Secret letter lodged in Israeli state archives reveals South African icon underwent training under an assumed identity

Nelson Mandela apparently underwent weapons training by Mossad agents in Ethiopia in 1962 without the Israeli secret service knowing his true identity, according to an intriguing secret letter lodged in the Israeli state archives.

The missive, revealed by the Israeli paper Haaretz two weeks after the death of the iconic South African leader, said Mandela was instructed in the use of weapons and sabotage techniques, and was encouraged to develop Zionist sympathies.

Mandela visited other African countries in 1962 in order to drum up support for the African National Congress's fight against the apartheid regime in South Africa. While in Ethiopia, he sought help from the Israeli embassy, using a pseudonym, according to the letter - classified top secret - which was sent to officials in Israel in October 1962. Its subject line was the "Black Pimpernel", a term used by the South African press to refer to Mandela.

Haaretz quoted the letter as saying: "As you may recall, three months ago we discussed the case of a trainee who arrived at the [Israeli] embassy in Ethiopia by the name of David Mobsari who came from Rhodesia. The aforementioned received training from the Ethiopians [a codename for Mossad agents, according to Haaretz] in judo, sabotage and weaponry."

It added that the man had shown interest in the methods of the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organisation that fought against the British rulers and the Arab population of Palestine in the 1930s and 40s, and other Israeli underground movements.

It went on: "He greeted our men with 'Shalom', was familiar with the problems of Jewry and of Israel, and gave the impression of being an intellectual. The staff tried to make him into a Zionist. In conversations with him, he expressed socialist world views and at times created the impression that he leaned toward communism.

In an effort to condition children to accept the police state, the TSA has released a cartoon depicting an animated family enduring a warrantless federal checkpoint at an airport.

The video casts the the travelers and government agents as cute doggie characters that show how fun it can be to go through a checkpoint.

"Its not scary," explains the father, as he hands his papers to the blue-shirted sentry. "TSA officers are here to keep us secure!"

The children are taught the phrase, "Stop, Screen, and Go!" as their persons, papers, and effects are searched without cause.

"Vrrrrroooom!" exclaims the child as he excitedly steps through the TSA scanner.

"Thank you TSA!" the family praises, as their baby's milk bottle is returned to them after a search.

According to the TSA, "passengers who know what to expect during screening will benefit from a more positive screening experience." After all, those who expect to be treated with dignity and in observance to their rights are unlikely to have a pleasant experience getting groped, scanned, and searched.

Arab foreign ministers on Saturday sided with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and rejected the security plan presented by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as part of Israeli-Palestinian talks.

At an emergency meeting called at the request of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday, Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Araby said there could be not one Israeli soldier in the territory of a future Palestine.

But a resolution he read at the end of the meeting did not repeat the harshly critical language of a report circulated to the Arab delegates ahead of the gathering. The position of the report - based mainly on the Palestinian stance - is that Kerry's plan is skewed in favor of Israel and secures prolonged Israeli military presence in the Jordan River Valley, while the Palestinian demands will only be addressed at a later stage.

The report, seen by Reuters, said the U.S. security proposals "achieved Israeli security expansionist demands, and guaranteed (Israel's) continued control of (the Jordan Valley) on the security pretext".

Mission creep? More like a 'new dawn' for Africa.

Indeed, famous last words of many a US President, now coming out of Barack Obama's mouth today:

"These troops will remain in South Sudan until the security situation becomes such that it is no longer needed."

Watch this space, as US AFRICOM's first major set piece in the new Africa - the partitioning of Sudan and South Sudan - begins heating up this month.

Off the wire: "The US has deployed 45 troops to protect US personnel and assets in South Sudan amid ongoing fighting between rebels and government forces, the White House said. President Barack Obama sent a letter to Congress, saying the group of soldiers was sent Wednesday, AFP reported. The small force will remain in South Sudan"until the security situation becomes such that it is no longer needed," Obama said."Although equipped for combat, this force was deployed for the purpose of protecting US citizens and property."

The December 16th, 2013, edition of The New Yorker published an article with a revealing anecdote about the Obama administration's continuation of Bush era national security policies. Revealing, that is, for those who can see.

Ryan Lizza, in 'State of Deception: Why won't the President rein in the intelligence community?' asks why Obama, once a constitutional law professor who, when running for the Senate in 2003, called the Patriot Act "shoddy and dangerous," became a president who lobbied for the renewal of the Patriot Act and continued the Bush administration's surveillance state policies (minus the creepy 'Total Information Awareness' brand name). The easy answer is that no president has control over the secret government. The assassination of the last president who tried to exert control, John F. Kennedy, proves that point. As the comedian Bill Hicks once joked, whenever a new president gets elected, the real leaders call him into a room, show him the Zapruder film, then say, "Any questions?", and the new president answers, "Only what my agenda is."

But the spooks probably don't like to be so crude unless they have to be. It's much more fun for them to apply their skills in subtle manipulation. L. Fletcher Prouty, in his book The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, gives what I think is the best account of how the game is played. According to Prouty, it's done through 'the briefing'.

From President to Ambassador, Cabinet Officer to Commanding General, and from Senator to executive assistant -- all these men have their sources of information and guidance. Most of this information and guidance is the result of carefully laid schemes and ploys of pressure groups. In this influential coterie one of the most interesting and effective roles is that played by the behind the scenes, faceless, nameless, ubiquitous briefing officer.

He is the man who sees the President, the Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff almost daily, and who carries with him the most skillfully detailed information. He is trained by years of experience in the precise way to present that information to assure its effectiveness. He comes away day after day knowing more and more about the man he has been briefing and about what it is that the truly influential pressure groups at the center of power and authority are really trying to tell these key decision makers. In Washington, where such decisions shape and shake the world, the role of the regular briefing officer is critical...

The role of the briefing officer is quiet, effective, and most influential; and, in the CIA, specialized in the high art of top level indoctrination.

A heated battle is underway just meters away from a chemical facility in Syria, the Russian foreign ministry has warned, accusing the Islamist rebels of attempts to hamper international efforts to dispose of the deadly weapons.

"The fighting between the Syrian government troops and militants from the Al-Nusra Front and the Army of Islam goes on just about 100 meters away from a chemical facility in Sukkari neighborhood in Homs Governorate," the statement by the Foreign Ministry said.

The endangered facility is used to store chemical agents due to be moved and utilized outside Syria as part of the international plan to destroy the chemical arsenals of President Bashar Assad, the statement stressed.

According to the ministry, the joint mission of Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and United Nations in Damascus has already been notified of the events in Sukkari by the Syrian authorities.

"Moscow is deeply concerned by those reports. We strongly condemn the provocative actions aimed at disrupting the schedule of disposal of toxic substances and their precursors from Syria," the statement said.

Oil behemoths BP and Chevron dumped toxic waste - including some radioactive material - from their drilling operations into coastal waters, claims Louisiana parish Plaquemines in a lawsuit removed to federal court Thursday.

Plaquemines Parish alleges the companies released oil field waste into ocean water "without limitation," violating the Louisiana State and Local Coastal Resources Management Act of 1978. The law requires companies to clear, revegetate, detoxify or restore polluted areas, which the companies did not do, the lawsuit claims.

The pollution, along with the companies' lack of adequate maintenance of their oilfields, has resulted in serious coastal erosion and contaminated groundwater, according to the lawsuit.

"I think the oil companies have an obligation to self-report, I think the oil companies are to blame and I think the oil companies took advantage of the state," John Carmouche, a lead attorney for Plaquemines, told The Advocate in November when the suit first came out in state court.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors have neither the right nor any duty to inspect Iran's military and missile sites, a senior Iranian official says.

"The agency's inspectors have no right and [no] responsibility to do it. There is no authority in the world [responsible] for inspecting such facilities, and there is no treaty in that regard, either," Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi said on Saturday.

"The IAEA is not in a position to conduct such inspections," he underscored, dismissing certain media reports which quoted him as saying that the agency's inspectors will visit Iran's missile industries for more transparency. In November, Iran and the IAEA agreed on a road map based on which Iran would, on a voluntary basis, allow IAEA inspectors to visit the Arak heavy water plant and the Gachin uranium mine in Bandar Abbas, in southern Iran, despite the fact that Tehran is under no such obligation to do so under the Safeguards Agreement.

The voluntary move is a goodwill gesture on the part of Iran to clear up ambiguities over the peaceful nature of its nuclear energy program. Salehi further denied charges leveled by certain Western countries suggesting a diversion in Iran's civilian atomic work.

Portraits of British prime ministers are two a penny over at the National Portrait Gallery. Of course they are. This institution is all about the creation of pleasing sets of this and that, and this is one of the most important sets in the great game that we used to fondly call The Establishment.

These are the (all but one) men who have helped to make this country what it is, for better or for worse, beginning with Robert Walpole, our first Prime Minister, who is depicted, standing, by Sir Godfrey Kneller in about 1710, a Whig in a wig, and a splendid velvet coat, cheeks rouged, posturing, self-preening. Pompously gay as they come. Or perhaps not.

Most of the major portraits are to be found on the first and second floors of the old gallery - Grey, Disraeli, Gladstone, Churchill.... These are all formal acts of portraiture, officially sanctioned and paid for, here to set off dignity, decorum, clout. Many of them, face-forward or in profile, are close to life size, and they hang in such a way that we often have to lift our heads up slightly in acts of - perhaps rather unwilling - homage. All this is perfectly calculated, these portraits and their staging here, as if in the decorous solemnity of a country house that just happens to have snuck in behind the boisterous blare of Trafalgar Square, just as Van Dyke's great portraits of the Stuarts - soon-to-be-headless Charles, for example, rampant on a horse to lift him up and out of his own miserable stature - or Holbein's, of the Tudors - massy, spread-legged Henry - were calculated to show off the men of steel upon whom, in the end, we could depend.

China's Defense Ministry on Friday issued a strongly worded statement criticizing Japan's plans to increase defense spending, accusing Tokyo of turning up the temperature on regional tensions.

Amid ongoing territorial tensions between Beijing and Tokyo in the East China Sea, Japan this week announced a five-year defense plan that has attracted an uncharacteristically outspoken response from China.

China "resolutely opposes" the five-year defense plan adopted by Japan on Tuesday, Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said in a statement posted on the ministry's website.

Tokyo is attempting to sell a so-called "proactive pacifism" under the pretext of safeguarding national security, Geng said. Japan "continues to deny its history of World War II aggression, challenge the post-war order, and harm the feelings of the people of those victimized nations," he said.