Courtesy: Evening Post.
Tamil Workers Protest in front of Indian Consulate
By Daniel P. George
Dubai Following yesterday’s protest outside the
Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs 132 workers of the Arab Light
Electro Mechanical Contracting LLC Company today marched in protest
to the Indian Consulate demanding their intervention and payment of
pending salaries. The workers arrived at the Indian Consulate at 7 a.m.
this morning and were given a patient hearing by the consulate officials
along with representatives of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
The striking workers all from the Southern Indian
state of Tamilnadu were assured that the matter would be given top priority
and that they would receive their six months pending salaries and a
release from their current employer Kannan Ravi the owner of the company
who also hails from Cuddalore District in Tamil Nadu.
Three representatives of the striking workers were taken
to the Ministry of Labour for talks with the owner while the others
were transported back to their labour camp in Satwa by sympathetic Ministry
and consulate officials who pacified the angry mob and assured them
of all action in this regard.``We will confiscate
the passport of the owner of the company put him on the watch list at
all the international airports in the UAE and see that all of you receive
your pending salaries and your release, we understand your situation
and we are with you in your fight against this gross human rights violation’’
a Ministry of Labour official told the labourers.
One of the representatives Subramanian Kadiresan told
this newspaper ``We came here with great expectations after selling
off our wive’s jewellery and taking loans on huge rates of interests
with a feeling that we would be working for a fellow Tamil and see what
he has done to us, our families back home are in a bad state this is
not the way to treat human beings.’’
The labourers pleaded with officials that they were
not willing to work for Kannan Ravi as he had harassed them and abused
them even physically. ``He has just returned after purchasing lands
back home at more than Rs. 1 crore (Dhs 1 million) he came here to take
some money back home to pay the pending amount to the seller, the labour
ministry officials should confisicate his passport otherwise he will
run away leaving us in the lurch, what right does he have to see us
and our families suffer when he cannot pay our salaries, do you call
this humanity’’ the irate protestors asked.
Sekhar Manohar another labourer said ``In so many of
our cases neither has the visa been stamped nor has the labour card
been issued, when we ask for our rights the owner brings some arabs
and tells us that they are CID officials who would take action against
us, we have even been beaten by some goons brought by the management
to the labour camp’’ they alleged.
It may be recalled that yesterday the same workers participated
in four protests yesterday in Dubai to demand their wages and better
living conditions, following a series of protests last month.The men
are all paid Dh700 a month and said they paid about Dh7,000 in India
to work in the UAE. The protest by workers at
Al Hamed on September 19 set a precedent in two ways: the demonstration
was public and the minister came down hard on the company's owners.
Mr. Sajid Aboobacker advocate and legal consultant who
is fighting on behalf of the workers said the owner has assured to pay
four months salary to all labourers by Saturday and the pending amount
by a months time.``What is surprising is the owner
has so many companies in his name and flashes visiting cards of atleast
a dozen companies in the UAE I have asked the police and labour authorities
to verify the same.’’
*Chief Reporter Evening Post
Dubai Municipality, Microsoft and Seven Seas Computers
announce long term agreement
Microsoft to provide free software licenses and conduct
monthly training for the Municipality’s staff on the latest software
applications
October 03, 2005 Dubai Municipality
has announced that it has entered into a strategic long term agreement
with software major Microsoft Corporation and leading computer systems
technology company Seven Seas Computers, by which the Municipality and
its employees will receive Microsoft products and free software licenses.
The announcement was made during the recently concluded Gitex Dubai
2005. icrosoft will provide 3000 free software licenses for MS Office
and the Windows application, to employees of Dubai Municipality for
their home use, which will enable them to use the latest & original
software and operating system. Seven Seas Computers, a Microsoft technology
partner will be in charge of the installation and consultancy services.As
per the agreement, Microsoft will also conduct monthly training programs
for the employees of Dubai Municipality on the latest versions of Microsoft
software applications, to enhance the IT skills of the staff and improve
the overall productivity of the Municipality.
“Dubai Municipality has been focusing on providing
the highest standards of service to its customers, and IT plays a very
important role in this effort. We appreciate the support extended by
Microsoft to train our staff in various software applications, which
will help them fine tune their IT skills and in the process develop
our range of eServices,” said AbdulHakim Abdul Kareem Malik, Director
of IT Department, Dubai Municipality. “Further, providing free
software licenses to our staff will encourage them to use computers
at home, extending its use to other family members as well.” “Our
participation in Gitex Dubai has tremendously helped in promoting our
services to the large number of visitors at the show. It also served
as an excellent networking platform for us to enter into fruitful discussions
especially with the private sector,” added Malik.
Also part of the Dubai Municipality - Microsoft agreement
are the Employee Purchase Program (EPP), eLearning program and training
vouchers. The Microsoft Employee Purchase Program offers employees of
Dubai Municipality significant price discounts on some of its popular
productivity and consumer products. The eLearning program delivers a
high quality learning experience to students, using streaming audio
and video software demonstrations, hands-on exercises and animations,
and courses designed by professional instructors. Further, Dubai Municipality
will also receive training vouchers for training on select courses from
Microsoft Certified Technical Education Centers (CTECs). Dubai
Municipality participated in Gitex Dubai 2005 under the Dubai eGovernment
umbrella and showcased a wide range of eServices to spread awareness
and promote these services among Dubai’s residents. The
services that Dubai Municipality is focusing on during Gitex include
E-Tendering Management Service, Centralised Billing Presentment Service,
Dubai Municipality Clinic Health Certificate, Food Control Health Certificates,
Food Import and Export and Online Advertisement Permit eService.
New Diplomacy .. E.Ahmed in Syria
The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Shri E. Ahamed
with the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka
IIwas, in Syria on September 26, 2005
Clearing the Baffles for 911
By Wayne Madsen
Top officials of the George W. Bush and, to a lesser
extent, the Clinton administration, stymied a number of coordinated
intelligence and law enforcement activities that could have prevented
both the 911 attacks and the attack, eleven months before, on the USS
Cole. These subscribers and ardent supporters
of the Project for a New American Century's (PNAC) blueprint for U.S.
global domination interfered with covert projects by the CIA, FBI, Defense
Intelligence Agency, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Treasury
Department, and National Security Agency (NSA) that could have exposed
an international organized criminal cartel that included the 911 hijackers,
arms and drug traffickers, and Mafia financiers. According to a number
of former CIA, FBI, and DIA officers, the one glaring missing link in
the 911 attacks and the USS Cole bombing is the lack of provable involvement
by organized Islamist fundamentalists, including the generic bogeyman
consistently cited by the PNAC supporters: "Al Qaeda."
The element that is common to both the Bush II and Clinton administrations
is a group of neo-conservatives who signed on to the PNAC dream of "some
catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor" to
advance their agenda in the same way the German Nazis torched the Reichstag
building to advance their agenda. Then the bogeyman of convenience was
the Communist Party, today, it is Al Qaeda.
However, much like a submarine "clearing the baffles"
by turning 120 degrees to port and starboard to detect trailing enemy
subs, the instigators of 911 cleared their own baffles by firing, suspending,
and blocking U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agents who were aggressively
pursuing the many leads that could have prevented the advancement of
the PNAC and the overall neo-conservative agenda. Without 911, there
would have been no Patriot Act, no Iraq War, no trashing of the United
Nations, no upending of the U.S. intelligence community, no Department
of Homeland Security, and no second administration for George W. Bush
and Dick Cheney. Moreover, there would be no current role in government
or policy making for those who benefited most from 911, those who were
charter members of PNAC: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Perle, newly-emergent racist leader
William Bennett, and Cheney himself.
The one individual who stands tall among those intelligence
and law enforcement officers who was aggressively pursuing the criminal
network that would carry out 911 was FBI counter-terrorism top man John
O'Neill. Ever since the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, O'Neill's
pursuit of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda had been dogged. After further
terrorist attacks at the Khobar Towers barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia;
the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and the USS Cole in Aden harbor,
O'Neill's biggest problem was not Al Qaeda, it was resistance from top
officials inside the U.S. government.
According to classified documents from French intelligence,
Al Qaeda and Bin Laden had still been under the operational control
of U.S. and British "security services" until 1995, fully
two years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. As of 1996, the
U.S. State Department continued to refuse to list Al Qaeda as a terrorist
organization. After the 1996 bombings of the Khobar Towers that killed
nineteen U.S. military personnel, the State Department under Secretary
of State Warren Christopher, FBI Director Louis Freeh, and the Saudi
government did everything they could to obstruct O'Neill's investigation.
In his aggressive pursuit of Al Qaeda, O'Neill, according to people
who worked closely with him, began to have serious concerns over complicity
by those inside the Clinton and Bush administrations. There was the
mysterious theft in the summer of 2000 of his briefcase at a Tampa hotel
during a retirement seminar where the only other participants were 150
other FBI agents. In the briefcase were a few classified emails and
a classified document called the Annual Field Office Report, a summary
of the New York FBI's office counter-terrorist and counter-intelligence
operations, including one very sensitive investigation being conducted
by another New York counter-intelligence FBI special agent, Michael
Dick. Although a lighter, cigar cutter, and expensive pen were stolen,
the papers were all accounted for when the briefcase turned up 90 minutes
later at another nearby hotel. Ninety minutes, of course, was sufficient
time to photocopy the documents and discover what O'Neill knew about
both Al Qaeda and their Israeli shadows. Special
Agent Dick, who worked closely with O'Neill, had discovered a troubling
ring of Israeli movers operating in the New York and New Jersey areas.
Furthermore, some of these Israelis not only had connections with Mossad
and other Israeli intelligence agencies but were also shadowing Arab
and Muslims that had been under investigation as potential terrorist
cells. But the Israelis were acting independently and there was no effort
made to inform the FBI or local police of any intelligence they were
obtaining on their targets. Further frustrating
Dick's counter-espionage activities against the
Israelis was the fact that they were using communications methods that
made it almost impossible to conduct communications surveillance: they
used Verizon pre-paid cell phones, two-way Nextel walkie-talkies, and
Internet cafes.
At the same time, the DEA had discovered a nationwide
ring of Israeli "art students," many of whom had past connections
to Israeli intelligence and military demolition units, were operating
in and around New York and New Jersey. What the DEA did not realize
was that the art students were also shadowing the very same Arab cells
that would later carry out the 911 attacks. And
the DEA had become aware of a drug connection between the Russian-Israeli
Mafia in Colombia and the globe trotting Saudi Prince Nayif al Saud.
The DEA's Operation Millennium was directed against this network, which
largely took down most of the network in June 1999, when 808 kilograms
of cocaine were seized in Paris. Later the DEA, in June 2000, the DEA
declassified a "SECRET DEA-6" report from the DEA's BCO (Bogota
Country Office) so that the PCO (Paris Country Office) could share the
intelligence on Saudi cocaine smuggling operations with the Paris police.
The DEA and French law enforcement had compiled tons of evidence that
Prince Nayif was transporting cocaine to support some major event.
The DEA report stated that Nayif stated that Allah had authorized him
to sell drugs and that later his reason for selling the drugs would
become known. It is significant that Nayif did not use alcohol, tobacco
or drugs. Nayif claimed diplomatic immunity and the Saudi government
threatened France and the Clinton administration with withholding lucrative
contracts if they pursued their prince. Because of O'Neill's close contacts
with DEA, this intelligence would have been made known to him as well.
The Saudi cocaine smuggling network involved organized crime elements
tied to the Russian-Israeli Mafia in Miami; Medellin, Colombia; Marbella
and Barcelona, Spain; Venezuela; Geneva; and the Netherlands. According
to the DEA report, Nayif fathered a child with a woman named Doris Salazar,
a Colombian national residing in Miami. The report also states that
an organized crime figure only identified as "Pepe," a Cuban
American who ran a "large section of the Miami Port" and who
came to Florida during the 1978 Mariel boat lift, was involved with
Nayif in "protecting narcotic shipments upon arrival in the Miami
port." The declassified SECRET DEA-6 report contains the names
of a number of cooperating witnesses in the investigation of Nayif and
the cocaine smuggling network and the author takes seriously the statement
in the document:
"Protect identities of the cooperating defendants."
The DEA originally became interested in the Israelis because they suspected
they were involved in an Israeli Mafia Ecstasy smuggling ring. However,
it soon became clear that the DEA had stumbled across something much
larger - not only were DEA offices and homes of DEA agents around the
country being cased by the Israelis, but they were also targeting Federal
judges, U.S. Marshals, Environmental Protection Agency law enforcement
officers, and FBI agents for surveillance. It
also became clear to the DEA that the Israeli art students were also
involved with certain Colombians. On March 22, 2002, at the Oak Hills
Apartment Complex in Irving, Texas, DEA agents arrested Israeli art
student Dahan Eldad, along with Elsa Beatriz Africano-Leon, a Colombian
national. On March 27, DEA agents arrested four other Israelis in the
same apartment complex, including Aran Ofek, who said his father was
a retired Israeli army two-star general. A $10,000 bond for another
arrested Israeli, Michal Gal, was placed by Ophir Baer, an employee
of Israeli telecommunications firm AMDOCS, Inc., a firm with operational
access to the telephones being used by FBI agents John O'Neill, Michael
Dick, and the DEA agents involved in tracking the Saudi/Mafia cocaine
shipments being used to support various terrorist and intelligence cells
in the United States and abroad.
On April 11, 2001, a DEA agent and a Fredericksburg, Virginia policeman
questioned two female Israeli "art student" nationals at the
shopping center in Fredericksburg. The passport for Yael Gavish contained
some interesting entry/exit visas: 13 December 2000, entry into Bogota,
Colombia and 5 February 2001, exit visa from Bogota. In addition, on
5 February there was a possible entry visa for Panama, which was followed
by a 9 March 2001 entry visa in New York City. Gavish's colleague Meirav
Balhams had a New York State identity card listing her address as 354
Paterson Plank Rd., Jersey City, New Jersey.
An FBI 9-11 suspect list dated February 22, 2002 lists
Dominik Suter, along with an Ornit Levinson, a.k.a., Omit Suter, with
an address of 312 Pavonia Avenue, Jersey City. Dominik Suter was the
head of Urban Moving Systems of nearby Weehawken, the base of operations
for two white vans with the same rear license plate that were seen parked
at the Doric Apartments (near Patterson Plank Road) and at Liberty State
Park at the same time the first plane struck the North Tower of the
World Trade Center. The occupants of both vans, all Israelis, were seen
celebrating the attack while dressed in Arab garb. Five Israelis in
one of the vans were later arrested by the local police and FBI near
Giant Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey in the late afternoon of
September 11.
O'Neill's FBI colleague, Mike Dick, aggressively investigated
this Israeli ring before and after 911. But like O'Neill, he soon found
himself removed from his duties on the orders of the then-head of the
Justice Department's Criminal Division Michael Chertoff. Dick was very
suspicious when Israeli movers quickly moved Zim American Israeli Shipping
Company out of its 10,000 square feet of office space on the 17th Floor
of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The partially Israeli
state-owned firm forfeited a $50,000 security deposit when it terminated
its lease and vacated the building one week prior to 911. According
to a non official cover (NOC) CIA source who worked with Dick, Israeli
movers moved explosives into the 17th Floor office space after Zim moved
out. After 911, Dick as well as the CIA NOC were
harassed by their superiors on orders "from above." Those
orders came from Chertoff. Dick was first relieved of his primary counter-espionage
duties, eventually sent to Pakistan to investigate the kidnapping of
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and eventually buried in
a desk job at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. According to the CIA
source, Pearl was murdered because he was getting too close to the money
trail that financed 911. The CIA source said, "the same group that
beheaded Pearl in Pakistan did the beheadings in Iraq." The source
added that the beheadings were "not Al Qaeda."
The CIA source, who emphasized his past Republican credentials, emphasized
that Al Qaeda was merely a "list" of arms dealers,
mercenaries, drug dealers, financiers, and terrorists used by the CIA
and Saudis during the Afghan Mujaheddin War against the Soviets. The
source also iterated that all the 911 hijackers had fake IDs. During
a joint CIA-FBI operation against lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in Fort
Lee, New Jersey in 2000, the CIA and FBI team leaders complained to
their superiors that their operation was being photographed by Israeli
agents, thus compromising the operation. The CIA source affirmed that
the Israelis in New Jersey were providing cover for the future hijacker
teams. It was not the first run-in by the CIA
operative with the Israelis. He once caught a senior U.S. diplomat with
close ties to Israel taking bribes from Moroccan government officials
to write favorable reports on Morocco's continued control over disputed
and oil and mineral rich Western Sahara. Attempts to follow the diplomat's
laundered money were rebuffed by Madeleine Albright's State Department.
The problems at the top of the CIA and FBI, said
the source, existed since the Russian/Soviet spies Aldrich Ames and
Robert Hanssen were able to penetrate the top levels of both agencies.
"They got there with help," said the source.
O'Neill decided that because his own agency was stymieing his own investigative
leads, he relied on DEA to handle his most sensitive inquiries and communications.
Although DEA memos later suggested that Israeli telecommunications companies,
under contract to the Justice Department, may have penetrated sensitive
DEA communications as part of an intelligence operation, O'Neill was
sure that his communications at the FBI were totally compromised and
forced to rely on the DEA because of both internal political pressure
from the FBI and Justice Department leadership and his fear that his
communications were being wiretapped. O'Neill
also relied on French intelligence to obtain wiretap information on
Al Qaeda cells. O'Neill was certain that the Saudi government and oil
industry-centric members of the Bush administration were behind the
Al Qaeda network. He was also aware of repeated negotiations between
U.S. oil companies like UNOCAL and Halliburton and Taliban representatives
dating back to 1996, the same year the Khobar Towers were bombed by
the Taliban's Al Qaeda wards. Although those negotiations ceased after
the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, they began again in earnest after
George W. Bush became president. O'Neill had
discovered that some of his Al Qaeda targets were involved in some very
un-Islamic fundamentalist activities, including drug smuggling, teenage
prostitution, and blood diamond dealing. The financial trail led O'Neill
to a network of bank accounts in London, Dubai, the Isle of Man, Guernsey,
and Jersey. The network investigated coincided exactly with the activities
being carried out by the Russian-Israeli Mafia and its links to diamond,
drug, and weapons dealers that was especially active in New York and
Florida. The future 911 hijackers and their Israeli "shadows"
had more than living in the same neighborhoods and frequenting the same
bars, video rental stores, and rental mailbox stores in common. More
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