fufor's unregelmässige news

EGYPT JOINS ISRAEL IN DENYING MEDICAL AID TO GAZANS
January 22, 2008



When Menachem Begin signed a Peace Treaty with Anwar Sadat, I am positive that neither even dreamt this would mean the beginning of the end for the Palestinian people.

Twenty eight years down the line the Egyptians are proving their loyalties to the zionist state by denying patients from the besieged regions of Gaza medical treatment.

The following, just in from Gaza, talks about this new situation…..

Palestinian women storm Rafah crossing; Egyptian police use water cannons, clubs to suppress protesters

Gaza – Ma’an – Hundreds of Palestinian women were beaten by Egyptian security forces after the women broke through barbed wire on the Rafah border into Egypt from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday afternoon.

Egyptian riot police used water cannons and clubs to suppress a surging crowd of demonstrators. Women shouted “God is great!” while rushing the gate into Egyptian territory. A number of women lost consciousness in the ensuing violence.

The security forces arrested the women, using dogs to break up the crowd.

Demonstrations began at the Rafah crossing point on Monday, with protesters calling for the border to be opened to allow Palestinian patients into Egypt for medical treatment.

After months of tightening sanctions, Israel imposed a total lockdown on the Gaza Strip on Friday, blocking shipments of food, medicine, and fuel oil. Running on emergency generators, Gaza’s hospitals were treating only the most serious cases.

Crowds of women gathered at Rafah crossing on Tuesday morning in a demonstration organized by Change and Reform, the Hamas bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

PLC member Huda Na’im said the demonstrators have no intention of backing down: “We won’t surrender until they lift the blockade.”

Hamas said that Gaza’s problems will not solved be by shipments of fuel alone, but that a complete end to the embargo that has beseiged one and a half million people in the coastal strip was necessary.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that the demonstrations and sit-ins will not stop until the blockade is lifted.
http://tinyurl.com/23mf72

Stock Markets Plunge Worldwide
01-21-2008

LONDON (AP) - Stocks fell sharply worldwide Monday following declines on Wall Street last week amid investor pessimism over the U.S. government's stimulus plan to prevent a recession.

U.S. markets were closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but the downbeat mood from last week's market declines there circled through Europe, Asia and the Americas. Britain's benchmark FTSE-100 slumped 5.5 percent to 5,578.20, France's CAC-40 Index tumbled 6.8 percent to 4,744.15, and Germany's blue-chip DAX 30 plunged 7.2 percent to 6,790.19.

In Asia, India's benchmark stock index tumbled 7.4 percent, while Hong Kong's blue-chip Hang Seng index plummeted 5.5 percent to 23,818.86, its biggest percentage drop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Canadian stocks fell as well, with the S&P/TSX composite index on the Toronto Stock Exchange down 4 percent in early afternoon trading. In Brazil, stocks plunged 6.9 percent on the main index of Sao Paulo's Bovespa exchange.

Investors dumped shares because they were skeptical that an economic stimulus plan President Bush announced Friday would shore up the economy that has been battered by problems in its housing and credit markets. The plan, which requires approval by Congress, calls for about $145 billion worth of tax relief to encourage consumer spending.

"We've taken our lead from the Asian markets who have not been impressed by the U.S. There's debate if there's going to be a recession in the U.S. I don't think there's much chance of that though," said Richard Hunter an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers Ltd. in London.

Concerns about the outlook for the U.S. economy, a major export market for Asian companies, has sent the region's markets sliding in 2008. Just last Wednesday, the Hang Seng index sank 5.4 percent.

"It's another horrible day," said Francis Lun, a general manager at Fulbright Securities in Hong Kong. "Today it's because of disappointment that the U.S. stimulus (package) is too little, too late and investors feel it won't help the economy recover."

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 index slid 3.9 percent to close at 13,325.94 points, its lowest close in more than two years. China's Shanghai Composite index plunged 5.1 percent, partly on worries about mainland Chinese banks' exposure to risky U.S. mortgage investments.

"People are certainly nervous about a potential recession in the U.S. spilling over to the rest of the world," said David Cohen, Director of Asian Economic Forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore.

"Maybe there's still some wariness about politicians are able to come up with a compromise and act sufficiently quickly" on a stimulus package, Cohen said. "I think the impact would be marginal anyway."

Investors took cues from the negative reaction to the president's plan on Wall Street on Friday, when the Dow Jones industrial average slid 0.5 percent to 12,099.30, bringing its loss for the year so far to nearly 9 percent.

Traders also have shrugged off assurances from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the U.S. central bank is ready to act aggressively—which means a likely big interest rate cut later this month—to help the sagging economy.

Some analysts predict that Asia won't suffer dramatically from a U.S. recession because increased trade and investment within Asia has made the region less reliant on the United States than in the past. Excluding Japan, 43 percent of Asia's exports go to other nations in the region, Lehman Brothers calculates, up from 37 percent in 1995.

But on Monday, uncertainty and pessimism reigned.

In Tokyo trading, exporters got hit hard, partly because of the yen's recent strength against the dollar. Toyota Motor Corp. lost 3.3 percent and Honda Motor Co. sank 3.4 percent.

Shares of Bank of China dropped 6.4 percent in Hong Kong after the South China Morning Post newspaper reported that the bank is expected to announce a "significant write-down" in U.S. subprime mortgage securities, citing unidentified sources. In Shanghai, the bank's stock declined 4.1 percent.

India's the benchmark Sensex index fell 1,353 points, or 7.4 percent—its second-biggest percentage drop ever—to 17,605.35 points. At one point, it was down nearly 11 percent.

The decline hit companies across the board, with power utility Reliance Energy Ltd. falling 16.4 percent. Major software company Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. slid 7.6 percent

"A gloomy U.S. climate has affected the global markets. Even if those markets recover, it will take sometime for the recovery to reach India because today's fall has been so drastic," said Jayant Pai, of the Mumbai investment company IL&FS Ltd.

Still, Pai and others suggested that the declines could lead to a buying opportunity.

"The sell-off today takes us close to the bottom," she said.

Since the start of the year, Japan's Nikkei index has declined 13 percent, while Hong Kong's blue-chip index is down more than 14 percent. Even China's Shanghai index—which nearly doubled last year—has fallen 6.6 percent over the same period and nearly 20 percent from its all-time closing high on Oct. 16.
http://tinyurl.com/2bdhy7

The CIA Eyes the Internet
Saturday, January 19, 2008
By Alex Constantine

Chooms: This is a TRUE story, not an execrable satire, capricious exercise in political fulmination or similar waste of petroleum ...

The next phase in the institution of fascist law enforcement involves cyber-security and the Internet. Media martinets have been making noise about cyber-terrorism lately - similar to the manner in which they raised a good scare over anthrax preceding the mailing of the spores - and the CIA is currently laying the justification for legislation that will permit spying on us via our computers with this story in the current PC World: "CIA Says Hackers Have Cut Power Grid":

"Several cities outside the U.S. have sustained attacks on utility systems and extortion demands."

No one but the CIA appears to know anything about the outages and attendant extortion demands, and now the Company - one that trains death squads and put Saddam Hussein in power - is graciously letting us in on it ...

"Criminals have been able to hack into computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities.... Speaking at a conference of security professionals on Wednesday, CIA analyst Tom Donahue disclosed the recently declassified attacks while offering few specifics on what actually went wrong.

"Criminals have launched online attacks that disrupted power equipment in several regions outside of the U.S., he said, without identifying the countries affected. The goal of the attacks was extortion, he said."

Again, vagaries, no specifics - as if he were making the whole thing up ...

"'We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands,' he said in a statement posted to the Web on Friday by the conference's organizers, the SANS Institute. 'In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet.'"

How did media around the world miss THAT ONE, especially in cities thrown into blackness and disarray by these vicious criminal "outages." There must have been looting, chaos, casualties. But why is this secret information suddenly fit for lay consumption? ...

'According to Mr. Donahue, the CIA actively and thoroughly considered the benefits and risks of making this information public, and came down on the side of disclosure,' SANS said in the statement."

Risks? Anyone who thinks secrecy is necessary in this case may WORK for the CIA, which is holding all related information closely to its blood-stained vest:

"One conference attendee said the disclosure came as news to many of the government and industry security professionals in attendance."

It may also come as a surprise to the cities around the world subject to these hideous "extortion plots."

"It appeared that there were a lot of people who didn't know this already,' said the attendee, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak with the press."

OF COURSE, the disclosure "came as news" - the CIA appears to have fabricated the whole problem, or perhaps hired provocateurs as they've often done in the past, to stir up tensions, fatten the counter-terror budget ...

"He confirmed SANS' report of the talk. 'There were apparently a couple of incidents where extortionists cut off power to several cities using some sort of attack on the power grid, and it does not appear to be a physical attack,' he said."

We would all like an actual, concrete example of a power grid extortion plot, so the reporter gives us this:

"Hacking the power grid made front-page headlines in September when CNN aired a video showing an Idaho National Laboratory demonstration of a software attack on the computer system used to control a power generator. In the demonstration, the smoking generator was rendered inoperable."

The scare mongering recalls Colin Powell's tiny vial of death. Drastic steps that happen to violate civil liberties are necessary.

"The U.S. is taking steps to lock down the computers that manage its power systems, however. On Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved new mandatory standards designed to improve cybersecurity. CIA representatives could not be reached immediately for comment."

The Agency will search frantically for other existing "solutions." As it happens, in little Bavaria, Nordic Big Brother is already taking on the Beast, according to Trend News: "German state of Bavaria to go ahead with online surveillance."

That's IT!

"The southern German state of Bavaria is to go ahead with controversial plans to permit security officials to monitor personal computers online to check for terrorist internet traffic, the state interior minister said Saturday.
A spokesman for Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann confirmed an earlier news report in the weekly Focus news magazine that Bavaria would not wait for planned federal legislation."

No time for niceties like overhauling the Bavarian Constitution.

This is a likely peek at our own near future if the CIA succeeds in putting the fear into the proles. Legislators are enamored of the prospects:

"Herrmann said he would put forward draft legislation in February. Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble favours similar plans to deploy a so-called 'government Trojan' to spy on the PCs of terrorist suspects. The German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe is currently considering a similar law put forward by the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and is expected to rule in the spring. Schaeuble, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), last year suggested constitutional changes to give increased powers to counter-terrorism operatives, including online searches of PCs.

"Members of the Social Democrats (SPD), the junior partner in Merkel's grand coalition, have opposed the plans on civil liberties grounds. SPD Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries has said she is not 'in principle' opposed to the idea but concerned about the practicalities of implementing legislation."

We can all be reassured that government in Bavaria and stateside will handle its new powers "responsibly."

"The head of the Federal Criminal Police (BKA), Joerg Ziercke , has criticized the debate as 'scare-mongering,' adding that at most only 10 such online searches would be carried out in any one year."
http://news.trendaz.com/index.shtml?show=news&newsid=1115506〈=EN

But when the cyber-security apparat is in place, who's to stop the CIA Homeland Security thugs from "overstepping their bounds," as they did with forced detainments, secret files and torture, to cite a few well-known examples?
http://tinyurl.com/yp5m4q