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It seems to be "on" in cybersphere.. Hackers hit Mastercard and Visa over Wikileaks row Opening salvo excerpts in italics:
Hackers have attacked the websites of credit card giants Mastercard and Visa.
The attacks came after the Anonymous group of hackers pledged to pursue firms that have withdrawn services from Wikileaks.
Mastercard payments were disrupted but the firm said there was "no impact" on people's ability to use their cards.
Visa's website also experienced problems. The attacks came after both companies stopped processing payments to the whistle-blowing site.
So far, it's Hackers, Master Card, Visa, and now.. Twitter..
Entries on the Twitter page of Operation Payback, the Anonymous campaign, said the Visa site had been taken down.
Then..
But in a day of fast-moving developments, the Anonymous Twitter page then went down, replaced by a message from Twitter saying the account had been suspended. (I'm guessing they're next, or on the list..)
..
Earlier the BBC was contacted by a payment firm linked to Mastercard that said its customers had "a complete loss of service".
Master Card downplays the event, as expected..
"While we have seen limited interruption in some web-based services, cardholders can continue to use their cards for secure transactions globally."
And:
Anonymous, which claimed to have carried out the attack, is a loose-knit group of hacktivists, with links to the notorious message board 4chan.
It said that it has hit several targets, including the website of the prosecutors who are acting in a legal case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
An Anonymous member told AFP news agency the group would extend their campaign to anyone with "an anti-Wikileaks agenda".
These people are fucking serious, and they're strong enough to inflict some serious damage before they're all apprehended or decide they're done. As a precaution, you might consider how you'll live your life with extended Internet(and possibly electrical, but that's another topic..) outages, banking disruptions, distribution chaos.. Me? I plan on lots of jogging, yoga, and P90X.
Archaeologists from the University of Chile have discovered a 12,000-year-old iron oxide mine in the north of the country.
Researchers say it is the oldest mine discovered in all the Americas.
Chief researcher Diego Salazar said the iron oxide was used by Huentelauquen Indians as a pigment in dying cloth and in religious rituals, revealing an unexpected sophistication in what was previously considered a primitive group of people.
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The ancient mine was discovered near the town of Taltal, in the Antofagasta region, 1,100 kilometres north of Santiago, in October 2008, but its antiquity was not determined until tests were conducted this year in US and Polish laboratories.
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Before this find, the oldest mine in the Americas was 2,500 years old and located in the United States.
The world's most ancient mine is in South Africa and is about 40,000 years old.
But.. But.. Isn't the world only 6000 years old?
Has it really been a year since you appeared? You captured our imagination, inspiring believers and debunkers alike, and generally making a worldwide phenomenon of yourself. So it's hardly surprising that one year later, you're back, making a cameo appearance in this year's Most Sensational Event: Wiki Leaks. And no one's more suited to write about you(again!!) than the Order of Sorcha Faal, a bunch of Russian nuns, or David Booth(I don't know) on their/his site What Does It Mean. Awesome; truly.Norway Spiral, you are the inter dimensional event/failed missile test our dreams. Thanks for the laughter and the tears, but mostly.. for the weirdness.
Jim Rickards: At Least One Swiss Bank Has Started Refusing To Hand Over Physical Gold To Clients Excerpts in italics:
He tells King World News of a client of a major Swiss bank who was refused access to his one ton of physical gold ($40M) and was forced to make threats to convince the bank otherwise:
“Correct, and through all of that eventually the individual did get his gold...it took lawyers, it took threats of publicity, it took a lot of pressure to do that, which my inference is that that gold was not there. The bank had to scramble, go out and find it somewhere before they could make good delivery.”
There's a shortage of physical metals, especially gold and silver, and banks will face more and more clients who want posession of their metal assets. The problems arise when the Banks cannot fulfill these increasingly frequent requests. The problems can be described ultimately, with terms like "default," and "implosion." There is no "if" involved, only the inevitablily of "when." Stories like this are just the precursor, not random or anomolous. The coming metal storm continues to strengthen, to solidify..
Haiti presidential election goes to 2nd round Excerpts:
Government-backed candidate Jude Celestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat will advance to a second-round runoff in Haiti's presidential election, officials announced Tuesday as furious protests led by supporters of the third-place contender broke out in the capital.
The results were immediately questioned and matters are far from settled in the race to lead a country wracked by a cholera epidemic and still recovering from a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
Much of the concern centered around conflicts between the announced results and those reported recently by a local election monitoring group financed by the European Union — the National Observation Council — which said that Celestin, a protege of outgoing President Rene Preval, would be eliminated
"The Government of the United States is concerned by the Provisional Electoral Council's announcement of preliminary results ... that are inconsistent with the published results of the National Election Observation Council" as well as U.S. observers and vote counts monitored by domestic and international observers, the U.S. Embassy said in an e-mailed statement.
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The Nov. 28 election was plagued by allegations of fraud. Thousands of voters were disenfranchised by confusion on the rolls and there were many reported incidents of ballot-stuffing, violence and intimidation confirmed by international observers.
Officials acknowledged the rolls were both "bloated" and "incomplete," with hundreds of thousands of earthquake dead still registered and many living voters waiting for ID cards. In the last days of counting, tabulators had to sort out clearly fraudulent tally sheets.
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After results were released Tuesday night, flaming barricades were set up near the Petionville restaurant where the tallies were announced. Martelly supporters threw rocks at people passing nearby and gunshots rang out. An Associated Press journalist was robbed.
"If they don't give us Martelly and Manigat (in the second round), Haiti will be on fire," said a protester, Erick Jean. "We're still living under tents and Celestin wastes money on election posters."
In the last eleven months, Haiti has dealt with the fifth deadliest quake in recorded history, almost total devastation of the major metropolitan area and capital's infrastructure, glacial debris removal, two million instantly-homeless people, a burgeoning, unfortunate cholera epidemic, and now, election fraud with not only the threat of turning the entire country into a riot zone, but effectively paralyzing any significant progress until an acceptable answer is reached. I can't imagine the level of rage on the streets of Port Au Prince that is now the New Normal..
If you ever needed evidence of the existence of the Multiverse, Haiti is it. Mind you, there are "distorted energies" at work planet-wide, but wow.. There's just so much.. Dissonance.. Working together In Terrible Concert, inhabiting such a small physical area.. There has always, always been a higher level of malevolent energies than in other countries, but now, that level of pain must be almost absolutely unbearable.
What can life be like, moment to moment? All that sadness, rage, helplessness, all around, all the time, from the constant, to the new and surprising disappointments that present themselves daily. It's amazing the situation hasn't devolved any further than it has. Each person has a breaking point. So do entire populations. I salute the people of Haiti for not descending into total anarchy, and honor their tremendous internal fortitude for not doing so.. But with election results over a month away, though, I wonder if this event will end up being The Final Straw..
Payback: Bank That Froze Julian Assange's Bank Account Has Now Been Taken Down By Hackers. Assange was a hacker. Those aligned with him would be fairly close to him in abilities, I would guess. Do you really think they couldn't be say.. seven jumps ahead in their overall strategies? I'm sure we'll see many variations of today's events forthcoming as the the Cyber War heats up..
Just a thought.
Asia Session: Awaiting the Irish Budget
The Euro continued to move higher in Asia as markets looked ahead to the hopeful passing of the 2011 Irish budget which is due later in the day. Now loaded with new austerity measures in order to appease the EU and IMF after securing a bailout package the proposed Irish budget for 2011 was to be put in front of the parliament later today. The passing of the budget without any hitches would surely help the Euro currency and that optimism was seen in today’s Asian moves from 1.3280 to 1.3350 in EUR/USD. The ECB’s move to extend its bond purchasing program also proved beneficial to the European currency as investors welcomed the determination of the European Central bank.
At the moment, the proposed budget looks like it will pass. Of course, bankers and politicians are pretty happy with that projected outcome, but the non-ultra rich, non banker, non politicians aren't happy, and will be expressing their displeasure later today, and probably frequently for quite some time..
And then there's the World wide bank run, originating in France, scheduled for today. Your host? Eric Cantona.:
Following an idea put forward by Eric Cantona recently the 7th December is planned to be ‘bank run’ day. The general idea is that nowadays protesting in the street doesn’t achieve much – but if we all withdraw our money from the banks at the same time the banks will collapse.
Will this destroy the European banking system? Probably not, and most likely not in America, but people in other countries are paying attention, and we won't know what the end result will be tomorrow, or in the near term.. And it all starts today.
So much information, so much to disseminate, so little time..
Kitco chart via UrbanSurvival. Once again, the question is: Will it hold?
Just when you thought you couldn't stuff any more SuperInteresting into your eye and ear holes, Julian Assange gets closer to Freeing the Beast /Dropping the Poison Pill by agreeing to meet with Police regarding charges against him. This story continues to explode out in all directions, and it's becoming obvious that we're only at the beginning stages of this one.. And that it's execution was much more thought out than is currently, publicly thought.. But first, today's events:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is "in the process of making arrangements" to meet with British police regarding a Swedish arrest warrant, his attorney said Monday.
Assange is wanted for questioning by Swedish authorities over sex-crime allegations unrelated to WikiLeaks' recent disclosure of secret U.S. documents. Mark Stephens, his British lawyer, told the BBC no time had been set for the meeting as of Monday evening, but one is likely "in the foreseeable future."
And:
WikiLeaks, which facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information, has been under intense pressure from the United States and its allies since it began posting the first of more than 250,000 U.S. State Department documents November 28. Since then, the site has been hit with denial-of-service attacks, been kicked off servers in the United States and France and found itself cut off from funds in the United States and Switzerland.
In response, the site has rallied supporters to mirror its content "in order to make it impossible to ever fully remove WikiLeaks from the Internet," with more than 500 sites responding to the appeal by Monday evening, it said.
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In addition, WikiLeaks has posted a massive, closely encrypted file, identified as "insurance" -- a file Assange's lawyer has described as a "thermonuclear device." Assange has said the more than 100,000 people who have downloaded the file will receive the key to decoding it should anything happen to him or should the site be taken down.
At first glance, it looks as if WikiLeaks is in trouble, but this isn't necessarily correct. I'm assuming that Assange prepared for much more political and cyber blowback than any government anywhere can throw:
"Nobody has really picked up on this yet, but apparently there is a schedule. And where there is a schedule there is a plan. And looking at where things are going, the plan is for radical change, and it relies on an open source model."
Xymphora says it perfectly:
"Wilikeaks is a hologram, breaking up into innumerable little pieces each containing the same information. The shattering was planned."
Cyber Jujitsu, anyone? The entire WikiLeaks saga has, as I said earlier, only just begun.
I really do believe that all the pieces are already in place, and it's just a matter of release, but the release is more confirmation of already-posessed information, not something new to download. Just an assumption, there, but the absolute thorough- and thoughtful-ness of Assange's actions point to a studied, cyber-apocalyptic outcome. Whatever you think of this event so far, you should not forget that you are watching History in the making, and the more you pay attention, the more detail you can provide your descendants, when you tell them about all you witnessed.
From UniverseToday. Excerpts:
Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft will arrive at Venus later today, and will enter orbit around the planet. The box-shaped orbiter will make observations from an elliptical orbit, from a distance of between 300 and 80,000 kilometers (186 to 49,600 miles), looking for — among other things — signs of lightning and active volcanoes.
The Akatsuki probe (Japanese for “Dawn”)((Which is really interesting to this guy)) has been traveling for six months, and launched along with the IKAROS solar sail mission. The timing for the orbit insertion burn is Dec. 6 at about 6:50 p.m. EST (2350 GMT), which is early Tuesday morning Japan Standard Time.
Lately, enthusiasts of The Unusual have been on quite a roll. Webbots, Wikileaks, Solar filaments, UFOs, Major Space Discoveries.. So far, it's been an amazing year, our species adding new elements to our understanding of "reality," and how our universe works. While Mars is certainly worthy of our continued research and exploration, so is Venus. And, judging by these last eleven months, Japan might provide some amazing insights into our closest neighbor. Thanks, Japan, and here's hoping for something Wonderful..
12:55 p.m. CST $29.90/oz. The link's to Urban Survival's Kitco chart at the top of the page. Oh yeah, it's already broken $30 today, and is hanging out just below that mark. Will it break the barrier at the close of today's trading? Monday, Monday..
The authorities in Ecuador have begun evacuating people from the slopes of the Tungurahua volcano after it started spewing ash.Scientists say fast-moving currents of extremely hot gas and rock could be seen flowing from the volcano's crater...Scientists with the Ecuadorean Institute for Geophysics say the number of explosions has increased. They say the ash cloud has reached 2km (1.2 miles) in height.People living on the slopes reported the ground and buildings shaking, and a rumbling sound coming from the volcano...The tourist town of Banos is one of those being evacuated.In 1999, its 15,000 inhabitants were forced to evacuate when the Tungurahua had its last major eruption. Residents were not able to return to their homes for a year.
South Korea to Begin Artillery Tests Excerpts:
South Korea's military said Monday it would test-fire artillery at 29 locations this week, including one of the islands in the Yellow Sea maritime border area where North Korea was angered by such testing two weeks ago.
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On Sunday, North Korea's state media maintained its barrage of criticism at South Korea, saying Seoul was "far from drawing a lesson from the deserved punishment" of the North's attack on the South's Yeonpyeong Island nearly two weeks ago.
The latest statement, issued by Korea Central News Agency, said South Korea is "getting more frantic in military provocations and war moves." The statement also showed that Pyongyang closely watched Friday's confirmation hearing of South Korea's new defense minister, Kim Kwan-jin.
Mr. Kim said South Korea would respond to any fresh attacks by North Korea with air power, something it didn't do during the Nov. 23 assault on Yeonpyeong, an island in the Yellow Sea a few miles from the North Korean coastline. Four South Koreans—two civilians and two marines—died in the attack. South Korea has added new weaponry, including multiple rocket launchers, to the island since the attack.
Yeah, so no one seems to be backing down just yet. As I write this, live fire exercises have been going for a little over six hours. Happy Monday, everyone! It's gonna be one exciting week, huh?
Top secret American spy plane returns to Earth after seven months... but U.S. still won't say what it was doing in space
The U.S.'s first unmanned re-entry spacecraft landed at an airfield today, seven months after it was launched.
The X-37B's exact purpose remained shrouded in secrecy when it touched-down at at Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast 130 miles north west of Los Angeles.
It was launched by an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 22, with a maximum mission duration of 270 days and is suspected of being an advanced spy plane.
The rest of the article is a yawner, as it basically tells you nothing more than these three sentences. But that's what's intriguing: One knows nothing more about Why it went on a Seven Month Mission. Words were strung together, but nothing was said. So what is it's real purpose?
WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning "designed Facebook" as a schoolboy, friends sayThis person sounds much more.. capable of the know how needed to engineer such a massive transfer of information, and the thoughtfulness to understand and stand up for his beliefs and motivations. Excerpts:Bradley Manning, the prime suspect in the leaking of top secret documents to the WikiLeaks website, was such a computer expert that he designed a version of Facebook years before modern social networking sites took off, friends have disclosed.Friends remember the teenager as a shy schoolboy who was determined to speak his mind and “had his own sense of right and wrong”."He produced a website with another schoolmate. It was pre-Facebook. It was like a community site. It didn’t really lift off, but it was a good idea."It was pretty much a social networking site before its time. You could log in and find out about local news."....Those who befriended Manning when he arrived in Wales aged 13, after his parents divorced, suggested that he had always possessed some of the character traits which may have prompted the biggest-ever leaks of confidential information from the US government.Mr Dyer told Channel 4 News that Manning had quickly established a reputation for computer expertise at his West Wales comprehensive...He said: “He's always had this sense that 'I'm going to right a big wrong'. He was like that at school.Mr Dyer insisted that Manning never meant any harm but was simply determined to stand his own ground."He has his own sense of what is right or wrong,” he added. “It’s not directed against another person in particular. He's certainly not malicious in any of his actions."This portrait of Manning doesn't really fit the Lady Ga Ga narrative pushed when the story initially broke. Will his early friends stand by and not respond to the "Manning is treasonous" talk thrown around the punditsphere? I find the differing reactions to the event so far very interesting. The calls for Assange's arrest, execution(Very Christlike, Mike, by the way..), assassination, re-classification as terrorist, and yet, fascination with the cables they might have interest in...**Like this: I would not want to be in Mr. Assange's shoes right now. Assange gave an interview to Forbes earlier this month. Wikileaks is supposed to be unveiling a major U.S. banking scandal in early 2011, consisting of thousands of documents obtained from a major U.S. financial firm (Goldman Sachs ??? Those are some documents I wouldn't mind seeing). ** Ron Paul, though, gets it right.. "In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."I can't attribute this yet, but something I picked up this week's readings was this: If the government can know all of your secrets and peer into so many aspects of your private life, why shouldn't they be held by the same standard? Do not forget, they indeed work for us; not us for them. Whether or not you agree with Bradley Manning's actions, it does sound like he stands behind his convictions and probably hasn't changed his mind about what he has brought about. This story becomes more compelling with each passing day..
Come January, it's payback. The Irish are mad, and ready to kick some Fianna Fail ass. The other traditional opposition parties(Fine Gael, in first, at the moment, Labour in second and Sinn Fein, third) are crushing Fianna Fail(by default) which has dropped to last place in the "major" parties (not counting the Greens), and elections are slated for the second week of January. In a quirk of Irish politics, Fine Gael is to the right of Fianna Fail, but works with Labour, which is similar in spirit to the progressive left of the American Democratic Party. (It would be nice to have that cooperation stateside, but, you know..)
Fianna Fail has seen their popularity plummet from 42 percent to 13 percent, and are projected to lose as many as 55 seats in this disaster election scenario created by their greed and unshakable allegiance to the banks that got them in trouble in the first place. And now, members of its own party might not follow suit for December 7th's budget vote. And if the budget doesn't pass and Ireland refuses the bailout and the entire government collapses, this will cause a whole new set of problems for the EU, the IMF, and bankers from other countries. Stay tuned..
Wow.. I thought this was a parody article, but it is definitely not. Beautiful excerpts in italics:
.. Julian Assange also revealed he would publish classified U.S. files about aliens and unidentified flying objects.
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In a fresh twist, Mr Assange, who is in hiding somewhere near London, pledged to publish leaked diplomat cables relating to flying saucers.
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But he said: ‘It is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFO's.'
Oh F/N Snap! Every day, new secrets drop, bombshells here and there.. But when UFO cables start coming out(Proving the phenomenon either real or fake), the space bombshells could be too big to ignore, and will require a response from both the government and the media.
And now, if what Julian Assange said is true, the truth really is out there.. Already.
Dollar Rises Against Euro on Prospect U.S. Payrolls ExpandedNorth Korea may attack the province that surrounds Seoul, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper said, citing an unidentified person who quoted an official in the communist nation. South Korea will hold artillery drills on Yeonpyeong, the island shelled by the North last week, on Dec. 6, television broadcaster MBN reported today, citing government officials it didn’t identify.Japan and the U.S. will conduct a joint military exercise from tomorrow until Dec. 10.“Geopolitical risk appears to be returning a bit on worries that North Korea may attack the South,” said Satoshi Okagawa, head of the foreign-exchange and money trading group in Singapore at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., a unit of Japan’s third-largest banking group. “There’s some safe-haven buying of the yen and the dollar.”And:The won strengthened for a third day as funds based abroad bought $373 million more Korean shares than they sold yesterday, the biggest net purchases in almost three weeks, exchange data show. The Kospi index of shares posted its highest close since Nov. 10 on optimism that tensions between North and South Korea are easing.“We haven’t seen North Korean retaliation, which they pledged to do after the attack, and the lack of negative events let risk aversion subside,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. “Positive sentiment globally boosted appetite for risk assets like the Korean won.”US, Japan begin war games; China denounces drillsIn an ongoing show of force following a deadly North Korean attack on a front-line island, the U.S. and Japan began one of their biggest-ever military exercises Friday, mobilizing more than 44,000 troops, hundreds of aircraft and a U.S. supercarrier.The drills come just after the U.S. and South Korea concluded maneuvers in the Yellow Sea. The exercises brought immediate criticism from China, which is wary of having foreign navies off its shores and has been increasingly assertive over large swaths of waters in the south and east China seas, where some of the drills would take place...The Nov. 23 North Korean attack killed two South Korean marines and two civilians on Yeonpyeong Island, a tiny enclave of civilians and military bases located near a disputed maritime border.The attack has heightened tensions in the region and renewed fears of a bigger clash breaking out that could draw in neighboring countries, including Japan, where about 50,000 U.S. troops are based under a security pact.South Korea’s New Defense Chief Threatens Air Strikes on North South Korea’s new defense minister vowed retaliation that would include airstrikes if North Korea makes another attack following last month’s deadly artillery bombardment.“I will mobilize all combat capabilities available to severely punish the enemy,” Kim Kwan Jin, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today at a confirmation hearing. “I will surely use planes. This is a matter of self-defense.”This may be a sign that the crisis is cooling a bit..“The latest tough talk seemed to be mostly aimed at deterring North Korea from further provocations,” said Kim Yong Hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “There is only so much South Korea can do in terms of tough actions when there’s little assurance of how far North Korea will go.”Or maybe cooling not so much.. A news report says North Korea now has more multiple-launch rockets capable of hitting Seoul.Yonhap news agency says North Korea has increased its arsenal of rockets by 100 pieces to about 5,200. Yonhap cited an unidentified South Korean military source.The agency says the rockets have a range of 37 miles (60 kilometers), putting Seoul within striking distance.
A lot of alliteration and allegations regarding the Horn of Africa's crazypants country, eh? 1,000-Man Militia Being Trained In North Somalia. All the ingredients for a super weird, intriguing, politically charged situation slash latest George Clooney thriller are here(Of course, this isn't the plot of Clooney's latest; but it could be!): In the northern reaches of Somalia and the country's presidential palace, a well-equipped military force is being created, funded by a mysterious donor nation that is also paying for the services of a former CIA officer and a senior ex-U.S. diplomat.
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training for an anti-piracy force of up to 1,050 men has already begun in Puntland, a semiautonomous region in northern Somalia that is believed to hold reserves of oil and gas.
But key elements remain unknown — mainly who is providing the millions of dollars in funding and for what ultimate purpose.
Pierre Prosper, an ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues(Heh. This guy's desk probably had two inches of dust covering it..) under former President George W. Bush, told AP he is being paid by a Muslim nation he declined to identify to be a legal adviser to the Somali government, focusing on security, transparency and anti-corruption. (Read that again. Then again. Still senseless, right?)
Somalia hasn't had a fully functioning government since 1991 and is torn between clan warlords, Islamist insurgent factions, an 8,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force, government forces and allied groups. Given that mix, the appearance of an unknown donor with deep pockets is troubling, said E.J. Hogendoorn, a Nairobi-based analyst with the International Crisis Group.
"We don't know if this unknown entity is operating in the interests of Somalis or their own self-interest," he said in an interview. "If it's a company, there has to be a quid pro quo in terms of (oil and gas) concessions. If it's a government, they are interested in changing the balance of power."
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"You cannot have oil exploration if you have insecurity," Mohamed Farole said. "You have to eliminate the pirates and al-Shabab."
Energy exploration has started mainly just south of the mountains, although the amount of estimated reserves is unknown, or at least not publicly divulged.
Michael Shanklin, who was the CIA's deputy chief of station in Mogadishu 20 years ago, told AP he is employed by the unidentified donor country as a security adviser and liaison to the Somali government. Prosper said he is encouraging the Muslim donor nation, which insists on keeping its identity secret, to become more transparent. (The only one saying this "unknown" country is "Muslim" is a former CIA deputy chief. It might be true, but I'd like a second opinion before believing this..)
And:
In recent weeks, Shanklin and Prosper met several Nairobi-based diplomats to discuss the contract between the Puntland and Mogadishu governments and a private security company called Saracen International, Prosper said in written replies to questions from AP. Prosper said Saracen is doing the military training and is being paid by the unnamed Muslim nation. Saracen is not providing the militia with any weapons, he said.
Uganda-based Saracen International was named in a March letter written by the Somali president's former chief of staff, Abdulkareem Jama, and obtained by AP that described training for the presidential guard. And it was named in a Nov. 18 statement from Puntland's government announcing the anti-piracy training. Bill Pelser, the chief executive of Saracen International, said it is "definitely a mistake or a misrepresentation."
Pelser denied being involved in the training program in Puntland or the one for the presidential guard in Mogadishu, saying he merely made introductions for another company called Saracen Lebanon. Lebanese authorities have no record of a company called Saracen. Pelser did not respond to requests for contact information for Saracen Lebanon.
Pelser is a former South African special forces soldier. Like many of his staff, he used to work for Executive Outcomes, a South African mercenary outfit credited with helping defeat rebel forces in Sierra Leone in return for mineral concessions.(Fantastic. Subplots within denials, misdirection and nonexistent companies with no follow up information. Clear cut, so far..)
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Whoever controls a well-trained, well-equipped and consistently paid military force is in a strong position to make a bid for filling the power vacuum in Somalia.
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The U.N. is quietly investigating to see if the creation and outfitting of the new military force violates an arms embargo.. (Creating an army is considered violating an arms embargo?)
The embargo forbids the importation of arms, military equipment or any support to any armed group in Somalia, including to any Somali government, without authorization from the U.N.'s sanctions committee. There is an exemption for support for counter-piracy operations, provided the Security Council was notified and gave permission. In the case of the new military force, the Security Council was not notified. (Not notified? Another shock, I tells ya..)
Let's see.. A politically somewhat stable region of an unstable country with factional leadership and continual infighting receives support and paramilitary training from an unknown, possibly "Muslim" nation in exchange for unknown monies/ influence/ resources. Unknown country is facilitated in their efforts by a South African former mercenary, a Ugandan "anti-piracy" training something-or-other corporation, a former CIA deputy chief, and a former Bush administration official as Liaison?
When this becomes a movie, I certainly hope Clive Owen plays the South African mercenary. So sexy, and I'm sure he can handle the accent..
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