypass the decision. Still, the whole concept would remain in trouble due to serious resistance to CCS among the states.

Violent Protests
 

Critics point out that carbon dioxide is toxic in high concentrations, arguing that the escape of gas from underground storage facilities cannot be ruled out. In recent years several attempts at an agreement between the federal and state governments have failed. Storage sites require specific geological conditions found mainly in the German states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, where there have been violent protests against the technology.

The federal government's law would give states extensive authority to prohibit CCS on their territory. Lower Saxony, therefore, says it supports the law -- but would not allow any CCS activity. This in turn has angered Brandenburg, which as the major brown coal-producing state, fears it would be the only one forced into storing CO2 in the long run.

There could also be problems with the implementation of CCS testing. Energy giant Vattenfall has complained that the law is only valid until 2016, and that the liability provisions force the operator to take on too much risk. Even if the law is passed, therefore, the conditions needed for the test plant at Jänschwalde to be constructed, using EU funds worth hundreds of millions of euros, would almost certainly not be present.
 

Nokia and Siemens Helping Torture in Bahrain

AllGov
Noel Brinkerhoff

Being known as a facilitator of secret police and torturers is not ideal branding for any company. But that is the reputation that Germany’s Siemens and Finland’s Nokia are developing, as a result of their partnership that’s provided spy technology to authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.

The latest sordid news comes out of Bahrain, where the government used voice- and data-recording technology sold by a Nokia Siemens Networks’ business (Trovicor) to gather incriminating text and voice messages of dissidents. According to Bloomberg, government interrogators not only used the software to track down activists, but also to show those being tortured the information that’s been gathered on them.

Trovicor’s equipment reportedly is used in at least 12 Middle Eastern and North African nations, and the company’s monitoring centers have been sold to Bahrain, Egypt, Syria and Yemen, reports Bloomberg.

It’s been previously reported that the government of Iran, too, has used a Trovicor monitoring center to go after political protesters and members of the local media. Journalist Isa Saharkhiz, a one-time reporter for the Islamic Republic News Agency, sued Nokia and Siemens in U.S. federal court claiming the European companies facilitated his capture and torture at the hands of Iranian agents.

Why we need hand-counted paper ballots and citizen exit polls in the recall elections

By Grant W. Petty, PHD
and Sheila Parks, Ed.D

Forecasting the outcome of elections weeks in advance is always a risky business, but we nevertheless offer the following confident prediction concerning the outcomes of the nine Senate recall elections currently scheduled in Wisconsin:

In every case, a majority of votes actually cast will be for one of the two candidates. But in at least some cases, the opposite candidate -- perhaps the one you passionately opposed -- will ultimately be declared the official victor.

If it turned out we were right, wouldn’t you be upset? Wouldn’t this outcome (were it known) demolish your confidence in the honesty of our elections and thus, ultimately, in the integrity of our democratic institutions?

Here’s another prediction:

No one -- not the Government Accountability Board, not the media, not any elected official, and most certainly not you – will be able to disprove our first prediction in light of current election procedures and practices.

You might disagree on the likely validity of our first prediction. But the second is absolutely rock solid. Why? Because our appallingly compromised election procedures in this state are simply incapable of detecting or precluding even massive election fraud.

Note by the way, that we are not talking about voter fraud, which was ostensibly the reason behind the recently enacted voter ID law. But the prevalence and practical significance of voter fraud is a discredited myth. If you want your candidate to win an election dishonestly, it is far easier and more effective to rig the counting of the ballots on the electronic voting machines.

We find it interesting and significant that those in the Wisconsin Legislature who rammed through the voter ID law have so little to say about the far greater threat of election fraud. Election fraud is not just a hypothetical concern. In addition to strong circumstantial evidence in countless other cases, instances of clear fraud have been uncovered that led to actual indictments in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and Clay County, Kentucky.

Experts on election integrity sound two main alarms: (1) it’s far too easy to rig elections in ways that are difficult to detect, and (2) it’s apparently already being done routinely.

Consider this: Approximately 1.48 million votes were cast in the Prosser v. Kloppenburg election. The final published difference between them was a mere 7,004 votes, so flipping only 3,502 of them could have given the election back to Kloppenburg. That’s only a single vote flipped (or, alternatively, two Prosser votes simply discarded) per 422 cast!

Consider also this: Electronic voting machines use proprietary software to tabulate votes. Not even election officials are allowed to view or test the integrity of the software or the memory cards. The counting of votes simply cannot be observed or verified by the voting public or the election officials. It is impossible to know whether it is being done correctly and honestly. We are being told to take it on faith that the voting machine vendors, and those who have access to the machines, are honest. This is not merely risky, it is fundamentally antithetical to democracy.

The Emmy-nominated documentary Hacking Democracy (free viewing online, 81 minutes) presents a shocking demonstration of how easily electronic votes can be hacked, and it also offers troubling evidence that election rigging is actually occurring. Even if you don’t read beyond this point, please view Hacking Democracy and urge family, friends, and acquaintances to watch it as well. You will never view our elections or electronic voting machines the same way again.

We’re accustomed to hearing the phrase “innocent until proven guilty” applied to suspects being tried for crimes, and that’s as it should be. But we in the United States, more so than in many other developed countries, inappropriately apply the same standard of evidence to our elections. Our naive assumption is that unless unambiguous evidence of fraud or gross error is actually uncovered, it most likely didn’t occur. If you can’t see it, it must not exist. This is delusion of the most dangerous kind.

Election fraud, like any crime, requires both motive and opportunity. And ample motive can already be found on either side of the current ideological divide in our country.

Imagine the zealous conservative who sincerely believes that abortion is murder and that liberal politicians are therefore condoning murder on a large scale. Or imagine the zealous liberal who sincerely believes that conservative policies will condemn the earth to perish, and soon, from runaway greenhouse warming. Either of these individuals might be persuaded that it’s morally justified and urgently necessary to commit election fraud in defense of humankind.

Would anyone who cares about honest elections deliberately put either person in charge of actually overseeing and enforcing election procedures? But that’s exactly what we do with our partisan elections for county clerks! As we saw in the last recount, many judgment calls were made as to which ballots would be declared valid and which discarded. And whenever judgment is in play, so is bias. If you are unfortunate enough to live in a county or municipality where your election officials oppose the party or candidate you support, you should be very, very concerned about whether your vote will be fairly counted.

But it doesn’t stop at the county level. Consider further the wealthy industrialist who quite plausibly believes that if a certain pro-regulation candidate for Congress loses, s/he and their allies stand to make millions of dollars more per year. Might s/he not be tempted to invest considerable political and financial capital in getting voting machines adopted that can be easily and undetectably hacked? Would they perhaps even get into the business of building them?

We may never be able to eliminate the motive, but we can, and we must, identify and eliminate the opportunities to undetectably rig our elections. Until we do, we cannot rationally assume that elections are clean and fair. And we therefore cannot rationally trust the official outcomes of elections.

Here are the two major categories of weak links in Wisconsin elections:

* Vote tabulation. Can we be certain votes are being honestly and correctly tabulated by electronic devices? No. Unfortunately, current procedures and the electronic voting machines themselves provide absolutely no way to independently verify the accuracy of electronic vote counts short of a full hand recount of paper ballots. And by Wisconsin law, most of the recount must be done on the same electronic voting machines that could have been hacked in the first place. Be aware that the memory and printouts can be made to differ from the real voter intent and that the pre-election testing is useless for detecting fraudulent programming!

Also, although required by Wisconsin law, touch-screen machines used in some districts were found to provide no paper record and thus no voter-verifiable (or recountable) record of the vote!

* Chain of custody. For the purposes of a recount, are we ensuring that ballots can’t be added or subtracted between the time they are cast by the voter and the time they are recounted? As we clearly saw in the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court recount, the mandated procedures for our elections are not always followed. Citizen observers witnessed a stunning range of abnormalities in the labeling/sealing of ballot bags and even discovered a poll tape dated March 30, days before the election. The poll tape in question, with its time stamp of 1:40 AM, was sworn to as actual votes. This claim was later retracted only when persistently questioned.

Here’s what you can do to help mitigate the above security holes in the imminent recall elections:

1. Wisconsin Citizens for Election Protection are urging hand-counts for the recalls. They have sent letters to all the clerks asking that they hand-count the recalls. You can contact them at protectwi@gmail.com. Here is their web site.

2. Contact your county and municipal clerks, the election inspectors and the mayor and councilpersons or the town chair and the supervisors. They can authorize the little extra money that it would take to hand-count paper ballots (HCPB) for the recalls in your municipality. Make friends with your clerk. Suggest to the clerks that they get in touch with the municipalities that already hand-count. The clerks are usually friendly with one another, talk and email with one another, and go to the same meetings. Here is a chart that tells you which municipalities in Wisconsin hand-count now.

Talk with the clerks about the many jurisdictions in the USA that already count their ballots by hand. Maine and New Hampshire are good examples. Acton, Maine, in particular, could be a model for the entire country. With seven races and two initiatives, six teams of two people each were able to hand-count, twice, 944 ballots in four hours. The counters came in specifically to count; they had not worked at the polls earlier in the day. Each team consisted of a Republican and a Democrat.

See the warrant article passed by Lyndeborough, NH for an interesting example of what people could do in their own communities to get hand-counted paper ballots.

3. Volunteer to serve in non-partisan citizen exit polls being organized by the Election Defense Alliance to rigorously and independently verify vote tabulations and chain-of-custody of ballots.

One last prediction: Unless the Wisconsin recalls are hand-counted in every race, with secure hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB) elections, we predict they will be rigged. Not all of them, that would be too obvious. But enough so that some of the outcomes may be flipped, with major implications for the balance of power in the Statehouse.

How Did German Sprouts Become Contaminated?

Food Safety News
Gretchen Goetz

The German E. coli outbreak that has now claimed 37 lives and damaged fresh produce markets across Europe finally seems to be abating; but the question of how the suspect sprouts became contaminated remains unanswered.

Investigators are looking closely at whether the problem originated with sprout seeds.

After 5 workers on an organic farm in Bienenbüttel, Lower Saxony were confirmed to have been infected with the outbreak strain of E. coli, health authorities have been trying to figure out whether they could have transferred the germ onto the sprouts or whether the sprouts made them ill.

While investigators said the possibility of human introduction of the E. coli pathogen into the sprouts at the farm can't be ruled out, and that water and preceding suppliers are also possible sources, there is growing suspicion that the sprout seeds arrived at the farm already carrying the bacteria.

What health officials do know is that the 5 infected workers reported eating broccoli, garlic and fenugreek sprouts. Workers who had eaten alfalfa and spicy mix varieties of sprouts remained healthy, according to Der Spiegel.

Contaminated fuel discovered in three planes prepping for takeoff

Haaretz
By Zohar Blumenkrantz

Although most departures from Israel Ben-Gurion Airport have taken off on schedule, contamination leads to delay of several flights.

The fuel contamination crisis continued to delay outgoing flights at Ben-Gurion International Airport Tuesday, with the discovery of contaminated fuel in three planes preparing for takeoff to Belgium, Germany and Spain.

Fueling at the airport had restarted at 8 P.M. on Monday evening but was halted less than five hours later, shortly after midnight on Tuesday morning.

The fuel tanks of the Belgian flight needed to be drained and refueled from a tanker, and the flight then took off after a delay. Fuel was changed in the other two flights as well, but as the crews finished their working hours the flights were delayed considerably more.

Two more flights bound for the U.S. left late as well, because the fuel tests continued for longer than anticipated.

Two more planes - a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt and an Austrian Airlines flight from Vienna - were forced to land and refuel in Larnaka, Cyprus, so as to be able to takeoff from Ben-Gurion airport later. Both return flights were consequently two hours late.

"I was waiting in line for the security check, which was stuck despite there being very few passengers," said Michal Regev, a marketing director in a high-tech company on her way to a business trip in Vienna. "I approached one of the officials and asked him what was happening. He tried to dodge the question for a while but eventually admitted there were problems with the fuel."

Tal Muskal, spokesman for Austrian Airlines proprietor Lufthansa Group, said that the delay happened because "on Monday evening, airlines were told that Ben-Gurion Airport resumed normal refueling operations. The Austrian Airlines flight therefore took off from Vienna with enough fuel to get to Israel. However, another flight of the group was stuck here overnight, and a decision was made to land the Austrian Airlines flight in Larnaka to refuel ahead of its return trip to Vienna. This layover delayed the flight's landing at Ben-Gurion and subsequent takeoff back to Vienna.

"We apologize for the delay and inconvenience, which was not caused through any fault of ours," Muskal added.

The decision to resume normal refueling operations, pending sample tests by the Air Force, was taken Monday afternoon, at a meeting chaired by Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz. Also taking part were the ministry's director general, Dan Harel; chairman of the Israel Airports Authority board Ovadia Ali; IAA director Kobi Mor; and expert Dr. Yoseffa Ben Asher.

The forum decided to have the planes refueled with the fuel stored at Ben-Gurion. The decision was made based on a new opinion by Dr. Ben Asher, the same expert whose initial estimate brought the airport to a halt last week. In her new opinion Dr. Ben Asher distinguished between the fuel before it was filtered - and could conceivably be polluted - and the fuel that was filtered through into the aircraft, which she believed would be clean.

A mobile Air Force lab was asked to test samples from the tanks of every flight due to leave the airport, and this is how pollution was discovered on Monday night.

In response, the IAA said that only the fuel in two out of 38 flights tested for pollution was feared to be polluted, and the jets were emptied and refueled again, with fuel that was found to be clean beyond any doubt.

"Within two days all the fuel currently at the airport's disposal will be replaced," the statement said. "The airport awaits the findings of an inquiry commission assigned by the National Infrastructure Ministry, which is supposed to find the source of the pollution in the fuel supply and finally resolve the problem."