IMPORTANT CNN STORY ABOUT IMPLICATIONS OF RAPE

Rape victims offer advice to today's college women

By Jessica Ravitz, CNN

December 15, 2009 3:56 p.m. EST

A student spoke out about being raped in her dorm room and was both confused and let down by her school's actions.

(CNN) -- If you are already in college or headed there, sit down. If you're the parent or friend of a student, listen up.

One in five college women will be raped, or experience an attempted rape, before graduation. Less than 5 percent will report these crimes to officials on or off campus, and, when they do, there's a good chance the system will let them down.

A handful of former students who spoke out and reported rapes at their schools told CNN they didn't feel protected by their universities. They were initially interviewed as part of an investigative series by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit that says it seeks to make institutions more transparent and accountable.

The women welcomed the chance to share their experiences and offer advice to students today.

"I was too young, still in too much shock and too emotionally gone to make decisions on my own," said a woman who, as a freshman, reported a rape in 2001. "I needed an adult I trusted. The school did not provide such a person."

Schools are aware it's a problem, a big problem. ... They're just not dealing with this issue head-on.
--Kristen Lombardi, Center for Public Integrity

The shocking statistics of rape and attempted rape on campus came to light in a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice nine years ago. But the recently released series published by the Washington center shows that while federal law requires schools to act on sexual assault allegations and look out for the rights of victims, many higher-education institutions aren't making the grade.

"Schools are aware it's a problem, a big problem," said Kristen Lombardi, the center's lead reporter for Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice. She pointed to a "culture of silence" and said critics say, "The biggest sin is one of omission. They're just not dealing with this issue head-on in a public manner with their student bodies."

Over the course of nine months, Lombardi and her colleagues spoke to 33 women who'd reported rapes, interviewed about 50 experts and surveyed more than 150 crisis clinics and programs on or near campuses. They also reviewed cases and combed through 10 years of complaints against institutions that had been filed with the Department of Education.

The alleged rape victims and others shared stories of secretive hearings, administrators who encouraged students to drop complaints and failures to sufficiently pursue the accusations and seek punishments when warranted. Others spoke of gag orders, confidential mediations where women sat across from their attackers and feelings of being revictimized at the institutions they thought would help them.

I was too young, still in too much shock and too emotionally gone to make decisions on my own. I needed an adult I trusted.
--Student rape victim, 2001

Many said administrators appeared more concerned with protecting their employer, or the school's reputation, than they were with protecting students. A number of women ended up leaving their universities. One student in the investigative series was written about posthumously, after killing herself.

Part of the problem stems from ignorance, said S. Daniel Carter, the director of public policy for Security on Campus, a national organization committed to advancing safety for students.

For one, he said acquaintance rapes, which dominate campus assaults, are often wrongly dismissed as "misunderstandings." And lack of coordination when it comes to responses isn't helped by the fact that too few school officials are trained to understand the impact of sexual assaults.

"People are going to do the best they can, but they only have limited knowledge based on their profession," said Connie Kirkland of George Mason University in Virginia, a school that's emerged as a model for others.

Kirkland, the school's director of sexual assault services, has held this position since the office was established in 1993, making it among the first of its kind. She said the university jumped to action soon after then-Gov. Douglas Wilder issued in 1992 recommendations regarding campus sexual assaults. And while other Virginia schools made efforts early on, Kirkland said that when Wilder left office in 1994, most schools folded their programs.

I wish I'd been less trusting of my surroundings. ... In college, you feel as if you are invincible.
--Sexually assaulted student, 2007

Meantime, budgetary woes at schools across the country mean the programs that do exist often come and go, she added.

Kirkland said nothing serves victims better than having a clear point of contact on campus, an office and professionals who are trained -- and can train others -- to understand all aspects of these sexual assault crimes, including legal options, the psychological toll and health concerns.

A compassionate and well-meaning professor, administrator or residential adviser, for example, may listen, but they can't be expected to provide full-fledged therapy or tell a student what it means to file a police report or go to court, she said. And a therapist can't offer legal navigation any better than a law enforcement officer can be responsible for emotional processing.

The women who spoke to CNN described what they would have done differently if they'd known then what they know now. In general practice, CNN does not name sexual assault victims. Here, in their own words, is their advice:

Feeling invincible, an age of denial and disbelief

"I wish I'd been less trusting of my surroundings," said a woman who said she was assaulted as a sophomore in 2007. "In college, you feel as if you are invincible, when in reality, trouble could be hiding behind the façade of a casual get-together or a party where you feel completely safe. Always keep control of yourself and your surroundings, and keep a close eye out for your friends as well.

"And if you are a friend of a person who has been assaulted, all I can say is that though it might be hard, please listen and support that person," continued the former student, who said she was "met with a response that I never expected -- laughter and disbelief. Because of that, I kept silent until my attacker assaulted a friend of mine almost a year later."

Said another rape victim: "Do not binge drink or leave drinks unattended."

Reaching out elsewhere, protecting your interests

"I wish I'd told my parents sooner," said a woman who reported a campus rape that happened in her dorm room in 2003. "My parents now know about it, but when it initially happened, they did not. I was just so ashamed.

It is important to know all of your options after you are assaulted so you can choose how to overcome this.
--College gang-rape victim, 2001

"You're too inhibited to make rational decisions, to understand emotionally what's going on," she added. "Whether it's outside counsel, law enforcement, a friend or a parent, do not rely on the university to serve your best interests. And don't sign anything."

Seeking out professionals who understand

"Get help from a professional as soon as possible. I spoke with a counselor at Victim's Assistance a few days after my assault, and that was crucial in helping me overcome this. There are a lot of different emotions after you are assaulted, and speaking with someone who really understands sexual assault is imperative," said a woman who reported a gang rape by athletes in 2001 when she was a sophomore.

Furthermore, she said, "Family members and friends are also victims when this happens to someone they care about. The technical term is 'secondary survivors.' Sometimes it is difficult for them to deal with their own emotions and still be supportive to the primary survivor. Secondary survivors should not be afraid to get professional help, or to speak with a counselor about their own feelings. That way, they are not projecting their emotions onto the primary survivor. Seeking professional help also gives you options, and it is important to know all of your options after you are assaulted so you can choose how to overcome this."

TETRACTYS MERKABA TO DELIVER A LECTURE ON MANLY P HALL' SEMINAL WORK

By Tetractys Merkaba

For those who are interested, I shall be delivering a lecture on "The Secret Teachings of all Ages", Manly P Hall's seminal work. Details on the advertisement below.

Hope to see you there!

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

By Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 -- 3:31 pm
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craigmurray Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be raped with broken bottlesThe CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is "endemic" to the country's justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a "totalitarian" state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.
Story continues below...

Suspects in Uzbekistan's gulags "were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they'd been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes."

"I was absolutely stunned -- it changed my whole world view in an instant -- to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn't do the torture ourselves," Murray said.

IT'S THE PIPELINE, STUPID

Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.

Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan's natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

"The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan," Murray noted.

Murray said part of the motive in hyping up the threat of Islamic terrorism in Uzbekistan through forced confessions was to ensure the country remained on-side in the war on terror, so that the pipeline could be built.

"There are designs of this pipeline, and if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you'll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It's what it's about. It's about money, it's about oil, it's not about democracy."

The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline is slated to be completed in 2014, with $7.6 billion in funding from the Asian Development Bank.

Murray was dismissed from his position as ambassador in 2004, following his first public allegations that the British government relied on torture in Uzbekistan for intelligence.

The following videos were posted to YouTube by the Real News Network on Oct. 26 and Nov. 4, 2009

JDILLA REMEMBERED-FROM THE FADER 2006?

Shine On…and On (Extended Sentimental Remix)

* story THE FADER

In the new issue of The FADER, our last Vinyl Archeology column of 2006 is dedicated to the stories about some of producer and rapper J Dilla’s greatest tracks, as told by the people who were part of or were affected by their creation, everyone from Erykah Badu to Just Blaze to the members of Slum Village and many more. To further our tribute to Dilla, who died earlier this year at the age of 32, we’ve put together an extended version of the article with more in-depth reminiscences and more discussed songs. Read it after the jump.

Interviews By: Eothen “Egon” Alapatt, Eric Ducker, Edwin “Stats” Houghton

“Runnin” The Pharcyde Labcabincalifornia (Delicious Vinyl 1996)
We were looking for Q-Tip to do some tracks for us. Tip would be like, “Yeah, I’m getting some stuff together…” He couldn’t do what needed to be done, but he said, “You can check my boy,” and we were like, “Okay, who is it?” He was like, “Jay Dee.” We didn’t even believe Jay Dee existed. Q-Tip’s name is Jonathan Davis, we thought it was Q-Tip pretending that was his little spin-off name. Q-Tip brought a bunch of beats over, we heard “Runnin’” and “Drop,” it was some incredible shit. Jay Dee came to Los Angeles and he had his SP1200 and he would just flip these beats like nobody’s business. This kid couldn’t fuck up a beat. I gave him one of Vince Guiraldi’s Snoopy loops like, “I always wanted to do something with this,” and he flipped this song called “Splatittorium” and I was like, “Of course.” Fat Lip and I fought physically over the way Jay Dee originally programmed “Runnin’.” Fat Lip went in and reprogrammed a very straight beat because Fat Lip was all about having the beats a certain way. I fought for it to be the way that it was because I was a stickler about people’s creative input—that’s what we hired him for. If I didn’t stop that and physically fight this guy for it, “Runnin’” would have been a different song all together on a spiritual level. Tre Hardson

“Players” Slum Village Fan-Tas-Tic Vol 1 (Goodvibe 2000)
[The sample] don’t say “players,” it say “Claire,” but we used subliminal tactics on that one. Dilla didn’t really even chop it, but by us saying “players” so much you think it says “players.” People don’t know that was a battle song, only niggas in the D know that. We was actually talking ’bout some real niggas. We’re cool today, but it was actually [deceased rapper] Proof’s group. These niggas had just dropped they CD that Dilla did most of the beats for and they was just acting arrogant, walking around real tough and we got kind of offended by it. Once we started talking about it, Wajeed [from Platinum Pied Pipers] was like a hype man, like, “Man, they just put their shit out, where’s yours?” We went over to Dilla’s house and it was one a them nights where everything was clickin. Two weeks later we came with Vol 1. They kind of inspired us by being so arrogant, so we made “Players” about them. They found out, I don’t know how…somebody told. T3

“Don’t Nobody Care About Us” Phat Kat “Dedication to the Suckers” 12-inch (House Shoes 1999)
We met at this spot called Rhythm Kitchen, it was a spot where cats used to come and get on the open mics or whatever. We got close after that, that was like in ’92. We had the little 1st Down thing pop off before Slum Village, Dilla was on the production and I was on the rhymes. We had a single that was released on Payday around the same time that Jeru tha Damaja was over there, Jay-Z was over there, Showbiz & AG. Right at the same time, Q-Tip got one of his beat tapes. That’s how that little shit popped off. But we always stayed recording, it didn’t matter who he was doing production for. There is mad stuff that I turned down. That dude got beats for eons to come, stuff that people never even heard.

There were multiple beats that I’d already rapped on that ended up on the beat tapes that Dilla sent out and that somebody bought. When the industry started jumping on the Dilla bandwagon, they was getting scraps. He kept all the hot shit for himself and the crew. After we’d seen that people were jumping on all the stuff he was doing, everything that me and Dilla recorded, we did it right on the spot. That’s why I always got the freshest shit. That whole “Dedication to the Suckas” 12-inch—I bullshit you not—we started around 8 o’clock in the evening, we was done by 11. He would load the beats up and leave or talk on the phone, let me do my rhymes, come back and the verses were done, it’s a wrap. We recorded so fast that it was nothing really but laughs and jokes. A lot of smokes and a lot of jokes, for real for real. A lot of prank phone calls. That’s all we used to do, just have fun. Phat Kat

“Get Dis Money” Slum Village Fantastic Vol 2 (Goodvibe 2000)
We would always hear stuff in progress, like for “Get Dis Money” there’s a lot of little intricate stuff in the background of that song that didn’t happen until the last two weeks before the album had to be turned in. A little singing here, a little sound effects and all that. The drum programming on “Get Dis Money” is a little off. Dilla didn’t like to use a metronome or whatever, so some would be slightly off beat, but on purpose. It’s just the way his ear was, crazy. What’s funny about “Get Dis Money” is that Baatin wrote three verses before we liked one, me and Dilla was being real hard on his rhyme. If you listen to Vol 1 and Vol 2, Baatin don’t talk about the topic at all. It ended up being like we was doing it on purpose, but originally it was not on purpose. Dilla was more upset than anybody about staying on topic. I think our fans have grown to love that about Baatin, but at the time it was frustrating. He would just talk about anything. The song is about getting money and the pursuit of it, a real simple concept, and Baatin would just start talking bout his family and then go over here and over there…you ain’t know where he’s going! Even with three verses, Dilla still took out a part of his rhyme on the final version, Dilla kind of faded him out on the end of that song. T3

“Nag Champa” Common Like Water for Chocolate (MCA 2000)
When I was working on Like Water for Chocolate I would go to Detroit like two to three times a month. This is in Jay Dee’s original basement, in the house where he grew up. That’s where Slum Village recorded their album. I went out there first with the Roots to work with Jay Dee. When we would go to Jay Dee’s basement we would always burn nag champa incense, that’s where I got that title from. I was listening to Slum Village a lot, so I was influenced by them. With “Nag Champa,” which was either the first or the second song for Like Water for Chocolate, we had it for a long time with no chorus. We kept trying to do a chorus and there wasn’t nothing good coming out. I took T3 and them to the studio and I asked them to come and work with me on this chorus. T3 started chanting something, he didn’t finish, but he just had a little idea, Jay Dee heard and started really singing it and got it together. He had an incredible voice, he actually was going to do a singing album, we used to talk about that when he would stay in LA. Common

“Little Brother” Black Star Music From and Inspired by The Hurricane (MCA 2000)
At that point J Dilla was still an enigma to me, but I was still very excited about working with him because of the work he did with Slum Village and A Tribe Called Quest and Common. Mos [Def] had gotten his beat tape that was circulating and it had a couple beats on it that Mos wanted to use. One of them ended up being used for a Sprite commercial with Mos and Mack 10 and Fat Joe, I think. Certain artists want to go in the studio and mix and master and be there for every session, Mos will just take a beat off a beat tape and be like, “It sounds good to me.” With a producer like Dilla, a lot of his shit was so orchestrated and sounded so right that you’d be like, “Yeah, that’s how I want it to sound.” Mos took the beat tape to Electric Ladyland [Studio], we laid rough vocals and we wanted to get Gil Scott-Heron to sing on it, so Mos sang the Little brother… part and we got in touch with Gil Scott-Heron a week later. When he got there he was like, “I need to take a nap,” and he slept for like three hours. Then he woke up and he sang it, but it didn’t sound right. At this point Wendy Goldstein at Capitol was like, “We need it for the soundtrack!” She had the rough version with Mos singing and Gil Scott-Heron was supposed to come back the next day. A week later we were still trying to get Gil Scott back in the studio and I heard the song on a mixtape that had been sent out for the album and I got upset because I was like, “We didn’t get to hear the mixdown, it wasn’t approved. I know Dilla didn’t get to hear the mixdown.”

I didn’t really get to work with Jay until the Kwelity album when I went out to Detroit to pick up some beats and hung out with him and Frank N Dank. It was when the Roots won the Grammy for “You Got Me.” I was watching the Grammys at his house while he was making beats downstairs. A few of his records were nominated for Grammies and I was calling downstairs like “Common’s on…the Roots are on!” These are people he’s worked closely with and he was like, “Aight,” and just kept making that beat. Talib Kweli

“Didn’t Cha Know” Erykah Badu Mama’s Gun (Motown 2000)
I went to Detroit to work with this cat that I heard a few tracks from that drove me crazy. Common took me over there, we went down to the basement, Common left and Dilla and I sat and talked. He had records wall to wall like it was a public library and he goes, “OK, I want you to look for a record.” I’m looking through these organized, tightly packed crates, and I just pulled out one record and the artist was Tarika Blue. I liked that name. I put on the first track [“Dreamflower”] and I fell in love with the song and I kept playing it over and over again and I said, “I want this.” He showed me how to loop a small part of the bassline, he was very generous in teaching you and letting you be hands on. Then I left the room and when I came back he had looped some drums to a small sample of the song and I started to write to it. I came up with the Ooooh, heeeey melody. I wrote for a few days and then the song came to be. I’d hike down to his house in mittens and a scarf. I just kind of stayed down there and worked until we got the things the way that I liked.

My songs sound different from everyone else’s Dilla songs. The sound is a little bit more bass heavy and the frequencies are definitely different than most of the songs he does, because it’s his world. But when he allowed me to come into his world, it became another kind of world. I think he allowed everybody that kind of space and that kind of freedom because he was so super creative that he would go onto something else while we learned the first part. He was ultraviolet, cosmic, dark. He went to aeronautics school so of course he was a mad scientist mathematician. I don’t know, you can’t really dissect what he was.

I used to tease him all the time. I was dating Common and he seemed really shy when Common would leave and it was only he and I there. So I would play this little game, I would pretend like I was coming on to him, walking slowly towards him like, “So…now that we are alone…” Then Common would come back into the room and I would pretend I was doing something else. This would freak Jay Dee out because he didn’t know that Common knew that I was doing it. Common would be like, “Don’t do that Erykah.” We would talk about a lot of things, but he didn’t do most of the talking, he did most of the listening. Erykah Badu

“Eve (remix)” Spacek “Eve” 12-inch (Blue 2000)
I first became aware of Dee’s work back in the early days of Spacek. I’m not exactly
sure when, it kind of feels like he’s been there forever. The thing that has always struck a chord with me in all things Dilla is the soulfulness of his approach to music, mainly in the time and feel. Then there’s his impeccable ear for chord progression and structure which I’ve always felt separates him from all other hip-hop producers. Even though you know he has the records and samples, you get the impression that those are just partial aspects of his beat making and production. His musicianship is forever present in all of his works. The way he applies the synth parts, the sound he gets from a drum kit—if he decides he wants to record his rhythm section as opposed to using a sampled beat, Dee killed it on an audio aesthetic level. The first time we crossed paths was when he touched one of our early Spacek singles “Eve” from our first album Curvatia. He displayed such grace and skill in the execution of that remix. It opened up a lot of cats to our sound back then, and I’m sure his too. Steve Spacek

“Hold Tight” Slum Village Fantastic Vol 2 (Goodvibe 2000)
Hold tight this is the last time you hear me/ I’m out now this is the last time to cheer me/
I’m a leave it in the hands of the Slum now.”—Q-Tip, “Hold Tight”

I think Q-Tip wasn’t feelin his whole situation at the time and when we went in to make that song that was waaaay unexpected. We went to New York and we was just going get a verse from him and he just surprised everyone with that. And you know man, that was a gift and a curse, more of a curse than a gift, ’cause niggas kept comparing us to Tribe Called Quest. And although we were affiliated and those were our people, our lyrical content was nothing like theirs. We always had a street edge, a metaphysical edge and the nigga-in-between edge. It was nothing like them, but when New York cats heard that, some frowned up real tough on us, and that kind of hurt us in a sense. If they never compared us to Tribe, I felt like things would have been a little smoother. And it was at that time, once Dilla put his heart and soul into Vol 2, that’s when he decided he couldn’t deal with the whole Slum Village thing no more because he felt like he had too many demons around it. T3

“Soul Power” Common Electric Circus (MCA 2002)
We did a phase of beats that didn’t make the album, so “Soul Power” was really the beginning, but we had already been working towards making new stuff. I remember talking to Jay Dee about just taking the music to another place. At the time we all were listening to Stereolab and Radiohead and I was listening to Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd, so Jay Dee knew I wanted some stuff that just didn’t sound standard, didn’t sound as traditional. I would explain a direction and he would come up with something that was completely above what I explained. We sat there and he came across the bassline part. We were both like, Oh man, and he started doing those drums the way he did it. It felt like that magic that I wanted. I knew that the way the drums were programmed were different than anything I had heard, and he went and pulled out this record that had the “Soul power!” vocals on it. And once he did that, I was like, “Man, this is a song right here.” The thing about Jay Dee was he could take it anywhere you wanted it to go. He could play instruments, he could cut. His musicianship was impeccable. Common

“Keep It Comin’” Frank N Dank 48 Hours (unreleased 2003)
“Keep It Comin’” was the era when we recorded 48 Hours for MCA—that’s just about coming up out of the hood because we finally crossed that barrier. “Keep It Comin’” was like the wrap up, that was just the last song we recorded for that record. ?uestlove from the Roots played the drums. For that album we played everything live. We had a sample version of it before, but [Dilla] was like, “I want to play this all live.” We used the traditional drums, tambourines, shakers, Mexican shakers, old school cowbells, the old school Moog, trombone. That record created Dilla. Everybody knew Jay Dee, Jay Dee sampled everything and chopped, Dilla was a more playing live instruments type. Dank

“Champion Sound” Jaylib Champion Sound (Stones Throw 2003)
“Champion Sound” was one of my favorite cuts, it stood out amongst all of the other joints in the first batch of Jaylib songs he sent to me. I didn’t think he would have picked that beat, it was one of the dirtiest tracks on the beat CDs I sent to him. But that fit perfect. That track is running, like rolling in your car. His lyrics made that shit even harder. And the concept…what! What! Someone else would have rapped over it, but it wouldn’t have been the same. I remember when we would perform that song, the crowd would get super hype. I wouldn’t even say his lyrics. I would just do ’em with steps. I’d just be watching him. Too hype. Flowing with my steps, Thelonius style. That is one of my favorite albums. People are sleeping, but they’re going to catch up. It’s one of my favorites I ever recorded. I’m still performing that motherfucker. Madlib

“As Serious as Your Life (remix)” Four Tet “As Serious As Your Life” 12-inch (Domino 2003)
My record company asked me if I wanted to get any remixes for my album Rounds. I instantly suggested Jay Dee thinking that he was my ultimate choice, but also thinking it was deeply unlikely seeing as he had records coming out with people like Busta Rhymes at the time. Domino tracked down his manager, sent him the music and a few weeks later we heard back saying he was up for doing it (for a very reasonable fee). A couple of months passed and no remix showed up, so we chased his manger. He came back saying that Jay Dee had been quite sick recently. Not knowing how serious his illness was, we decided to just wait and see what happened. Then a couple of months later we got a message asking if we could send out the parts again to his mother’s house because he was staying there while he was recovering. Not knowing what his situation was at all, I thought this was kind of strange, but sent out the parts again. Some more time passed after this and I wasn’t really expecting to hear back. Then one day I got a call from Domino saying that a CD has turned up in the post from Jay Dee and the remix is wild. It has him singing on it and some guy called Guilty Simpson rapping. He had made the heaviest beat from the sounds and him and Guilty were rapping amazing lines all over it, stuff about saxophone reeds and Eddie Murphy’s pants. The way he had made the title of my instrumental track into this huge vocal hook was just too good. “As Serious as Your Life” is a reference to a book about ‘60s free jazz, so to hear Dilla sing about something that I associated with Coltrane and Ayler was especially deep for me. I never got to meet Dilla so I was not personally able to tell him how much I was into the track, and that made me so sad when I heard that he passed away. Kieran Hebden<

“Nothing Like This” Jay Dee Ruff Draft EP (Mummy/Groove Attack 2003)
I bought the Ruff Draft EP real late. I listened to it, but then I forgot about the album for a minute. Most of us don’t sit around turntables anymore, and I didn’t have it ripped to my iPod or on CD. One day I was on the net and found that someone had ripped it. I downloaded it, and when I was listening to it, I just skipped past that song like, “He ain’t rapping…” Then it hit me. It was hypnotic. I didn’t even know what he as talking about, but it didn’t matter. At the end of the beat, he hit stop on his machine, but the sample played out. I sat there for 20 minutes with that part on loop, trying to figure out what the sample was. He caught a part of the record that was so non-descript. That was what was so crazy about him: he wouldn’t use the obvious break. He might use the part right before or after the break. And that part he used on that song, I couldn’t figure it out. It drove me crazy for months. Finally I just gave up. Just Blaze

“Reunion” Slum Village Detroit Deli (Capitol 2004)
A lot of people think that’s a Dilla track, but it was produced by Black Milk, Dilla is just rapping on it. Basically what happened was me and [producer] Young RJ went over Dilla’s house, playing joints for him off the album ’cause we wanted to work with him on it. We played a couple joints and he picked to rap on that one. Originally it was supposed to be me, him, Baatin and Elzhi, but Baatin at the time wasn’t feeling doing anything Slum Village. Me and Elzhi already had our verses, then Dilla put his “rep mo’ D than 12 Eminems” verse down, then Elzhi said, “You know what, I’ma keep it real. I’ma tell people what really happened with Baatin cause they lookin at us like, ‘T3 kicked Baatin out.’” I didn’t kick him out, he left the group. Elzhi wanted to tell the truth and he did it. That’s when he put his “unlawful demons” verse down. He called Baatin up maybe like a week after he did it and was still asking him to get on the song, but Baatin never did. It was supposed to be four of us but Baatin was going through his whole struggle. I’m kind of mad that we never got to make a reunion LP, ’cause me and Dilla always talked about doing it. It’s kind of upsetting that we didn’t get to close the Slum Village chapter like that. Now it’s at a point like, where do we go from here? T3

“Dollar” Steve Spacek Space Shift (Sound in Color 2005)
I was recording my solo project in Hollywood, just around the corner from where Dee and Common lived. We met up at his place, rolled a blunt and got straight down to it. It was quite surreal actually. Myself, [manager] Mr French and Leon Ware were rolling together that afternoon. I had met Jay briefly a few times before in London, but had never really hung out in a chilled environment. So I say to him, “Jay man, just bless me with something for my album.” And he’s like, “Yo, Spacek man, I don’t know if I have anything ready for you now,” picking up the remote control for his DAT machine. So he’s flicking through this tape, then he stops, pulls out the DAT and exchanges it for another and resumes flicking through. Not even a couple of minutes have passed when he lands on the Billy Paul thing, looks up at me and just lets it roll. As soon as I hear it, what with the “yeh-yeh-yeh” vocal going through, I knew that it was the one. We hung out for a little longer, smoked a bit more, then I headed back to French’s gaff to start writing. A few verses and a hook later, along with a couple of chops/edits on the two track, and “Dollar” was done. That afternoon was the last I saw of Jay. He came across like an angel on Earth, man. Anyone who can create the way he did and still be so humble has to be on some heavenly tip. Steve Spacek

“Lightworks” J Dilla Donuts (Stone Throw 2006)
I knew he was working on a series of beat CDs before he came to Los Angeles. Donuts was a special project that he hadn’t named yet. This was the tail end of his “Dill Withers” phase, while he was living in Clinton Township, Michigan. You see, musically he went into different phases. He’d start on a project, go back, go buy more records and then go back to working on the project again. I saw it because I was at his house every day, all day. I would go there for breakfast, go back to Detroit to check on the daycare business I was running, and then back to his house for lunch and dinner. He was on a special diet and he was a funny eater anyway. He had to take 15 different medications, we would split them up between meals, and every other day we would binge on a brownie sundae from Big Boys. That was his treat.

I didn’t know about the actual album Donuts until I came to Los Angeles to stay indefinitely. I got a glimpse of the music during one of the hospital stays, around his 31st birthday, when [friend and producer] House Shoes came out from Detroit to visit him. I would sneak in and listen to the work in progress while he was in dialysis. He got furious when he found out I was listening to his music! He didn’t want me to listen to anything until it was a finished product. He was working in the hospital. He tried to go over each beat and make sure that it was something different and make sure that there was nothing that he wanted to change. “Lightworks,” oh yes, that was something! That’s one of the special ones. It was so different. It blended classical music (way out there classical), commercial and underground at the same time. Maureen Yancey

“Stop” J Dilla Donuts (Stones Throw 2006)
I’d used Dionne Warwick’s “You’re Gonna Need Me” for Usher’s “Throwback,” Dilla used it for “Stop” on Donuts. When that song first leaked, right before he died, people were asking, “Is he trying to jack you?” No. And I don’t care. If you listen to the OG song, there are so many breaks you could take any part of that record. It’s hip-hop, this happens. He may have heard the Usher version, maybe not. Just Blaze

“Love” J Dilla ft Pharoahe Monch The Shining (BBE 2006)
His label reached out to me about being part of the [Shining] project. He was in the middle of his illness so we didn’t meet in person, but we had met before in California. I usually do all my recording face to face, I’d been to Detroit a bunch of times to work with my man Denaun Porter, but never to work with Dilla. We did it all through exchanging files over the internet. They sent over some beats and I chose that one. It was soulful and had the feel that let me rap and sing over it and take it in that direction. I don’t think he gets enough credit for how much he affected the sound of neo-soul and R&B and music in general as much as he does for hip-hop. Pharoahe Monch

“Jungle Love” J Dilla ft MED & Guilty Simpson The Shining (BBE 2006)
I first met Jay in 2001. He fell through a few spots that I used to rock at and my mans House Shoes connected us. The very next day I was in the lab with him. We cut a few solo joints that the world has yet to hear. They were mainly joints for my project we were planning to drop, an EP called The Verdict. The song “Strapped” on the Jaylib album was the first released joint. A little further down the road brought the remix to Four Tet’s “Serious As Your Life.” I would mainly get beat CDs from Jay, take them to the crib, smoke to ’em and pick what I liked. It was a hard process ’cause I was looking for three tracks but he gave me three CDs each with at least 30 tracks. Impossible! After Dilla passed, Karriem Riggins took over the Shining project and he reached out to me and asked if I wanted to do another joint. I told him “yes” and he sent “Jungle Love” to me the same day. MED actually had his verse on there already, I used his vibe to come up with mine. His verse was running wild on the beat so I just applied his mindstate to my version. It was difficult to record that song. I just had a heavy heart, that’s all I can say. Dilla’s death was fresh on my mind. It still is! And I just wanted to rep for my mans without putting his passing in the rhyme. It was important for his project to reflect his life, not his death. Guilty Simpson

Read more: http://www.thefader.com/2006/11/18/shine-on-and-on-extended-sentimental-remix/#ixzz0diM0GiZk

FROM WeAreGreen.tv

Michael R. Taylor, J.D., was appointed Deputy Commissioner for Foods. This was announced on the FDA’s website the day after the earthquake in Haiti. Michael Taylor is a former top executive, lawyer and lobbyist with biotech giant Monsanto Co. He has rotated in and out of law firms, Monsanto, the USDA and FDA.

During his former stint in the FDA during the Clinton administration he helped write the rules to allow rBGH (Bovine Growth Hormone) into the American food system and our children’s milk. Which is perhaps why the FDA staffer who wrote Taylor’s bio seems to have all-but-forgotten his decade-plus of Monsanto work. Michael Taylor and Monsanto are responsible for subjecting this country and many others to the increased risk of breast cancer (7 times greater risk), prostate cancer and colon cancer because of what they did to milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream with rBGH as well as to all the foods that rely on milk solids and other parts of milk.

As a bi-product of the rBGH fight Michael Taylor then led the ban on labeling of GM products all together. This was labeled “the principal of substantial equivalence” which prohibits any distinction to be made between GM and traditional products. Regardless of any testing or lack there of on the possible effects of GM foods used for human consumption. Even though Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried “serious health hazards,” and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.

He left the FDA in 1994 and a few years later became Monsanto’s Vice President in charge of lobbying in Washington. As a lobbyist, Taylor argued AGAINST the Delaney Clause, one of the foundations of food safety regulation that prohibits cancer-causing chemicals to be added to food.

“The American Academy of Environmental Medicine this year said that genetically modified foods, according to animal studies, are causally linked to accelerated aging, dysfunctional immune regulation, organ damage, gastrointestinal distress, and immune system damage. A study came out by the Union of Concerned Scientists confirming what we all know, that genetically modified crops, on average, reduce yield. A USDA report from 2006 showed that farmers don’t actually increase income from GMOs, but many actually lose income. And for the last several years, the United States has been forced to spend $3-$5 billion per year to prop up the prices of the GM crops no one wants.

If GMOs are indeed responsible for massive sickness and death, then the individual who oversaw the FDA policy that facilitated their introduction holds a uniquely infamous role in human history. That person is Michael Taylor.” – Jeffrey M. Smith*

It’s deplorable that Michael Taylor who has repeatedly and knowingly endangered the American people is once again in charge of our food safety.

A Winning Pair FDA & USDA!

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has a glowing reputation as being a schill for agribusiness biotech giants like Monsanto support of genetically engineered pharmaceutical crops, especially pharmaceutical corn. Vilsack was the origin of the Seed Pre-Emption bill in 2005, which many people in Iowa fought. The bill took away local government’s possibility of ever having a regulation on seeds such as where GE would be grown, having GE-free buffers. Tom Vilsack was also the founder and former chair of the Governor’s Biotechnology Partnership.

Bill HR 875 nicknamed ‘The Criminalization of Organic Farming and the Take Over of the US Food Supply’

Monsanto is taking massive control over all farms through the falsely named “Food Safety” bills, introduced by Rosa DeLauro whose husband, Stanley Greenburg got rich from working for Clinton and Monsanto. The agriculture committee is loaded with people who have gotten large donations from Monsanto. The biggest of the Monsanto bills introduced by DeLauro is HR 875. Identical bills that have been enacted into law in the European Union resulted in 60% of the Polish farmers are now gone and 60+ UK farmers have committed suicide. Iraq has been rendered helpless serfs by the theft of their country’s seeds and criminalization of farmers’ collection of their own seed. By far the most devasting is India, where 182,000 farmers have committed suicide since the WTO and IMF got hold of agriculture and our Big Ag firms went in there, an additional 8 million farmers have left the land altogether.

By comparison to other nations the criminalization of our hard working family farmers is still in it’s infancy. In Ohio, state ag department SWAT team raid on an organic CoOp, Pennsylvania ag department raids on horse and buggy Mennonites, California setting coliform levels so low fresh milk dairy farmers would need cows that produced pasteurized milk right out the udder, arrest and handcuffing of a single mother in front of her children for selling goat milk, the USDA paying its agents bonuses for foreclosing on farms. HR-875 will make theses instances look like specs of dust in the devastation it wishes to unleash on Americans.

This is the death of organic food and the criminalization of seed banking. It is a Monsanto take over and Taylor is here to run it with a few former Monsanto sidekicks – Clarence Thomas (Supreme Court), Ann Veneman (Executive Director of UNICEF).

WHAT YOU CAN DO!

Keep the conversation going! Share informative articles such as this with friends, family and colleagues. Knowledge is power! This is a topic you rarely if ever see on the news, it’s up to us to protect our family, friends and farmers. Americans need to demand a food safety system that is independent of corporate interests. Use your buying power; every dollar you spend with organic, local, Monsanto-free farmers, as well as the stores and restaurants that carry their food, is a vote against companies like Monsanto.

It will take you less then 5 minutes to read the facts below. These scientific facts should lead to no other conclusion that top parties (former and present) at Monsanto should face criminal prosecution, not be rewarded with top seats in the American Government.

a VERY Brief Monsanto Background – Monsanto is responsible for the following:

* The Manhattan Project – under Monsanto operation conducted during World War II to develop the first atomic bomb and nuclear weapons.
* Agent Orange – Dow Chemical and Monsanto were the main producers of Agent Orange. Internal memos from them reveal that at the time Agent Orange was sold to the U.S. government for use in Vietnam it was known that it contained a dioxin, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), a by-product of the manufacture 2,4,5-T. The National Toxicology Program has classified TCDD to be a human carcinogen linked to the following diseases as reported by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs: prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, type II diabetes, Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, B cell leukemias, such as hairy cell leukemia, Parkinson’s disease, ischemic heart disease, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange.
* DDT – Monsanto began producing in 1944 along with 15 other companies. People living in areas where DDT is used for IRS have high levels of the chemical and its breakdown products in their bodies. These levels have been associated with profound affects on male fertility and neurological abnormalities in babies ingesting relatively large quantities of DDT from breast milk.
* Bovine Growth Horomone (rBGH, BST) - Bovine somatotropin (abbreviated bST and BST) is a protein hormone produced in the pituitary glands of cattle. It is also called bovine growth hormone, or BGH. Monsanto first synthesized the hormone in large quantities using recombinant DNA technology and marketed it as “POSILAC” beginning in 1994. The resulting product is called recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), or artificial growth hormone. After many legal battles, bad press and public outcry against rBGH Monsanto sold its POSILAC Brand Dairy Product and Related Business to Elanco Animal Health, a division of Eli Lilly and Company in August 2008. Posilac was banned from use in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe, by 2000 or earlier. By 2009, in parts of the United States, consumer desire for “no artificial growth hormones” caused many milk products to become rBST-free
* Sued 100+ Family Farms – The non-profit Center for Food Safety listed 112 lawsuits by Monsanto against farmers for claims of seed patent violations. Many innocent farmers settle with Monsanto (agree to use their GMO seeds) because they cannot afford the lawsuit from the giant company. Monsanto is frequently described by farmers as “Gestapo” and “Mafia” both because of these lawsuits and because of the questionable means they use to collect evidence of patent infringement.
* RoundUp - This is a deep rabbit whole that is a key element in the current Monsanto compan – I highly recommend watching The World According to Monsanto! Much of Monsanto’s seed products are genetically modified, often to make them immune to their pesticides. In a study by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, researchers found that “these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal toxicity (chemical driven liver damage).
* PCBs – Monsanto produced PCBs at plants in Sauget, Illinois and Anniston, Alabama. Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents — many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy” — show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew. Anniston is now one of the most polluted patches of land in America, so saturated with toxic, cancer-causing chemicals, that it’s in the dirt people walk on, in the air that they breathe, even in the blood that pumps through their veins. Due to PCB’s toxicity and classification as persistent organic pollutants, PCB production was banned by the United States Congress in 1976 and by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001.

*Jeffrey M. Smith, International Best Selling Author of Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating and Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods from Chelsea Green Publishing. Smith worked at a GMO detection laboratory, founded the Institute for Responsible Technology, and currently lives in Iowa—surrounded by genetically modified corn and soybeans.

CLIMATE SKEPTIC LORD MONCKTON IS LECTURING IN AUSTRALIA

ITENERARY UPDATE
January 24 Radio interview Ian Plimer on 2UE 11 am
January 25 Radio interview with Alan Jones, 2GB Radio 7-9am
January 26 Radio interview with Brian Wilshire, 2GB Radio 10-11.59pm
January 27 - Sydney 12.30pm Union Club Lunch
January 27 - Sydney $20 5.30pm Grand Ballroom, The Sheraton on the Park, Elizabeth Street.
January 28 - Newcastle $2 12:30p.m. Pay at the door.
VENUE: The Banquet Room, Newcastle City Hall, King St, NEWCASTLE.
January 29 Radio Interviews with 4BC(between 4-6pm) and United Christian Broadcasters
- Brisbane 12.30pm Lunch Grand Ballroom Hilton Hotel
Queens Street - ($130) See attached pdf flyer climate-debate-brisbane
To book, Damian Wyld, thomasmore@chariot.net.au, Ph 08 8379 0246

January 29- Brisbane 3pm Brisbane Irish Club, Tara Ballroom
January 30 - Noosa $20 The J in Noosa Junction @2p.m. Payment at the door
February 1 - Melbourne $20 luncheon, 12.00 for 12.30, will be held at 6/112 Millswyn St, South Yarra: (RSVP no later than c.o.b. on Thursday, January 28, by email to ipe_2@bigpond.com)
February 1 -5.30 Melbourne $20 "Town Hall Meeting," Venue Sofitel Hotel Grand Ballroom. contact: Case Smit case.smit@gmail.com

February 3 - Canberra -3pm- Address at National Press Club, Canberra


February 5 - Adelaide 5.30 Public lecture Intercontinental Hotel (formerly Hyatt)
North Terrace

February 8 - Perth Lunch - Parmelia Hotel

- Perth 5:30pm "Town Hall Meeting" Parmelia Hilton, 14 Mill Street, Perth.
To cover costs a “donation” of $10pp will be collected at the door.
Assorted homemade biscuits, coffee & tea provided.
Please email: Daphne Dhimitri daphne_dhimitri@hancockprospecting.com.au
or Ph: (61 8) 9429 8248 l Fax: (61 8) 94298268

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STOP PRESS! The BBC will be making a documentary of the Monckton Tour>
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GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS: FULL TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH THE TIMES

From The Times January 25, 2010
General Petraeus, head of US Central Command
Deborah Haynes Afghanistan

It seems that the Pakistanis are talking at all levels to Afghan Taleban and President Karzai will be announcing this reconciliation plan for low to mid-level Taleban...

It is really reintegration to be technically accurate.

What are the chances of engagement with the senior Taleban leaders?

I’m not sure I would completely subscribe to the characterisation that the Pakistanis are talking to the Taleban at all levels. What you have are two different endeavours. One is reintegration and that is what we anticipate the Afghan Government to announce as a policy developed in co-ordination certainly with the international community and Isaf elements that are focused on that particular topic. Obviously that’s an important component of any comprehensive approach to a situation such as that in Afghanistan.

In Iraq as you know very well having interviewed me on that topic the Iraqi form of reintegration, of reconciliation with low and mid-level leaders and fighters proved to be an important factor in the reduction of violence and the reconciliation of tens of thousands of individuals who were either actively or tacitly involved with the Sunni insurgent elements that contributed to much of that violence that led to the surge.

In Afghanistan there are every week instances in which Taleban or other insurgent elements come to Afghan or Isaf tactical level leaders and want to talk. In some cases literally want to lay down their weapons and in a number of cases have actually done that in recent months. We think as the combination of additional pressure from the surge of US and other Isaf contributing nations forces takes place, as the additional operations ... are launched, that additional pressure the additional focus that will also allow to develop Afghan security forces, host nation governance and capacity, all of that will provide a number of different incentives for low and mid-level leaders in particular to consider becoming part of the new Afghanistan, part of the solution in the new Afghanistan rather than a continuing part of the problem.

The concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taleban or other insurgent leaders, perhaps involving some Pakistani officials as well, is another possibility. Although many observers think that that is probably one for the mid or long term rather than the short term given that many of those leaders will feel that they are resurgent right now rather than under the kind of pressure that might lead them to seriously consider laying down their arms and indeed directing that large insurgent elements pursue reconciliation rather than continued violence.

Mid or long term meaning in months?

Mid or long term. Again it depends on the pace of the campaign plan, the operational tempo, the dynamics of the battlefield if you will but at an operational and strategic level not just at a tactical level.

Senior commanders right up to the very top if they’re willing?

As Secretary Gates observed recently. He noted the possibility of that is probably unlikely given the dynamics at present but I don’t think it is something that anyone rules out. Again that was not an option pursued in Iraq. We certainly never approached the most senior al-Qaeda in Iraq or the most senior Sunni extremist leaders. However there were certainly some fairly high-level insurgent leaders who did indeed reconcile with the Iraqi Government so it is not something that can be ruled out but it is also not something that I would anticipate as they say in the United States: coming soon to a theatre near you.

Another goal from the London conference is a tentative timetable, and I know you don’t like timetables, for the transfer of security of Afghan provinces. What do you think is a realistic timeline for this?

I haven’t heard of a timetable. Nor of discussions of a timetable other than of course what was in the President’s speech about beginning a transition of certain security tasks based on conditions. Conditions meaning enemy situation, Afghan Security Force capacity and capability and so forth. So what there has been focus on however has been to refine the discussion of indeed what those conditions should include, what considerations should be part of discussions about transition and indeed what transition actually means. Is it just the lead for security responsibility or is it transfer of all governance and service and security tasks from Isaf to Afghanistan and again at what level? Is it sub district, district, province, how to go forward with it. There has been a lot of good discussion on that and we’ll see really where the state of those discussions by the London conference because they are still very much, they’re continuing in quite an intensive manner.

Helmand is obviously of particular interest to Britain. With another 10,000 US Marines due to deploy to the province as part of the surge, will the US take control of northern Helmand to free up the British to focus on LKG, Garmsir and Gareshk in the centre?

Well that again has yet to be announced shall we say. Certainly there’s a terrific amount of coordination ongoing both in terms of tactical and operational co-ordination of the conduct of future operations and also co-ordination about literally what additional US forces, US assets in some cases other nations’ assets and how all of those are going to be meshed together as it is currently of course under regional command south and I don’t want to get ahead of Isaf commander nor the intermediate joint commander or for that matter the RC south commander in laying out how it’s envisioned that this will go forward.

So you don’t want to say who is going to be in command of Helmand?

I think that would probably be premature. But there are certainly discussions of that ongoing and then there are discussion understandably about how best to do command and control of what is currently regional command south as you have an influx of a substantial number of additional forces and as you get multiple more brigades just in Helmand province not to mention also of course other forces going into Kandahar and other areas of regional command south.

How many surge forces are already on the ground?

The first two combat battalions are now on the ground in terms of the surge forces those are both marine units and the first of the army ground battalions in now also in the process of deploying in addition to numerous what we call enabler forces. These are engineers who are doing the infrastructure development in addition of a dance of other forces.

The Iraq surge was accompanied by an initial rise in coalition deaths. Do you predict that given we have a surge going on in Afghanistan now this could be Nato’s bloodiest year over there?

Honestly I don’t know. Certainly I have said that it will be tougher before it gets easier as I did also in advance of the surge in Iraq. The circumstances are different. First of all you don’t have a vastly higher level of violence already. The level of violence in Iraq when the surge was launched was several orders of magnitude greater than that in Afghanistan. In December 2006 when the decision was made to conduct the surge into Iraq there were 53 dead bodies every day, every 24 hours on average, in Baghdad alone from sectarian violence there were some others from other categories of violence. The spiral of violence in Iraq, of sectarian violence in particular, had gone nearly out of control.

We are going to have to make sacrifices before things get better?

Again as I have said it will get harder before it gets easier and that will result from offensive operations intended in Helmand among others to take away Taleban sanctuaries and safe havens that they’ve been able to establish over the course of the last two or three years in particular.

Do you have a prediction of when the violence will peak?

The summer fighting season has traditionally been the time when the violence has been highest.

Could this be the last summer of violence? And afterwards you are hoping that we won’t see that again next year?

I think again that would be premature to make that kind of prediction. I have said that I have not assessed that Afghanistan could be turned as quickly as Iraq was turned. That it will be difficult to assemble all the same factors that we were able to bring together in Iraq to reduce the violence as rapidly as was the case, in hindsight at least. It didn’t feel rapid when we lived through it. It took a good six to nine months of very heavy fighting and then the militia battles of March and April of 2008, six months after that. But the reduction in violence did indeed begin and was fairly sharp starting in the late June, early July 2007 timeframe and it really continued on down, it would plateau a bit then continued down further.

There are cycles in Afghanistan and over time what we want to do of course is to drive the peak violence in the summer down and the level of violence in the winter down also but again I think it would be premature to predict that the combination of Isaf and Afghan forces can yet produce the factors that collectively could result in that kind of reduction.

Resolve will be tested?

I think the question is whether or not the combination of Isaf, international community and Afghan efforts can produce demonstrable evidence of progress that gives the publics of the contributing nations, all of them, the kind of sense that was produced over time in Iraq that this endeavour, the objectives of this endeavour can be obtained over time.

What will you be looking for?

Some of the same indicators as we saw in Iraq. Indeed the momentum that the Taleban for example has achieved in recent years can be reversed. That over time the security bubbles can be extended. That the population can be better protected over time. That Afghan forces are developing in a positive manner. That Afghan governmental capacity capability and performance progresses and so on.

You were a fan of British Special Forces in Iraq.

I was, I am and I always will be the biggest fan of BSF wherever they may be and also of British forces in general with whom I’ve been privileged to work in the Balkans, in Iraq and now of course in Afghanistan and a host of other places.

How important a role do British SF play in Afghanistan?

A very important role. They are, they always have been and they continue to be nothing short of terrific. In particular their innovativeness and capacity for independent action continue to be very impressive.

America is committing 30,000 additional forces for Afghanistan. What are you hoping countries like Germany will potentially be sending? What hopes do you have for that?

My understanding is that the latest number that other Isaf contributing nations have already pledged I think it is somewhere around 7,500 and there are hopes certainly that other counties that have not yet officially or publicly made pledges will announce those as well. It is not the role for a US CENTCOM commander. I’ll defer that to my close friend and colleague the Nato supreme allied commander.

Money was a key weapon in Iraq, with the Sons of Iraq programme for example?.

It is important for people to understand that the Sons of Iraq programme initially took off before we announced salaries for the Sons of Iraq. It was truly based out of a desire to maintain security in areas once al-Qaeda and other extremist elements had been cleared from them... Over time there was a desire for compensation, reasonably understandable, and we had the Cerp [Commander's Emergency Response Programme] dollars to do that. In fact for now probably somewhere around nine months all of those Sons of Iraq have been on the Iraqi payroll and it’s now about 50,000 of them who have shifted to the payrolls of various Iraqi ministries.

I understand the pilot scheme in Afghanistan has not been as effective.

There is not for Afghanistan something quite comparable to the Sons of Iraq. There are a number of different initiatives that are being pursued. There is a local defence initiative in which small special forces teams locate with villagers, develop trust and confidence over periods of months and with the approval of the Afghan Government allow certain members of those villages to carry weapons and to augment the security of areas that in some cases is not that well assured by still small Afghan security forces and they then they have the link to a quick reaction force and so forth.

Literally live in the villages with them?

Initially Special Forces will live with them and then overtime they will move to other villages and then again the local defence forces, some of whom may be paid over time but relatively small numbers of those. That is one concept and this is actually ongoing.

When did that start?

Several months ago.

There is the Afghan Population Protection Programme. That has been used in limited form in Wardak and Logar provinces southwest of Kabul really as a short-term measure to add rapidly to the roles that will ultimately be the Ministry of Interior forces. Some local forces who are selected by tribal leaders from those areas and again it is assessed to have had modestly positive results and those forces over time will be incorporated into the Ministry of Interior.

Are they being paid?

Yes, they are paid by the Ministry of Interior.

Then you have the various initial stages of reintegration efforts that are taking place in part just because the situations demand that tactical-level Afghan and Isaf leaders respond to low-level Taleban leaders who literally come in with their hands up and want to lay down their weapons. In those cases local officials are brought into this and there are local arrangements that are brokered even as the formal development of a reintegration programme at the highest levels of the Afghan Government together with the international community is being finalised.

The surge has begun. You were in this position in Iraq, everyone was watching, how do you feel in terms of is it a winnable mission? Can you see a successful end to this?

The surge has begun... General McCrystal has described the situation in a way that I think is accurate and that is serious but doable. There are no illusions about the magnitude of the difficulty. Everyone clearly recognises the magnitude of the difficulty. I have recognised this all the way back in September 2005 when I was asked by then Secretary Rumsfeld to come home after a second tour in Iraq, this is when I was a three-star General, via Afghanistan and do an assessment of the training equipment programme and the situation in Afghanistan, which I did and came back and in reporting that out to him at that time when the level of violence was vastly lower than it has been over the past year, or two, I said that I thought that Afghanistan likely would be the longest campaign in the long war just because of the various factors on the ground and the enormous challenges that reside there. That turned out to be fairly prophetic.

There are no illusions about this being in any stretch of the imagination easy and everyone recognises the difficulty. Having said that everyone also recognises the imperative of doing all that is possible to achieve a hugely important mission, one that is of enormous importance to all our countries and that is to ensure that Afghanistan does not become once again a sanctuary or a safe haven for transnational extremist elements like al-Qaeda. It was in Kandahar that 9/11 attacks were planned. It was in training camps in eastern Afghanistan where the initial preparation of the attackers was carried out before they went to Hamburg and flights schools in the US. It is important to recall the seriousness of the mission and why it is that we are in Afghanistan in the first place and why we are still there after years and years of hard work and sacrifice that have passed.



Iraq

How worried are you that this furore over the decision to blacklist several hundred candidates could trigger fresh unrest over there and delay the US withdrawal plans?

I’m considerably much less worried than I was say last weekend when this was all really appearing that it actually could boil over and result in a reversal of the effect of two and an half years of reconciliation among different groups. It appears however in the last 48 to 72 hours that Iraqi leaders have really gripped this issue.

It turns out now that each party has at least double-digit numbers of individuals on this particular list of over 500 names and that it is reportedly 55 per cent or so Shia and 45 per cent or so Sunni. So if it ever was as was reported a predominately Sunni list and predominately focused on sidelining Sunni candidates that is not the case now and it appears there is going to be, as has been the case in Iraq on a number of previous occasions when there has been quite considerable political drama, that Iraqi leaders will resolve the issue without unhinging and undoing again two and a half years of very hard work at reconciling all of the factions inside the new Iraq.

So no panic.

No panic.

No timetable changes.

No timetable changes. Still a weather eye though at this issue and a number of other issues and I think residual concern from this particular issue by Iraqi leaders about how leaders of a previous organisation that was supposed to have been defunct by the legislation that established the accountability and justice commission that replaced the former de-Baathification committee, those leaders seemingly hijacking the new organisation without having been confirmed as the leadership of it and being manipulated by reportedly the Iranian Quds force.

You said that US intelligence believes that Peter Moore spent some time in Iran but Britain’s FCO insists there is no evidence of this. Who is mistaken?

We’ll throw it back to the intelligence community and let them tell us what they think.

You haven’t heard any different? You still think he was held in Iran?

I have heard no different information.

Do you know how long?

I do not. No.



Yemen

How worried are you that it could become the next Afghanistan in terms of providing a safe haven for al-Qaeda to launch global attacks.

A number of us have been focused on Yemen for well over two years.

From the time when we were examining how foreign fighters were being trained and then how foreign fighter facilitators were operating who enabled foreign fighters to come into Iraq through Syria and many different roads lead to what was then termed al-Qaeda in Yemen and this past year was franchised by the al-Qaeda senior leadership as al-Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsular.

In 2006 there was a very important prison break in which the current leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular and some 20 to 25 other important al-Qaeda members were able to escape from prison in Yemen. We knew even further back that al-Qaeda had a presence in Yemen. It tried to sink the Cole, did do considerable damage to it and have carried out various attacks over the years on various Western targets and Yemeni governmental targets again in various locations in Yemen.

And we saw again links to al-Qaeda in Yemen that included foreign fighter facilitators, the establishment of training camps and a variety of different communications all traced back to Yemen that helped facilitate the flow of foreign fighters from various countries in the greater region into Damascus and then on into Iraq where a number of them were blowing themselves up or providing expertise in explosives or other tactics, techniques and procedures being practiced by al-Qaeda in Iraq.

At that time we were focused on it in 2007 there were over 120 foreign fighters per month entering Iraq. That flow has now been reduced to under 10 a month by the actions that we and our Iraqi partners and some tremendous UK Special Operations forces took together inside Iraq and then by actions that regional partners took to make it much more difficult for military-aged males to fly from their countries to Damascus on a one-way plane ticket, for example.

And then also a number of different operations that were carried out through co-ordinated intelligence and other activities as a result of the focus that we were all taking collectively on the effort to reduce that flow of fighters into Iraq. So coming into this job in late October 2008 I announced right away that we were going to focus more attention and resources on Yemen. Made an initial trip to Yemen shortly after taking command. We developed in concert with the embassy in Yemen and with intelligence organisations and with the State Department a military campaign plan for Yemen that I approved in late April of 2009.

Made another trip to Yemen in July that has now been acknowledged. That was a very, very positive trip and we launched the efforts to expand our assistance to certain Yemeni forces, expand our intelligence sharing, and development efforts and all of that led to the ability to enable the actions that have been taken against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula over the course of the past couple of months. The most well known of which were various strikes on December 17, December 24 and a variety of other actions that have taken place in which cumulatively two training camps have been destroyed, three suicide bombers were killed, the fourth one who was with them was wounded and captured with his suicide vest still on by the Yemeni Sensitive Site Exploitation Team, one quite senior al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular leader was killed, others have been wounded or very nearly missed and a degree of disruption has been inflicted on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular. But certainly activities continue, threat streams continue and efforts to plan attacks in Yemen and elsewhere in the world continue.

You want to double the military assistance given to Yemen. In what form will this be? Training? Drones?

The large ticket items that were in programmes that are part of the defence budget that were proved by congress and signed by the President are for items of equipment, such as helicopters, some coast guard vessels and then a variety of other less expensive items of military equipment and then some training, education.

What about airstrikes and drone attacks. Will that have to happen given the threat?

Well the Yemeni forces in fact carried out an air strike most recently two or three days ago. It is possible that those Yemeni activities could continue.

Can you envisage any further US involvement in terms of troops there, any deployment?

Obviously it depends on what the Yemeni leadership wants. They have very clearly ruled out the possibility of US forces being involved in ground combat operations and have done so publicly and that is not in the realm of the possible. But again a variety of different training and assistance activities based on a schedule that we agreed mutually is certainly in the realm of the possible and indeed the kind of activities that we carry on with the majority of the countries in the central command area of responsibility.



Iran

You told CNN that the US has contingency plans to address...

No, actually what I told Christiane Amanpour is that it would literally be irresponsible if Central Command was not considering a variety of contingencies including those involving Iran and planning for those contingencies.

What are the contingency plans for Iran?

Well would you like me to spell all of them out for you.

Well, yes.

[Laughs] Again it wouldn’t be productive I don’t think to go into any kind of discussion beyond really the answer that I gave to Christiane. Nice try though.

AFGHANISTAN WILL TAKE "LONGER" TO TACKLE THAN IRAQ, GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS SAYS

From The Times January 25, 2010

Deborah Haynes, Defence Editor The new American-led surge in Afghanistan will take longer to fight the insurgency than a similar injection of force in Iraq three years ago when violence fell sharply within months, the top US general in the region told The Times.

General David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, also warned that the fight in Helmand province, Afghanistan, where British and US forces are based, as well other areas, would become even tougher before the situation improved.

Frontline offensives will run alongside initiatives to reach out to Taleban elements. When the time was right, General Petraeus said, there was a possibility that Afghan officials would hold reconciliation talks with senior Taleban and other insurgent leaders, perhaps also involving Pakistan.

In 2005, the commander predicted that Afghanistan would be the longest campaign in the war on terror. “That turned out to be fairly prophetic,” he said, speaking at his headquarters in Tampa, Florida.

“It will get harder before it gets easier and that will result from offensive operations intended in Helmand [province] and others to take away Taleban sanctuaries and safe havens.”

The first two Marine battalions, which are part of a surge of 30,000 extra US troops announced by President Obama last month, are already on the ground in Helmand and an Army battalion is in the process of deploying. The majority of US troops are due to be in place by the end of August, along with several thousand extra soldiers from other countries, including Britain.

Violence in Afghanistan typically increases over the summer months and General Petraeus forecast that this year would again be bloody. He also said that it was premature to make predictions about whether the situation would improve by 2011.

“I have not assessed that Afghanistan could be turned as quickly as Iraq was turned — that it will be difficult to assemble all the same factors that we were able to bring together in Iraq to reduce the violence as rapidly,” said the general, who commanded US-led forces in Iraq during the surge.

George Bush, then President, sent 30,000 additional troops to the country in the first half of 2007 when it was on the brink of civil war. They pushed into no-go areas in and around Baghdad, killing or capturing al-Qaeda and other Sunni fighters as well as convincing insurgents — dismayed by the sectarian killings — to switch sides in return for money. Violence fell dramatically within nine months of the first troops being deployed.

The US military and other Nato forces in Afghanistan are trying to use public anger over an increasing number of attacks to prompt Afghans to repel the Taleban in the same way that Iraqis rejected al-Qaeda, although the level of civilian casualties is much lower than it was in Iraq.

There are also attempts to create local, anti-Taleban militias and to broker deals with low-level Taleban elements, willing to switch allegiance.

Every week Taleban fighters approach US and other Nato or Afghan forces wanting to talk and on occasion lay down their weapons, General Petraeus said.

“In those cases local officials are brought into this and there are local arrangements that are brokered even as the formal development of a reintegration programme at the highest level of the Afghan Government together with the international community is being finalised.”

He was referring to a plan expected to be presented by President Karzai at the London conference on Afghanistan this week.

As for higher up the Taleban chain of command, General Petraeus said: “The concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taleban or other insurgent leaders, perhaps involving some Pakistani officials as well, is another possibility.”

He said, however, that many observers believed this would take time.

Asked whether it would include the top leadership, he said: “It’s not something that can be ruled out but it’s also not something that I would anticipate, as they say in the United States, ‘Coming soon to a theatre near you’.”

As head of Central Command, General Petraeus is also responsible for American security interests in 19 other nations through the Arabian Gulf region and into Central Asia. Also high on his agenda is Yemen, where al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is based.

He welcomed a series of strikes by the Yemeni Government over the past two months that he said had destroyed two training camps, killed three would-be suicide bombers and resulted in the capture of a fourth.

“A degree of disruption has been inflicted on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but certainly activities continue, threat streams continue and efforts to plan attacks in Yemen and elsewhere in the world continue.”

The US is planning to double its security assistance to the impoverished nation next year to $150 million (£93 million). The aid will include helicopters, some coastguard vessels as well as training.

General Petraeus said that there were no plans for American ground forces to deploy to Yemen but indicated that the two countries would continue to work closely together to tackle the issue.

“A variety of different training and assistance activities based on a schedule that we agreed mutually is certainly in the realm of the possible.”

In a sign of strong relations between America and Yemen, a curved sword in a jewelled sheath, which was presented to General Petraeus’s predecessor, Admiral William Fallon by the Yemeni President in July 2007, sits in a cabinet of gifts received by the head of Central Command from various dignitaries across the region.

BRITISH TROOPS FACE FIVE MORE YEARS IN HELMAND

From The Times January 25, 2010

British soldiers of 3 Rifles on patrol with the Afghan National Army near Sangin, Helmand Province
Tom Coghlan, Defence Correspondent, and Jerome Starkey in Kabul

British troops will have to fight the Taleban for another five years, according to a leaked draft of the communiqué that will conclude the London conference on Afghanistan this week.

Participating governments are also expected to agree to bribes totalling hundreds of millions of pounds which will be paid to leading insurgents in the hope that they will stop fighting.

The controversial plan is likely to anger relatives of British soldiers killed by the Taleban in Helmand province. Last night the MoD said that a 251st serviceman had died, while the most senior US commander in the war zone predicted that the violence would get worse before it got better.

Gordon Brown, the host of the summit which begins on Thursday, will present the plan for stabilising Afghanistan. It foresees a bloody endgame, with Afghan forces only gradually taking on their rightful role over several years.

The draft closing statement lays down a timeline which is significantly less optimistic than that envisaged by President Obama, who has suggested that US forces would aim to begin drawing down troops from mid-2011.

It commits Afghan forces to “taking the lead and conducting the majority of operations in the insecure areas of Afghanistan within three years and taking responsibility for physical security within five years”.

“Providing conditions are met”, it adds, some of the more stable regions of the country may be put under the control of Afghan security forces at the end of this year or in early 2011, with Western troops providing support.

Yesterday Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, acknowledged that the transition to a more peaceful Afghanistan would be a lengthy process. “We’ll be able to hand over parts of Afghanistan long before we hand over other parts,” he said.

A similar note of caution was struck by the top US general, David Petraeus, who told The Times in an interview that fighting in Helmand and elsewhere in the south could intensify this summer. He warned that the particular combination of factors that produced a decisive drop in violence following the 2007 Iraq surge were unlikely to be replicated as quickly or dramatically in Afghanistan.

The centrepiece of the London conference, attended by countries with troops in Afghanistan, will be the reconciliation plan. It promises “an honourable place in society” to those who cut their ties with “al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups”. It will be underwritten by a “Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund” over the next three years.

The Times has learnt that the US, Britain and Japan are the principal donors to the scheme, the details of which were thrashed out in a meeting involving diplomats from 20 countries in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago.

“The hope is the Afghans will present the plan in London. Then the Americans, the British and the Japanese will open up the purse strings and bankroll it to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars,” said a senior official briefed on the discussions.

The Government will seek to justify the London plan by arguing that peace in Afghanistan requires all sides to be involved in the process. “When people say to me, ‘Should the Afghan Government be talking to the Taleban?’, I have a simple answer: ‘Yes, they should’,” David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, told the BBC.

UN BLUE HELMETS REPRESS THE HAITIAN PEOPLE

Control of Port au Prince airport by U.S. military forces have reached a point of order, without consultation with the Haitian government, the expulsion of the journalists who serve as special envoys to Haiti, who are encamped at the port so as housed in the headquarters of the UN mission in the Caribbean country, as reported by the Spanish Agency of International Development Cooperation (AECI).

ViVe/TeleSUR (21 de enero de 2010) Live / TeleSUR (21 January 2010)

Haití, Haiti

Military forces of the United Nations Organization (UNO) stationed at the airport in Port au Prince, Haiti's capital, equipped with weapons repress rubber bullets and tear gas bombs popular protests taking place in the Caribbean country seriously affected by the earthquake of 7.3 degrees occurred last week.

As reported by the Web site Cubadebate, images of the moment in which the UN Blue Helmets assaulted the Haitian people seeking work and food for survival were captured by a team of Cuban television.

In the same review that the force of UN security guards the outer area of the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, occupied by hundreds of U.S. soldiers who, in addition to determining who enters and who leaves the island, has finally enabled a space for arrival of planes carrying humanitarian aid.

Lack of coordination renders the air port to accumulate the supplies sent from various countries and hundreds of people come to the site to find work or food for themselves and their surviving relatives.

in the terminal has delayed delivery of food, water and medical teams from last weekend, which has generated criticism from the international community to continue sending supplies to help the Haitian people.

Against this background of irregularities which is facing the Haitian people, Alain Joyandet, French Cooperation Minister, lodged a formal protest with the U.S. government's embassy in Paris. "Se trata de ayudar a Haití, no de ocuparlo”, enfatizó el funcionario. "It's about helping Haiti, not occupy it," stressed the official.

Control of Port au Prince airport by U.S. military forces have reached a point of order, without consultation with the Haitian government, the expulsion of the journalists who serve as special envoys to Haiti, who are encamped at the port so as housed in the headquarters of the UN mission in the Caribbean country, as reported by the Spanish Agency of International Development Cooperation (AECI).

Spanish Secretary of State for Iberoamerica, Juan Pablo Church, says the fact he is very serious and supports collective protests in view of journalists who lose their accommodation possible, so they will meet on Thursday to urgently with Haitian President Rene Preval, to consider the decision and can avoid eviction.

The U.S. military took over the operations of the airport in Port-au-Prince after the earthquake toppled its control tower, so that these forces were responsible for the departures and landings priorities of intense international traffic that caused the tragedy.

CHAVEZ SAYS US USED HAARP HIT HAITI

HAARP EXPLAINED


Hugo Chavez Mouthpiece Says U.S. Hit Haiti With 'Earthquake Weapon'
Thursday , January 21, 2010

The United States apparently possesses an "earthquake weapon" that set off the catastrophic quake in Haiti and killed 200,000 innocents. Don't believe it's true? Just ask Hugo Chavez.

Citing an alleged report from Russia's Northern Fleet, the Venezuelan strongman's state mouthpiece ViVe TV shot out a press release saying the 7.0 magnitude Haiti quake was caused by a U.S. test of an experimental shockwave system that can also create "weather anomalies to cause floods, droughts and hurricanes."

The station's Web site added that the U.S. government's HAARP program, an atmospheric research facility in Alaska (and frequent subject of conspiracy theories), was also to blame for a Jan. 9 quake in Eureka, Calif., and may have been behind the 7.8-magnitude quake in China that killed nearly 90,000 people in 2008.

What's more, the site says, the cataclysmic ruin in Haiti was only a test run for much bigger game: the coming showdown with Iran.

The ultimate goal of the test attack in Haiti, the report reads, is the United States' "planned destruction of Iran through a series of earthquakes designed to topple the current Islamic regime."

The story has since been taken down from the Venezuelan Web site, but a Google cache of the charges remains intact.

The publication of the story came just days after Chavez himself accused the U.S. of using the earthquake as an excuse to "invade and militarily occupy Haiti," a nation so poor that its entire economy is based on foreign aid — particularly from the U.S.

"The empire (the U.S.) is taking Haiti over the bodies and tears of its people," he said at a press conference.

"I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war. They are occupying Haiti undercover."

By week's end, some 16,000 U.S. troops are expected to be providing humanitarian assistance in Haiti, where they have taken control of the only working airport and are coordinating relief efforts on the ground.

FOREIGN-OWNED HERALD SUN REPORTS ON UP-COMING BRITISH FALSE FLAG OP

Britain raises terror threat level to severe Alice Ritchie AFP From: AAP January 23, 2010 4:54PM

BRITAIN has raised its terror threat level from substantial to severe with the Home Secretary warning that an attack was "highly likely".
The change comes just weeks after a failed plane bombing in the United States, and days ahead of two major international conferences on Yemen and Afghanistan in London.

"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre has today raised the threat to the UK from international terrorism from substantial to severe," Home Secretary Alan Johnson said early today.

"This means that a terrorist attack is highly likely, but I should stress that there is no intelligence to suggest than an attack is imminent."

In a television statement shortly afterwards, Mr Johnson refused to say whether the change in the threat level - to the fourth in a five-level scale - was linked to the failed Detroit plane bombing on December 25.

"We never say what the intelligence is and it would be pretty daft of us to do that," he said, adding: "It shouldn't be thought to be linked to Detroit or anywhere else for that matter."

He said the JTAC, a unit within the MI5 domestic intelligence agency, "looks at all factors and no one should draw any assumptions from this".

The increased threat level meant that Britain would put "more resources in, we heighten the state of vigilance", he said.

In a statement issued by his office, Mr Johnson insisted the threat level, which has been made public on MI5's website since August 2006, was kept "under constant review".

The terrorism analysis centre "makes its judgments based on a broad range of factors, including the intent and capabilities of international terrorist groups in the UK and overseas", he said.

Mr Johnson said Britain continued to face a "real and serious threat" from international terrorism and urged the public to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activities to the authorities.

The threat level was last at severe on July 20, 2009, when it was downgraded to "substantial", suggesting an attack remains a "strong possibility".

Prime Minister Gordon Brown during the week reiterated the threats Britain faced as he unveiled new security measures sparked by the attempt to blow up the US passenger jet flying into Detroit, which has been claimed by al-Qaeda.

"We know that a number of terrorist cells are actively trying to attack Britain and other countries," he told the House of Commons.

Mr Brown said the "crucible of terrorism" was based on the Afghan-Pakistan border, but noted how the failed Detroit attack also highlighted the threat posed by militants in Yemen.

The alleged bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had reportedly trained in Yemen. He had also studied in London for three years as an undergraduate.

Britain has organised a meeting to strengthen international support for Yemen in its efforts against al-Qaeda, to take place in London this week before a high-level conference on Afghanistan.

There have been numerous attempted attacks on Britain in recent years, as well as the successful one on July 7, 2005, when four suicide bombers attacked the London transport system, killing themselves and 52 others.

Since the threat levels have been made public, they have twice briefly been raised to the top "critical" level, meaning an attack was imminent.

The first time was on August 10, 2006, after a series of arrests linked to a plot to down trans-Atlantic aircraft, and the second on June 30, 2007, at the time of failed attacks in London and Glasgow.

The two lower threat levels are "moderate", indicating an attack is possible but not likely, and "low", meaning that an attack is considered unlikely.