Notice!

Our new security system prevents email messages coming through the AOL server from being delivered to our address. This is because of the probability of unwelcome and problematical attachments to messages from this source.  Correspondents wishing to contact TBR News are suggested to use another server. Ed.

Announcing TBR Ebooks!

Starting with a new publication concerning the background behind the 9/11 attacks, TBR News will be presenting a series of interesting, informative and definitive works for our readers. Future titles will include the complete Voice of the White House with much more added material that was considered too controversial to post, the heavily-censored Armenian Holocaust of 1916, the Bush-Lay private correspondence, the Assassination of JFK,Pearl Harbor intrigues and rare documents, Malaparte’s inside study of the making of revolution, sensational selected articles from the German Rudolf historical revision files, unpublished before Rudolf’s arrest and forced deportation to Germany, World War II studies of holocaust history, taken from secret German files and much more. Please see the title page for more information.

The Editors

Descending Into Darkness: The Harring Report

A well-researched study into the background of the 9/11 attack: Who knew what and when did they know it. Russian and German intelligence material, not published before show that the U.S. had ample warning...and did nothing about it.

THE VOICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE

The full collection of the twice-weekly commentary of what is really going on inside the corrupt Bush White House. The spectrum includes the Gannon scandal, the planned invasion of Iran, many stories of stupidity and corruption coupled with biting sarcasm. Interesting to note that many, if not most, of the predictions have come true.

REGICIDE The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy

A landmark book that sold very well in hardback, this work contains actual intelligence documents concerning the inside U.S. plans to kill Kennedy; the reasons, the methods and the results.

The Final Reckoning: An Analysis of Demographics in Holocaust Literature

By Harold Kreig, Lt.Col, AUS ret.

This is the first rational, heavily documented work on the subject of the Holocaust. Colonel Krieg has taken thousands of documents, including the official SS concentration camp records from 1935 through 1945 and official U.S. government postwar analysis of the system and the casualties and causes of death and produced a book that is highly informative and readable.  Heavily footnoted and annotated, ‘The Final Reckoning’ is logical and compelling and is an historical work that should be read through by any student of the period and subject.

Coup D’Etat: The Technique Of Revolution

By Curzio Malaparte

First published in Italy by Curzio Malaparte in 1928, this is a seminal work on historical seizures of power from Napoleon through Hitler.

Gestapo-Chief: The CIA & Heinrich Müller by Gregory Douglas

                In 1948, the former head of Hitelr’s Gestapo was interviewed by senior officials of the CIA in Switzerland where Müller had been in hiding since the end of the Second World War. His interview, for Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA’s Gehlen Organization, runs to nearly a thousand pages and for years was hidden in the CIA’s files.

                This is a translation of a part of the interview, which was initially conducted in German and then translated into English for CIA use.

                It is a fascinating series of historical episodes covering both the Axis and Allied sides with comments on Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, Winston Churchill, the 20^th of July bomb plot against Hitler, Bishop von Galen’s heroic, and successful, attacks on the Nazis and their euthanasia program, the concentration camps, the Duke of Windsor, the Roger Casement diaries and many more fascinating and insightful views of a man who ran the most effective counter-intelligence agency in modern times. 

                There is also extensive information on the attempts on the part of the CIA to silence or discredit the fact that the Gestapo Chief worked for the United States and eventually came to live in Washington, D.C. as part of the notorious “Operation Paperclip.”

                Fascinating inside views of many top Nazis and CIA officials. 

The CIA COvenant: Nazis in Washington

by Gregory Douglas

* From the end of World War II, the American CIA imported thousands of Nazis into the United States to work for them, many on the list of wanted war criminals

*One of the most important of these was Heinrich Mueller, once head of Hitler's Gestapo. Mueller was recruited by Colonel James Critchfield who ran the CIA's "Gehnel Organization' in Munich.

* Mueller kept journals and this book is a translation of three years (1948-1951) of notes and observations made of top CIA officials, President Truman, top U.S. government officials, plans for murder, thefts, kidnappings, wholesale thefts of public money and a terrifying pattern of uncontrolled ambition, unchecked by any person or agency.

* Also included are CIA and other agency's activities that have never been revealed.

*Mueller's deals in stolen Nazi art for the CIA are covered in detail.

*Also to be found are the steps the frightened CIA have taken to prevent the publication, sales or distribution of this work.

An Essay on the Principle of Population

by Thomas Malthus

The 1798 classic study of how supplies of food do not keep up with an expanding population

Malthus' theory is that population growth is geometric while the food supply increase is arithmetic.

A very literate and current study that clearly highlights present and current population problems

With the world's population higher than ever before, this is a work of great and current interest

CONSPIRACIES for Fun and Profit

Contents
The Evil Catholics Murdered Abraham Lincoln
TWA Flight 800: The Gathering of the Nuts
The Real Truth About the Kennedy Assassination!
The Great 9-11 Plot
Who is Sorcha Faal?
The Bush Indictments
Faked Conspiracy photos
The Sinking of the MV Estonia
The German Guy and the Destruction of Houston
The Great Contrail Conspiracy
Planet X
Remote Viewing unveiled

Notice!

Our new security system prevents email messages coming through the AOL server from being delivered to our address. This is because of the probability of unwelcome and problematical attachments to messages from this source, coupled with the fact that AOL’s voluntary cooperation with various American, and foreign, law enforcement groups makes contact with them in any form a risky business.  Correspondents wishing to contact TBR News are suggested to use another server. Ed.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people, On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
- H.L. Mencken

“That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

“Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance.”
-Eric Hoffer The True Believer

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

America’s Enemies!

There are four entities who represent the most dangerous enemies to American liberties since George III.

They are:

1.                    The Neocons or Likudists who owe their personal allegiance to another country and now completely control our foreign policy. They lied and deceived us into the Iraq war and are demanding that more and more American soldiers die to preserve their own country and ideals.

2.                    The Christian Evangelical right who is trying to force the United States into becoming a theocracy under their rule. They know in their hearts that they alone can restructure a secular humanist America into their idea of Heaven on Earth.

3.                    An element of American society that call themselves Patriots and are obsessively militaristic and great admirers of the corporate or fascistic state. Many of these have been very minor members of the American military and as a counterbalance to their reserve or rear area tours of duty, are rabidly in favor of draconian military action, the bloodier the better. Usually these drumbeaters are too old, or too fat, to fight and have no sons of draft age.

4.                    George W. Bush, who is the worst president in the history of the United States and directly responsible for the huge death tolls in Iraq, is determined to rule the United States until God puts a stop to him and is even more determined to force the American people into becoming obedient, Christian and self-sacrificing lemmings who worship at his shrine and march in step.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., June 8, 2007: “ I have two subjects of general interest to discuss today. The first concerns the flap over the Turkish threats to invade northern Iraq in the wake of Kurdish terrorists cross-border murderous activities inside Turkey and the second deals with a very serious problem with rising sea levels and genuine economic chaos for our east and gulf coasts. First, let’s look at what could very well become a major political disaster. To reduce the problem to basics, the Kurds occupy territory in northern Iraq. There is considerable oil in northern Iraq. The Kurds hate the Shiites and Sunnis who occupy the lower part of Iraq and Saddam attacked them, gassing large numbers of civilians using Sarin gas obtained from the U.S. CIA. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration approached Israel to see if they would be interested in a deal whereby Israel would oversee the Kurdish oil fields and investigate the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request was formalized in a secret telegram from the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld to the Israeli Forgien Ministry and a copy of which is in a file in my safe.

Sharon, then the Isreali Prime Minister felt that this projected pipeline to the Israeli port of Haifa was something the United States could strongly support in return for “unlimited support” by Israel for the American conquest of Iraq.

This projected pipeline would be designed to obtain  oil from the Kirkuk area, representing 40 percent of all Iraqi oil production. The pipeline would got via Mosul, across Jordanian territory to Israel.  The Rumsfeld secret cable did include a request for a cost estimate for repairing the present Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the so-called  War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.

The Isreali National Infrastructure Ministry conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter.

Iraqi oil initially had been transported via Turkey to a small Mediterranean port near the Syrian border. The transit fee collected by Turkey is an important source of revenue for the country. This line has been damaged by sabotage in the past, sabotage committed by Kurdish separatists.

This pipeline was not viewed well by the Turkish government and they informed Israel that they would view their interference in the oil situation as “a serious blow to Turkish-Isreali relations.

According to intercepted diplomatic messages from Israel to their Embassy in Washngton , Israel believed American statements about the pipeline was a means of pressuring Turkey to be “more cooperative” with American military forces and to forgo relaliation against Kurdish rebels.  the American hints about the alternative pipeline were seen as part of an attempt to apply pressure on Turkey.

Emboldened by what the Kurdish saw as ‘unconditional” American assistance, their rebel groups, based inside northern Iraq, began to increase their incursions onto Turkish territory. This, of course, enraged the Turks, who promptly informed Washington that the United States must cease and desist supporting groups that were killing Turks. This put the Bush people in a quandry. The area was full of Israelis working on developing the oil fields and a Turkish incursion could endanger their lives and added to this, if the U.S. tried to rein in the Kurds, they could well counter by cutting off the oil.

When the Turks learned that the U.S. was planning to hand over the security of northern Iraq to the Kurds, Turkey went ballistic, moving two well-armed divisions and significant heavy artillery units to their joint border. The Turkish Foreign Ministry informed the Bush people that if the United States did not take steps to physically halt the Kurdish attacks, they, the Turks, would strike militarily into the area and destroy the capability of Kurdish separatists to launch any more attacks.

The United States is seen as being increasingly weak militarily in that area due to the carnage in Baghdad and the Turks are not happy with this country for a number of reasons.

The interesting aspect of this, again taken from Israeli diplomatic communications, is that Israel has been spying on the Kurds, has located rebel bases, safe houses, weapons dumps, key rebel personnel and so on and has made a deal with their friends, the Turks, to turn all of this over to them to assist in what is now seen as an almost certain Turkish military action. The quid pro quo? In return for their  ‘assistance’ to the Turkish government, a deal has been tenatively agreed about the oil, a deal that leaves the United States out in the cold and the Kurds very dead.

It it interesting to note that a major highway from Bagadad, 250 km south from Kirkuk, was just recently destroyed, precluding any land reenforcements by the U.S. to the Kurds and, even more important, to prevent the escape of Kurds to the south.

The last report was that Israeli specialists blew the bridge to facilitate their assistance to the Turks.

The second subject of interest is the rapidly increasing melting of the Greenland icecap, a process that has speeded up way beyond any computer projection. Most scientists, outside of official U.S. ones, agree that the entire huge ice cap will melt (at the present accelerating rate) within five years, not five hundred. If this happens, and all the serious projections indicate that it will, there will be a disastrous rise in sea levels, a neutralizing of the Gulf Stream and massive and permanent flooding of most of the American east and gulf coasts and a massive destruction to the commercial infastructure that will have devastating financial consequences.  For this reason, the matter is not to be discussed by any governmental agency and public discussion in any of the major media outlets has been kept very quiet. The Bush people pray it will not happen before they are out of office.

If you own property on the coast, at or slightly above the current sea level, my advise to you is to sell now while you can. When this becomes ohvious, you will be sol about selling anything and your neighbors will be moving to Chicago.”

Editor’s Comment: We have been advised that readers wishing copies of many interesting diplomatic communications on the Turkish situation should write to: anniejohummerbug@hotmail.com for more detailed information. Ed.

Editorial

A New Danger in Iraq

May 8, 2007

New York Times

Absolutely the last thing Iraq needs right now is to have thousands of Turkish troops pour across the border into the country’s one relatively peaceful region — the Kurdish-administered northeast. Turkey’s government needs to know that it will reap nothing but disaster if that happens.

A huge military buildup is already under way on the Turkish side of the border, and Ankara has been issuing a flurry of angry charges that the Iraqi Kurds are providing sanctuary to murderous anti-Turkish guerrillas.

The Bush administration has rightly stepped up its warnings to Turkey not to attack. A Turkish invasion would not only embarrass the United States, which numbers the Kurds among its few allies in Iraq. It would add a whole new and even more dangerous dimension to the mess in Iraq.

It would infuriate Arabs, who would resent any Turkish return to areas once ruled by the Ottoman Empire. It would finish off any remaining hope of Turkey joining the European Union. And it would put a huge strain on Turkey’s fragile democratic politics. In short, it would be a disaster.

Turkey does have a real problem. Guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or the P.K.K., have been striking into Turkey from their bases in Iraqi Kurdistan with growing impunity and effect, using plastic explosives, mines and arms that are readily accessible in Iraq.

These strikes have roused powerful passions in Turkey, stoked by generals eager to regain their primacy over the civilian government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which military leaders loathe for its roots in Islamic politics. So far, Turkish forces have occasionally chased P.K.K. rebels into Iraq, but they have always withdrawn.

Turkey’s feud with the P.K.K. is inextricably tied to other conflicts and rivalries inside Iraq. The most directly relevant is the tug of war between the Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens over the oil-rich region of Kirkuk. Ankara’s fear of fears is that a quasi-independent, Kurdish statelet on its borders could embolden Turkey’s 15 million-strong Kurdish minority to demand autonomy or independence.

Reining in the Turkish Army will take more than the warnings already issued by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Turkey’s leaders must understand that a major military operation in Iraq could touch off a series of regional wars and realignments that would harm Turkey far more than anything the P.K.K. could possibly cook up

Iraqi Kurds: Turkey shells across border

May 8, 2007

by Christopher Torchia

Associated Press

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkish artillery shelled suspected positions of Kurdish rebels based across the border in northern Iraq on Friday, according to reports. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice warned Turkey that it risked expanding regional tensions with any "robust" move of troops into Iraq.

Turkey has been building up its forces along the border with Iraq, and its leaders are debating whether to stage a major incursion to pursue Kurdish rebels from Turkey who rest, train and resupply at bases in Iraq. Such an operation could ignite a wider conflict involving Iraqi Kurds, and draw in its NATO ally, the United States.

Rice, speaking in New York to a panel of journalists and editors from The Associated Press, said it's "not good for anybody for a robust move across the border." She described it as "not good for Iraq and not good for Turkey."

The statement by Rice suggested Washington has acknowledged that Turkey might conduct limited incursions across the rugged frontier against the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, also known as PKK.

Iran has also clashed with Iranian Kurd fighters who have bases in remote, mountainous areas of northern Iraq, and Iranian forces reportedly participated in the overnight shelling.

Tension and violence involving Kurds, who lack a nation-state but have long sought autonomy, have ebbed and surged in the past century in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. In Turkey, Kurds make up about 20 percent of the country's population of more than 70 million.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, the party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, reported the overnight Turkish and Iranian shelling on its Web site. Turkish military authorities at the General Staff in Ankara were not immediately available for comment.

Iranian officials in Tehran could not be reached for comment late Friday. Iranian media contained no reports on any shelling, and usually wait several days to report such incidents.

The PUK said artillery shells overnight hit some areas in the Sidikan area in Irbil province, where the borders of Turkey, Iran and Iraq converge, and that nine villages were affected. It was unclear whether there was any degree of coordination among Turkish and Iranian gunners.

"Huge damage was inflicted on the area," the PUK said, citing what it described as an unidentified "source" in the area. "The source said that residents have left their houses, fearing for their lives."

Lt. Ahmed Karim of the Iraqi border guards force told the AP that seven Turkish shells landed on a forest near Sakta village in the Batous area, but no casualties were reported.

Belgium-based Firat, a pro-Kurdish news agency that Turkey says is a rebel mouthpiece, said Turkish forces shelled areas in Iraq for three hours beginning at 11 p.m. Thursday. It said there were no reports of casualties.

On Friday, Turkey's military declared its "unshakable determination" to defeat Kurdish rebels, and a fourth soldier died of injuries from a roadside bomb in a new Turkish security zone north of the Iraq border. The bombing Thursday was blamed on Kurdish separatists.

On Wednesday, Turkish security officials and an Iraqi Kurdish official said Turkish soldiers had crossed into Iraq in pursuit of rebels based there. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul denied such a raid took place.

Turkish forces occasionally have pursued Kurdish rebels just across the border, but rarely announce the operations.

As The Turkish Army Storms Into Iraq, CNN Is Stupider Than Usual

June 7, 2007

by Paul Reickhoff

Huffington Post

Yesterday, when I heard that thousands of Turkish troops may have crossed the border into Iraq, I was extremely concerned. Turkey has been building up its military forces on the Iraqi border for some time. There has been intense debate in Ankara among political and military leaders about whether to attack separatist rebels of the PKK. When I heard of Turkey’s latest move, I feared that the Iraq war was quickly spilling into a larger regional conflict, so I turned on CNN for the latest. And here’s what I saw:

That’s right, CNN’s headline: “Teen, Sex, Prison.” I guess the producers couldn’t find an excuse for “Live XXX Girls.”

This story, about a teenager imprisoned for statutory rape, repeated throughout the morning. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that CNN provided any substantive coverage of the situation in northern Iraq. The coverage lasted for maybe five minutes - before CNN returned to footage of…yet another missing teenager.

It was just as bad at CNN.com. There I found a brief story on the incursion between headlines including “Man tries to jump onto popemobile,” “Jumbo squid swarming off California coast,” and “Jericho’ fans assail CBS with 25 tons of peanuts.” I really, really wish I were kidding.

Of course, Turkey has sent limited numbers of troops into Kurdistan before, as a part of its anti-terrorist policies. And, since reports are conflicted, it’s not clear how many Turkish troops are in Iraq right now. But the possible consequences of foreign forces in Iraq are dire, according to the Iraq Study Group Report:

• “A broader regional war.”

• “Humanitarian catastrophe… as more refugees are forced to relocate across the country and the region.”

• “Ethnic cleansing”

• “A Pandora’s box of problems–including the radicalization of populations, mass movements of populations, and regime changes–that might take decades to play out. If the instability in Iraq spreads to the other Gulf States, a drop in oil production and exports could lead to a sharp increase in the price of oil and thus could harm the global economy.”

I can only hope that if these terrible (and increasingly likely) events do occur, CNN will break away from the intense coverage of issues like the judge who fixed divorce cases for cigars, and Paris Hilton’s latest shenanigans. And I don’t even want to know what will be on Fox.

Paul Rieckhoff is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Executive Director and Founder of IAVA (Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America), the country’s first and largest Iraq Veterans group. IAVA is a non-partisan, non-profit organization headquartered in New York City.

Comment: A beautiful illustration of the utter uselessness of the American media and an excellent reason why television news and the print media are losing tens of thousands of readers and viewers a month. This is why your internet provider sources are clogged with thousands of obnoxious and intrusive pop up ads and why it will get worse. Overpriced gas- guzzling vehicles, fraudulent insurance companies who never pay on claims, dating services for the desperate, cell-phones with very expensive batteries guaranteed to stop working before the contracts are over, special air fares offered by airlines that have two hour take off delays and send your baggage (after the ex-convict goons hired by the pathetic and useless DHS have looted it) shipped to Mexico where it will be returned filled with drugs or dead and unwanted babies and so on. If the crude Rupert Murdoch takes over the Wall Street Journal, believe he will turn it into more trailer park trash delights like he always does, so none of this is much of a loss after all. BH

Thunder? It's the sound of Greenland melting

June 6, 2007

Reuters

Story Highlights

• A new island in East Greenland is a clear sign of how the place is changing

• If the Greenland ice cap melted entirely, oceans would rise by 23 feet

• Its melt zone has expanded by 30 percent -- faster than models had predicted

• Warmer weather boosting tourism, a source of development for Inuit inhabitants

ILULISSAT, Greenland (Reuters) -- Atop Greenland's Suicide Cliff, from where old Inuit women used to hurl themselves when they felt they had become a burden to their community, a crack and a thud like thunder pierce the air.

"We don't have thunder here. But I know it from movies," says Ilulissat nurse Vilhelmina Nathanielsen, who hiked with us through the melting snow. "It's the ice cracking inside the icebergs. If we're lucky we might see one break apart."

It's too early in the year to see icebergs crumple regularly but the sound is a reminder. As politicians squabble over how to act on climate change, Greenland's ice cap is melting, and faster than scientists had thought possible.

A new island in East Greenland is a clear sign of how the place is changing. It was dubbed Warming Island by American explorer Dennis Schmitt when he discovered in 2005 that it had emerged from under the retreating ice.

If the ice cap melted entirely, oceans would rise by 23 feet, flooding New York and London, and drowning island nations like the Maldives.

A total meltdown would take centuries but global warming, which climate experts blame mainly on human use of fossil fuels, is heating the Arctic faster than anywhere else on Earth.

"When I was a child, I remember hunters dog-sledding 50 miles on ice across the bay to Disko Island in the winter," said Judithe Therkildsen, a retiree from Aasiaat, a town south of Ilulissat on Disko Bay.

"That hasn't happened in a long time."

Greenland, the world's largest island, is mostly covered by an ice cap of about 624,000 cubic miles that accounts for a 10th of all the fresh water in the world.

Over the last 30 years, its melt zone has expanded by 30 percent.

"Some people are scared to discover the process is running faster than the models," said Konrad Steffen, a glaciologist at University of Colorado at Boulder and a Greenland expert who serves on a U.S. government advisory committee on abrupt climate change.

In the past 15 years, winter temperatures have risen about 9 degrees Fahrenheit on the cap, while spring and autumn temperatures increased about 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Summer temperatures are unchanged.

Swiss-born Steffen is one of dozens of scientists who have peppered the Greenland ice cap with instruments to measure temperature, snowfall and the movement, thickness and melting of the ice.

Since 1990, Steffen has spent two months a year at Swiss Camp, a wind-swept outpost of tents on the ice cap, where he and other researchers brave temperatures of minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit to scrutinize Greenland's climate change clues.

The more the surface melts, the faster the ice sheet moves towards the ocean. The glacier Swiss Camp rests on has doubled its speed to about 9 miles a year in the last 12 years, just as its tongue retreated 10 km into the fjord.

"It is scary," said Steffen. "This is only Greenland. But Antarctica and glaciers around the world are responding as well."

Two to three days' worth of icebergs from this glacier alone produce enough fresh water to supply New York City for a year.

The rush of new water leaves scientists with crucial questions about how much sea levels could rise and whether the system of ocean currents that ensures Western Europe's mild winters -- known as the "conveyor belt" -- could shut down.

"Some models can predict a change in the conveyor belt within 50 to 100 years," said Steffen. "But it's one out of 10 models. The uncertainty is quite large."

If you're a fisherman in Greenland, however, global warming is doing wonders for your business.

Warmer waters entice seawolf and cod to swim farther north in the Atlantic into Greenlandic nets. In this Disko Bay town, the world's iceberg capital, the harbor is now open year-round because winter is no longer cold enough to freeze it solid.

Warmer weather also boosts tourism, a source of big development hopes for the 56,000 mostly Inuit inhabitants of Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark.

Hoping to lure American visitors, Air Greenland launched a direct flight from Baltimore last month, and there is even talk of "global warming tourism" to see Warming Island.

One commentator, noting the carbon dioxide emissions such travel would create, has called that "eco-suicide tourism.

CIA jails in Europe confirmed

June 8, 2007

BBC News

A Council of Europe investigator says he has evidence to prove the CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania to interrogate "war on terror" suspects.

Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, has been investigating CIA operations on behalf of the European human rights body.

In his new report, released on Friday, Mr Marty says secret CIA prisons "did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania".

The governments of both countries have strongly denied any involvement.

Mr Marty says he drew on multiple sources and used his own intelligence methods to investigate the CIA's "extraordinary renditions", the process under which terror suspects were transported around the world for interrogation.

"Some European governments have obstructed the search for the truth and are continuing to do so by invoking the concept of 'state secrets'.... This criticism applies to Germany and Italy, in particular," he said.

His report came as the first criminal trial over the CIA "extraordinary renditions" opened in Italy. Twenty-five CIA agents and a US Air Force colonel are on trial in their absence, accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terror suspect and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.

Unnamed CIA sources quoted by Mr Marty said Poland was the "black site" where eight "high-value detainees (HVDs)" were interrogated, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001 - and Abu Zubaydah, a suspected top al-Qaeda operative.

The report says Romania "was developed into a site to which more detainees were transferred only as the HVD programme expanded".

"The secret detention facilities in Europe were run directly and exclusively by the CIA. To our knowledge, the local staff had no meaningful contact with the prisoners and performed purely logistical duties," the report continues.

But it adds: "the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA's illegal activities on their territories".

US President George Bush admitted in September that terror suspects had been held in CIA-run prisons overseas, but he did not say where the prisons were located.

Mistreatment

Mr Marty says there is evidence that the CIA operations took place in line with Nato authorisations agreed on 4 October 2001, "some of which are public and some of which remain secret". Some detainees were held in secret for several years and subjected to "degrading  treatment and so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques' (essentially a euphemism for a kind of torture)," Mr Marty says.

In a preliminary report last year Mr Marty said the CIA ran a "global spider's web" of secret flights.

In comments published in the French daily Le Figaro on Friday, Mr Marty said "suspected terrorists" were also "kidnapped then tortured and detained illegally in rogue states like Syria, where there is no civilian law or law governing the rules of war".

In January a European Parliament committee approved a report which said EU states knew of secret CIA flights over Europe.

The report said the governments also knew of the abduction of terror suspects by US agents and the US's use of clandestine detention centres.

A BBC investigation last year revealed that a well-known CIA Gulfstream plane, the N379P, had made several landings at Szymany airport in northern Poland in 2003.

The airport's flight log also showed that a Boeing 737 had flown direct from Kabul to the airport, which is not far from a Polish intelligence base in the village of Stare Kiejkuty.

Resource Wars - Can We Survive Them?

June 6, 2007

by Stephen Lendman

rense.com

Near the end of WW II, Franklin Roosevelt met with Saudi King ibn Saud on the USS Quincy. It began a six decade relationship guaranteeing US access to what his State Department called a "stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history" - the region's oil and huge amount of it in Saudi Arabia. Today, the Middle East has two-thirds of the world's proved oil reserves (around 675 billion barrels) and the Caspian basin an estimated 270 billion barrels more plus one-eighth of the world's natural gas reserves. It explains a lot about why we're at war with Iraq and Afghanistan and plan maintaining control over both countries. We want a permanent military presence in them aimed at controlling both regions' proved energy reserves with puppet regimes, masquerading as democracies, beholden to Washington as client states. They're in place to observe what their ousted predecessors ignored: the rules of imperial management, especially Rule One - we're boss and what we say goes.

The Bush administration is "boss" writ large. It intends ruling the world by force, saying so in its National Security Strategy (NSS) in 2002, then updated in even stronger terms in 2006. It plainly states our newly claimed sovereign right allowed no other country - the right to wage preventive wars against perceived threats or any nations daring to challenge our status as lord and master of the universe. Key to the strategy is controlling the world's energy reserves starting with the Middle East and Central Asia's vast amount outside Russia and China with enough military strength to control their own, at least for now. These resources give us veto power over which nations will or won't get them and assures Big Oil gets the lion's share of the profits.

In Iraq, the new "Hydrocarbon Law," if it passes the puppet parliament, is a shameless scheme to rape and plunder the country's oil treasure. It's a blueprint for privatization giving foreign investors (meaning US and UK mainly) a bonanza of resources, leaving Iraqis a sliver for themselves. Its complex provisions give the Iraqi National Oil Company exclusive control of just 17 of the country's 80 known oil fields with all yet-to-be-discovered deposits set aside for foreign investors. It's even worse with Big Oil free to expropriate all earnings with no obligation to invest anything in Iraq's economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire local workers, respect union rights, or share new technologies. Foreign investors would be granted long-term contracts up to 35 years, dispossessing Iraq of its own resources in a scheme to steal them.

That's what launched our road to war in 1991 having nothing to do with Saddam threatening anyone. It hasn't stopped since. The Bush (preventive war) Doctrine spelled out our intentions in June, 2002. It then became NSS policy in September getting us directly embroiled in the Middle East and Central Asia and indirectly with proxy forces in countries like Somalia so other oil-rich African nations (like Sudan) get the message either accede to our will or you're next in the target queue.

With the world's energy supplies finite, the US heavily dependent on imports, and "peak oil" near or approaching, "security" for America means assuring a sustainable supply of what we can't do without. It includes waging wars to get it, protect it, and defend the maritime trade routes over which it travels. That means energy's partnered with predatory New World Order globalization, militarism, wars, ecological recklessness, and now an extremist US administration willing to risk Armageddon for world dominance. Central to its plan is first controlling essential resources everywhere, at any cost, starting with oil and where most of it is located in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The New "Great Game" and Perils From It

The new "Great Game's" begun, but this time the stakes are greater than ever as explained above. The old one lasted nearly 100 years pitting the British empire against Tsarist Russia when the issue wasn't oil. This time, it's the US with help from Israel, Britain, the West, and satellite states like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan challenging Russia and China with today's weapons and technology on both sides making earlier ones look like toys. At stake is more than oil. It's planet earth with survival of all life on it issue number one twice over.

Resources and wars for them means militarism is increasing, peace declining, and the planet's ability to sustain life front and center, if anyone's paying attention. They'd better be because beyond the point of no return, there's no second chance the way Einstein explained after the atom was split. His famous quote on future wars was : "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Under a worst case scenario, it's more dire than that. There may be nothing left but resilient beetles and bacteria in the wake of a nuclear holocaust meaning even a new stone age is way in the future, if at all. The threat is real and once nearly happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. We later learned a miracle saved us at the 40th anniversary October, 2002 summit meeting in Havana attended by the US and Russia along with host country Cuba. For the first time, we were told how close we came to nuclear Armageddon. Devastation was avoided only because Soviet submarine captain Vasily Arkhipov countermanded his order to fire nuclear-tipped torpedos when Russian submarines were attacked by US destroyers near Kennedy's "quarantine" line. Had he done it, only our imagination can speculate what might have followed and whether planet earth, or at least a big part of it, would have survived.

Now we're back to square one, but this time a rogue administration, with 19 months left in office, marauds the earth endangering all life on it. It claims a unilateral right in its Nuclear Policy Review of December, 2001 to use first strike nuclear weapons as part of our "imperial grand strategy" to rule the world through discretionary preventive wars against nations we claim threaten our security, because we said so.

Orwell would love words like "security" and "stability" meaning we're boss so other countries better subordinate their interests to ours, or else. To avoid misunderstandings, we spell it out further. The May, 2000 Joint Vision 2020 claims a unilateral right to control all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems. It gives us the right to use overwhelming force against any nation challenging our dominance with all present and future weapons in our arsenal including powerful nuclear ones.

Here's the danger. The Bush administration effectively threw out the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) over 180 nations are signatories to including the US. Under NPT's Article VI, nuclear nations pledged to make "good faith" efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons because having them heightens the risk they'll be used endangering the planet. That doesn't concern Washington now developing new ones, ignoring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It's no longer hampered by the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty either, and it rescinded and subverted the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. In addition, it won't consider a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty preventing additions to present stockpiles already way too high, and spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined, plans big future increases, and is unrestrained using the weapons it has.

As things now stand, that's an agenda for disaster according to former NATO planner, Michael McGwire. He thinks "a nuclear exchange is ultimately inevitable" by intent, accident or because, sooner or later, terrorist/rogue groups will get hold of nuclear weapons or materials and use them. Harvard international relations specialist Graham Allison agrees in his 2004 book, "Nuclear Terrorism," saying "consensus in the national security community (is that a) dirty bomb (attack is) inevitable," and/or one with nuclear bombs, unless all fissionable materials are secured. At present they're not.

This raises the specter Noam Chomsky developed in his 2003 book, "Hegemony or Survival." Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez admired it enough to hold it up during his impassioned September, 2006 speech before the UN General Assembly. In the book, Chomsky cited the work of Ernst Mayr he called "one of the great figures of contemporary biology" who said human higher intelligence is no guarantee of our survival. He noted beetles and bacteria have been far more successful surviving than we're likely to be, especially since "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years" or about how long we've been around.

Mayr feared we might use our "alloted time" to destroy ourselves taking planetary life with us. Chomsky observed we have the means to do it, may recklessly try them out in real time, and if so, may become the only species ever to deliberately make ourselves extinct. Chomsky went further in his 2006 book, "Failed States," addressing the three issues he believes are of greatest concern - "the threat of nuclear war, environmental disaster, and the fact that the government of the world's only superpower is acting in ways that increase the likelihood of (causing) these catastrophes" by its recklessness.

In the book, Chomsky raises a fourth issue heightening the overall risk further. He wrote the "American system" is in danger of losing its "historic values (of) equality, liberty and meaningful democracy" because of the course it's on. And in his newest book, "Interventions," he quotes Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell saying 50 years ago when waging nuclear war was unthinkable under Dwight Eisenhower: "Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race, or shall mankind renounce war?"

The Environmental Threat to Our Survival

Human activity has consequences for the environment. It's been mostly negative in the face of technological advances that should be as friendly to the earth as to the profits industrial corporations get from them. Instead, the opposite is true because Wall Street only cares about next quarter's bottom line, Washington wants unchallengeable military dominance and the right to use it freely, and threatening planetary life from wars or ecological havoc is someone else's problem later on - provided there is one.

Jared Diamond, for one, studied the way societies fail or survive in his 2005 book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," that hold lessons for the planet overall. He says ecological devastation brought down earlier failed ones citing one or more proximate causes:

-- deforestation and habitat destruction; -- soil degradation through erosion, salinization or fertility decline;

-- water management problems; -- over-hunting and/or fishing; -- over-population growth; -- increased per capita impact on the environment; and

-- the impact of exotic species on native plant and animal ones.

In modern industrial states, add to these contaminated air, water and soil from toxic chemicals, biological agents and radioactive pollutants creating irremediable hazards threatening human survival. And to these add the inexorable warming of the earth's air and surface from fossil fuel burning greenhouse gas emissions causing:

-- arctic ice cap melting; -- rising sea levels; -- changed rainfall patterns;

-- increased frequency and intensity of weather extremes like floods, droughts, killer heat waves, wildfires, and hurricanes and cyclones.

-- a plague of infectious diseases; -- water scarcity; -- agricultural disruption and loss of arable land; -- as many as one-third of plant and animal species extinct by 2050, according to some predictions; and

-- increasing disease, displacement and economic losses from natural calamities like hurricanes, other extreme weather-related events, lowering of ocean pH, reductions in the ozone layer, and the possible introduction of new phenomena unseen before or never extreme enough to threaten human life or environmental sustainability that will when we experience them.

Is global warming a threat to the planet? The debate is over beyond increasing state-of-the-art knowledge further. The scientific community is almost unanimous except for outliers in it allied to the Bush administration, Big Oil or Big Chemical willing to say anything if it pays enough. These fraudsters spurn what scientific academies from all G-8 countries plus China, India and Brazil acknowledged prior to the 2005 G-8 summit in Perthshire, Scotland. Their alarming low-key statement read: "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions."

The Bush administration's failure to address what's now accepted as fact means America may one day face the dark future Peter Tatchell wrote about last November in the London Guardian after joining 20,000 protesters at a Saturday rally in Britain's capital. They "call(ed) for urgent international action to halt global warming" with Tatchell disturbed one million weren't in the streets demanding it.

He painted a grim picture of life in the UK with a glimpse of what's ahead for the US and other nations, especially in coastal areas, if drastic remediable action isn't undertaken soon. He began by calling "unchecked climate change....likely to be a thousand times worse than the horrors of Iraq. By 2080, England may no longer be green and pleasant. Instead, we'll probably be living in a brown, sunburnt country (like the Australian outback or US desert southwest)."

He described a scenario only Hollywood filmmakers might conceive - scorching drought, unpredictable semi-tropical downpours, flash floods with coastal cities waste-deep in water, rising sea levels and tidal surges turning streets into canals "with much of low-lying London becoming a British version of Venice," and all of London, Manchester and Liverpool frequently swamped by rising sea levels and tidal surges. This is the England he sees in less than eight decades unless global warming is stopped.

And that's just "phase one" with a nastier "phase two" ahead in the 22nd century - "a Siberian-style ice age blanketing Britain and all of Europe for most of the year, with blizzards so strong and temperatures so low that food production will almost cease and our economies will be just a shadow of what they are today." Already we've had a foretaste, he noted, with recent European heat waves killing thousands and many more devastated by flash floods.

Tatchell continued saying most climatologists predict a two to five degree average global temperature increase by 2100 as things now stand. That will produce all the devastating consequences listed above an island nation like Britain won't be able to handle - loss of "low-lying coastal and river estuary regions" shrinking and changing the country's geography permanently and harming inland areas as well.

He noted researchers at the government's Office of Science and Technology believe "catastrophic mega floods," having the negative economic impact of a major war, can be expected over the next two decades, and "lower-level floods will become routine causing around ($40 billion in) damage annually." Regular flooding in a country Britain's size "could put two million houses and five to six million people at constant risk" making homes uninsurable and unsellable "causing a cataclysmic melt-down in house prices" in flood-prone regions and a "corresponding astronomical rise in house prices" in secure areas.

Further, millions of flooded out refugees will have to leave unusable homes behind. With no ability to pay for new accommodations, they'll need government help to get by. And businesses, too, will suffer. Many will have to relocate to safer areas at great cost meaning job losses will follow making things even worse. Power generating plants will be hit as well including coastal nuclear reactors with potential calamitous risks from that possibility alone.

Tatchell continued with much more painting an overall picture so dire, Britain no longer will be a fit place to live in. But bad as that prospect is, poorer countries around the world will fare even worse. One billion people in river delta areas (the rice bowl parts of the countries) of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, and China will see their land disappear under rising sea water causing a catastrophic drop in essential food production unlikely able to be made up.

Sometime around 2100, forests will have died, plankton will be gone by rising sea temperatures, and "these two important 'carbon sinks' will no longer be able to absorb dioxide emissions. (In addition, higher) sea temperatures will also release....vast amounts of methane....trapped in the world's oceans....sending temperatures soaring." Further, the disappearance of polar ice caps will raise sea levels at least five meters removing vast areas of the earth's land mass.

Now, imagine how much worse things may be in the US, facing future hazards this great, with a land mass 39 times greater than Britain and a population five times the size. Democrat and Republican leaders ignore the threat meaning manana is someone else's problem.

A day of reckoning may be approaching faster than earlier thought based on information Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean wrote June 3 in the London Independent. His article is titled "Global Warming 'Is (accelerating) Three Times Faster Than Worst Predictions' " according to new "starting, authoritative studies." One of them by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) shows CO2 emissions increasing 3% a year now compared to 1.1% in the 1990s. It's causing seas rising twice as rapidly and Arctic ice cap melting three times faster than previously believed.

The NAS report is even grimmer than this year's "massive reports" and worst case scenario by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggesting their forecasts of "devastating harvests, dwindling water supplies, melting ice and loss of species (likely understate) the threat facing the world." Another study by the University of California's National Snow and Ice Data Center shows "Arctic ice has declined by 7.8 per cent a decade over the past 50 years, compared with an average estimate by IPCC computer models of 2.5 per cent."

Sum it up everywhere, underscored by these most recent findings, and it spells apocalypse made worse with many governments having to rule by decree to control chaos and disorder. It means democracy, civil liberties, human rights and most essential amenities are out the window in tomorrow's world sounding more like Dante's hell on earth because today we didn't care enough to prevent it. Moreover, it's wishful thinking imagining new technologies will emerge solving everything. Nor will market-based economies where profits trump common sense. How could they ever improve in the future what they've only worsened up to now.

Change cuts both ways though, and despite the apocalyptic title of his book, "Collapse," Jared Diamond notes his sub-title is "How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail" saying that better states his sense of things. Ending an interview published in the spring, 2005 issue of New Perspectives Quarterly, he says "We are in a horse race between the forces of destruction and....a solution. It is an exponentially accelerating race of unknown outcome (with his gut feeling being) it is up for grabs." He continues saying we have a "fighting chance" to solve a "crisis of unsustainability....if we choose to do so (but) It will be fatal to our civilization, or near fatal, if we don't."

Nuclear Power Is Not the Solution

In the interview cited above, Diamond doesn't address nuclear power, but he did in a July, 2005 public lecture in San Francisco. Mark Hertsgaard featured his comments in his August 12, 2005 Tom Paine.com and Common Dreams.org articles titled "Nukes Aren't Green." Diamond surprised his audience saying global warming is so grave "we need everything available to us, including nuclear power" to deal with it, disagreeing with most environmentalists believing otherwise and then some.

Nuclear power won't solve, or even alleviate global warming, according to Helen Caldicott in her important 2006 book, "Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer." That's aside from the catastrophic consequences from commercial reactor malfunction-caused meltdowns, terror attacks on them with the same result, or fissionable material falling into the wrong hands and used against us. Caldicott explained, contrary to government and industry propaganda, nuclear power generation discharges significant greenhouse gas emissions plus hundreds of thousands of curies of deadly radioactive gases and other radioactive elements into the environment every year.

The 103 US nuclear power plants are also sitting ducks to retaliatory terror attacks experts say will happen sooner or later. It means if one of Chicago's 11 operating commercial reactors melts down from malfunction or attack, and the city is downwind from the fallout, the entire area will become uninhabitable forever and would have to be evacuated quickly with all possessions, including homes, left behind and lost.

Caldicott explains much more noting commercial plants are atom bomb factories. A 1000 megawatt reactor produces 500 pounds of plutonium annually while only 10 pounds of this most toxic of all substances are needed for a bomb powerful enough to devastate a large city. She also exposes the myth that nuclear energy is "cleaner and greener." Although commercial reactors emit no carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary greenhouse gas causing global warming, they require a vast infrastructure, called the nuclear fuel cycle, which uses huge and rapidly growing amounts of fossil fuels. Each stage in the cycle adds to the problem starting with the largest and unavoidable energy needed to mine and mill uranium fuel needing fossil fuel to do it. Then there are the tail millings and what to do with them. They require great amounts of greenhouse-emitting fossil fuels to remediate.

Other steps in the nuclear fuel cycle also depend on fossil fuels including the conversion of uranium to hexafluoride gas prior to enrichment, the enrichment process, and the conversion of enriched uranium hexafluoride gas to fuel pellets. Then there's nuclear plant construction, dismantling and cleanup at the end of their useful life, and all this requires huge amounts of energy. So does contaminated water cooling reactors, and the enormous problem of radioactive nuclear waste handling, transportation and disposal/storage. In sum, nuclear power isn't the solution to global warming or anything else. Its risky technology plays nuclear Russian roulette with planet earth betting against long odds where losing means losing everything.

If that's not bad enough, Caldicott shows how much worse it is summarized briefly below:

-- the economics of nuclear power don't add up for an expensive technology, aside from the risks involved, the pollution generated, and the cost of insuring commercial plants needing billions in government subsidies private insurers won't cover.

-- the toll on human health to uranium miners, nuclear industry workers and potentially everyone living close to reactors including those downwind from them.

-- accidental or terrorist-induced nuclear core meltdowns, already addressed, in one or more of the 438 operating plants in 33 countries worldwide and huge numbers of new ones under construction or planned increasing the danger further.

-- nuclear waste storage that in the US will be Yucca Mountain known to be unsafe as it's located in an active earthquake zone unable to assure no leakage or seepage will occur for the 500,000 years needed to guarantee safety.

-- Newer planned so-called Generation III, III + and Generation IV reactor designs even more dangerous than earlier ones now in operation with plans to build hundreds of them worldwide despite the safety risk.

-- the unacceptable madness of nuclear weapons proliferation assuring eventually a rogue nation or group will have enough fissionable material for a crude bomb and will use it with devastating consequences.

-- the unacceptable threat of nuclear war causing nuclear winter ending all life on the planet if it happens.

In light of Caldicott's convincing case, the solution seems clear for friends of the earth and everyone else. Western and allied major nations need a cooperative joint "Manhattan-type Project" to develop safe, non-nuclear, non-greenhouse gas emitting, alternative energy sources replacing ones now used harming the planet and threatening our survival. In addition, conservation must be emphasized and wasteful western lifestyles must change voluntarily or by law because there's no other choice.

Final Thoughts

This article addresses reckless living unmindful of the consequences. It's about endless wars and resources they're waged for. It's about gaining control of what we can't do without, but must learn to, or we'll risk losing far more, including the planet's ability to sustain life. If we reach that point, it won't matter except to resilient beetles and bacteria free at last from us. Instead of being an asset, superior human intelligence has us on the brink of our own self-destruction. It proves Ernst Mayr right saying greater brain power won't guarantee our survival even though it may have helped him live 100 years till 2005.

The human species teeters on the edge putting excess personal gratification and living for today ahead of the long-term consequences of bad behavior. That assures one day Nixon and Ford Council of Economic Advisors chairman Herb Stein's maxim will bite us. Back then, he noted "Things that can't go on forever, don't." He meant bad economic policy, but his comment applies to all excesses, especially the worst ones, and what's worse than endless wars, the threat of nuclear ones, and the sure threat ecological havoc will destroy us if nuclear war doesn't do it first.

We know this and can explain it in precise, sensible, scientific terms, but what good does it do when we won't heed our own advice. The privileged are rolling in good times, but look at the problem this way. We're all at Cinderella's ball and have till midnight to leave or turn into pumpkins losing everything. At this ball, clocks have no hands, so guessing right plays Russian roulette with planet earth. This article asks: can we survive our resource wars? The answer is only if we stop waging them and start using our superior intelligence to protect the earth, not destroy it as we're doing now.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen Saturdays to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com at noon US central time

US called to account for 'disappeared' detainees

June 7, 2007

by Ian Cobain

Guardian Unlimited

Dozens of people who have vanished after allegedly being detained by the United States during counter-terrorism operations were named in a report published by human rights groups.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and four other groups, are demanding that the US government accounts for the whereabouts of 39 people whom they believe have been held at secret CIA prisons since the attacks of September 11 2001.

The detainees include a number of al-Qaida suspects, including a former British resident who has been charged with plotting the 1998 east African embassy bombings in which 225 people died.

The list also includes a number of children, including the two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. The two boys have not been seen by family members since they were detained in Pakistan almost five years ago during a raid in search of their father.

If accurate, the report flatly contradicts assurances given by President Bush that the CIA's secret detention programme has been closed down and all the agency's prisoners handed moved to Guantánamo Bay.

Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch said: "What we're asking is where are these 39 people now, and what has happened to them since they 'disappeared'?"

In a related move, a number of the human rights groups filed a lawsuit in a US federal court seeking information about the so-called ghost detainees under freedom of information laws.

Information about the detainees was gathered during interviews with former prisoners, and with officials in the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Some of the information is sketchy, but Amnesty said that information about at least 21 of the detainees has been confirmed by two or more independent sources.

The list includes Hassan Ghul and Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi, who were both named as al-Qaida operatives in the official US report into the 9/11 attacks.

Another is Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, named as one of the FBI's "most wanted terrorists." US officials have confirmed that he was captured in Pakistan.

Another is Anas al-Libi, a Libyan who lived in the UK before moving to Afghanistan, allegedly to avoid prosecution over the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa. He is reported to have been captured in Khartoum.

The report also expresses concern over the fate of Yusuf al-Khalid and Abed al-Khalid, the sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They were taken into custody, aged nine and seven, in September 2002, during an attempt to capture their father. A former detainee says that he saw them in March the following year, around the time their father was captured, in a secret prison where the guards tormented them with insects.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano dismissed the report, telling Reuters news agency that the agency acts in "strict accord with American law", and that its counter-terrorist initiatives are "subject to careful review and oversight". He added: "The United States does not conduct or condone torture."

President Bush acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons in September last year, but said that they had been emptied and all detainees transferred to the US prison at Guantánamo Bay.

One of the authors of the report publis