Officials Admit Second Man Detained As More Witnesses Emerge

Two more eyewitnesses contradict FBI’s denial that Abdulmutallab had possible accomplices

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have admitted that a second man possibly carrying explosives was detained after last week’s aborted plane bombing attack, contradicting initial statements by the FBI that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was the only person arrested or charged in relation to Friday’s foiled attack.

As we reported yesterday, attorney and Flight 253 eyewitness Kurt Haskell said that he saw a well-dressed Indian man aid the accused bomber to board the plane despite the fact that he had no passport and was on a terror watch list. After the incident, while the passengers were being detained, Haskell witnessed an Indian man being handcuffed and led away after a bomb-sniffing dog had flagged up his luggage. The FBI then removed the other passengers from the area, strongly indicating that explosive materials had been found in the man’s bag.

Officials have now been forced to acknowledge that a second man was detained despite initial FBI denials after two more witnesses came forward to validate Haskell’s account.

“Daniel Huisinga of Fairview, Tenn., who was returning from an internship in Kenya for the holidays, says he also saw a man being taken away in handcuffs at the airport after a dog search. A third person, Roey Rosenblith, told The Huffington Post on Sunday that he saw a man in a suit being placed into handcuffs and escorted out, as well,” reports Michigan Live.

“Huisinga talked about seeing a man taken away at the airport during an interview Monday on MSNBC. He mentions it at about the 1:25 mark of the video below. The reporter appears to confuse Huisinga’s account with a man who was detained on a separate flight Sunday and deemed not to be a threat.”

Huisinga later told Michigan Live that the Indian man who was later detained by the FBI after dogs had detected something suspicious in his baggage was “wearing a nice suit,” raising questions as to whether this was the same man who helped Abdulmutallab board the plane. Huisinga was located about 20 feet from where the man was handcuffed.

Huisinga shared Haskell’s view that the passengers were moved because more explosives had been discovered, adding that agents told the passengers that they could not use their cell phones or computers. “We were kind of left to draw our own conclusions,” he said.

“It is unknown why the person was detained or whether the person will face any charges,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Ron Smith told MLive.com.

The FBI is still denying that a second person was detained in relation to the incident, raising suspicions as to whether the well-dressed Indian man is being protected by the authorities and for what reason.

“There’s a lot of stories out there, whether any of them are accurate or not, or they’re a little bit accurate and blown out of proportion,” FBI spokesman Bill Carter said. “But I’m not aware of anyone charged or arrested other than Abdulmutallab.”

MLive.com writers attempted to contact the U.S. Department of Justice for clarification, but their calls have not been returned.

China resets terms of engagement in Central Asia

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China resets terms of engagement in Central Asia
By M K Bhadrakumar

Nursultan Nazarbayev has a way of drawing lines in the sand. The president of Kazakhstan recently told global oil and metal majors that new laws would allow only those foreign investors that cooperate with his industrialization program to tap his nation's mineral resources.

"We will work only with those who propose projects helping diversification of the economy," he said at a December 4 investment conference in Astana, the Kazakh capital, which was attended by ArcelorMittal, Chevron, Total, ENRC and other investors. To any unwilling to collaborate, he said: "We will look for new partners, offer them favorable conditions and resources to fulfill projects."

For good measure, he added that Beijing has asked Kazakhstan - a country the size of Europe but with just 16 million people - to allow Chinese farmers to use one million hectares of Kazakh land to cultivate crops such as soya and rape seed.

Pro-Western elements in Kazakh politics have since taken to the streets. On December 17, addressing a rally in Almaty, Bolat Abilov, co-chairman of the opposition party Azat [United Social Democratic Party] drew an apocalyptic scenario: "If we tomorrow give, or distribute, one million hectares of land, it would mean 15 people working per hectare. That means 15 million people would be brought from China. If one of those 15 people were to give birth each year, that would be the end. In 50 years, there would be 50 million Chinese [in Kazakhstan]."

A rally was held outside the Chinese consulate in Almaty with placards reading, "Mr Hu Jintao, we will not give up Kazakh land!"



A pipeline to the heart of Asia ...
Nazarbayev's message was direct: Western investors could keep their money if interested only in exploiting Kazakhstan's mineral wealth. The president was speaking as a momentous event in the history and politics of Central Asia was resetting the terms of engagement for foreigners in the region: the development of an ambitious 7,000 kilometer pipeline to link the region's gas fields to cities on China's eastern seaboard.

Ten days after Nazarbayev spoke, Hu arrived on a Central Asian tour for the formal commissioning of the 1,833-kilometer pipeline connecting gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (and possibly Russia) to China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

Turkmenistan says it alone can supply 40 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas a year through the pipeline for three decades once it reaches full capacity. That is about half China's current annual consumption.

Uzbekistan signed an agreement with China in November last year to export up to 10 bcm gas a year. (A 2006 estimate put Uzbekistan's gas reserves at 1.8 trillion cubic meters.) A branch line of the Turkmen-China trunk pipeline passes through the town of Gazli, in the Bukhara region, where the Uzbek gas can be fed into it. China has invested in the Uzbek gas fields in the region. The Uzbek reserves are primarily concentrated in the Qashqadaryo province and near Bukhara alongside which the Chinese pipeline passes.

Kazakhstan is set to export another 10 bcm gas through another branch pipeline connection. China, which is preparing for a massive increase in consumption, wants natural gas to account for 10% of its energy mix by 2020, from 3% in 2005. China consumed 77.8 bcm of natural gas last year, a little more than its domestic output of 77.5 bcm. However, the nation faces a natural gas shortage of 70-110 bcm by 2020, according to the 2009 Energy Development Report published by the Chinese Academy of Social Science, an official think-tank. All China's gas imports are currently in the form of LNG and it is separately raising its LNG import capacity to 15 million to 18 million tons by the end of next year.

There was widespread skepticism among observers whether the Central Asia pipeline project would see the light of day. Indeed, China pushed ahead against Western views that last year's renewed unrest in Xinjiang put it at risk. "China is putting a lot of eggs in one basket,'' one British expert said. "An awful lot of oil and gas is coming through a small region. Looking now at trends in Xinjiang, you could ask whether a route from Central Asia is actually more secure than routes through Southeast Asia or the South China Sea."

The implication was obvious: that China's Central Asian pipeline could become a sitting duck for terrorists. As Robert Ebel, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, put it, security could be impossible if the pipelines become targets as they pass through vast stretches of sparsely populated areas in Central Asia and Xinjiang. "There is no way you can protect a pipeline along its entire length. It just can't be done", Ebel, a security expert, maintained. Unrest in Xinjiang, particularly, threatens the Central Asian pipeline, he added. "I'm sure it's causing grey hairs on the people in Beijing," he said.

... sends shock waves to Washington
The American experts have drawn a doomsday scenario for the Chinese pipeline. Writing in the Central Asia & Caucasus Institute Analyst of Johns Hopkins University in October last year, Stephen Blank of the US War College branded Xinjiang as a "pressure cooker" which Beijing is nowhere near controlling.

Growing nervousness in Washington about the Chinese pipeline was quite palpable. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a rare hearing in July regarding China's geopolitical thrust into the Central Asian region. Testifying at the hearing, Richard Morningstar, the US special envoy for energy, underlined that the US needed to develop strategies to compete with China for energy in Central Asia.

This was perhaps the first time that a senior US official has openly flagged China as the US's rival in the energy politics of Central Asia. US experts usually have focused attention on Russian dominance of the region's energy scene and worked for diminishing the Russian presence in the post-Soviet space by canvassing support for Trans-Caspian projects that bypassed Russian territory. In fact, some American experts on the region even argued that China was a potential US ally for isolating Russia.

Certainly, 2009 was a turning point in American discourses on Chinese policies in Central Asia. As China's Turkmen gas pipeline got closer to completion, US disquiet began to surface.

"China is having increasing and heavy influence in Central Asia,'' Morningstar said. ``It is hard for us [the US] to compete with China in some of these countries. It's easy for Turkmenistan to make a deal with China when China comes in and says, 'Hey, we're going to write a check for X amount of money, we're going to build a pipeline'. That's not a hard deal to accept, and we [US] can't compete in that way."

Morningstar put forward two suggestions. One, "to develop a strategy to deal with that [Chinese policy] and encourage the US companies to negotiate creatively with Turkmenistan". Two, Washington should also think about whether it makes sense for US companies to cooperate with China in such countries.

Scope for US-China cooperation over Central Asian energy resources is very limited. In geopolitical terms, there is a conflict of interest between the two countries. One principal objective of China is to lock in energy sources that are not dependent on supply routes passing through the Malacca Straits, which the US controls and could prove a choke point in the event of a US-China confrontation.

Besides, Morningstar himself put his finger on the crux of the problem. While it was good for China's energy-hungry economy to get "clean energy" such as natural gas, the "gas that goes to China competes with gas that could go westward".

Beijing raises the stakes ...
However, the US realizes that devising a counterstrategy to China's is easier said than done. China's presence in the Central Asian energy scene was not a single day's happening. Painstaking diplomacy spread over years went behind it. It was back in 1997 that Kazakhstan and China agreed to build a 3,000 km crude oil pipeline and would later double capacity to 20 million tonnes a year.

In 2005, CNPC International paid almost $4 billion for a 33% stake in PetroKazakhstan. The following year China bought up Kazakh oil assets worth nearly $2 billion in the Karazhanba oil and gas fields (which has proven reserves of more than 340 million barrels), agreed to purchase 30 bcm gas from Turkmenistan ((later increasing this to 40 bcm), and committed $210 million to look for oil and gas in Uzbekistan over the next five years.

In 2008, Kazakhstan and China agreed on jointly developing oil and gas reserves on the continental shelf of the Caspian Sea, while China's Guangdong Nuclear Power Co and Kazakhstan's state nuclear firm Kazatomprom agreed on boosting uranium output in their joint venture.

In April 2009, China made the mother of all energy deals by agreeing to lend Kazakhstan $10 billion in an unprecedented "loan-for-oil" deal and also agreed with state-owned KazMunaiGas to jointly buy oil producer MangistauMunaiGas for $3.3 billion.

In 2009, China also agreed to issue a $3 billion loan for developing the Central Asian state's largest gas field, South Iolotan, which is estimated to contain anywhere between 4 trillion and 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, according to Britain's Gaffney, Cline and Associates - making it one of the world's five largest gas deposits.

French Revolution! Carbon tax ruled unconstitutional just two days before taking effect

This new French carbon tax was scheduled to go into law on Jan1, 2010. The tax was steep: 17 euros per ton of carbon dioxide (USD $24.40). In a stunning move, and surely a blow to warmists everywhere, the tax has been found unconstitutional and thrown out. Originally found here (Google Translation).

Lord Monckton was kind enough to assist me in deciphering the meaning of the ruling and writes:

In France, if at least 60 Deputies of the House and 60 Senators appeal to the Constitutional Council, it has the power to pronounce on the constitutionality of a proposed law – in the present case, the 2010 national budget of France, which contained enabling provisions (loi deferee) for a carbon levy. The Council found that these enabling provisions were unconstitutional on two grounds: that the exemptions contained within the provisions for a carbon levy vitiated the primary declared purpose of the levy, to combat carbon emissions and hence “global warming”; and that the exemptions would cause the levy to fall disproportionately on gasoline and heating oils and not on other carbon emissions, thereby breaching the principle that taxation should be evenly and fairly borne.

The Press release from the French Constitutional Council is here in English (Google Translated) and in original French

Here’s a Deustch-Welle news article on the reversal.

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The council said the tax had too many exemptions

France’s Constitutional Council says the country’s proposed carbon tax is illegal. This is a severe blow to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to fight climate change.

France’s Constitutional Council has struck down a carbon tax that was planned to take effect on January 1st. The council, which ensures the constitutionality of French legislation, said too many polluters were exempted in the measure and the tax burden was not fairly distributed.

It was estimated that 93 percent of industrial emissions outside of fuel use, including the emissions of more than 1,000 of France’s top polluting industrial sites, would be exempt from the tax, which would have charged 17 euros per ton of emitted carbon dioxide.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has argued the tax is necessary to combat climate change and reduce the country’s dependence on oil.

However, the council’s ruling is a severe blow to both Sarkozy’s environmental plan as well as France’s budget for 2010. The government now has to find a way to come up with about 4.1 billion euros in revenue that was expected from the tax.

Bombshell Revelations: Confirmed FBI Cover-Up Of Flight 253 Attacks p1

Click this link ..... http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=9217

US Spies: Israel or UK Forged Nukes Report on Iran

Philip M. Giraldi, PhD, is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer. He was also foreign policy advisor to Ron Paul during his last presidential run.

US intelligence sources have confirmed Iran's assertions that a document published by a British daily about Tehran's nuclear program is a fabrication.

According to a former CIA official, US intelligence agents have found that the document, which was published by the Times of London on December 14, was fabricated by Israel or Britain, the Inter Press Service (IPS) reported on Monday.

The IPS report was penned by renowned investigative journalist Gareth Porter.

Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say the US had nothing to do with forging the document.

He added, however, that US intelligence sources mainly suspect Israel of carrying out the forgery, although, they do not rule out the possibility of the British having played a part in it.

The Times article said that Iran had been secretly experimenting on a key component of a nuclear bomb called the "neutron initiator."

Right after the article was published, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast dismissed the report as completely "baseless."

The Times article did not identify the source of the document, but rather quoted comments by "an Asian intelligence source," who claimed that his government believes that Tehran has been working on a neutron initiator since 2007.

"An Asian intelligence source" is a term some news media use to refer to Israeli intelligence officials.

The Times story came just before US politicians and their European allies launched a new round of verbal attacks against Iran, threatening it with tougher sanctions and the possibility of an Israeli military attack.

Porter wrote US media reports have left the impression that US intelligence analysts are confident about the document's authenticity. This is while it has been widely reported that they have now had a year to assess the issue.

Although Giraldi's intelligence sources did not reveal all the reasons that led analysts to conclude that the document had been fabricated, they did note that the source of the story itself was suspicious.

"The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government," Giraldi said.

Other than The Times, Murdoch's press empire includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post, all of which are known for the strongly pro-Israeli tone they take in their reports.

Porter added that other than its source, the two-page document itself included a number of giveaways that also indicated fraud.

For example, the image of the Farsi-language original of the document, which was also published by the Times lacked any confidentiality marking, although the subject of the document logically put it into the highly classified category.

Furthermore, the document did not include information about the issuing office or the intended recipients. It vaguely referred to "the Centre," "the Institute," "the Committee," and the "neutron group."

The ambiguity was in stark contrast with the concreteness of the plans, which included detailed instructions about recruiting eight individuals for different tasks for very specific numbers of hours and for a four-year time frame.

The vagueness can be explained by reasoning that security markings and identifying information in a forged document would increase the likelihood of potential errors that could expose the fraud.

The absence of any date on the document also conflicted with the rest of the information, which came in detail. The 2007 timeline was only introduced by the Times' unnamed foreign sources.

A clear motive for suggesting the early 2007 date would be to appease the Israeli government by discrediting the US intelligence community's November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran was not working on a nuclear bomb.

The biggest reason for discarding the document as fraudulent is its attempt to suggest past Iranian experiments on Polonium-210 for use in a neutron initiator, a claim which was ruled out by the UN nuclear watchdog in a February 2008 report.

This is not the first time that Giraldi has been tipped off by his intelligence sources on forged documents. He was the individual who identified those responsible for the two most notorious forged documents in recent US history.

In 2005, Giraldi identified Michael Ledeen, the extreme right-wing former consultant to the Pentagon, as an author of the fabricated letter, which introduced the allegation that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger.

That letter gave the administration of former US President George W. Bush the opportunity to claim that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program, an allegation that was proven completely false following the invasion of Iraq.

Giraldi also identified officials in the "Office of Special Plans" who worked under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith as those who forged a letter, allegedly written by a Saddam intelligence aide, about an operation to arrange for an unidentified shipment from Niger.