- Further Clarification
-
- From Warren Brown
warren.brown@iridium.com
8-27-3
-
- Pam,
-
- I assure you I am a real person and I do work for Iridium
Satellite LLC, based and operated in the US. The false report started with
The Globe in the Middle East when a reporter claimed that Gaya Com (a company
in Israel that only has a reseller's agreement with Iridium Satellite)
was "Iridium Israel" and that their president, Ami Schnieder,
was "CEO of Iridium Israel". Iridium Satellite only has one CEO
and that is Gino Picasso, located in our corporate offices in Arlington,
VA (you can verify this on our website at www.iridium.com). The reporter
also claimed that "Iridium Israel" had won a "$4-5 million
dollar public telephone contract in Iraq". Neither Iridium Satellite
nor any of its official global service providers have been awarded or are
involved in such a contract and I am unaware of anyone else being awarded
or being involved with such a contract.
-
- I have submitted response letters to the majority of
the publications that have picked up on this original story but unfortunately
all it takes is one reporter/publication to put something into print without
a proper fact-check and many other reporters will simply pick up the story
assuming it was factual - kind of a bad snowball effect. That is why you
are seeing other stories pop up when you search under "Iridium Israel"
- they are merely the same articles being picked up from the original false
article carrying the same basic false premise. I have yet to get a response
from the reporter or editor who originally made the false claims. I never
made claims of "libel" and I am only stating the facts that the
reporter did not accurately check. I can prove through public record that
there is no "Iridium Israel", that we only have one CEO in our
corporate office in Virginia and that we have no contract for "$4-5
million in public telephones in Iraq". However, it should not be our
responsibilty to be "guilty" until proven innocent. It is however,
the responsibility of the reporter to report accurately which did not happen
in this case.
-
- It is unfortunate when a publication or reporter does
not properly do their job and check all the facts as it degrades the entire
media industry and also does severe damage to the reputations of companies.
Iridium Satellite LLC holds itself to high standards of quality, integrity
and ethics and it hurts the many employees of the company on both a professional
and personal level who work so hard to make this an upstanding and successful
company.
-
- Thanks for your interest and for the opportunity to explain
the facts to you in this unfortunate situation.
-
- Best regards,
Warren
-
- Warren Brown
Director of Marketing and Corporate Communications
Iridium Satellite LLC
----
Why the supposed "correction"?
-
- I've noticed that a lot of GUILTY people have been throwing
the words "libel" and such around, as if they're going to sue
a radio show. (I even heard someone on "Democracy Now!" this
morning throwing such language around with an environmental advocacy group.)
However, they need to prove that the information is 1.) false, and 2.)
the author knew it was false at the time they wrote it, to succeed in a
libel case. Anyway, all you have to do is search on "Iridium Satellite
Israel" to find articles like this.
-
- Looks like the original author is CORRECT, as usual,
and this "Warren Brown" person (if such a person actually exists)
is sending you false information for his (or her) company's profitability
damage control...
-
- From: http://www.menareport.com/story/TheNews.php3?action=story&sid=255621&lang=e&dir=mena
- Notice in the following article the line "According
to CEO of Iridium Satellite Israel Ami Schneider..."
- So find this Mr. Schneider, and see if he's the CEO of
the CA company as well. Also whether he lives in Israel or California...
-
- "Israeli firm wins public telephone contract in
Iraq
-
-
- Iridium Satellite Israel is supplying Iraq with public
telephones worth four to five million dollars. The global satellite voice
and data communication provider was authorized last month by the office
of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to sell its mobile satellite
communications services, subscriber terminals, and related equipment in
Iraq.
-
- According to CEO of Iridium Satellite Israel Ami Schneider,
the order was placed by a Jordanian company, reported Globes. The company
also plans to market several thousands of mobile telephones in Iraq.
-
- Israel's Minister of Finance Benjamin Netanyahu signed
a general permit late last month authorizing trade with Iraq. The new agreement
normalizes commercial and financial ties between the two countries, marking
the Jewish state's recognition of Iraq as a hostile-free nation.
-
- Israeli companies can now trade and invest in Iraq without
facing any sanctions from the government. A group of Israeli industrial
representatives reportedly made a trip to Baghdad this past June in order
to scope out business opportunities related to the reconstruction effort.
-
- Iridium Satellite Israel is a subsidiary of the privately
held corporation Iridium Satellite. The company acquired the assets of
the Iridium company in December of 2000. It is a provider of global satellite
voice and data solutions with complete coverage of the earth. Through a
constellation of 66 low-earth orbiting (LEO) satellites operated by the
Boeing Company, Iridium delivers communication services to and from remote
areas where no other form of communication is available.
-
- Iridium currently provides service to the US Department
of Defense under a multi-year contract. Iridium Satellite Israel is owned
by Iridium Satellite Solutions' regional operators in Turkey, Greece, Cyprus,
Eastern Europe, and East Africa, and a group of investors headed by Schneider.
÷ (menareport.com)
- "
-
- Note that the same article at http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/030804/0348000538_1.html
is billed as "Dow Jones Business News".
-
- Also see this article (doesn't directly say Israel, but
look at the site it's on):
- http://www.imakenews.com/shalomequityfund/e_article000048786.cfm
-
-
- Just one more, and then I'll give it a rest:
- <http://noidrocca.tripod.com/whatsup/id6.html>http://noidrocca.tripod.com/whatsup/id6.html
-
- Will the American empire make Iridium glow in the dark?
-
- or, why that next call you make from a booth in downtown
Baghdad could be your last...
-
- Gary Zatzman comments on the news that a group of Israeli
businessmen, using a derelict global communnications satellite relay system,
plan to run public telephones in post-Saddam Iraq
-
- On August 3, 2003 the Israeli commercial news provider
Globes Online published a tale to the effect that a group of Israeli businessmen
propose to restore "public phone" service (pay phones etc) for
something like US$4-5 million.
-
- The sensational portion was a mention that the group
will use the global satellite telephone system that was set up by the US
electronics giant Motorola under the name of Iridium back in the 1990s
but which declared bankruptcy in 1998.
-
- Although the technology --- a linkable system of geostationary
communications satellites positioned in enough different orbits so that
their footprints cover the entire surface of the Earth --- was completed
and launched, the bankruptcy left the system as a whole un-linked and un-networked.
(1)
-
- The Iridium system represented a failed attempt to establish
the world's first privately-controlled global telephone network. At the
time of the bankruptcy, the impression was left that the project collapsed
because the world market demand for commercial use of such a network "wasn't
there yet".
-
- One important thing about communications satellites is
their bandwidth. Most are capable of accommodating an enormous number and
range of switching operations, generally more than would be used up by
ordinary commercial demand for its services. So if you have some spies
around the globe who have implanted transmitters in their territories,
tuned to and beaming into space on a frequency receivable by one of these
satellites, you can piggyback an entire espionage-gathering network onto
a network of such satellites.(2)
-
- Certainly the espionage-gathering capabilities were part
of the ambition of the U.S. military. It financed a great deal of the research
that Motorola used to perfect the Iridium system. But the Pentagon wanted
its own network of satellites dedicated exclusively to military use. That
would mean relying on the NASA shuttle program to launch such satellites.
The cost and unrealiabilities built into the shuttle program were deemed
unacceptable at a time ---the early to mid 1990s --- when such projects
seemed unnecessary for current or projected US military or espionage requirements.
-
- Motorola thereafter attempted to complete Iridium as
a private purely commercial project --- managing to launch all the satellites
in place. Indeed, in the attempt to accommodate the potential consequences
for how it would be doing business into such a future, Motorola turned
its entire system of internal management, accounting, etc. upside-down
and became case-study material at all the top business schools. But the
project failed to generate the required volume of business and Iridium
was placed in bankruptcy.
-
- The Israeli Zionists' interest to start picking up pieces
of this system looks like a way the U.S., in "partnership" with
a Zionist machine that cannot breathe for a nanosecond or do anything without
U.S. financial guarantees, economic subsidies and ongoing military support,
can now convert this network to the purposes it originally had in mind.
For the Pentagon of Donald Rumsfeld, this approach has the advantage of
shifting financial and political responsibility for maintaining the network
onto the "partner", while harvesting some considerable share
of the intelligence booty collected.
-
- The fact the Israelis will also have access is no cause
for immediate or particular alarm at the Pentagon, since / so long as there
is no cause or interest independent of the imperial interests of the U.S.
for the Zionists to serve. Almost two-thirds of the Israeli GDP --- 64
% as of the year 2000 --- originates outside Israel, from foreign sources
mainly U.S.-based.
-
- Based on information supplied in the latest OECD study,(3)
at this time the direct capital investments and government subsidies from
the U.S. (for purchasing US military equipment and civilian goods &
services, not to mention financing the Occupation and the expansion of
the settlements) account immediately for 20 per cent of the Israeli GDP.
This is far and away the single biggest chunk of the entity's GDP. Israel's
economy is foreign-dependent and its society and polity are a satellite
of and hostage to U.S. imperial policy.
- So, yes indeed: Iraq's prostration has become another
opportunity for the Zionists to "coin it". But this latest scheme
is also about a great deal more than a $4 or $5-million public-phone contract.
It has to do with some critically important aims and objectives of the
American empire in this period.
-
- Three years ago, the member-states of the EU (excepting
Britain) raised warnings against the so-called ECHELON system of electronic
spying which had been set up by the U.S. using its infrastructure of control
within other English-speaking countries, especially Britain, Canada and
Australia, and which was caught gathering information about French corporate
deal-making at the expense of various American companies in various sectors
of the global economy.(4)
-
- The response was widespread and immediate in quite a
number of countries, where Linux and open-source computer network management
software were widely substituted for Microsoft. Microsoft had become one
of the most way-beyond-the-call-of-duty faithful and fervent agencies of
the State Department and Pentagon --- even moreso as various antitrust
suits were mounted against it by numerous state governments in America
and Europe. The inter-imperialist edge underpinning this rivalry is seen
in the fact that most of the U.S.-based suits were settled between 2001
and early 2003, whereas the EU as recently as August 2003 was intensifying
its efforts to compel Microsoft to conform to its existing standards of
data privacy and data protection.
-
- To supplement ECHELON with electronic intelligence-gathering
by means of a globe-girdling system of communications satellites for which
the US government could not be held responsible or fingered for using against
other countries may seem like science fiction to some.
-
- Maybe. But it sure sounds like Donald Rumsfeld to the
rest of us.
-
- End Notes
-
- 1. That, for example, is why foreign correspondents cannot
just dial a central network switch from their videophone. Instead, they
must first coordinate with their network ahead of time as to when they
will be in contact, then wait for one of these satellites to pass within
range of the transmitting equipment and manually establish the uplink at
the prearranged time.
-
- 2. This is known as ELINT or "electronic intelligence-gathering".
Up to now, ELINT has been confined to passive collection, collation and-or
distribution of electronically-intercepted information. Certain technical
aspects of satellite transmission also have major implications for the
real-time conduct of actual military operations.
-
- Iridium Satellite Israel is a subsidiary of the privately
held corporation Iridium Satellite, owned by Iridium Satellite Solutions'
regional operators in Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Eastern Europe, and East
Africa, and a group of investors headed by Ami Schneider. The company acquired
the assets of the Iridium company in December of 2000. It is a provider
of global satellite voice and data through a constellation of 66 low-earth
orbiting (LEO) satellites operated by Boeing, one of the top 5 military
contrractors weith the Pentagon. Iridium currently provides service to
the US Department of Defense under a multi-year contract. Benjamin Netanyahu,
wearing his "Minister of Fianance" hat, was reportedly instrumental
in arranging the deal. This rings lots of alarm bells as to the likelihood
that far deeper and broader U.S.-Israeli strategic objectives are to be
served by this project.
-
- Radio signals that are not loaded by electronic noise
or degraded by the amount of switching that would take place over a conventional
analog or digital telephone network would at least theoretically make excellent
triggers for detonating explosives. State terrorism buffs take note: it
is speculative but not beyond reason that devices hooked to Iridium's network
could be used to detonate explosives anywhere on the planet.
-
- 3. OECD. Reviews of foreign direct investment: Israel
(June 2002. Data current to March 2002)
-
- 4. The exposure began late in 1999. As of August 2003,
googling "Echelon" and "BBC" still brought up a series
of stories covering these developments.
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