Queen's Warning to Paul Burrell

Gordon Rayner and Natalie Paris have this interesting bit on the Telegraph (Jan 14, 2008, Queen warns Paul Burrell of 'powers at work' after Diana's death):

The Queen warned former butler Paul Burrell of "powers at work in this country" shortly after the death Diana, Princess of Wales, her inquest was told.

Mr Burrell said the Queen had made the remarks during a 90-minute meeting with him, but that he had not asked her to clarify what she meant.

Ian Burnett QC, counsel for the inquest, suggested that possible explanations included media chiefs, the Establishment and the security services....

...Mr Burrell said the Queen had shown her concern in such a way because she is "just a wonderful lady"."I think it was a general 'be careful warning' over many issues," he told the court....

The Filipino Monkey Strikes Again! - Iran Threat Source

Tom Chivers at the Telegraph (Jan 14, 2008, 'Iran threats' may have been work of a heckler)reports:

Threats to US ships in the Strait of Hormuz heard at the end of a Pentagon-released recording of an incident between Iranian patrol boats and US Navy warships last week may have been the work of a local heckler known as the "Filipino Monkey", The Navy Times has reported....

...In accented English a voice is heard to say "I am coming to you ... You will explode in a few minutes." Pentagon officials had previously stated that the voice came from one of the boats, but they are now distancing themselves from that claim, saying instead that they do not know the source of the transmission.

The Navy Times said that the voice in the audio did not match that of an Iranian officer shown speaking to Navy cruiser USS Port Royal over the radio in a video released by the Iranian authorities.

This has led several Navy experts to raise the possibility that a heckler, known locally as the "Filipino Monkey" - or a copycat - could have made the threats.

"Filipino Monkey" is believed to be more than one person. Its modus operandi is to listen in to ship-to-ship radio traffic before jumping in with insults and threats.

According to The Navy Times, US Navy women come in for particularly harsh treatment.

A civilian mariner told the paper that the "Filipino Monkey" phenomenon is worldwide, but more common in areas of heavy shipping such as the Strait of Hormuz....

Philip Agee

The Telegraph (2:08am GMT 10/01/2008, Philip Agee) has this obituary:

Philip Agee, who died in Havana on Monday aged 72, turned from being a CIA agent into the most notorious of its "ideological defectors"; after leaving the agency in 1969, he made a career out of exposing the names of CIA personnel and attacking its methods.

Agee established his reputation as a critic of the CIA with Inside the Company: A CIA Diary, published in Britain in 1975 prior to its release in America. The book identified approximately 250 Agency officers and agents and claimed that "millions of people all over the world had been killed or had their lives destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports".

According to the British and American security services, the book led directly to the deaths of several agents. "It was not enough simply to describe what the CIA does," Agee recalled. "It was important to neutralise the effectiveness of everybody doing it."

In 1975, after requests from the American government as well as an MI6 report that blamed Agee's work for the execution of two of its agents in Poland, an order was issued to deport Agee from Britain, where he had been living....

...Agee's version was that it was his Roman Catholic conscience that had persuaded him to leave the CIA, and he certainly succeeded in presenting himself as a principled critic of US intelligence. In 1978 he and a small group of his supporters began publishing the Covert Action Information Bulletin, a platform for his campaign to "expose" the workings of the CIA. In 1978-79 Agee published two volumes of Dirty Work, which exposed more than 2,000 covert CIA agents in western Europe and Africa as well as details about their activities....

...The son of a Florida businessman, Philip Burnett Franklin Agee was born on July 19 1935. He joined the CIA straight out of college in 1957 and worked as a case officer in several Latin American countries. He described himself as being politically "naive" in his youth, and colleagues recalled him as Right-wing; he argued against the minimum wage, saying that it would bankrupt small businessmen such as his father, who ran a laundry and uniform rental service in Tampa.

By his own account Agee became increasingly disillusioned with the way in which the CIA was supporting the traditional power structures in Latin America, where wealth was in very few hands. "We call this the 'free world'," he wrote, "but the only freedom under these circumstances is the rich people's freedom to exploit the poor."....

...Agee, who was twice married and had two sons, was described after his death by the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma as a "loyal friend of Cuba and staunch defender of the people's struggle for a better world".

Sir Edmund Hillary

The New Zealand Herald (11:37AM Friday January 11, 2008, Sir Edmund Hillary dies at 88) has Sir Edmund Hillary's obituary, biography:

Sir Edmund Hillary has died aged 88.

Sir Edmund shot to international stardom when he was the first man to scale Mt Everest in 1953.

Prime Minister Helen Clark today described Sir Edmund as the best-known New Zealander to have ever lived and said his passing was a profound loss to New Zealand....

US-British forces blood donations

Michael Evans, Defence editor for the Times (UK, January 11, 2008, US may have given injured British forces infected blood transfusions) reports:

The medical records of hundreds of British servicemen seriously wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 have had to be investigated by the Ministry of Defence after the Americans admitted that they may have given some of the injured infected blood transfusions.

The Pentagon revealed at a meeting in Washington in early November that, according to its records, 11 British servicemen had received life-saving blood transfusions from American volunteer donors at US military centres in Iraq and Afghanistan over the six-year period. None of the donors had been pre-screened to detect for any sign of HIV, hepatitis C, syphilis or other blood diseases.

However, MoD officials discovered that the US military medical record-keeping was “so poor”, according to one source, that Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, ordered an immediate search of British records to check whether the Americans had treated other wounded servicemen. After weeks of trawling through all the records of those who had been wounded and might have received blood transfusions, the MoD discovered that there were seven more who had received on-the-spot blood donations from American military personnel, giving a total of 18. Two of them had left the Armed Forces. Six British civilian security contractors working for the US military in Iraq had also received emergency blood transfusions after being wounded....

...The Pentagon said the American donors who provided the blood had now tested negative for hepatitis and HIV.

However, there are blood diseases that still have to be eliminated, and none of the 24 Britons involved will know if they are free of contamination for another three weeks. One official said it took three weeks to check for any sign of Chagas disease, a blood infection that can be picked up from insects in South America....

...Although British officials could barely suppress their anger and frustration over the delay by the Americans in informing them of the potential medical crisis, it was acknowledged that the fresh blood provided by the volunteer donors almost certainly saved the lives of the 24 Britons.

Professor Stan Urbaniak, a consultant at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service in Aberdeen, said that fresh blood,for life-threatening wounds, was the only realistic source to stop massive haemorrhaging and give a chance of survival. “It’s a question of making a judgment between risk and benefit,” he told The Times.

What angered the MoD, however, was that under British procedures, even the emergency blood donors have to be prescreened for contamination. “When there’s an emergency, donors are called for from a panel of servicemen who have been checked. But the US doesn’t do this, they do the checking after the blood has been donated,” one official said....

Abdul Salaam - Afghan warlord who fought against coalition now a governor

Nick Meo reports on the Times (UK, January 9, 2008, Taleban warlord gets new job as governor):

A feared Taleban commander who fought against British troops until he changed sides has been named governor of the key town of Musa Qala.

The appointment of Abdul Salaam to the crucial job was hailed last night by the Afghan Government, which is redoubling British-supported efforts to persuade Taleban commanders to end their armed struggle.

Officials hope that persuading Mullah Salaam, formerly one of their most ferocious enemies, to “reconcile” will encourage other Taleban commanders to change sides....

...the appointment will be opposed bitterly by many anti-Taleban Afghans who fear that the reconciliation process will allow fundamentalists to return to power, at least at local level. It will also put British soldiers in the unusual position of working closely with a man who was pledged to kill them a few weeks ago.

During the ten months when the Taleban ran Musa Qala, a key opium bazaar town in the north of Helmand, Afghans accused of being British spies were hanged in public, and suspected government collaborators were tortured. Heroin was traded openly in the town, and an estimated half a billion dollars of drugs were stockpiled there. Mullah Salaam was an important leader in the town during that time....

...Yesterday the new governor said that the Taleban had been divided for a while in Musa Qala but the majority were behind him.

“There are two groups of Taleban fighters in Musa Qala and I have the backing of the major one. The Taleban who are against peace and prosperity in Afghanistan, I will fight them,” he said.

The appointment comes soon after two senior international officials from the UN and EU were ordered to leave the country by President Karzai, who accused them of trying to negotiate with Taleban commanders in Musa Qala....

US Navy Backing Off Iranian Threat Claims

Agence France-Presse on News.com.au (January 11, 2008 08:35am, US Navy threat may not have been Iranian) has this interesting info:

THE US navy says there is "no way to know" if a threat radioed to US warships in the Strait of Hormuz came from Iranian speedboats, casting doubt on the earlier US version of Sunday's confrontation.

"There is no way to know where this (radioed threat) exactly came from. It could have come from the shore... or another vessel in the area,'' Lieutenant John Gay of the US Navy Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said....

...overnight Iran released its own video to counter the charges, showing the crew of a speedboat contacting an American sailor via radio, asking him to identify the US vessels and state their purpose.

State-run Press-TV in Iran said the footage had been released by the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological force involved in the incident. Lt Gay said the threat was made through an "open bridge to bridge circuit'' and it would be "very difficult to determine'' that it came from the Iranian speedboats....

Richard Holt on the Telegraph has this story (5:37pm GMT 10/01/2008, Iranian video 'shows no threat to US navy'):

Iran has released a video which is claimed to show that its boats did not threaten US navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, as has been claimed by the Americans.

...the new video, broadcast by Iran's Press TV satellite station, gives a completely different version of the incident....

...Guards Brigadier General Ali Fadavi said Iran's boats had only approached the US ships to examine the registration numbers as they had been unreadable, Press TV said.

The video showed an Iranian naval officer on a small boat speaking via radio to a ship which can not be clearly identified. A total of three ships can be seen on the video.

The Iranian officer says: "Coalition warship 73 this Iranian navy patrol boat".

"This is coalition warship 73. I read you loud and clear," the person replied in what appears to be an American accent.

The Iranian officer then appears to ask for the ships to identify themselves, although not all his words can be understood: "Coalition warship 73 this Iranian navy patrol boat, request side number ... operating in the area this time," the Iranian voice says....


Video : http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1137942530/bclid1155254697/bctid1370834932