Friday, February 19, 2010

AYUMA

...

Yo bien se lo que se debe a si mismo un cristiano. Si este hombre me hubiese llevado a la cumbre de una montana en Palestina, en una noche de luna llena, y desde alli, mostrandome ciudades razas e imperios adormecidos, me hubiera dicho sombriamente: "Mata al Mandarin, y todo lo que ves en valles y colinas sera tuyo", yo le habria replicado, siguiendo un ejemplo ilustre, con la mano levantada hacia las inmensidades consteladas. "Mi reino no es de este mundo!".

Conozco bien a mis autores. Mas eran veinte millones de pesos, ofrecidos a la luz de una vela de esperma, en la travesia de la Concepcion, por un sujeto de sombrero de copa, apoyado en un paraguas.

Entonces no dude. Y con mano firme repique la campanilla. Fue tal vez una ilusion: mas pareciome que una campana de boca tan ancha como el cielo repicaba en la oscuridad, a traves de Universo, con un son temeroso que ciertamente iria a despertar soles que dormian y planetas panzudos.

El extrano individuo llevo un dedo al parpado, y limpiando una lagrima que nublaba su ojo rutilante exclamo:

Pobre Ti-Chin-Fu!

...

Mas un sufrimiento mayor vino a amargar mis dias. Juzgandome arruinado, todos aquellos que mi opulencia humillo, cubrieronme de ofensas. Los periodicos, con triunfal ironia, publicaron mi miseria. La aristocracia, que balbuceaba adulaciones, inclinada a mis pies de Nabab, ordenaba ahora a sus cocheros que atropellasen en las calles el cuerpo encogido del escribiente de secretaria.

El clero, a quien yo habia enriquecido, me acusaba de hechicero, el pueblo me apedreaba y la viuda del Marques, cuando me quejaba de la dureza granitica de los garbanzos, poniase en jarras y gritaba:

_ Que quiere usted mas? Aguantese! Valiente perdulario!

Y a pesar de esta expiacion, el viejo Ti-Chin-Fu, estaba siempre a mi lado porque sus millones, que yacian ahora intactos en los bancos, eran desgraciadamente, mios.

Entonces indignado, volvi a mi palacio y a mi vida de lujo. Aquella noche, de nuevo el resplandor de mis ventanas alumbro el Loreto, y por el porton abierto vieronse, como en otro tiempo, negrear con sus calzones de seda, las largas filas de lacayos decorativos.

Luego, Lisboa, sin excepcion, se arrojo a mis pies. La viuda de Marques me llamo llorando: Hijo de mi corazon".

Los periodicos me otorgaron los calificativos que, segun la tradicion, pertenecen a los dioses. Fui el omnipotente, el omnisciente! La aristocracia me beso los pies como a un tirano y el clero me incenso como a un viejo idolo. Y mi desprecio por la humanidad fue tan grande que se extendio hasta el mismo Dios que la creo.

Desde entonces, una saciedad enervante me mantuvo durante semanas enteras tendido en un sofa, mudo y terrible, pensando en la felicidad de "no ser..."


De Queiroz, E. El Mandarin. PEPSA Editores. Mexico, D.F. 1975. Primera Edicion. Pags. 23-24, 124-125.



Cold but sunny in the far east. El expreso polar se desacelera un poco. Is Global Warming losing steam? Desde el Reino Unido a very well-mannered British friend me informa que el tema del calentamiento global ha captado una inusitada atencion en los medios: "el profesor fulano no cesa de ser llamado para entrevistas en radio y periodicos por igual. Yo no se, Marco, pero este ha sido un invierno muy frio en Norwich. Estoy toda confundida, a veces pienso que no se esta calentando tanto esto.

A full of advertising city. From small shops to big deparment stores banners and screens are everywhere, inciting your senses. "Strange, huh?" -me dice la rojilla para referirse a mis primeras impresiones sobre su pais. "Yo no lo llamaria extrano, darling, sino diferente". La historia que me parece un poco rara es que una de sus primas (ciudadana sudcoreana obviamente) este decidida a cambiar los aires asiaticos por los norteamericanos. Durante la sobremesa a la cena de anoche, su tia me cuenta que su unica hija, que habla con fluidez el ingles, quiere emigrar a Canada. Su plan consiste en comenzar viviendo en una ciudad de medio pelo, para despues dar el salto a una de las grandes urbes de esa nacion.

No deseo orientarme al recuento de frivolas comparaciones que podrian encontrar en cualquiera de los programas televisivos. Prefiero concentrarme en aquellos servicios publicos que me han impresionado gratamente, y que no envidiarian nada a sus contrapartes de los so called developed countries.


_ Dificil de entender. Porque crees que tu prima se esta moviendo -esa es mi primera pregunta on our way back home.

_ Its all daydreaming, she got to experience what we already saw.

_ Well, obviously I havent seen that much in the city, but the local services look quite good so far. When I arrived to your international airport it was so tidy and up to date that germans will envy it for sure -trato de expander mi pensamiento con el fin de obtener mejor informacion.

_ Exactly.


Con las actuales condiciones de vida, no es facil imaginarse que hace un poco mas de medio siglo esta fue una de las principales zonas de batalla entre dos visiones contrapuestas del mundo.


_ So tell me, please. Is Mexico mainly industralised? -me lanza esa dificil cuestion la progenitora de la rojilla.


Mmm, como salgo del atolladero sin rasparme con una respuesta honesta?

_ Bien, not that much. Hasta donde se, tres son nuestros principales ingresos: petroleo (crudo, por supuesto), las remesas de nuestros trabajadores fuera del pais (en los EUA la mayoria), y el turismo -sintetizo apretadamente.


Nuestra ultima fuente de ingresos llama especialmente su atencion.

_ Why then not so many koreans are travelling to Mexico?

_ No tengo la menor idea, si mal no recuerdo, Mexico atrae turistas de todas partes del mundo solo por debajo de Italia y Espana -trato de justificar la poca afluencia de viajeros coreanos a nuestro pais.

Otra de las amigas de la rojilla de plano desistio vivir fuera de su pais. Le ha costado sudor y lagrimas durante los primeros tres meses, pero ahora es propietaria y administradora de una pequena guarderia infantil. Aunque esta en la planta baja de un edificio departamental, el pequeno local esta bien acondicionado: dos cuartos de juego, dos banos con regadera y una cocina forman el changarrito que si cuenta con los muuuy indispensables smoke detectors.

El esquema de subrogacion tambien se aplica aqui. Ahora mismo esta tratando de llegar al limite inferior de pequenos para obtener un apoyo gubernamental.

_ Se tuvo que endeudar mucho para abrir el kinder y estuvo sometida a un stress insoportable -me aclara la rojilla, pero al final ha salido poco a poco.

_ Asi es, he tenido de todo; hasta uno de los chamaquillos pesco la influenza (porcina) -nos dice con un semblante que recuerda una no muy lejana preocupacion.

Una involuntaria sonrisa mia llama sin embargo su atencion.

_ What? you dont believe it? -me inquiere incredula.

_ No, I do believe you, but you reminded me all that hype -le digo.

_ Hype?, why a hype? -pregunta sorprendida.

_ Pus porque a lo mejor si creo que exista la enfermedad pero no creo que sea pandemica -evito entrar en el terreno of an one-sided artificially instigated tale.


Indeed, it is a really complicated task when they havent heard both sides of the story.

_ When?, when is gonna change? You keep telling me that, but I cannot see it -me suelta impaciente la rojilla.

_ Because you are not reading the right sources, babe. I can assure you that big transformations are occurring right in front of your eyes without you even notice them -evito lo mas que puedo la condescendencia. Did you know that analysts are predicting one of the most largest socioeconomic develeopments of the world around here? This is the region with one of the most promising futures, luv. So, now can you see why is not so easy to understand your relative likes to live abroad now?

_ Yes, it wasnt easy to get it -me dice levantando su mirada como tratando de conjurar un pasado no muy lejano.

_ Por supuesto que no. Pero al menos lo intentaron. No es sano eso de pretender tener la razon unica, pero hay locos que ciertamente nos muestran ciertas claves. Recuerdas a tu paisano en Cambridge que estudiaba las caracteristicas principales del desarrollo economico? El no hablaba de abrir impudicamente las puertas al comercio exterior, verdad?

_ So what do you think your country is lacking? -pregunta inocentemente.


_ See, again its hard to spot one factor, but Im not gonna explain it in my own pseudo-scholar words, lets one of the best speak himself:



In fact, one of the differences—one of the reasons for the radical difference between Latin America and East Asia in the last half-century is that Latin America didn’t control capital flight. In fact, in general, the rich in Latin America don’t have responsibilities. Capital flight approximated the crushing debt. In contrast, during South Korea’s remarkable growth period, capital flight was not only banned, but could bring the death penalty, one of many factors that led to the surprising divergence. Latin America has much richer resources. You’d expect it to be far more advanced than East Asia, but it had the disadvantage of being under imperialist wings.

(Noam Chomsky on DN, 3/07/09)







_ So, what has been shocking you most of what you seen here so far?

_ Mira, yo se que no he visitado los barrios que podrian darme otra impresion de tu pais (se acepta financiamento desinteresado para hacer una de mis ya miticas investigaciones de campo across "the wall", supongo que a un mexicanito no le seria imposible conseguir una visa de turista), pero lo que no esperaba es no encontrar (so far) a big gap in social inequality somewhere in the city.

_ Why do you think is like that?

_ Parece que una de las tacticas infalibles para mantener la paz social es reducir la brecha entre clases. So, protecting your local economy and supporting small business like the one of your mum and friends seems to be relatively working in your country.

Indeed, There are certain guys who think they are above any law. In Mexico is not reducing poverty what matters but pushing a military solution that lacks of popular support (now also including our very well lubricated congress). En su mundo irreal, no es ya necesario vender esperanza, sino avanzar una estrategia propagandistica de logros imaginarios. Cuando las predicciones (largamente anunciadas por la mentes mas preclaras del planeta) de los grandes cambios globales inunden nuestro pais, y la clase politica y su ejecutivo se vean empequenecidos por la historia, habremos de ver si somos capaces de aprovechar, para empujar en forma consensuada, nuestras estrategias de cara mas humana, que reduzcan radicalmente las desigualdades socioeconomicas en nuestro Mexico secuestrado. AL TIEMPO.


M@RCOrea_del_Sur;

Seul, C(alando_hechos);

19/02/10.


todos me odian?



PREGUNTAS SIN RESPUESTA:

Cadena de Mando.

A tricky issue. El articulo 39 de nuestra constitucion nos otorga la soberania nacional. Now, en condiciones como las actuales en las que las medidas gubernamentales no parecen gozar del apoyo popular general (maybe as a result of their original sin). A quien deberian teoricamente la obediencia ultima nuestras fuerzas armadas: al ejecutivo federal o al pueblo?


ADIOS (EL SOLDADO)




ENCORE APOCALIPTICO?:



Chossudovsky: US will start WW3 by attacking Iran




... being edited.



The truth about the Mossad

The recent, outlandish assassination in Dubai may prove the most damaging yet in the Mossad's history of high-profile, bungled operations. How did it squander its reputation for ruthless brilliance?


  • Ian Black

  • Last November, a sharp-eyed Israeli woman named Niva Ben-Harush was alarmed to notice a young man attaching something that looked suspiciously like a bomb to the underside of a car in a quiet street near Tel Aviv port. When police arrested him, he claimed to be an agent of the Mossad secret service taking part in a training exercise: his story turned out to be true – though the bomb was a fake.
2005, MUNICH

A still from Steven Spielberg's film Munich


  1. Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services
  2. by Ian Black, Benny Morris
  3. 634pp,
  4. Avalon Travel Publishing
  1. Buy Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services at the Guardian bookshop

No comment was forthcoming from the Israeli prime minister's office, which formally speaks for – but invariably says nothing about – the country's world-famous espionage organisation. The bungling bomber was just a brief item on that evening's local TV news.

There was, however, a far bigger story – one that echoed across the globe – two years ago this week, when a bomb in a Pajero jeep in Damascus decapitated a man named Imad Mughniyeh. Mughniyeh was the military leader of Lebanon's Shia movement Hizbullah, an ally of Iran, and was wanted by the US, France and half a dozen other countries. Israel never went beyond cryptic nodding and winking about that killing in the heart of the Syrian capital, but it is widely believed to have been one of its most daring and sophisticated clandestine operations.

The Mossad, like other intelligence services, tends to attract attention only when something goes wrong, or when it boasts a spectacular success and wants to send a warning signal to its enemies. Last month's assassination of a senior Hamas official in Dubai, now at the centre of a white-hot diplomatic row between Israel and Britain, is a curious mixture of both.

With its cloned foreign passports, multiple disguises, state-of-the-art communications and the murder of alleged arms smuggler Mahmoud al-Mabhouh – one of the few elements of the plot that was not captured on the emirate's CCTV cameras – it is a riveting tale of professional chutzpah, violence and cold calculation. And with the Palestinian Islamist movement now vowing to take revenge, it seems grimly certain that it will bring more bloodshed in its wake.

The images from Dubai follow the biblical injunction (and the Mossad's old motto):"By way of deception thou shalt make war." The agency's job, its website explains more prosaically, is to "collect information, analyse intelligence and perform special covert operations beyond [Israel's] borders."

Founded in 1948 along with the new Jewish state, the Mossad largely stayed in the shadows in its early years. Yitzhak Shamir, a former Stern Gang terrorist and future prime minister, ran operations targeting German scientists who were helping Nasser's Egypt build rockets – foreshadowing later Israeli campaigns to disrupt Iraqi and (continuing) Iranian attempts to acquire nuclear and other weapons.

The Mossad's most celebrated exploits included the abduction of the fugitive Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was later tried and hanged in Israel. Others were organising the defection of an Iraqi pilot who flew his MiG-21 to Israel, and support for Iraqi Kurdish rebels against Baghdad. Military secrets acquired by Elie Cohen, the infamous spy who penetrated the Syrian leadership, helped Israel conquer the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war.

It was after that that the service's role expanded to fight the Palestinians, who had been galvanised under Yasser Arafat into resisting Israel in the newly occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The 1970s saw the so-called "war of the spooks" with Mossad officers, operating under diplomatic cover abroad, recruiting and running informants in Fatah and other Palestinian groups. Baruch Cohen, an Arabic speaker on loan to the Mossad from the Shin Bet internal security service, was shot in a Madrid cafe by his own agent. Bassam Abu Sharif, of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was badly disfigured by a Mossad parcel bomb sent to him in Beirut.

Steven Spielberg's 2006 film Munich helped mythologise the Mossad's hunt for the Black September terrorists who massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Eleven of them were eliminated in killings across Europe, culminating in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer, where a Moroccan waiter was mistaken for Ali Hassan Salameh, the Munich plot's mastermind. Salameh was eventually killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 1979 – the sort of incident that made Lebanese and Palestinians sit up and notice last year's botched training episode in Tel Aviv.

Some details of the assassination of Mabhouh last month echo elements of the campaign against Black September – which ended with the catastrophic arrest of five Mossad agents. Sylvia Raphael, a South African-born Christian with a Jewish father, spent five years in a Norwegian prison; she may have been among the young Europeans in Israel who were discreetly asked, in nondescript offices in Tel Aviv, if they wished to volunteer for sensitive work involving Israel's security. Other agents who had been exposed had to be recalled, safe houses abandoned, phone numbers changed and operational methods modified.

Over the years, the Mossad's image has been badly tarnished at home as well as abroad. It was blamed in part for failing to get wind of Egyptian-Syrian plans for the devastating attack that launched the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Critics wondered whether the spies had got their priorities right by focusing on hunting down Palestinian gunmen in the back alleys of European cities, when they should have been stealing secrets in Cairo and Damascus. The Mossad also played a significant, though still little-known, role in the covert supply of arms to Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran to help fight Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as part of the Iran-Contra scandal during Ronald Reagan's presidency.

It has, in addition, suffered occasional blows from its own disgruntled employees. In 1990, a Canadian-born former officer called Victor Ostrovsky blew the whistle on its internal organisation, training and methods, revealing codenames including "Kidon" (bayonet), the unit in charge of assassinations. An official smear campaign failed to stop Ostrovsky's book, so the agency kept quiet when another ostensibly inside account came out in 2007. It described the use of shortwave radios for sending encoded transmissions, operations in Iran for collecting soil samples, and joint operations with the CIA against Hezbollah.

But the worst own goal came in 1997, during Binyamin Netanyahu's first term as prime minister. Mossad agents tried but failed to assassinate Khaled Mash'al – the same Hamas leader who is now warning of retaliation for Mabhouh's murder – by injecting poison into his ear in Amman, Jordan. Using forged Canadian passports, they fled to the Israeli embassy, triggering outrage and a huge diplomatic crisis with Jordan. Danny Yatom, the then Mossad chief, was forced to quit. Ephraim Halevy, a quietly spoken former Londoner, was brought back from retirement to clear up the mess.

The Dubai assassination, however, may yet turn out to be far more damaging – not least because the political and diplomatic context has changed in the last decade. Israel's reputation has suffered an unprecedented battering, reaching a new low during last year's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. "In the current climate, the traces left behind in Dubai are likely to lead to very serious harm to Israel's international standing," the former diplomat Alon Liel commented yesterday.

Even though Israel is maintaining its traditional policy of "ambiguity" about clandestine operations, refusing to confirm or deny any involvement in Dubai, nobody in the world seems to seriously question it. That includes almost all Israeli commentators, who are bound by the rules of military censorship in a small and talkative country where secrets are often quite widely known.

It would be surprising if a key part of this extraordinary story did not turn out to be the role played by Palestinians. It is still Mossad practice to recruit double agents, just as it was with the PLO back in the 1970s. News of the arrest in Damascus of another senior Hamas operative – though denied by Mash'al – seems to point in this direction. Two other Palestinians extradited from Jordan to Dubai are members of the Hamas armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades, suggesting treachery may indeed have been involved. Previous assassinations have involved a Palestinian agent identifying the target.

Yossi Melman, the expert on intelligence for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, worries that, as before the 1973 war, the Israeli government may be getting it wrong by focusing on the wrong enemy – the Palestinians – instead of prioritising Iran and Hizbullah.

"The Mossad is not Murder Inc, like the Mafia; its goal is not to take vengeance on its enemies," he wrote this week. "'Special operations' like the assassination in Dubai – if this indeed was a Mossad operation – have always accounted for a relatively small proportion of its overall activity. Nevertheless, these are the operations that give the organisation its halo, its shining image. This is ultimately liable to blind its own ranks, cause them to become intoxicated by their own success, and thus divert their attention from their primary mission."

From an official Israeli point of view, the Mossad has an important job to do. Its reputation for ruthlessness and cunning remains a powerful asset, prompting what sometimes sounds like grudging admiration as well as loathing in the Arab world – where a predisposition for conspiracy theories boosts the effect of the disinformation and psychological warfare at which the Israelis are said to excel.

The government's official narrative, of course, is that Hamas is a terrorist organisation that pioneered horrific suicide bombings, fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian targets and – despite occasional signs of pragmatism or readiness for a temporary truce or prisoner swap – remains dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state. It refuses to admit that its ever-expanding West Bank settlements remains a significant barrier to peace.

In western countries, including Britain, there was widespread anger at the 1,400 Palestinian casualties of the Gaza war. Barack Obama has declared the occupation "intolerable". Netanyahu heads the most rightwing coalition in Israel's history; his famous quip that the Middle East is a "tough neighbourhood" no longer seems to justify playing dirty.

Yet Israelis, and not just those on the right, worry that their very existence as an independent state is being de-legitimised. And, judging by the jobs section of the Mossad website, there are still plenty of opportunities for Israel's wannabe spies: challenging positions are available for researchers, analysts, security officers, codebreakers and other technical work. Speakers of Arabic and Persian are invited to apply to be intelligence officers.The work involves travel abroad and a "young and unconventional" environment.

It is a novelty of this episode that ordinary Israeli citizens are angry that their identities appear to have been stolen by their own government's secret servants – one reason why the Mossad chief Meir Dagan may find his days are numbered. But it is hard not to detect an undercurrent of popular admiration for the killers of Mabhouh. The day after the sensational CCTV images and passport photos were shown, the Israeli tennis champion Shahar Pe'er reached the quarter-finals of a major international competition in the emirate. "Another successful operation in Dubai," the Ynet website headlined its story.

Ofer Kasti, Haaretz's education correspondent, did not have his passport cloned, but he does bear a striking resemblance to the hit-squad member named as Kevin Daveron. "My mum rang and asked gently if I'd been abroad recently," he wrote. "Friends asked me why I hadn't brought back any cigarettes from the duty free shop in Dubai. I thought I sensed admiring glances in the street. 'Well done,' said an elderly woman who came up to me in the supermarket and clapped me the shoulder. 'You showed those Arabs."


Robert Fisk: Passport to the truth in Dubai remains secret

It's a propaganda war. Whoever killed the Hamas official in Dubai – let's speak frankly – it's part of an old, dirty war between the Israelis and the Palestinians in which they have been murdering their secret police antagonists for decades. Whose were the passports? Or should we say "passports". So here's a moment to reflect on realities.

Many Dubaians believe that the collapse of the emirate's economy last year was the revenge of Western banks – spurred on, of course, by the Americans – to punish them for allowing Iranian shell companies to use Dubai as a sanctions-busting base during the cold-hot war between the US-Israeli alliance and Iran. Now the Americans (or the Israelis – you can take your pick) want to turn Dubai into the Beirut of the Gulf. That was actually a headline last week – in The Jerusalem Post, of course – which painted Dubai as dangerous as it was economically calamitous.

But hold on a minute. According to a Dubai "source" of The Independent – readers will have to judge what this means – the security forces of the aforesaid emirate informed a "British diplomat" in Dubai (presumably the consul, since the embassy is in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi) of the UK passport details almost six days ago and "did not receive an appropriate reply". If this is true – the Foreign Office will be wrathful in its denials – then why didn't the British immediately express their outrage at the use of forged British passports and cough up details of the equally outrageous frauds a week ago? This misuse puts every British citizen at risk.

Yet the Foreign Office – so keen to warn British citizens of the dangers they face in the Middle East – sat on their large behind and did bugger all. I'm sorry. If they had the details, they had a duty to UK citizens to speak up. If they hadn't got the details, they should have told us. But they were silent. Why? Was there a cold breeze coming beneath a closed door?

Far too many police forces are now sending their minions to Israel to learn about "terror". The Canadians actually dispatched a team of cops to Tel Aviv who allowed themselves to wear "suicide vests" for publicity pictures. Air France now hands the US details of all its passengers' profiles – which, of course, go straight to the Israelis – despite the fact that Israeli security officers (like hundreds of Arab security officers in the Middle East) may well be involved in war crimes.

Now a small addendum. The Dubai authorities apparently gave the British the (allegedly) forged Irish passports under the misapprehension that Dublin was still a major city of the United Kingdom. Things, needless to say, changed in Dublin almost a hundred years ago – although how many readers can name the date of Dubai's independence from British rule? – but this elementary mistake suggests that the Dubai version of events (the inexplicable failure of the British to explain their silence) may contain a distressing truth. Don't we (the British? Gordon Brown? etc, etc) care when killers use supposedly British passports?

It is too soon to give a reply. But I should add that the Dubai authorities have other information which they have not yet revealed. The world awaits.



Robert Fisk: Britain's explanation is riddled with inconsistencies. It's time to come clean

How could the Arabs pick up on a Mossad killing, if that is what it was? Well, we shall see

Thursday, 18 February 2010

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    Collusion. That's what it's all about. The United Arab Emirates suspect – only suspect, mark you – that Europe's "security collaboration" with Israel has crossed a line into illegality, where British passports (and those of other other EU nations) can now be used to send Israeli agents into the Gulf to kill Israel's enemies. At 3.49pm yesterday afternoon (Beirut time, 1.49pm in London), my Lebanese phone rang. It was a source – impeccable, I know him, he spoke with the authority I know he has in Abu Dhabi – to say that "the British passports are real. They are hologram pictures with the biometric stamp. They are not forged or fake. The names were really there. If you can fake a hologram or biometric stamp, what does this mean?"

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh - the victim of British collusion with Israel?

REUTERS

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh - the victim of British collusion with Israel?


    Haiti earthquake: In God's name


    Soon after the quake, 10 US Baptists were arrested trying to smuggle 33 children out of Haiti. Were they just trying to help, as they claim, or was something more sinister going on?


    The village of Callabasse is perched on top of a hill in the lush St Jacques mountains in Haiti. To reach it you drive an hour and a half from the shattered centre of Port-au-Prince, ­finishing the journey along a dirt track. At the ­entrance to the village a cluster of ­concrete houses are set back from the road. A few show signs of minor ­damage, but the general impression is that this village has been spared much of the ­terrible impact of the earthquake. The contrast it presents to the devastation of the capital is enhanced by a game of football that is taking place on an expanse of dusty ground to one side of the village.


    laura silsby

    Laura Silsby, one of the 10 American Baptists arrested in Haiti, exits a police vehicle before entering a court building in Port-au-Prince. Photograph: Javier Galeano/AP


    It was in this small, remote rural community that a bus arrived towards the end of January. Out stepped 10 American Baptists, five men and five women, eight from the sparsely populated western state of Idaho, one from Kansas and the last from Texas. They had come, by their own reckoning, to bring God's love to the precious children of Haiti. Their God-given mission was to heal the orphans of the disaster, helping them to "find new life in Christ".

    With the help of a young man from the village, Isaac Adrien, who could speak English, the Americans asked all the 500 people of Callabasse to assemble on that soccer pitch. With Adrien translating, the Americans handed round leaflets illustrated with pictures of a hotel swathed in greenery and a swimming pool, just a short walk from the sea. It was here, in a seaside resort in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, that the Americans promised they would take children from Callabasse and offer them a new life. "We love God," the leaflet says, "and he has given us tremendous love for the children of Haiti."

    Over the next few hours forms were signed, farewells made and about 20 children ushered into the Baptists' bus. And here begins one of the most puzzling, contentious and disturbing episodes to have arisen out of the catastrophe that struck Haiti a month ago.

    The Baptists were arrested three weeks ago when the bus, by now bearing 33 children – the eldest 12 years old, the youngest three months – was stopped at the border of the Dominican Republic. Since then the Americans have been held in jail and investigated for kidnapping and criminal association on grounds they tried to take children out of the country without permission.

    There are now judicial moves afoot to have them released, with the case judge recommending they be set free. But it is unclear under the Napoleonic legal code how long that could take and yesterday news broke that may further complicate matters. It was revealed that a lawyer who has been widely quoted over the past three weeks as a Dominican adviser to the Baptists, Jorge Puello, has become embroiled in a police investigation in El Salvador into the trafficking of women and girls. An international arrest warrant has been issued for someone of the same name, though Puello angrily denied any link to the New York Times, saying: "Bring the proof."

    So what exactly were the Baptists up to? Were they guilty, as charged, of entering a disaster zone, when people, particularly children, are at their most vulnerable, only to exploit them? Or were they, as they have insisted, simply out to help Haiti's traumatised orphans?

    The first puzzling fact is that of the 20 children who boarded the bus at Callabasse that day, many were not orphans. They had loving, albeit desperately poor and struggling, parents. Maggie Moise, standing outside her home, described the moment she handed over her nine-year-old twin sons, Volmy and Kimley. She had been approached by Adrien, who told her some white people wanted to help her family.

    "They said they wanted to go with our children. They put the names of the children on a piece of paper and asked me to sign it. A white woman told me, 'Don't worry, you will be able to access your children.' They showed me a ­brochure of where the children would be going to live. I signed the paper."

    Why did she sign it? "The country is going to be bad for some time. I cannot help my children. So I gave my boys to the white people," Moise says.

    Further clues as to the mindset and intentions of the Baptists are provided by a written plan of action they prepared at the outset of the trip, which they called an "Haitian orphan rescue mission". The plan discloses their ultimate aim: to "gather" up to 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages and take them to a new life in the Dominican Republic.

    The document is striking in that it displays profound ignorance of the geography and society of Haiti. It anticipates driving the round trip from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to Port-au-Prince, collecting the children and bringing them back, in just two days – a wildly overambitious schedule given the destroyed infrastructure of Haiti. It talks of rescuing orphans "abandoned in the streets", which was fanciful as very few children who lost parents would have been abandoned; most Haitians live in extended families with relatives ready to step into the childcare role.

    Though the missionaries made no mention of adoption to the parents in Callabasse, their true intentions are made plain in the document. Their goal, it says, is to give each child "opportunities for adoption into a loving Christian family". In the long term, they even conceive building villas near the orphanage in which adopting parents from the US could stay.

    The Baptists ask their US friends to pray for "God to continue to grant favour with the Dominican government in allowing us to bring as many orphans as we can into the DR". Yet there is no mention of any attempt, prayerful or otherwise, to persuade the Haitian government to grant permission to take children out of Haiti. Lawyers for the Americans have protested that they had paperwork from the Haitian authorities, though none has yet been produced.

    In a country with 380,000 children living in orphanages even before the earthquake, and where up to 2,000 children a year are trafficked to the Dominican Republic, the issue of illegal transportation of minors is hugely sensitive. Many of the children taken abroad do so with the approval of their parents who often mistakenly believe they are relinquishing them to a better life. In all too many cases the young people end up in forced labour or sex slavery, or are sold for adoption in the west.

    International aid groups have been working with the Haitian government for several years to try and stem the flow of children. "We are looking for a fundamental shift that will support vulnerable families so that they can take care of the children they love. It's a ­tragedy that so many think it's preferable to put their children into the hands of strangers," says Phoebe Greenwood, of Save the Children.

    What was it about the 10 Baptists that gave them the hubris to believe they would provide better care for Haitian children than those children's parents? The acknowledged leader of the group was Laura Silsby, 40, who since the arrest has maintained the line that "we simply wanted to help these children. We did not understand [Haitian] rules."

    Silsby is an active member of Central Valley Baptist church in her hometown of Meridian, Idaho. She became interested in Haiti and its orphans last spring and together with her nanny, Charisa Coulter, another of the arrested, made several visits to the Caribbean country.

    By the end of last year she had formulated the idea of creating an orphanage in the Dominican Republic for Haitian children. At precisely the same time, however, and perhaps significantly, ­Silsby's own private world was imploding.

    An investigation by the Idaho Statesman has found that an internet business set up and run by her, PersonalShopper.com, had fallen behind in payments of its employees and that Silsby had been hit with several civil claims against her. She was due to have appeared in court this week, and her financial troubles are such that last December she foreclosed on her Meridian house.

    A month earlier she formally launched her Haitian orphans drive under the auspices of a venture she called New Life Children's Refuge. From then on she appeared to pour all her frustrated business energies into it, using her considerable charm and persuasiveness to win the support of some other members of her Baptist congregation.

    "She is a very outgoing, strong lady, very cheerful. She knows what she wants and she is very verbal and dynamic at getting it," says Carolyn Groom, a fellow Baptist at the Central Valley church who says she has known Silsby for years.

    Silsby expected her dream to take at least another year to get off the ground, but when the earthquake hit on 12 January she went into hyperdrive. As the document puts it: "God has laid upon our hearts the need to go now v waiting until the permanent facility is built."

    Silsby injected that sense of haste into the rest of the group. "She was able to make Haiti seem very urgent," says Groom, "that children were starving, hundreds dying every day and we felt an overwhelming need to do something to help."

    Groom came very close to joining Silsby and the others on their venture, but pulled out at the last minute after her husband expressed anxieties about her safety in Haiti as well as about the hazy arrangements for taking children out of the country.

    With the benefit of hindsight, Groom has had a change of heart. At first she had no doubts about the righteousness of taking starving kids to a better place. "But now I'm seeing all the negative impact, hearing people calling us stupid Americans and saying we were trying to impose our culture on poor people, and I can see how it looks that way."

    And she has changed her opinion of Silsby too. "Her purpose was good, her execution horrible," says Groom. "She might have been so intent on achieving her goals she wasn't aware that she had overstepped the mark."

    The other arrested Baptists appear to have developed similar criticisms of their leader. A note handed to NBC television from their jail cell earlier this week reads: "We only came as volunteers. We had nothing to do with any documents and have been lied to."

    There have been other peculiar aspects of Silsby's leadership in the middle of a disaster zone. In the hectic days after the quake, when she was assembling the group to go out to Haiti, she somehow managed to track down a couple from Kentucky, Richard and Malinda Pickett, to offer them help in extracting three children they were already in the process of adopting. She phoned three times, and on each occasion was told by the Picketts that on no condition should she try to move the children. Remarkably, she didn't stop then. Once in Haiti, Silsby turned up at the orphanage where the children were and asked to collect them. Richard Pickett told Associated Press that she had claimed to be his wife's friend. The three children had by then already been moved, so Silsby asked the orphanage managers if they had any other children she could have.

    "She asked for kids at each of the orphanages, and at the end of the day when no one would give her any, she cried. Why would you cry after you see these kids are being taken care of?" Pickett told AP.

    Such behaviour raises questions about Silsby's motives and objectives. But for the remaining nine ignorance and naivety appear to go some way to explain how they got in the mess they now find themselves in. Certainly, that would fit a changing pattern of behaviour within the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the US to which Central Valley Baptist church belongs. Over the past 20 years there has been a dramatic shift away from "career missionaries" who spend years immersed in the culture and language of the people they seek to turn to God, in favour of "missionary tourists" who dip in and out of communities for mere days or weeks and have much less cultural sensitivity.

    According to David Key, director of Baptist Studies at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, that sea change has come at a time when the convention has been increasingly focused on domestic social and political issues as part of the Christian right, which has led it to sound a strong note of American superiority. "Anyone under 40 years of age will have spent their entire life in the America First model of evangelism," says Key.

    That may help understand the predicament of the Baptists arrested in Haiti, but it doesn't make the child care workers of SOS Children's Villages International feel any less angry about what happened. The aid organisation is looking after the 33 children retrieved from Silsby and co in one of its purpose-built compounds outside Port-au-Prince.

    The kids arrived there with their names written on pink tape attached to their clothes. They were hungry, thirsty and in some cases dehydrated. By the calculations of the organisation, up to 20 of them had parents who had been sweet-talked into letting them go.

    A girl aged nine told an SOS worker that she could not wait to be reunited with her family. But she added that she wanted to be with her father, not her mother "because she gave me away".

    Georg Willeit, a member of SOS's emergency team in Port-au-Prince, says several of the children were depressed and confused because they too were having to deal with the shuddering ­realisation that their parents had willingly handed them over. He was baffled why the Baptists would have consciously inflicted such deep trauma on vulnerable kids.

    "How can you rush into a family and tell them: 'You are so poor you cannot care for your child'? How can you say: 'We know what's best for your child, it's God's gift'? That takes away the dignity of the parents. It is against all human nature," says Willeit.

    El regreso de la "moneda patrón"

    Sorpresa: El dólar renace y avanza contra el euro


    Simultáneo a los anuncios oficiales de salida de la recesión y/o de "recuperación gradual" de la economía global, el dólar estadounidense venía experimentando una caída constante en su cotización que no parecía tener fin. El derrumbe de la divisa estadounidense era paralelo, a su vez, a una recuperación acelerada de las bolsas y de los mercados de especulación financiera acompañada de una revaluación (también constante) del euro y de una nueva escalada de los precios del petróleo y de las materias primas (incluido el oro). De pronto, ese proceso parece revertirse y la moneda estadounidense sorprende con su su escalada frente al euro en los mercados internacionales.


    Desde el nacimiento de la crisis financiera en EEUU, la mayoría de los gurús y especuladores internacionales predecían casi con certeza la decadencia del dólar estadounidense.

    Se había puesto de moda mito generalizado (que abarcaba por igual a pensadores de izquierda, analistas del sistema, periodistas y hasta a reconocidos especuladores sionistas como George Soros) que sostenía que el imperio del dólar como moneda patrón de las transacciones internacionales había llegado a su ocaso como producto de la crisis financiera global generada, entre otros factores, por la debacle del sector inmobiliario en EEUU.

    Por "efecto dominó intelectual", esta percepción mitificada del derrumbe del dólar llevaba a otra conclusión:
    La crisis de la economía mundial capitalista referenciada en el dólar posibilitaría el declive de la supremacía imperial de EEUU poniendo en el centro de la hegemonía económica mundial a China y al resto de los países emergentes (en crecimiento acelerado) de Asia o de América Latina.

    Ahora ese mito parece derrumbarse frente a la recuperación sostenida que viene experimentando el dólar en los mercados internacionales.

    Según The Wall Street Journal, el dólar ha registrado un sorprendente repunte frente al euro y se prevé que mantenga su fortaleza en los próximos meses.

    La semana pasada, el dólar anotó su quinta alza semanal consecutiva contra el euro. El lunes el euro descendió a1,36 dólares. El dólar acumula un aumento de más del 5% contra el euro este año y se cotiza cerca de su máximo de los últimos nueve meses

    La recuperación del dólar y las fuerzas que lo impulsan complican el panorama para otras clases de activos. La debilidad de la moneda estadounidense había sido positiva para los commodities y dio bríos a las ganancias de las multinacionales estadounidenses provenientes del exterior, dice el Journal.

    El avance de la moneda estadounidense frustró las operaciones que dependían de la debilidad del dólar, como las apuestas por un aumento en los precios de las materias primas, apuntan analistas de Wall Street.

    El ánimo de los inversionistas pasó del pesimismo frente al dólar al pesimismo sobre el euro. Los problemas de Grecia pusieron de manifiesto la fragilidad de la recuperación de la zona euro y cualquier "nerviosismo" sobre la economía y el enorme déficit fiscal estadounidense quedó relegado a un segundo plano.

    De esta manera, el dólar ha vuelto a servir de refugio seguro para los especuladores internacionales preocupados por el contagio de la crisis de la deuda, tanto de EEUU como de la Unión Europea.

    La opinión respecto al dólar "cambió de forma radical", reconoce Claire Dissaux, directora de economía global y estrategia de la firma londinense Millennium Gobal Investments.

    La cuestión se remite a un aspecto central: Los especuladores internacionales (ante el embate de la nueva crisis fiscal) compran deuda pública estadounidense garantizada por el "refugio seguro" del dólar.

    La nueva crisis, como lo señala The Financial Times, ya está siendo exportada desde EEUU mediante el endeudamiento sin respaldo que explota el dólar como "refugio seguro" para los especuladores internacionales.

    Durante meses, el dólar tendió a bajar mientras los especuladores abandonaban sus refugios seguros con la moneda estadounidense e iban en busca de inversiones más rentables como el petróleo y las materias primas.

    Cuando estalló crisis financiera especuladores globales se refugiaron en efectivo y bonos del Tesoro de EEUU haciendo subir aa divisa estadounidense.

    Cuando la tormenta amainó, en 2009, el dólar reanudó su descenso. A fines de noviembre, tocó su nivel más bajo frente al yen desde julio de 1995, a 86,44 yenes por dólar, mientras el euro se acercó a su máximo histórico contra el dólar, al superar US$1,51.

    Los grupos especuladores hicieron subir los precios de las materias primas, que se fijan en dólares, y las acciones de productores de commodities, haciendo bajar al dólar..

    Muchos inversionistas compraron oro con el argumento de que mantendría su valor mientras caía el dólar. "El consenso era no anticipar un dólar fuerte durante el primer semestre de 2010", señala Steve Pearson, director de intercambio de divisas G-10 para Bank of America Merrill Lynch en Londres.

    A partir de diciembre pasado, no obstante, el dólar siguió subiendo hasta alrededor de 90 yenes y el euro cayó a US$1,36.

    Como ya está comprobado por la historia y por la realidad, el dólar USA es el refugio "seguro" del capitalismo financiero especulativo trasnacional (estatal y privado) en épocas de cataclismos.

    Tras el colapso en Dubai, por ejemp`lolos especuladores internacionales en alta escala se refugiaron, en los mercados europeos, en el dólar en medio de temores que pueden convertir esta conducta en tendencia generalizada a nivel mundial, según The Wall Street Journal.

    El euro, que durante meses mantuvo una escalada y había desplazado al dólar, sigue cayendo ante la huída masiva de los especuladores hacia la compra de activos más "seguros" en moneda estadounidense.

    La situación vuelve a repetirse con la crisis de deuda regional que crece y se propaga por toda la eurozona, con epicentro en Grecia, mientras se agigantan los temores de los especuladores a una insolvencia de pago generalizada y a un derrumbe en cadena de las economías más débiles encabezadas por España.

    Para el Financial Times, España marca el centro de la "incertidumbre" y nuevas bajas de calificaciones de su economía podría detonar finalmente un derrumbe financiero encadenado de los países que se mantienen en la "línea roja" de la insolvencia para afrontar los compromisos de sus deudas públicas.

    En general, la sombra de una insolvencia de pago generalizada (producida por los déficit y la baja de recaudación fiscal) hace temer un rebrote de la crisis financiera, y sigue favoreciendo la embestida del dólar contra el euro.

    Los especialistas estiman que la escalada del dólar frente al euro seguirá intensificándose impulsada por nuevas rebajas de la calificación de las agencias de rating para Grecia y Portugal, y frente al temor de una caída en cadena de las economías más débiles de la eurozona.

    Fuente: http://www.iarnoticias.com/2010/secciones/norteamerica/0030_regreso_dolar_16feb2010.html

    Thursday, February 18, 2010


    Televisa, monopolio subsidiado

    Jenaro Villamil



    MÉXICO, D.F., 16 de febrero (apro).- ¿De qué manera explicarán los diputados y senadores que aprobaron exentar hasta por 5 mil 600 millones de pesos por el pago de derechos a los “nuevos jugadores” de la telefonía celular, cuando Televisa ya oficializó que cuenta con casi mil 500 millones de dólares para comprar 30% de la compañía telefónica Nextel si ganan la polémica licitación de la banda 1.7 Ghz, ideal para los servicios de cuádruple play (video, audio, Internet y telefonía)?

    El contraste entre los argumentos que se esgrimieron para justificar un privilegio fiscal de ese tamaño y la soberbia de Televisa para doblegar al Congreso, a la Comisión Federal de Competencia, a la Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes y mandarle el mensaje a la Cofetel de que esa nueva banda será suya, sólo confirma lo que no han querido ver los organismos reguladores: la empresa que dirige Emilio Azcárraga Jean actúa como monopolio, condiciona como monopolio, presume como monopolio, intimida como monopolio, pero no se le reconoce esta condición. Incluso, reclama subsidios fiscales.

    El problema fundamental es que en medio de la peor crisis financiera y económica del país, el Estado mexicano decidió exentar a Televisa y a su socio Nextel del pago de derechos por el usufructo de un bien público que es el espectro para la telefonía celular.
    Se dijo una y otra vez que el transitorio del artículo 244-E de la Ley Federal de Derechos no tenía “ninguna dedicatoria”, y hasta Televisa publicó un desplegado para desmentir a los diputados Javier Corral, Armando Ríos Peter, José Narro y a la mitad de la bancada del PAN en el Senado, encabezada por Santiago Creel, que criticaron una medida de esta naturaleza.

    Ahora queda muy claro que se trata no sólo de subsidiar a un monopolio en televisión abierta, sino de subsidiar su ingreso al mercado de la telefonía móvil.

    Un ejemplo de esta situación es la autorización en un tiempo récord que le otorgaron los integrantes de la Comisión Federal de Competencia a Televisa para adquirir 30% de la compañía Nextel-México, bajo el argumento de que “implica la asociación de dos empresas enfocadas a mercados distintos”, que no generará prácticas monopólicas.

    El organismo que encabeza Eduardo Pérez Motta simplemente no tomó en cuenta que para analizar los nuevos mercados convergentes (telecomunicaciones y medios electrónicos) es importante tomar en cuenta la condición monopólica de Televisa en materia de publicidad y de producción y distribución de contenidos audiovisuales.

    Televisa posee 68% de las concesiones en materia de televisión abierta, concentra 75% de la publicidad en medios electrónicos, tiene cuatro “canales espejo” que el Estado le otorgó sin pago alguno hasta el 2021, y ha frenado la posibilidad de que exista una competencia real en esa materia.

    También controla ya más de 55% del mercado de la televisión restringida –a través de Cablevisión y sus socias Cablemás, TVI y Megacable--, impone sus condiciones para cumplir con las reglas del must carrier y el must offer, pero esa situación parece no ser una práctica preocupante para el futuro de la convergencia tecnológica.

    Por si esto no bastara, Televisa tiene 130 permisos para centros de apuestas, posee 25% de una empresa de aviación, controla las agencias publicitarias, el mercado discográfico, la industria del espectáculo, el futbol profesional y no tiene rival en su estrategia de mercadotecnia política.

    El artífice de esta expansión de Televisa hacia el mercado de telecomunicaciones –antes reservado al monopolio de Telmex-- es su vicepresidente de Finanzas, Alfonso de Angoitia.

    El lunes 15 de febrero, en rueda de prensa telefónica, De Angoitia confirmó lo que sus competidores Iusacell y MVS han documentado en sus demandas de amparo en contra de la licitación de la banda 1.7 Ghz: Televisa considera que esta concesión le corresponde.

    De Angoitia afirmó que la adquisición de 30% de Nextel México, con posibilidad de incrementarla 7.5% más, “está sujeta a la condición de que ganemos la licitación y a que Nextel tenga frecuencias para ampliar sus servicios. Entonces, si no fuera exitosa la propuesta que vamos a presentar en la licitación, no haríamos ya el negocio, y quedaríamos las dos partes libres a partir de ahí”.

    En otras palabras, si la licitación no es para la sociedad Nextel-Televisa, el multicitado anuncio de la adquisición es puro aire. Sin embargo, De Angoitia no admitió –quizá porque nadie se lo preguntó-- que las bases de la licitación que emitió la Cofetel están claramente direccionadas para que el consorcio formado por la televisora mexicana y la telefónica de origen estadunidense se quede hasta con 80 Mhz de la banda 1.7Ghz.

    Ninguno de sus otros competidores –Iusacell, Telcel, MVS o Telefónica-- puede aspirar a la mayor parte de este pastel.

    Estamos ante el surgimiento de un ‘megapoder’, tal como lo señaló Proceso en su edición de esta semana: unos legisladores que le garantizan privilegios fiscales, una Secretaría de Hacienda que cabildea a su favor, un órgano regulador de antimonopolios que simplemente no ve lo que para todos es un hecho –el predominio absoluto de Televisa en las concesiones--, una Cofetel que emite bases favorables para los intereses del consorcio y una clase política intimidada y desesperada por aparecer en la pantalla del monopolio para que no veten sus aspiraciones y la fantasía de algunos intelectuales que pretenden encontrarle, ahora sí, bondades a una compañía que siempre ha actuado monopólicamente.

    El asunto no es de maquillaje o de crear canales como Foro TV para lavarse la cara ante un sector crítico.

    El fondo del asunto es de estructura de poder. Mientras no se democraticen los contenidos, concesiones y telecomunicaciones, el ‘megapoder’ seguirá absorbiendo lo que quiera, incluyendo la fibra óptica de la Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE).

    Comentarios: jenarovi@yahoo.com.mx.

    Dubai police call on Interpol to help arrest Mossad head

    • Emirate '99% sure' Israeli spies were behind Mabhouh death
    • Israeli ambassador told to explain use of fake British passports


    Interpol should help arrest the head of Mossad if Israel's spy agency was responsible for the killing of a Hamas commander in Dubai, the emirate's police chief said today.

    In comments to be aired on Dubai TV, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim called for Interpol to issue "a red notice against the head of Mossad ... as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is likely now".

    Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

    The father of Palestinian militant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed recently, holds up a photograph of his son. Dubai police say they are virtually certain Mossad was behind the murder. Photograph: Hatem Moussa/AP


    International pressure intensified against Israel's spy service as official "wanted" notices were released for the suspected team of Israeli secret agents accused of participating in the assassination. The faces of an 11-strong alleged hit squad appeared on the Interpol website this morning, 48 hours after authorities in the United Arab Emirates issued arrest warrants for the killing last month of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

    Their offences are listed as "crimes against life and health". The group stands accused of entering the emirate state using forged or stolen European identities, murdering the militant in his hotel and then fleeing the country on 19 January. The red wanted notices are not international arrest warrants, but allow details of fugitives to be released worldwide with the request that the wanted person be arrested and extradited.

    Tamim said that the Dubai authorities were virtually certain that Mossad was behind the assassination of Mabhouh, as the incident threatened to turn into a diplomatic row between Israel and Britain over the use of false British passports.

    "Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. It is 99%, if not 100%, that Mossad is standing behind the murder," Tamim told the National newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.

    The Israeli ambassador, Ron Prosor, was at the Foreign Office this morning for a brief meeting to "share information" about the assassins' use of identities stolen from six British citizens living in Israel, as part of the meticulously orchestrated assassination of Mabhouh at a luxury hotel last month.

    "After receiving an invitation last night, I met with Sir Peter Ricketts, deputy-general of the British foreign minister," Prosor said after the meeting. "Despite my willingness to co-operate with his request, I could not shed new light on the said matters."

    Britain has stopped short of accusing Israel of involvement, but to signal its displeasure the Foreign Office ignored an Israeli plea to keep the summons secret. "Relations were in the freezer before this. They are in the deep freeze now," an official told the Guardian.

    David Miliband, the foreign secretary, insisted he was determined to "get to the bottom of" how fake British passports were involved in the killing. He said he "hoped and expected" that Tel Aviv would co-operate fully with the investigation into the "outrage".

    Gordon Brown launched an investigation yesterday into the use of the fake passports, which will be led by the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The British embassy in Tel Aviv is also contacting the British nationals affected in the plot "and stands ready to provide them with the support they need", the Foreign Office said last night.

    "The British passport is an important part of being British and we have to make sure everything is done to protect it," Brown told LBC Radio yesterday.

    A UAE official said the number of suspects in the assassination had widened to at least 18. The official said the list included 11 people identified this week, two Palestinians in custody and five others. Two women were among the suspects.

    The Israeli newspaper Haaretz named the two Palestinians as Ahmad Hasnin, a Palestinian intelligence operative, and Anwar Shekhaiber, an employee of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. They were arrested in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and extradited to Dubai. Both worked for a property company in Dubai belonging to a senior official of Fatah, the political faction headed by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, the paper reported.

    Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said there was no proof that Mossad was involved in Mabhouh's killing in a Dubai hotel last month, but added that Israel had a "policy of ambiguity" on intelligence matters.

    There were calls in Israel for an internal government inquiry into whether Mossad was responsible for identity theft from dual nationals, and criticism of its chief, Meir Dagan, for what critics described as a clumsy operation that risked alienating European allies.

    "What began as a heart attack turned out to be an assassination, which led to a probe, which turned into the current passport affair," a columnist, Yoav Limor, wrote in Israel Hayom, a pro-government newspaper. "It is doubtful whether this is the end of the affair."

    Yesterday more details emerged about the assassination plot:

    • The Guardian learned that a key Hamas security official is under arrest in Syria on suspicion of having helped the assassins identify Mabhouh as their target.

    • Authorities in Vienna have begun an investigation into whether Austria was used as a logistical hub for the operation. Seven of the mobile phones used by the killers had Austrian sim cards.

    • Three of the killers entered Dubai with forged Irish passports that had numbers lifted from legitimate travel documents.

    It is not the first British-Israeli row over the misuse of British passports. British officials are particularly angry because the Israeli government pledged that there would be no repeat of an incident in 1987, in which Mossad agents acquired and tampered with British passports