The German government has sent a proposal for the creation of "Special Units"
to the European Union (EU) "heads of central bodies for public order and security" to
counter protests at EU Council meetings and other international meetings.



In a report dated 20 September, the German government has proposed to other
EU states that, in response to "events in Gothenburg and Genoa", each
should form and make available "special units" to implement:

"joint and harmonised measures against travelling offenders committing
violent acts"

and proposes that:

"the preconditions must be established to enable one Member State to
request the support of special units from other Member States"



Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch, comments: "We are living in very dangerous times in many senses. The use of armed and
specially trained para-military police units to counter protests in the EU
will tend to escalate violence not diminish it. But, more importantly, it
is part of a strategy to treat protestors as the same kind of "threat" as
terrorists. This can only lead to a curtailment of the right of free
movement and the democratic right to demonstrate."



The full text of the report and Statewatch analysis is on:

iraradio.com, the web site which archives all Radio Free Eireann
broadcasts, has been taken down because the web service provider was
threatened with seizure of their assets if they continued to host
"terrorist" radio programs. Travis E. Towle, the Founder and CEO of Cosmic
Entertainment Company, which put up IRARADIO.COM, was told by their internet
service provider, Hypervine, that they had been "strongly advised" to take
the web site down.



A Hypervine representative read Mr. Towle a statement that, under an
Executive Order recently signed by President Bush, the newly created Office
of Homeland Security can seize all assets "without any notice and/or any
real un-reasonable evidence of any company or person that helps, supports,
or does anything that can be called or labeled terrorism or is found to be
connected to terrorism in any way or means possible." Hypervine is a
subsidiary of the New York based Skynet.



These threats have also caused Cosmic Entertainment to close the web
sites archiving two other WBAI radio programs, "Our Americas" and "Grandpa
Al Lewis Live." "Our Americas," hosted by Mario Murillo, is an acclaimed
news magazine covering Latin America. "Grandpa Al Lewis Live" features
commentary by the actor and political activist who starred in "The Munsters"
and "Car 54 Where Are You."



Radio Free Eireann, which broadcasts Saturday afternoons at 1:30
p.m. on WBAI 99.5 FM has covered the conflict in Northern Ireland for over
twenty years. Guests have included Bernadette Sands, the sister of IRA
hunger striker Bobby Sands; Rauri O'Bradaigh, the President of Republican
Sinn Fein; Sinn Fein chief negotiator Martin McGuinness and Irish Prime
Minister Bertie Ahern.

update: it seems that this (mostly) is not a hoax. www.iraradio.org and www.allewislive.com have been taken down, although www.ouramericas.org is still running with no notice of this event.

The Herald in London writes: "CIA paid Saudi to poison bin Laden

Ian Bruce



THE CIA paid a Saudi intelligence agent £140,000 to poison Osama bin Laden in 1998 after the failure of a missile attack on his Afghan bases in retaliation for the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.



But the world's most wanted man survived the assassination attempt by a hairsbreadth, suffering acute kidney failure in the process. He still walks with the aid of a stick and has not fully recovered.



The man chosen for the task was Siddiq Ahmed, an agent working for Saudi Arabia's external intelligence agency who was already operating covertly on behalf of Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, the governor of Riyadh, the Saudi capital.



Roping the Saudis into the act circumvented the US congressional ban on state-sponsored assassinations. The money paid to Ahmed, posing as a mujahideen volunteer, was also ostensibly Saudi, although intelligence sources say Prince Salman was reimbursed from CIA "black funds".



Former President Bill Clinton admitted at the weekend that he had authorised a special forces' operation to seize or kill bin Laden the same year. This had been called off at the last minute by the State Department, the US Foreign Office equivalent, on the grounds that any attempt to storm the terrorist leader's mountain lair in the Hindu Kush would result in "unacceptably heavy American casualties".



Full story at http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/25-9-19101 -1-4-59.html"