-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Information Warfare US Creates Another Cult Hero Bin Laden, Bin Laden, kicking Clinton's ass. BIN LADEN has become a cult figure in Pakistan's volatile north-west, near the border with Afghanistan where he is in exile. Among the gaudy posters of film stars and mountain scenes on sale at stalls in the dusty alleys of Peshawar's Khyber bazaar, one stands out. A picture of a bearded gunman in a white turban is emblazoned with the words: "I Love Osama bin Laden". The market's number one pin-up is the world's most-wanted terrorist. Many parents now name their sons Osama, and pictures of the Saudi multi-millionaire - holding an AK-47 assault rifle or astride a white charger with bombs exploding all around him - adorn many homes. One of Peshawar's markets was even called Osama Bazaar until police demanded a name change. Anger erupted last week when matchboxes began circulating in Peshawar offering a £350,000 reward for information leading to his capture by United States authorities. Informers were promised asylum. "He's an Islamic hero," protested Arif Hussein, an army labourer shopping in the market. "He has stood up to the West." Described by George Tenet, the CIA director, as "still foremost" among terrorists wanted by the US, bin Laden's popularity in Pakistan threatens to jeopardise a deal under which the country - if it helps to capture him - can avoid being officially branded a sponsor of terrorism. In the past month Sir Charles Guthrie, the Chief of the Defence Staff, and Karl Inderfurth, the US Assistant Secretary of State, have both been to Islamabad to meet Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler who seized power in October. The message has been the same: help us catch bin Laden and we will welcome you back into the international community and lift pressure on you to hold elections. Tony Blair and President Jacques Chirac of France have even written to Gen Musharraf, expressing support for what he is trying to do and asking for his co-operation in return. President Clinton, who is visiting south Asia next month, is awaiting a response from the general before indicating whether Pakistan will be on his itinerary. The matter is considered urgent because of fears that bin Laden is planning more attacks in the West. According to recent testimony by Mr Tenet to the Senate select committee on intelligence, the CIA has evidence that bin Laden's al-Qa'ida organisation is trying to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons. US officials believe that the Saudi terror chief may try to get help from Pakistan, which has conducted recent atomic tests. Secret documents filed by US intelligence agencies in a New York court over the past month suggest that bin Laden is masterminding a worldwide conspiracy to murder Americans. Detailing a network stretching from North America to the Philippines, the 400 pages of classified evidence link bin Laden to the 1998 bombings at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 240 people. Among the revelations are that al-Qa'ida used two African charities, Mercy International Relief Agency and Help Africa Poor, as fronts for the direction of operations. Codenames used by organisers referred to bin Laden as "Mr Sam" and the Kenyan cell members as "the fish people". Following widespread investigations, a number of people have been arrested around the world, including the brother-in-law of one of bin Laden's key lieutenants, who was detained in Senegal in December in connection with a plot to launch a series of bomb attacks in America. According to Mr Tenet, more than half of the 24 terrorists brought to justice in the US since mid-1998 have been linked to al-Qa'ida. Bin Laden "is placing increasing emphasis on developing surrogates to carry out attacks in an effort to avoid detection", he said. Many of these are believed to be at training camps in Pakistan from which young men are sent to fight in Kashmir and Chechnya. Because of bin Laden's close links with Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Washington considers Islamabad's help to be crucial to the capture of their most-wanted man. Gen Musharraf admitted to The Telegraph that he had come under pressure over the issue. "I would like to co-operate in resolving the issue of Osama bin Laden because it is causing us many problems," he said in an interview. "I am making diplomatic efforts to try to reach a solution." He has already told Kabul's Taliban regime that bin Laden's continued presence in Afghanistan is having a negative impact on the region. Gen Musharraf now plans to travel to Afghanistan to meet the reclusive Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, to lobby him on the issue of handing over bin Laden and closing guerrilla training camps. But he may not get far. Mullah Omar is rumoured to have married one of bin Laden's daughters. Moreover, bin Laden's popularity in Pakistan means that Gen Musharraf's hands are tied. "The majority of common people would be offended if he is seen to be helping the West in catching Osama because, to them, he is a hero," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Peshawar-based journalist who has interviewed bin Laden. Having already taken on his country's political parties, Gen Musharraf would be reluctant to anger its influential Islamic groups. Said Munawar Hasan, secretary-general of the organisation Jamaat Islami, which has many supporters within the army, commented: "Osama bin Laden has become more than an individual in this region - he is a phenomenon. It is the Americans who are terrorists. The fact they have framed no charges against him shows they have no evidence." Many of the men whiling away the hours among Peshawar old city's shabby stalls, which sell everything from car engines to blue movies, reacted angrily to the suggestion that Gen Musharraf might help the West capture bin Laden. "Osama is a true mujahid [freedom fighter]," said Mohammad Sadiq, whose bin Laden posters sell for about 12 pence each. "He is someone to look up to." The London Telegraph, February 20, 2000 Spy vs. Soldier Hello, soldier. This is the Gestapo speaking. Putin tells (ex-) KGB to spy on generals. AGENTS employed by what was once the KGB to spy on Russian soldiers are being given sweeping powers by Vladimir Putin, the acting president. The move reflects the growing concern of Mr Putin, a former head of the KGB, that Russia's generals, buoyed by their success in Chechnya, might threaten his authority. Every garrison in Russia has attached at least one agent of the FSB, as the KGB is now known. Known in Soviet days as the osobye otdely, or "special units", they keep a watchful eye on fellow soldiers and undertake counter-intelligence work. In Stalin's day their word could see a "politically unreliable" soldier sent to the Gulag or executed. A decree imposed by Mr Putin this month and officially acknowledged only last week scraps key restrictions introduced in 1993 when legislators were limiting the KGB's power. Under the new decree, parliament and the prosecutor-general's office lose their right to monitor the agents' activities; there is no explicit limit on their activities and they have the right to pay informers. Diplomatic observers say that Mr Putin is attempting to rein in an army that is becoming ever more independent. Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former KGB lieutenant colonel said: "He is a weak politician. He wanted to use the Chechnya war for his own promotion. Instead he is the generals' hostage." Last year Lt Gen Gennady Troshev, a commander of the Chechnya campaign, warned that revolt was on the cards if the war were stopped by the Kremlin. Alexander Pikayev, of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, said that the new powers would allow the FSB to collect compromising data on generals to be used if they ever turn disobedient. The London Telegraph, February 20, 2000 Money Laundering Slush Fund Scandal Destroys German Party? Oh, dear. Not that nasty Hitler business again. A POLL which reveals the plunging popularity of Germany's main conservative party has raised fears of a return to the Right-wing extremism that saw the rise of Hitler in the Thirties. Support among ordinary voters for the centre-Right Christian Democratic Union has plummeted to 29 per cent following the revelations of a slush fund surrounding Helmut Kohl, the former Chancellor, according to the poll by Germany's second television channel, ZDF. This is the lowest level recorded in the party's history and many fear it could presage a collapse of the traditional Right-of-centre opposition, open the way to extremist parties and threaten the future of democracy in Germany. The fall below the pyschologically important 30 per cent mark comes only days after the resignation of the party's leader Wolfgang Schäuble and the imposition of a heavy £13 million fine on the CDU by the German parliament in the wake of the slush fund affair. Both measures were meant to signal to German voters that a "new beginning" was underway in the party that has led the majority of the country's post-war governments through its wholehearted endorsement of conservative Christian values. Instead, the measures appear to have only heightened concern in Germany about the steadfastness of its democratic system. After resigning last week, Mr Schäuble said: "The CDU is in the deepest crisis in its history. There have been unthinkable breaches of party law and the principles of transparency. The CDU crisis must not be allowed to become a crisis of democracy." Lurking behind every such statement are innate German fears of a return to the "failed democracy" of the Weimar era. The then corrupt and unchecked polit ical system enabled Hitler to rise to power with the help of millions in undisclosed donations from wealthy industrialists. Until now, German voters had been led to believe that the transparency of political parties was a fundamental tenet of the the country's post-war democratic system and that constitutional precepts safeguarded against corruption. The example provided by the now disgraced "Unification Chancellor" has shown that voters have been duped. The CDU crisis displays every sign of worsening. The party is leaderless and locked in an acrimonious battle over the choice of a candidate to succeed Mr Schäuble. At the same time, the Kohl scandal is set to widen dramatically. Parliamentary investigators have revealed that scores of chancellery files relating to the most controversial arms export and privatisation schemes of his tenure have either gone missing or have been tampered with. The current CDU general secretary, Angela Merkel, is the favourite among younger CDU members to lead the party. The 46-year-old politician was one of the first Germans from the former East Germany to be brought into government by Mr Kohl after unification. He condescendingly referred to her as "the girl" at the time. But Mrs Merkel has since managed to distance herself from the former Chancellor by openly attacking him in public. However, her candidacy is strongly opposed by Germany's second conservative political force, the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian prime minister and CSU leader, has made clear that he regards Merkel as too "Left of centre" to lead the party. Mr Stoiber would dearly like to become Germany's next conservative Chancellor. Other CSU leaders, such as his predecessor Franz Josef Strauss, tried to achieve this goal but failed. "The CSU's hour has come," Stoiber told party colleagues in Munich last week after announcing that he intended to widen his party's role in national politics. Yet even with a new leader, the CDU is unlikely to escape the damaging legacy of the Kohl era. The files that have gone missing from the German chancellery cover key arms export and privatisation schemes conducted by the Kohl government. These include the controversial sale of the giant east German Leuna refinery to the French oil company Elf Aquitaine. Francois Mitterrand, the then French president, is alleged to have used this transaction to bankroll Kohl's CDU with a £10 million donation. The missing files also contain documents concerning the Kohl government's equally contentious sale of 36 Thyssen-made tanks to Saudi Arabia in 1991, the sale of German-made Airbus aircraft to Thailand and helicopters to the Canadian coastguard. Their contents would shed light on the central question hanging over the Kohl scandal: whether or not the ex-Chancellor's political and economic decisions were bought? But as Franz-Walter Steinmeier, the chancellery official leading the inquiry into the missing files, put it: "The absence of the files mean that the political decisions made during this period cannot be accounted for." Not surprisingly, German commentators now conclude that the "Kohl party funding scandal has just begun". The London Telegraph, February 20, 2000 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
