I dunno how much coverage the murder of Palestinian Mahmoud al-Mabhouh by an Israeli hit squad has been getting in amerika. Here is a Guardian article that gives some of the background.
The chap was strangled in his Dubai hotel room by a team of murderers who the Dubai police believe to have been a Mossad hit squad.
All the killers were travelling on third party passports (eg Brit French Russian), it has already been established that those on British passports had used the identities of Brits living in Israel. Lol that will teach them to go and live on stolen land now these zionists won't be able to travel again without setting off alarms, coming up on no-fly and wanted lists from bringing up an interpol flag. Stuck in Israel for ever. That was what they wanted, wasn't it?

Anyway as to be expected the eurpoean countries haven't exactly been leaping up and down demanding answers from Israel. After considerable pressure form citizens Brown's govt called in the Israeli ambassador for a cup of tea, there is an election this year and Gordon is desperate not to upset anyone.
Interpol have also, albeit reluctantly published the visa/passport photos of the killers. ( I am sorry you will have to go to The Guardian article and click on the link there, the url for the Interpol wanted pics is so long inserting it straight in to this blog destroyed formatting no matter which way I configured it)

But the photos of any with arabic or pakistani identities have a big 'not available' sign instead of the photo.
Why is Interpol desperate to protect the identities of assassins who are used in false flag operations by western intelligence?
Interpol are probably doing as little as they can.
It is always difficult to tell who is aiding and abetting the israeli terrorists when they get caught. They two Mossad agents arrested in NZ attempting to steal the identities of disabled New Zealanders managed to keep their faces out of the media.
The judge allowed cameras in the courtroom but he also allowed one of the terrorists to cover his face with his hands for the entirety of the proceedings.
We will never know if that was a decision of the judge or of some higher up bureaucrat. The fact that the judge told them they were terrorists and threw them in jail tends to suport the latter theory.
As the awful saga of Mossad agents harrassing South African citizens at Johannesburg airport demonstrated, ever since the early noughties, intelligence agencies of major global war on terror protagonasts (eg MI6, CIA) have been putting incredible pressure on the governments of smaller nations to 'normalise' relations with Israeli terrorists organistations and their agents.
It is vital that those of us living in those smaller states ensure our governments resist this pressure otherwise we will find ourselves to be caught in the middle between zionist attacks on indigenous peoples and the indigenous peoples' resistance to the attacks.

After writing up the post above I stopped for a coffee and breather, then realised I have just devised a new parlour game.
You take the photo of Mossad agent Uriel Zoshe Kelman with his hand over much of his face from some NZ Herald article on the tough row Mossad has to hoe, then compare it to Mossad's wanted posters for the murder squad being hunted after their assassination in Dubai.

Of course we are handicapped by the terrorists paw obscuring half his face in the first photo and by the unusually blurry photos of the wanted killers(when is the last time you managed to get a passport application through with anything so indistinct? - 1999?).

My best pick is Number 5 Michael Barney .
Others will undoubtedly have other opinions. Which killer do you reckon is Uri Kelman?

The European nationals whose identities and/or passport Nos. were "borrowed": 6 Brits 3 Irish 1 French 1 German.

Brits are at-least-theoretically the most heavily "wronged" and/so seem to be kinda-heading the charge, BIG diplomatic-incident kerfuffle played out in hyper-pissy "we are not amused" Brit-tones: I've been watching BBC and it sounds as indignant as the Guardian, been running a list of precedents + stressing a previous Israeli promise not to "ever-ever" pull a stunt like that again using British passports re a previous case back in the 1980s.
Samples of BBC coverage:
Long History of Israel's "covert killing"
Interpol puts Dubai killing suspects on wanted list

Ultra-quick Europress review

Ireland:
Seems to be quite a lot of highly indignant coverage around:
Innocent Irish faced arrest in 'Mossad' plot
Dubai suspects had five fake Irish passports

France:
Le Monde (Fr. "progressive") isn't even carrying the story on its website, nor is theoretically-leftist "Libération", but the more Gaullist-conservative "Le Figaro" is featuring it as story No. 4 with big headline + even larger pic (of Hamas fighters!) but bland accompanying text focussing more on Hamas vs Fatah rivalry and reciprocal finger-pointing than on Mossad's murderous-terroristic history and latest misdeed.

Germany (unfortunately I don't read German so can only scan the English-language German press zone)
Spiegel: Tourists with a License to Kill -A Look at the Mossad's Assassination Squads
(... more or less same historical narrative as BBC/Guardian but with far more devoutly-admiring tone...)

Spain:
El Pais is carrying the story as top headline in its international section - text and headlines are comparatively strongly worded:
Europa pide explicaciones a Israel por el papel del Mosad en el asesinato del líder de Hamás


Italy:
"Corriere" (center-right) - no mention I could find
"Repubblica" (center-left) - no mention ditto
"L'Unità" - (left) - carried the story yesterday, in minimalist agency-type format
mo_leader_hamas_ucciso_polemiche_su_mossad_e_furti_identit
Admittedly there's been so much really stinky It-Sh*t hitting the fan recently there's not much room left for scandals in which our own politicians/mafiosi/spooks/whatevers aren't directly involved.

Euronews (FR-based multilingual Europe-wide TV channel) is carrying the story in minimalist version, emphasis on mistreatment of innocent Irish:
http://www.euronews.net/2010/02/18/interpol-red-notices-on-11-hamas-murder-suspects/

....

Slightly further eastwards, Turkey's Today's Zaman is carrying the laconic Reuters version while Qatar-based Al Jazeera English is having a field-day highlighting Dubai's fury and Mossad's red face:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/201021817355228112.html

Ha'aretz has quite detailed coverage:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1150754.html
...............


So having read my way through all that, my impression is that the Interpol-pressure against Mossad is being fuelled mostly by Dubai.

Don't want to sound too cynical, but fact that British banks and etcetcs got their fingers badly burnt in the Dubai real-estate bubble crash with prospects of getting their billions back at least partly dependent on the UAE ruling family/banks/whatevers that have been bailing out the errant Dubai royal-cousin outfits could have something to do with the loudness of the Brits' declarations of outrage?

Murder is all I could think of when I'd heard about this horror. The NPR (national propaganda radio) voices seemed unconcerned they were discussing a murder as matter-of-fact as if they were talking about a meal they'd just eaten... in fact I'd argued they had even less passion than that. It was almost like they were robots and I was hearing a programed response. Fuckers.

How many cold-blooded killers are the various states hiding? What sort of person kills another in such a horrible fashion and then is able to sleep at night? I've tried to imagine what it would be like and I can't; Not that I wouldn't consider myself above such an act in a fit of passion, I've got that in me, and I've killed plenty of animals... I'm not bragging or anything, their deaths aren't something I enjoyed, but I've done it, so I've an idea about taking life. It isn't an act a normal person would ever willingly do to another person. With animals it really isn't easy... most ranchers and the such take no pleasure in butchering, but it's part of the job and is why the critters were raised. Sorry, I've gotten off one foul subject and started down another foul path... all killing is ugly when you're reading about it. Ugh.

So there are professional murderers being hired and protected by governments... I wonder how this makes a leader feel? Are they comfortable there are killers on their payroll? Who keeps these evil, soulless freaks in line? Is there a way to take-out one of these killers if they decided to freelance? How do they keep their skills sharp? Where do they practice their killing between the times they are called upon?

Contemplating such things makes me ill. Really, I feel physically ill thinking about this... It is amazing how for years I read about such acts in fantasy books and even dreamed of being like James Bond with the coveted '00' rating allowing you to kill bad guys – that was back when I was a teenager and I didn't understand what such an act would do to my soul. Now I wonder who does these murders and how many are officially sanctioned every year?

Dark times, dark times indeed.

DaveS

I agree with what you say about killing. Killing in cold blood is monstrous. Most monstrous of all IMHO is dropping bombs on a city or neighbourhood or inhabited building/s of any kind, I've heard too many people here still reliving the WW2 "allied" bombings. While Kabul, Baghdad, Lebanon and Gaza were being bombed I shook and retched for hours, couldn't eat or work so spent my time cursing those responsible with slow painful lingering deaths involving intubation bedsores and gangrene. Second-worst form of mass-murder - as per my own Italian sensitivities so heavily influenced by events here from late 60s through early 90s - is placing a bomb in a train/market/railway- station/plane/restaurant etc. and walking off, third-worst is detonating a bomb one is wearing oneself in the same kind of surroundings crowded with ordinary-type random and/or "enemy-group" people attending to their every-day business. Same applies to car-bombings and truck-bombings: if one "blood-sacrifices" oneself at the same time at least a micro-part of the blood-debt incurred is paid so not "quite" as bad as just sauntering off to watch TV/get drunk/get laid. Next in line are commando-type ops that spew machine-gun bullets at random people, more-or-less equiv. to chucking grenades/molotov cocktails into confined inhabited spaces. Killing someone who knows and more-or-less trusts you is next, followed by killing a prisoner/hostage you've been guarding/interacting with, followed by stalking and assassinating a stranger due to his/her social or political role - a journalist, writer, trade-unionist, scientist, judge, business-person, politician, cop... more or less in that order. Then comes stalking and shooting/blowing up anyone/anything military or paramilitary, regular or otherwise: relatively least-grave. May seem a strange list to some, but the standard-issue US kind seems no less strange to me.

P.S. professional executioners and torturers whether "legal"-type or otherwise are truly the scum of the earth.

...............

Here's a quick summary of Arabic-media info - about involvement of Fatah (Dahlan), Jourdanian complicity, and a European-looking i.e. non-Arab guy who used the name "Peter".

Insofar as how heads government handle the notion of employing killers, one of the links Parvati-Roma published above, points out that Ehud Barak the last Labor Prime Minister of israel had been a member of a squad that carried out several notorious murders.

He was by no means the first Israeli Prime Minister to be implicated in terrorist murdering. Old "Mr ME Peace himself "Yitzak Rabin" was the leader of a Haganah squad which slaughtered english peacekeepers as they slept in their beds at the King David Hotel. Their crime was to try to prevent Haganah and other zionist terror groups from slaughtering Palestinian families living on land that zionist invaders had decided they were going to steal.

Sure Israel is an extreme, it seems as if any PM that hasn't been involved in the slaughter of innovents has been found to be a thief. Of course some - such as 'Mr Living Proof Karma Lives', Ariel Sharon - have managed to be the whole gamut of israeli leaders weakliness. Successfully striving to be a murdering, bribe taking, thieving, war criminal.

Of course the zionists aren't alone in this. The zionist lackeys occupying leadership positions in western nations also enjoy tales of innocence thwarted. Anecdotal evidence suggests that both shrub and mad dog cheney delighted in vicariously listening to tales of slaughter by the murder squads they had sicced on any islamic people who dared to question amerika's hegemony in the ME.

Churchill had a similar bent for delighting in the stories of murder and mayhem 'his commandos' had acted out on people unlucky enough to be living in the coastal towns and villages of german occuppied europe.
Unfortunately for us humans there are far too many leaders who derive some sort of pleasure demonstrating their power by ordering up the infliction of horrors on ordinary shit kickers.

We must take heart from the mess Israel's diplomats find themselves in.

Much as I hate living in a society that is chocka with cameras filming humans going about their business, now Mossad has a reason to dislike the extent to which surveillance society impinges upon liberty.
A cloud with a thick silver lining indeed.

And the quislings in Fatah will be shitting themselves. At some stage Abbas is going to have to run an election even the amerikans will get antsy if he holds out too long. It was hard enough to win when the biggest gripe from voters was that Fatah personnel were dipping into the cash register. Now that Fatah has been caught conspiring with israel to murder a Palestinian hero, it is difficult to see how they could possibly steal enough of the vote next election to cover for the huge swing of votes against Fatah/PLO thuggery.
As reported in Aljazeera:

Gawker has a video, 27 mins, made by Dubai authorities (?) I haven’t watched it all or absorbed it but it seems interesting with lots of footage from surveillance cams.

http://gawker.com/5472942/the-video-traces-of-an-assassination

This looks like it could get interesting: Israel is a relatively small country, so the probability that the dozen of so photos of the hit team produce a "flash of recognition" in some "outsider" are very high. If, moreover, some of them are dual nationals (also this is not unlikely: just ask Cheryl Hanin Ben Tov) there may well be non-Israeli acquaintances ready to suggest an identification. Will someone start "naming names", even if only in a partial or deniable fashion? After all, the cat is largely out of the bag. Air travelers should probably carry the photos of the assassins with them, just in case the young man (or woman) sitting next to you happens to be one of them. Meanwhile Dubai is asking for Meir Dagan's arrest. Fat Chance, but certainly an interesting gambit.

The use of ‘stolen’ identities or passports is very strange.

This seems to be a meme that developed after 9/11 when it turned out that the 19 ‘terrorist’ identities put forward by the FBI were not quite correct, or ambiguous, and that ppl with the same, or very similar, names were still alive. See Note 1, it can be skipped.

The idea of mistaken, usurped, or stolen identities took hold, as it conveniently created a lot of confusion that the public could not follow, encouraged conspiracy thinking, muddied the waters, allowed contradictory public statements.

As usual, the meme appeals to daily life experience: Johnny signed my name on a cheque, I know all about how that goes - see also duct tape for housewives in case of a BIO attack; anthrax, or botulism in household fridges; etc. etc.

Apparently, at present, the Mossad perpetuates, or decided to take up and exploit such confusions, as a kind of fashion and f**k you statement, more fashion I reckon than anything else. Stolen identities are all the rage. The Mossad didn’t do it before, afaik (... ?)

Secret services, Gvmts., anyone in power, Corporate Heads, and even ordinary individuals can create identities, untraceable ones moreover, out of nothing. They have no need to steal passports and the identities of living people. Involving Pete in Brixton, aka the original identity owner, is lame and can lead to massive flack. (Maybe a few lost, poor, ppl will fall victims to scams run by rogue Gvmt. officials who ‘sell’ real identities.)

So, these moves are either calculated and deliberate or just hapless follow the fashion, congratulate each other, muck around, etc. The latter shows weakness, lack of expertise/skill, it sure has gotten them some unwelcome attention though. The former makes little sense to me, but who knows.

The last, recent, world wide mistaken identity was perpetuated by the media. Neda, the Iranian heroine, a protestor brutally murdered, is alive today, a recent immigrant to Germany, living off the measly refugee stipend.

http://www.ruhrbarone.de/the-story-of-neda-soltani-a-story-of-what-media-can-do-to-a-person/

Moreover, the Iran Gvmt. claims that the dead Neda was killed by mistake:

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/iran-says-neda-killing-case-mistaken-identity

The message seems to be that the personal identities of ordinary citizens are not protected by the State.

You, I, we, can no longer be sure of succeeding in claiming that we are who we are. Others - the media, and alphabet soup agencies, the Gvmt. - will decide, or choose not to decide.

The prototypical ex. is the US with its no-fly lists: arbitrary lists, wild spelling, etc. may see you banned from flying, no matter your characteristics, like being 5 years old, or a US senator, etc.

The Stasi kept careful track of who was whom. As did the KGB.

Stripping people of their identity, not allowing them to have an identity, is the ultimate totalitarian move.

Note 1.

For example, Al Omari (spelling, caps, spaces, etc. varies for all the names), the terrorist, with M. Atta in Portland, Maine, captured by vids, then on to Boston to catch flight 11 to LA,

was confused with:

Abdul Rahman Said Al Omari, a pilot for Saudi Airlines, the only one ever to obtain an apology from the US Gvmt. for a ‘false accusation’ (re 9/11) and:

Abdulaziz Al-Omari, a Saudi engineer who studied in Denver and had his passport stolen back in the middle 90’s; who had the same name as

A. Al-O, the married student (b. 1972, from visa applications) who was with Atta before 9/11.

http://www.correntewire.com/npr_and_assassin_look_or_news_alternate_earth

It is a bit surprising the the "newspaper of record" for the U.S. is still giving the Dubai hit story significant "play", as indicated by this front page story (at least in the Web edition). Nevertheless, up to now the correct names seem not to have been attached to the faces (although I do not claim to be completely up-to-date on this point). Things become more interesting if and when that begins to happen.

A brave man:

The story Dubai Mossad hit team has, by now, dropped below the event horizon of much of the Western press, but it is still of interest (or was yesterday) in Kuwait . Interestingly (indeed, astoundingly given the
widespread publication of photos of the hit squad) no confirmation of "real names" has yet appeared in print (at least to my knowledge). Presumably, the diplomatic "slap on the wrist" which has been given by various offended passport issuing allies of Israel will suffice to quiet the waters and, sooner or later, allow the perpetrators to travel freely once again, and perhaps even to enjoy the warm glow of celebrity which awaits them in Israel and among Israel's most fervent apologists. In this regard, is it just my antiquated Browser, or has
the photo linked to by Debs disappeared?

The faces...

http://www.interpol.int/Public/Wanted/Search/ResultListNew.asp?ct=Data&so=DocTitle%2CRank%5Bd%5D&qu=%28+%40META%5FPERSON%5FNOTIFICATION%5F%5FTYPE%5FOF%5FNOTIFICATION+PUBLIC%5FRED+%29+%26+%28+%40META%5FPERSON%5FARREST%5FWARRANT%5FOFFENCE%5F%5FOFFENCE%5FID+crimes+against+life+and+health+%29+%26+%28+%40META%5FPERSON%5FARREST%5FWARRANT%5F%5FISSUED%5FISO3166+UNITED+ARAB+EMIRATES+%29&mh=8&sh=0&nStartHit=16&cboNbHitsPerPage=8&cboNbPages=20

How's that for an address?

I checked and it links... but the address run on and on and on...

DaveS

This is probably just the expected slap on the
wrist from Britain, but I am still hoping that real names
will emerge.

It will be interesting to see what unfolds during the next few weeks. Some of my tinfoil hat sites are claiming that all the british and u.s. hardline talk is just that, talk. Many of the post wonder if this is just the dog and pony show before another 9/11, this time being blamed on Iran and once more uniting israel, uk and us against a 'common' enemy.

This week in Souther California there is a military drill... something my fellow Reynold's Wrap wearing chromedomed freaks speculate might be a precursor to another 'attack' but I'm not so sure. I guess we'll just need to wait and see.

Otherwise it appears that the corporate empire continues to run roughshod over everyone and everything... Business as usual, don't you love it?

DaveS

This link on Marc Grossman and the AQKhan nuclear proliferation network (and the accompanying comments) make for interesting reading. So far all official U.S. participants remain garbed in the finest cloth of legality, but perhaps the cloth is becoming so fine as to be well nigh invisible. Will some impertinent child inform the dazzled crowd about the nude reality? It is remarkable that other countries have corrupt officials who act illegally for monetary gain, while the U.S. is blessed with an ufficialdom universally untainted by the slightest whiff of peculation.

Any idea what could be behind this?

Report: Algeria arrests Mossad agent with fake Spanish passport