Forbes List:Bill Gates No Longer World’s Richest Man
Mar 11, 2010 News & Events
Carlos Slim Helu takes No. 1 spot on Forbes World’s Billionaires list as a record 164 10-figure titans return to the ranking amid the global economic recovery.
For the third time in three years, the world has a new richest man.
Riding surging prices of his various telecom holdings, including giant mobile outfit America Movil ( AMX – news – people ), Mexican tycoon Carlo Slim Helu has beaten out Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the wealthiest person on earth and nab the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires.
Slim’s fortune has swelled to an estimated $53.5 billion, up $18.5 billion in 12 months. Shares of America Movil, of which Slim owns a $23 billion stake, were up 35% in a year.
In Pictures: The 20 Richest People In The World
That massive hoard of scratch puts him ahead of Microsoft ( MSFT – news – people ) cofounder Bill Gates, who had held the title of world’s richest 14 of the past 15 years.
Gates, now worth $53 billion, is ranked second in the world. He is up $13 billion from a year ago as shares of Microsoft rose 50% in 12 months. Gates’ holdings in his personal investment vehicle Cascade ( CAE – news – people ) also soared with the rest of the markets.
Buffett’s fortune jumped $10 billion to $47 billion on rising shares of Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK – news – people ). He ranks third.
The Oracle of Omaha shrewdly invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs ( GS – news – people ) and $3 billion in General Electric ( GE – news – people ) amid the 2008 market collapse. He also recently acquired railroad giant Burlington Northern Santa Fe ( BNI – news – people ) for $26 billion.
In his annual shareholder letter Buffett wrote, “We’ve put a lot of money to work during the chaos of the last two years. When it’s raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble.”
Many plutocrats did just that. Indeed, last year’s wealth wasteland has become a billionaire bonanza. Most of the richest people on the planet have seen their fortunes soar in the past year.
Tags: Bill Gates, Carlos Slim Helu, Richest Man
Will US-NATO Start World War III by Attacking Iran?
Mar 11, 2010 News & Events, Videos
A UN nuclear watchdog report suggests Iran could be developing a nuclear bomb, apparently confirming long-held suspicions in the West. But Tehran denies the claims, again insisting that its atomic intentions are peaceful. Michel Chossudovsky, who’s from an independent Canadian policy research group, believes that what Iran says hardly matters, because the U.S. is planning for war…
Man Grabbed in Karachi Not Gadahn
Mar 9, 2010 News & Events, Pakistan
By MARTHA RADDATZ and NICK SCHIFRIN
WASHINGTON, Mar. 7, 2010
A Taliban leader who goes by the name Abu Yahya, just like American-turned-al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, was picked up in Karachi in recent days, but that person is not Gadahn, a senior Pakistani government official told ABC News.
Reports of the capture of an American-born al-Qaeda member by Pakistani authorities gave rise to speculation over whether it was Gadahn, the 31-year-old California-born Muslim convert who has been wanted since 2004.
The official told ABC News the leader who was arrested was possibly Abu Yahya Mujahdeen al-Adam, said to be another American member of al Qaeda, but the Pakistanis have yet to make that identification positive, the official said.
Dawn, an English-language newspaper, reports that Abu Yahya Mujahdeen al-Adam is an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen from Pennsylvania who helps command foreign militants fighting in Afghanistan and coordinates activities from Dubai.
The newspaper reports he is a close aide of Osama bin Laden and one of the “main financiers” of al Qaeda, and that he was arrested with the help of U.S. intelligence, and has been transported to Islamabad for interrogation.
Pakistani intelligence officials told ABC News that Karachi, the sprawling port city far from the Afghan border where Yahya was picked up, is where many other recent arrests have been made.
In the last six weeks, at least a half dozen senior Taliban commanders have been arrested, including the Afghan Taliban’s military commander, two Afghan Taliban shadow governors and the son-in-law of Taliban chief Mullah Omar.
The word of an arrest of an American in Pakistan came just hours after the release of the lastest video of Gadahn, in which he praised Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army major accused in the Fort Hood massacre last November.
Girls Hostel Rawalpindi on Fire Footage
Mar 9, 2010 News & Events, Pakistan
Tags: Girls Hostel, Rawalpindi
Al-Qaeda Video Calling for Attacks On U.S. Arrives Days After Pentagon Shooting
Mar 8, 2010 News & Events
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
March 8, 2010
According to the corporate media, John Patrick Bedell was not only inspired by the 9/11 truth movement and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, he was also motivated by the Fort Hood attack.
“CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports investigators are confident that Bedell acted alone, and there is no indication he was connected to any terrorist organizations or under any terrorist influences. That said, police were keeping an open mind and looking into the possibility that Bedell may have been inspired by the Fort Hood attack,” CBS News reported on March 5.
Determined to put Rahm Emanuel ’s maxim to good use — never let a good crisis go to waste — the murky spook forces behind the terror group named after a database have responded.
“Al-Qaida’s American-born spokesman on Sunday called on Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces to emulate the Army major charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood,” reports the Associated Press. “In a 25-minute video posted on militant Web sites, Adam Gadahn described Maj. Nidal Hasan as a pioneer who should serve as a role model for other Muslims, especially those serving Western militaries.”
After the whack job white supremacist James von Brunn shot and killed a guard at the Holocaust museum in Washington last year, Glenn Beck said al-Qaeda will work with anybody including members of the 9/11 truth movement (see video below). In January of this year, Beck expanded his outrageous fantasy by stating that there are truthers in the White House and they plan to kill Obama.
In February of 2009, a video surfaced featuring Kuwaiti dissident Abdullah al-Nafisi telling a room full of supporters in Bahrain that al-Qaeda is casing the U.S. border with Mexico to assess how to send terrorists and weapons into the U.S. “In the video, obtained and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, al-Nafisi also suggests that al Qaeda might want to collaborate with members of native U.S. white supremacist militias who hate the federal government,” The Washington Times reported on June 3, 2009.
The Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI for short, was founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, a former colonel in the Israel Defense Forces (Intelligence Branch) from 1968 until 1988, acting head of civil administration in the West Bank from 1977 to 1982, and Israeli-born Meyrav Wurmser, a neocon affiliated with the Hudson Institute.
Wurmser co-authored A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the neocon strategy paper calling for attacking Iraq. Her husband, David Wurmser, a key Bush era neocon, stands accused of passing classified information to Ahmad Chalabi and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Once upon a time, such behavior was considered treason.
“You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that military bases are the only high-value targets in America and the West. On the contrary, there are countless other strategic places, institutions and installations which, by striking, the Muslim can do major damage,” Adam Gadahn declares in the latest video.
Prior to becoming a senior operative, cultural interpreter, spokesman and media advisor for the mirage commonly referred to as al-Qaeda, Adam Yahiye Gadahn was known as Adam Pearlman. Gadahn’s Jewish paternal grandfather, Carl Pearlman, was a prominent urologist and was a “zealous supporter” of Israel. Osama bin Laden, the dead CIA asset, has long called for a holy war against Israel, most recently on January 22, 2009.
Gadahn and his handlers obviously will not support the actions of a pot-smoking mental case supposedly posing as a Libertarian and 9/11 truther. However, they will exploit the current hysteria surrounding Bedell’s ill-fated attack on police officers outside of the Pentagon. In this way, for the causal headline reader and non-observant consumer of corporate media, al-Qaeda and 9/11 truth are rolled together in a propaganda potpourri designed to demonize opposition to the government and portray it as a threat.
Tags: Al-Qaeda, attacks, Pentagon Shooting
American Al Qaeda terrorist Adam Gadahn arrested, Pakistan claims
Mar 8, 2010 News & Events, Pakistan
Pakistani officials claimed Sunday they nabbed Adam Gadahn, the treasonous Californian Al Qaeda leader who has long been on Washington’s most wanted list.
But high-level U.S. officials said they could not verify the report – and there were growing indications it could be a mixup.
President Obama did not mention what would be a welcome blow against terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden when he made a statement to reporters about the Iraqi election yesterday. He ignored a shouted question about Gadahn.
“We are checking with Pakistani authorities to confirm one way or the other,” said FBI spokesman William Carter.
A Pakistani official told Agence France-Presse that “we thought it could have beena big catch, but it appeared it’s not Gadahn.”
The confusing swirl of reports began in Karachi, where The Associated Press and several news outlets quoted Pakistani officials announcing the arrest of Bin Laden’s American mouthpiece.
An English-language paper ran a photo of a man said to be Gadahn being taken away with a bag on his head. Later reports suggested the arrested man might not be Gadahn but a Taliban commander with a similar name.
Gadahn, 31, is the first American to be charged with treason since World War II. If convicted, he would face the death penalty.
Stories about Gadahn’s arrest came just hours after he appeared in a new Internet video urging American Muslims to go on shooting sprees like Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s at Fort Hood, Tex., last year.
Gadahn’s arrest would be the latest in a series of successes in the new partnership between Pakistan’s once-balky intelligence services and the CIA.
Known in Al Qaeda videos as “Azzam the American” or Azzam al-Amereeki, Gadahn was born in Oregon to a Jewish family.
His hippie father converted to Christianity before his son was born, changing the family name from Pearlman to Gadahn, after an Old Testament warrior.
Adam Gadhan was home-schooled in Southern California on a goat farm without running water. Once an avid fan of Death Metal music, he converted to Islam at 17 and moved to Pakistan in 1998 at 20.
Intelligence officials say he joined up with Al Qaeda after 9/11 and attended terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
By 2004, he was a senior Al Qaeda operative and became Bin Laden’s top propagandist, appearing in numerous Internet videos calling for the destruction of America. In a 2008 video he tore up his U.S. passport on camera and urged Americans to launch domestic terrorist attacks.
He is believed to report directly to Bin Laden’s right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Gadahn was branded a traitor in 2006 by a federal grand jury in Santa Ana, Calif. He would be tried in a federal court, like California native John Walker Lindh and ex-Chicago gang member Jose Padilla.
With James Gordon Meek in Washington
Tags: Adam Gadahn, afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Gadahn arrested, Pakistan, Qaeda terrorist Adam Gadahn, terrorist, war on terror
Sex scandals and stampedes put India’s ‘godmen’ in focus
Mar 8, 2010 News & Events
MUMBAI: With two sex scandals and a fatal stampede, it’s been a bad week for India’s “godmen”, the self-styled Hindu ascetics whose followers range from farmers and housewives to politicians and rock stars.
On Thursday, 63 people — all of them women and children — were crushed to death in a stampede at an ashram run by a popular holy man in northern Uttar Pradesh state.
The day before, angry villagers in the southern state of Karnataka attacked another religious retreat after a television station aired footage purportedly showing its long-haired 30-something guru fondling two women.
And last weekend, police in the capital New Delhi revealed they had arrested a godman for allegedly running a vice ring involving air-hostesses, college students and housewives.
For sceptics, the sex scandals show that many godmen, despite their spiritual air and claims of mystical powers, are nothing more than confidence tricksters craving cash and power.
“Ninety-five per cent of godmen give the remaining five per cent a bad name,” joked Dipankar Gupta, a former sociology professor at Jawarhalal Nehru University in New Delhi.
“Most of them are not (holy). They’re charlatans. That’s why they crave indulgence from the rich and the gullible. This happens all the time. I don’t know why people fall for them.”
But for many Indians, these gurus play an integral role in daily life, taking their place in the country’s vast spiritual supermarket to be handpicked as a pathway to enlightenment.
Foreign tourists have flocked to India seeking spiritual awakening and an escape from their hectic lives in the West, ever since the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi captivated The Beatles with his teachings on transcendental meditation.
Today, popular gurus include Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, the so-called “hugging saint” of Kerala, and Sathya Sai Baba, a wild-haired south Indian godman who claims to be the reincarnation of a 19th century yogi, Sai Baba of Shirdi.
Both have massive followings and hundreds of spiritual centres and charitable foundations working in areas like health and education around the globe.
Mata Amritanandamayi Devi — known as “Amma” or mother — pledged 23.4 million dollars in aid for victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami, as well as free education and counselling for children orphaned in the tragedy.
Padmini Sardesai, a 72-year-old part-time shop worker from south Mumbai who also acts in commercials, is wary of modern-day gurus but like many Hindus reveres Sai Baba of Shirdi.
“He’s like a god,” she told AFP. “He has done some miracles. I have faith in him because he’s the incarnation of Dattatreya (a combination of the three gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva).
“Whatever your wish it will be fulfilled. Praying to someone like Sai Baba is for mental peace. These people won’t harm you. They will show you the proper path.”
The latest scandals, however, are further ammunition for critics of modern-day godmen like Sanal Edamaruku, head of the Indian Rationalist Association, which campaigns for scientific reasoning over superstition.
“All godmen are fake,” he said. “All godmen work on the basis of the gullibility of people… they only want power and money.”
He said anyone can don saffron robes and proclaim to be a godman or join the ranks of the saddhus — the unwashed, wandering mystics often found through a fug of marijuana smoke in places like the holy city of Varanasi on the River Ganges.
Shiv Murat Dwivedi, arrested last weekend in New Delhi, “used the guise of spirituality” as well as the offer of money, expensive gifts and cars to lure young women into a prostitution, from which he made millions, police said.
Edamaruku suggested a need for answers in an increasingly complex world explained the cult of godmen.
“It’s people who want instant solutions, instant miracles, they need something in front of them,” he said.
Gupta agreed. “People want customised, designer religion and the public is becoming more and more individualistic,” he said. “They can’t look for the usual routes to salvation.”
Hinduism — with its many gods, magic and mysticism — leads people to seek out such individuals to fulfil the emotional desire to believe or even a basic human need to congregate, he added.
Source Dawn.com
Tags: India's 'godmen', Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh
Mossad: Might or myth?
Mar 7, 2010 News & Events
by As`ad AbuKhalil
The assassination of Mahmoud Mabhouh, a Hamas commander, in Dubai is a watershed moment in the long history of the Mossad.
Israeli officials who ordered the assassination did something that Zionists have always done – underestimate their Arab opponents.
In his first impressions of Arabs, David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, compared them to children.
Ahad Ha’Am, an essayist considered to be the father of cultural Zionism, described the merciless beatings that Arabs were subjected to for no reason by Zionist settlers – the pioneers of the movement – in the late 19th century.
Other Zionists have compared the Arabs of Palestine to animals. All this prejudice would in the 1960s and 1970s benefit the rise of sophisticated Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements which would plan operations keeping in mind that the Israelis would likely underestimate their chances of success.
Hezbollah, established in the early 1980s, used that understanding when it established a resistance movement that would beat Israel at its own game – on the battlefield and in the war of intelligence.
More recently, Israeli officials assumed that the UAE’s rulers would not pose a challenge to their activities in the emirates, especially after the welcoming of Israeli tennis player Andy Ram to the Dubai Championships with great fanfare in February 2009. But little did they know that an effective and stubborn man serves as Dubai’s chief of police.
Israel has traditionally used its technological superiority and prowess over Arabs to operate freely in the Middle East.
Relatedly, the military gap between Israel and the Arabs remains quite insurmountable by order of the US and its allies.
But the technology of surveillance and intelligence is now available to most governments, and even ordinary citizens can assume the classic roles once reserved for characters in spy novels.
The assassination team in Dubai did not expect that their pictures would be plastered all around the world, and that their names (in their real passports) would be circulated on Interpol’s (“Red Notice”) wanted list.
The assassins did not think that the Dubai security officers would be capable of operating security cameras, retrieving the data therein and piece together how 26 of their agents were able to carry out the hit on al-Mabhouh.
The Zionist state has operated on the assumption that its enemies do not progress and are incapable of learning from past mistakes. This explains why Golda Meir, the late Israeli prime minister, ignored the late Jordanian King Hussein when he flew to Israel to warn of an impending Egyptian-Syrian attack in 1973. She brushed it off as highly unlikely and out of character for the Arabs.
Israeli strategists did not think that the Arabs could muster the courage, let alone the military acumen, to launch a pre-emptive attack – for the first time since the Zionist invasion of Palestine.
Inferior and dispensable
Israel has traditionally used a two-pronged strategy when dealing with the Arabs: The first is to treat them like inferior, dispensable human beings.
Israel first began using mass violence against Arabs, not for any military designs but for purposes of terrorising a whole population late in the 19th century.
Menachem Begin, the late prime minister, admitted as much in his book, The Revolt.
The Deir Yassin massacre, which was led by Begin in 1948, was targeting not only the 750 Arab residents of the village living just beyond the UN-demarcated Israeli border, but was also designed to terrorise the Palestinian and Arab at large.
Begin would later say: “The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory at Deir Yassin.”
Such killings of Arab civilians in large numbers and for no discernible military reason – the casualties do not even fall under what is now savagely dubbed “collateral damage” – has become part and parcel of Zionist politico-military strategy.
Secondly, the Zionist state has also terrorised the Arabs by exaggerating the reach and knowledge of its intelligence arm, the Mossad. It sought to convince the Arabs that Israel knows what they are doing and, in time, the name Mossad became synonymous with swift punishment, daring, and cruelty.
But cruelty toward Arabs was never a concern for Western public opinion, for Arab regimes also dealt harshly with their own citizens. Nevertheless, the undeserved image of the Mossad remained.
Botched operations
Israeli intelligence failures began very early on. In 1954, the Egyptian regime uncovered a network of Egyptian Jewish spies who were engaged in terror attacks on British and US targets in Egypt in what later came to be known as the Lavon Affair.
When the Egyptian government tried the spies in court, Israeli media claimed that Cairo had no case, was perpetrating lies and conspiracies against Tel Aviv, and fostering “anti-Semitism”. This knee-jerk reaction has become an almost automatic response whenever Israeli policies are scrutinised.
But of course, the Egyptians turned out to be right; the operation was such a debacle that it led to the eventual resignation of Pinhas Lavon, the then Israeli defence minister.
The second case was that of the Israeli spy, Elie Cohen who was smuggled into Syria, where he posed as a Syrian citizen with considerable financial resources and with Arab nationalist convictions.
The case was turned into a cheap paperback novel and into two movies, at least. But the ability for a Mossad operative to successfully infiltrate the highest echelons of the Syrian regime is wildly exaggerated.
Cohen was never the high-ranking person that Israeli propaganda made him out of to be. To be sure, he did operate his house like a brothel, and invited prostitutes to entertain various Syrians, but he was not really privy to state secrets of any relevance.
The story of his relations with then president Amin Hafiz was invented by Israel and echoed by his enemies within Syria. The affair concocted by the Israelis was even mired in historical inaccuracies. The Israelis had widely disseminated the notion that Cohen had met Hafiz when he served in Syria’s embassy in Argentina. But Cohen’s presence in Argentina did not match the years that Hafiz spent there.
Stansfield M Turner, the head of the CIA from 1977 to 1981, perhaps said it best when he described the Mossad as a mediocre intelligence agency which excelled in public relations.
Munich
And Mossad’s real achievements have been in the realm of public relations.
According to Mossad propagandist literature, one of their greatest achievements has been the pursuit and elimination of the “red prince”.
The Mossad supposedly scored its biggest hits when it killed the Palestinian Black September perpetrators of the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
But in fact, the Mossad had no clue what Black September was all about. They assumed the group was being led by Abu Hasan Salamah – the red prince, while his role in the faction turned out to be rather minor.
Not only did the Mossad spend years in pursuing Abu Hasan but they also managed to kill an innocent Moroccan waiter in Norway in 1973, mistaking him for the Palestinian.
The Mossad agents behind that bungled assassination were captured by Norwegian police but subsequently released. Israeli agents later assassinated Wael Zuaytir, a Palestinian scholar who had nothing to do with the Black September group.
In 1979, Mossad agents assassinated Abu Hasan in what was described as a surgical kill; a massive car bomb exploded as his motorcade passed through downtown Beirut, leaving scores of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians dead and wounded.
In what would be a further intelligence failure for the Mossad, Black September’s real mastermind emerged years later as Abu Dawoud, the nom du guerre of Mohammed Oudeh, a PLO commander who returned to Palestine in 1996 under the Oslo peace agreements.
In 1999, he published his memoirs and revealed that he had been the brains behind the Munich operation. He is believed to be living in Syria.
Kidnapping Nasrallah
Through film and literature, the media has romanticised the undercover world of intrigue, espionage and targeted killings and in doing so has elevated the Mossad to a station it does not deserve.
Mossad blunders are not as widely known as its invented successes, and Western governments have been more than keen to protect the image of the “formidable” Israeli spy agency.
But Israeli intelligence failures during the war on Lebanon in 2006 crippled the Mossad’s image in the eyes of the Arabs
During the summer of 2006, as Israeli jets pounded Beirut, the Mossad claimed they had captured Iranian soldiers in South Lebanon. That, and the kidnapping of a poor Lebanese farmer because his name is Hassan Nasrallah, later turned out to be in error.
Arab media were left scratching their heads; could the Mossad have been so inept as to fail to distinguish that there are many Arabs who have the name Hassan Nasrallah and in doing so capture a farmer who had nothing to do with Hezbollah?
As it turned out, the Mossad had a very inaccurate picture of Hezbollah capabilities and abilities; it failed to kill one Hezbollah regional or national leader despite blustering threats.
In summation, the assassination in Dubai will only serve to convince the Arabs that Israel is not as formidable as they were led to believe. Ironically, Arab governments also helped in exaggerating the powers of the Mossad because they wanted their citizens to remain passive and inactive. But the Arabs now know better.
They now know that some of the Arab intelligence services that are characteristically ridiculed are in fact more effective and capable than the highly touted Mossad.
The conflict with Israel is a very long one: it spanned over a century, and it will probably be settled before the end of this century, but not to Israel’s satisfaction.
As’ad AbuKhalil is a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of the Angry Arab blog. This article first appeared on Al Jazeera International.
Tags: As`ad AbuKhalil, Hammas, Mossad, Zionism
9/11 a big lie, pretext to occupy Afghanistan: Ahmadinejad
Mar 7, 2010 News & Events
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists the capitalist system, established by Israelis, is on verge of collapse, adding that the 9/11 was a set-up to occupy Afghanistan and wage a so-called ‘war on terror.’
The president described the September 11, 2001 destruction of the twin World Trade Center buildings in New York as a preconceived “scenario and a sophisticated intelligence measure” and emphasized that the 9/11 incident was a “big lie intended to serve as a pretext for fighting terrorism and setting the grounds for sending troops to Afghanistan.”
“Depredation, bullying and killing the reality of humanity are the outcomes of the capitalist way of thinking,” Ahmadinejad said on Saturday.
He deplored crimes by arrogant powers, saying, “They carry out heinous killings and acts of terror in the world under the guise of [defending] human rights.”
“The US attack and NATO expedition into the region were merely aimed at saving liberal democracy and the capitalist thought,” said the president.
Ahmadinejad said the September 11, 2001 attacks were part of a “scenario and a complicated intelligence move” and added, “The September 11 incident was a big lie aimed at finding the pretext to fight terrorism but it prepared the ground for adventurism in Afghanistan.”
The Iranian president pointed to the arrest of the leader of the Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi, and said his capture was a disgrace for the intelligence services of the US and Israel.
Rigi was captured by Iranian security forces on February 23. He was aboard a passenger jet flying to Kyrgyzstan from the UAE when his plane was grounded in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas.
A few hours after Rigi’s arrest, Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi said that the notorious villain was at a US base 24 hours prior to being captured by Iranian forces, adding that the Americans had issued an Afghan passport for him.
In his confessions, Rigi revealed details about his ties with some intelligence agencies such as the CIA and said that he had closely cooperated with the security services of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Tags: 9/11, afghanistan, Israelis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
US Creates Terror Groups, Hamid Gul
Mar 5, 2010 News & Events, Pakistan
PressTv
Former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency Hamid Gol says the United States is seeking to create and train terrorist groups in the region.
In a Wednesday interview with Fars news agency, Gol said Washington had been making efforts to destabilize the region through supporting groups like the Pakistan-based Jundallah terrorist group.
Gol went on to say that such attempts by the US intelligence agencies were in particular directed at fomenting unrest in Iran.
“The US intelligence agencies pursued just one goal by forming Rigi’s group which was provoking unrests and instability in Iran,” Gol was quoted as saying.
He also accused Washington and its western allies of seeking to strain ties between Iran and Pakistan.
The remarks come days after Iranian security forces arrested Jundallah ringleader Abdolmalek Rigi while he was aboard a Kyrgyz airliner on a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Kyrgyzstan.
In his confession broadcast by Press TV in late February after his arrest, Rigi talked about offers of unlimited support by the US spy agency, the CIA, saying the Americans offered to “cooperate with us” and “promised to give us a base along the border with Afghanistan near Iran.”
Rigi’s group has claimed responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks in Iran. The group has carried out murder, armed robbery, kidnappings, acts of sabotage and bombings inside Iran.
