BP Gulf Oil Spill Photos Show What BP Doesn’t Want You To See,

The Real Reason Constitution Has Been Suspended

Posted by Alexander Higgins – July 11, 2010 at 8:22 pm - Permalink - Source www.sott.net

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Washington’s blog points us to the the photos below showing just why BP and the Federal Government have suspended the constitution and has made it a felony crime punishable by jail time and a $40,000 fine for anyone that approaches boom, spill, workers or clean up vessels.

The pure devastation in the photos clearly show what BP doesn’t want you to see which is also the reason for the BP ran No-Fly zone over the BP Gulf Oil Spill.

The Bottom line the Federal Government and BP has decided it is not in their best interests to allow too many people keep seeing a steady stream of photos like the ones below.

Until the no-fly zone and the ban on boom, spill, workers and clean up vessels is lifted we just may not see too many more photos like these.

A pod of Bottlenose dolphins swim under the oily water Chandeleur Sound, Louisiana, Thursday, May 6, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

This is a photo of a dolphin pulled from the gulf….

Below you will find a picture of millions of dead fish. These are small fish, possible baby fish. They are slowly washing ashore and towards the ports. Over 9,000 species of animals will be under threat of extinction in this region, we might not ever see again on the planet. Click the image to enlarge it.

No that’s not asphalt… its millions of dead fish.

A Greenpeace activist steps through oil on a beach along the Gulf of Mexico on May 20, 2010 near Venice, Louisiana. (John Moore/Getty Images)

A Brown Pelican sits in heavy oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A pair of Brown Pelicans, covered in oil, sit on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast, Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A dead turtle floats on a pool of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in Barataria Bay off the coast of Louisiana Monday, June, 7, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A sea bird soaked in oil sits in the surf at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A Brown Pelican is seen on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A bird covered in oil flails in the surf at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A Brown Pelican is mired in heavy oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A Brown Pelican covered in oil sits on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A ship’s wake cuts through a pattern of oil near the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico Monday, May 17, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill pools against the Louisiana coast along Barataria Bay Tuesday, June 8, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) #

APTN photographer Rich Matthews dives into the water to take a closer look at oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill on June 7, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice, Louisiana. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

A dead Northern Gannet covered in oil lies along Grand Isle Beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana May 21, 2010. A member of Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research tagged the spot of the location of the incident. (REUTERS/Sean Gardner)

Collected oil burns on the water in this aerial view seven miles northeast of the Deepwater Horizon site over the Gulf of Mexico, May 18, 2010. (REUTERS/Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace)

Oil is seen on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico about six miles southeast of Grand Isle, Louisiana May 21, 2010. (REUTERS/Sean Gardner)

A sea turtle is mired in oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Grand Terre Island, Louisiana June 8, 2010. (REUTERS/Lee Celano)

Oil floats around booms and through marshlands of the Mississippi Delta on May 23, 2010. (REUTERS/Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace)

Maura Wood, Senior Program Manager of Coastal Louisiana Restoration for the National Wildlife Federation takes a sample of water in a heavily oiled marsh near Pass a Loutre, Louisiana on May 20, 2010. (REUTERS/Lee Celano)

A suction hose is used to remove oil washed ashore from the Deepwater Horizon spill, Wednesday, June 9, 2010, in Belle Terre, Louisiana. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) #

An oil-soaked pelican takes flight after Louisiana Fish and Wildlife employees tried to corral him on an island in Barataria Bay on Sunday, May 23, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Oil is scooped out of a marsh impacted by the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in Redfish Bay along the coast of Louisiana, Saturday, May 22, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

A sheen of oil sits on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico close to the site of the BP oil spill as a boat uses a containment boom to gather the oil to be burned off approximately 42 miles off the coast of Louisiana May 18, 2010 (REUTERS/Hans Deryk)

Crews try to clean an island covered in oil on the south part of East Bay May 23, 2010. (REUTERS/Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace)

A ship maneuvers and sprays water near a rig in heavy surface oil in this aerial view over the Gulf of Mexico May 18, 2010, as oil continues to leak from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead. (REUTERS/Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace)

An outboard boat motor breaks up a thick layer of oil as Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser toured the oil-impacted marsh of Pass a Loutre on Wednesday, May 19, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill coats marsh grass at the Louisiana coast along Barataria Bay Tuesday, June 8, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A brown pelican coated in heavy oil wallows in the surf June 4, 2010 on East Grand Terre Island, Louisiana. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A shrimp boat is used to collect oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in the waters of Chandeleur Sound, Louisiana on May 5, 2010. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

A helicopter flies over surface oil in this aerial view over the Gulf of Mexico, May 18, 2010. (REUTERS/Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace)

A young heron sits dying amidst oil splattering underneath mangrove on an island impacted by oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Barataria Bay, along the the coast of Louisiana on Sunday, May 23, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Seawater covered with thick black oil splashes up in brown-stained whitecaps off the side of the supply vessel Joe Griffin at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill containment efforts in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana Sunday, May 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

A tugboat moves through the oil slick on May 6, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. (Michael B. Watkins/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)

Oil burns during a controlled fire May 6, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Coast Guard is overseeing oil burns after the sinking, and subsequent massive oil leak, from the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform off the coast of Louisiana. (Justin E. Stumberg/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)

Dark clouds of smoke and fire emerge as oil burns during a controlled fire in the Gulf of Mexico, May 6, 2010. The U.S. Coast Guard working in partnership with BP PLC, local residents, and other federal agencies conducted the “in situ burn” to aid in preventing the spread of oil. (REUTERS/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg-US Navy)

The crew of a Basler BT-67 fixed wing aircraft releases oil dispersant over parts of the oil spill off the shore of Louisiana in this May 5, 2010 photograph. (REUTERS/Stephen Lehmann/U.S. Coast Guard)

A man holds a plastic bag with seawater and oil from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill south of Freemason Island, Louisiana May 7, 2010. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

Oily water is seen off the side of the Joe Griffin supply vessel at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill containment efforts in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, May 8, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

One of the New harbor Islands is protected by two oil booms against the oil slick that has passed inside of the protective barrier formed by the Chandeleur Islands, as cleanup operations continue for the BP Deepwater Horizon platform disaster off Louisiana, on May 10, 2010. (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Blobs of oil from the massive spill float on the surface of the water on May 5, 2010 in Breton and Chandeleur sounds off the coast of Louisiana. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Mississippi River water (left) meets sea water and an oil slick that has passed inside of the protective barrier formed by the Chandeleur Islands, off the coast of Louisiana, on May 7, 2010. (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill makes its way to shore on Chandeleur Islands in Louisiana on May 7, 2010. (AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, Vernon Bryant)

This image provided by NASA shows the Mississippi Delta (top right) and the growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico on May 5, 2010. Photo was taken by International Space Station Expedition 23 flight engineer Soichi Noguchi. (AP Photo/NASA – Soichi Noguchi)

Oil and oil sheen are seen moving past an oil rig, top right, in the waters of Chandeleur Sound, Louisiana, Wednesday, May 5, 2010. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

An oil soaked bird struggles against the oil slicked side of the HOS Iron Horse supply vessel at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana Sunday, May 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

An aerial view of the oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, May 6, 2010. (REUTERS/Daniel Beltra)

Dark clouds of smoke and fire emerge as oil burns during a controlled fire in the Gulf of Mexico May 7, 2010. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg/Released)

Bruce Padilla, left, and Adam Shaw, Louisiana oilfield divers, return through blackened seawater from watching a controlled oil burn in the Gulf of Mexico May 7, 2010. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg/Released)

Oil, scooped up with a bucket from the Gulf of Mexico off the side of the supply vessel Joe Griffin, coats the hands of an AP reporter at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, May 10, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Shrimp boats are used to collect oil with booms in the waters of Chandeleur Sound, Louisiana, Wednesday, May 5, 2010. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

• Chemist: BP Mercenaries Applying Toxic Dispersant at Night and In an Uncontrolled Manner

WHY AMERICA MUST HAVE AN ANTI-WAR UPRISING

GORDON DUFF

FIGHTING THE REAL EVILDOERS

IS THE SILENCE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE COMPLICITY IN WAR CRIMES?

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

I am not against war.  I am a combat veteran.  I sit on my tail, watch TV, go to restaurants and have fond delusional memories about Vietnam.  In my bedroom closet, I have a trash bag.  It is never opened, it has been there for years.  It has, along with other “military mementos,”  a small green “government issued” address book.  Marines, long ago, scrawled their names in it.  Half of them never came back from Vietnam, never had children, grandchildren, got to finish college or even high school.  Many, maybe most,  had never had sex, owned a car  or travelled more than 50 miles from home.

Their lives were stolen, stolen then and we are doing it every day, maybe not the numbers, not on such a grand scale, but the lessons of Vietnam have more than been forgotten.  The brightest time in American history, another “greatest generation” may well have been the one that stopped an evil and corrupt war.  That generation saw the cost.  Only the young, the young and the parents of those the war destroyed knew Vietnam.  America simply turned away, a nation of, do we call them, do we call us, cowards?  Is there another term?

Of the two to three million that survived, a hundred thousand were seriously physically disabled and a million more suffered lifelong Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Not long after coming home, another 50,000 would die, some of mysterious illnesses, many by suicide.  50,000 or more went to prison, some for a few years, some are still there.  One of my closest friends, LCpl. Daniel K. Staggs, winner of the Silver Star, would die in prison.  A stabbing.

By 1972, only a few troops were in Vietnam, fighting a “rear guard” holding action while America pretended it had won “peace with honor” at the bargaining table in Paris.  A monster named Henry Kissinger won a Nobel Prize for that farce.  Have we no shame?

The vast majority of Americans didn’t have 30 seconds a day to watch news about the war, not a minute a month to think about it, much less do something, take a stand for what was right.  These are the people that love to hear about hippies and airport spitters.  These people love Ollie North and John McCain, cartoon heroes for a nation too dead inside to care.  Scary terrorists and endless wars are bread and butter for the “drugstore Marine” and “Hanoi John.”  You don’t know them by these names, the monikers they were tagged with by their fellow officers after Vietnam?

Carefully hear what they say, that pair of bloated peddlers of death.  Are they continually undermining America through the fear and mistrust their every word sews while they rake in millions?  Why are men like this whose pasts reek of the worst abuses imaginable, allowed to dishonor our dead while strutting around playing hero?  Why has their real history been buried though the stench remains?

Vietnam had real heroes.  They aren’t flying in private jets, eating at the finest restaurants, 58,000 of them came home dead, many in pieces, some burned to cinders.

It wasn’t just the 58,000 dead or the 50,000 soon to die or the maimed or damaged, the imprisoned or the endless thousands poisoned with Agent Orange.  Oh, did we tell you that Agent Orange may have killed more Vietnam veterans than total combat deaths in World War II?

According to Israeli officials, there are more holocaust survivors than living Vietnam veterans.

This isn’t news, no more than dozens dying each day from Gulf War Illness,no more than the Iraq/Afghanistan vet than commits suicide every 36 hours.

Vietnam was a scam.  The South Vietnamese government was brutal and corrupt, hated by all.  North Vietnam was never part of a communist conspiracy to infiltrate America and force the evils of communism on our children.

When more documents are declassified and the lying slows down, I am absolutely certain that the first Gulf War is going to turn out to be a scam also.  It is out there, the reason Saddam invaded Kuwait, and when it comes out, the Americans responsible for misleading us into war after war after war will will die of old age, honored and respected with their offshore bank accounts brimming with blood money.

The countless dead were forgotten long ago being the “un-newsworthy” lot they were.

We already know, we and our gutless British cousins, that Bush and Blair and their cronies sent hundreds of thousands to war in 2003 based on, not only lies, but a plot to undermine the democratic freedoms of both governments and prestage the western world in their own image, totalitarian, interventionist and totally owned and operated by an international cabal of financial criminals.

Take a look at politics.  The same criminal empire controls, not only each party but they “throw the bums out” gang as well.  Billionaire Bush crony David Koch, a shadowy Israeli-American is underwriting the “grass roots” movement to restore our constitution.  He is also the same person who funded those who tore it apart.

Those who think they are electing “Tea Party” candidates will have a rude awakening.  When the bill comes due, they will be dancing to the same tune.

Recent as it was, few Americans realize what the Gulf War really brought us.  We got that “New World Order” that “Pappy” Bush promised us in his “points of light” speech.

”How do you like it so far?”

What we got was an end to America as we know it, a government taking orders from Tel Aviv and a “New World Order” economy now openly looting the world, eating away even America’s standard of living and flushing it down the toilet, turning the United States into a debt-ridden third world hell hole.

The Romans gave away bread and amused the public with blood drenched spectacles in the arena.  Our “bread and circuses” game is Islamophobia, phony “self induced” terrorism and exploitation of sub-human racial hatreds thinly veiled under the childish misnomer of “conservatism.”  Anyone who isn’t suspicious of 9/11, the TV spectacular whose original cast of “19″ now includes thousands, as years

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

of credible research and investigation has proven, will gladly send others to die in their name around the world.  Ignorance is complicity.  Anyone who doesn’t realize that the Bush cover story, now being resold under the “Ground Zero Mosque” label, is the most outlandish “conspiracy theory” in history is capable of cheerleading for any sociopathic political clown from Caligula to Hitler to Cheney.

We have to end our war because America can no longer trust itself.  With all of Americas media outlets owned by defense firms, lets call them “war profiteers” and be honest about it or citizens of the State of Israel, a “huckster” nation, smaller than Vermont that is the third largest weapons exporter in the world, no American can be certain about anything, what is true or false, what is fact, what is myth.  Every day every American is told two things.  Don’t trust your government.  Don’t trust your press.  Both things are correct.

The problem, of course, is that those that control the message control both the government and the press.  The “new” government they continually offer is always the “old government” and the new lies are always the old lies, enemies, new plots, new fears.

If what you believe is based on what you hear and see, whether it is an airplane crashing into a building or someone telling you that ending years of corrupt tax abatements for billionaires is going to end the world, something is always being kept from you.  That something is what is true, what is real.  “But I saw it!”  Yes, you saw something then someone explained it all.  What you want to do is ask yourself, who made money from this?  Who can control the news?

Where do the real conspirators live, caves in Afghanistan or inside the Beltway in Washington or the coffee shops of Tel Aviv.  Did I forget London?

A few months ago, we learned that 824,000 Americans have top secret security clearances.  How much do you think those nearly one million people know that would shock or sicken you?   Are only 10,000 involved in illegal conspiracies?  What if every Israeli spy flushed at the same time, would the Great Lakes suddenly disappear?

I hope this isn’t news to you, but most of history’s wars were started with a “false flag” attack.  A government attacks its own people to justify what it, out of delusion, tells itself is going to be best for everyone in the long run.  The fact that billions, even trillions is made, not made, really stolen, is never spoken of.

Nobody attacks a nation with 70% of the world’s military might.  It would only attack itself, “with a little help from its friends.”

How is America dealing with Afghanistan?  Though a few lunatics are still running around talking about poor dead Osama bin Laden and imaginary Al Qaeda, the mysterious worldwide conspiracy of cab drivers, waiters and dishwashers, most Americans have forgotten Afghanistan.

Wasn’t there a Brad Pitt movie about Al Qaeda?  Think about the terrorist masterminds we manage to catch.  Doesn’t this remind you of something?

Didn’t we see this in the movie Fight Club?  What is the first rule of Fight Club?  I am not allowed to tell you.

THE FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB…DON’T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!

Whenever Al Qaeda, the mythical “Fight Club” clone steps onto the scene, after the phony press reads their scripts, “Building 7 has just collapsed even though nothing hit it…..no wait a minute….oh…Building 7 is going to mysteriously collapse in two hours they are telling me now….(parody of BBC 9/11 “error”)

Many years ago, there was a popular TV series called Dallas.  The underlying story was about competition between two brothers one evil but fun and one good but boring as hell.  After a couple of seasons, one brother, Bobby Ewing, the boring one, tragically died.  The actor playing the part, Patrick Duffy, wanted to leave the show, thus his character was killed off.

The next season, Duffy reconsidered his decision.  The network simply raised him from the dead, begining an episode where he is suddenly alive again, taking a shower.

DEAD, NOT DEAD, WE’RE THE NETWORKS, WE CAN DO ANYTHING WE WANT

The BBC coverage of Building 7 at the World Trade Center is another “Bobby Ewing returns from the dead” thing.  Two episodes later, viewers will forget.  More Americans remember the shock of seeing Bobby Ewing alive in the shower than “accidentally” hearing the report of a major disaster than hadn’t happened yet.

What do you say of a generation of Americans who can’t say Palestinian without adding “terrorist” but watch cluster bombs being dropped on playgrounds in Gaza and are willing to accept it as “poor frightened Israel” protecting herself.  This is the kind of ignorance that begged 9/11 and was amply rewarded.  This is the kind of ignorance that will burn an American city to the ground with a “terrorist nuke” simply to remove Iran from competition in the oil and gas pipeline business.

Oh, newspapers don’t report such things, not on the sports pages anyway.

Millions of Americans are in a rage about an Islamic center being built in lower Manhattan because of sabre rattling by an Israeli run news organization commonly known as Fox.  Hundreds of hours have been spent railing at terrorists funding the project.  This week, a competing network, on a very popular news program, the genuinely humorous Daily Show with Jon Stewart, pointed out that the primary funding for what Fox News calls “the terrorist mosque” is one of the primary owners of Fox News.

I keep seeing Bobby Ewing in the shower and the lame BBC reporter telling about the building withering to the ground, as CBS News anchor, Dan Rather described it, “as though someone had planted dynamite.”

Over 40 years ago, Americans of conscience went to the streets to end a war.  They saved more than just the lives of American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians, they restored Americas honor.

Control of American education and media, whether by Zionists, right wing fanatics, thieving banksters or a coalition of “evildoers” combining all three, has attempted to rewrite history.  We are told mobs in airports attacked returning soldiers.  We are told thousands of Americans died because of protests, not because of Kissinger’s lies.

Those who know better are still alive, some still awake and too many silent.

A generation of soldiers, now men and women, return from war, maimed, crushed and thrown away.  21st century America sees nothing, not the corruption, the narcotics, the lies, the evil in what has gone on so long in the name of the people of the United States.

What is war?  All war is class struggle.  If we still had more communists around, they would remind us.  Rich people start wars, poor people die and resources are stolen, banks emptied and all of it hidden behind flag waving and childish scare tactics.  War is part of the grander plan.  Is war politics or is it economics?

At one point in the last 2 years, it was estimated there there were as few as 12 “potential Al Qaeda suspects” in Afghanistan.

The person reading my water meter is a “potential suspect.”  To a paranoid or law enforcement officer, anything that moves is a “person of interest.”  A “suspect” is a person of interest who isn’t sleeping or dead.

Thousands of such “suspects” have been kidnapped and tortured by the United States over the last decade.  The vast majority were released, some with millions in cash to shut them up, some died and a few were railroaded to criminal convictions based on false testimony and phony evidence.

Who would want to protest against that?  Would you want to die to defend that?  Your children already have.

Chinese chill sets in again, Kashmir the hot button

New Delhi:

With Beijing declining a visa last month to Northern Army Commander Lt Gen B S Jaswal since he looks after Kashmir, a diplomatic row has broken out. New Delhi today said J&K is as sensitive a matter to India as Tibet is to China.New Delhi, sources said, has decided it will be firm-footed on the issue and will not let it go by without proper redressal. For now, New Delhi has decided to put all defence exchanges, including training exercises, between the two countries “on hold”.

China’s Ambassador to India Zhang Yang met officials of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in South Block today and the matter is understood to have come up for discussion. Yang is learnt to have assured the Indian side that he will convey their sentiments to the Chinese government. India already has issued a demarche on the matter.

On August 11, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had met Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, drawing strong protests from Beijing.

Acknowledging that the visa denial matter had raised concerns in the Indian government, sources today said the issue had “introduced further complexity” in India’s relationship with China. “The Chinese side was solely responsible for it. They have tied the knot and they have to untie it,” a source said.

“This incident is certainly tied to China’s position on J&K. They are regarding J&K as an issue which is yet to be sorted out between India and Pakistan and are questioning the status of the state. This issue concerns our sovereignty and is as sensitive to us as Tibet is to them,” government sources said.

Lt Gen Jaswal was slated to visit China in July this year. Sometime in the middle of July, the Indian authorities were told by their Chinese counterparts that it would be difficult to allow Jaswal’s visit since he looked after an area which was a cause of “difficulty” to the Chinese establishment.

In a letter dated July 21, the Chinese government told the Indian authorities that Jaswal’s command extends to sensitive areas and that the Chinese government issues different visas for those areas. The fact that China has been issuing stapled visas to Indian nationals from J&K has already generated some heat in the past and Beijing’s response implied a stapled visa for Jaswal.

By early August, New Delhi registered its protest and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao called Ambassador Zhang Yang to her office to discuss the matter. India’s Ambassador to China S Jaishankar, too, met the Chinese Vice-Minister and lodged a protest. New Delhi made it clear that this was not acceptable and consequences affecting defence ties between the two nations would follow if China did not redress the situation.

Beijing, however, responded by sticking to its original position on the matter. As per government sources, since reiteration of its stance was a “strong message” from China, it became important for New Delhi to signal to China in no uncertain terms that it was not “business as usual”. The Indian government then conveyed to China that it will halt all defence exchanges till the situation was redressed.

As an immediate fallout, India has declined permission to a senior Chinese Colonel and two Captains who were slated to visit India this month. While the Captains were to attend a course at an Indian Army centre in Pachmarhi, the Colonel, who has been a guest lecturer at the National Defence College in New Delhi earlier, was slated to attend a reunion.

The meetings of army personnel posted on the borders, however, will go on since they were “part of the structure evolved to maintain peace and tranquility”, sources said. Adding that the issue of stapled visas had been discussed previously with the Chinese authorities, sources said that the Indian side had conveyed its views on the subject.

Dalai Lama’s meeting with PM Manmohan Singh was nothing unusual: Aide

Published: Saturday, Aug 21, 2010, 16:48 IST
Place: New Delhi | Agency: IANS

The Dalai Lama’s top aide, Tempa Tsering, Saturday said the Tibetan spiritual leader made a courtesy call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week to thank him for the hospitality shown in the last five decades.

He said that there was nothing unusual about the meeting.

“He has been living in India for the past 50 years. There was nothing special about the meeting. He thanked the prime minister for the good care that India has taken of him during this period,” Kalon Tempa Tsering, the Dalai Lama’s representative in Delhi, said.

He, however, pointed out that the meeting was part of the Dalai Lama’s regular interaction with Indian leaders from time to time.

“What’s so unusual about the meeting? He keeps meeting Indian leaders,” Tsering said while alluding to the meeting between the prime minister and the Dalai Lama Aug 11.

This was the first meeting between the two since the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) returned to power over a year ago.

“He met Vice President Hamid Ansari a year ago. Foreign secretaries have visited Dharamsala to meet Dalai Lama,” he said.

Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao visited Dharamsala and met the Dalai Lama and his senior aides last month.

In 1959, the Dalai Lama flew to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, which also houses the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Beijing, which regards the Dalai Lama a ‘splittist’, has objected to the meeting through diplomatic channels, sources said.

Tsering said there was nothing new in China’s criticism. “The moment he opens his mouth, they start criticising him,” he said.

China had vigorously opposed the visit of the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh, over which Beijing claims sovereignty, in November last year and protested Manmohan Singh’s visit to the state last October.

Manmohan Singh had defended the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal saying he was India’s “honoured guest” and has the right to visit any part of the country.

China plans Karakoram rail link to Pakistan and the Arabian Sea

After bringing a rail line close to the Indian border with Tibet, China is gearing to push a rail link across the Karakoram into Pakistan through the Gilgit-Baltistan region that is part of the original state of Jammu and Kashmir.

According to reports from Pakistan, Beijing and Islamabad are likely to sign an MoU for a feasibility study on building the trans-Karakoram railway line during President Asif Ali Zardari’s visit to China starting Tuesday.

As the first train track across the Great Himalayas, the line running nearly 700 km from Kashgar in Xinjiang province to Havelian near Rawalpindi in northern Pakistan through the Khunjerab Pass, will transform the geopolitics of western China and the subcontinent.

Given its claim to sovereignty over the entire state of J&K, India has naturally objected to the Chinese economic and infrastructure projects, including the Karakoram highway, in parts of the state under Pakistan’s control.

Over the longer term though, India will have to think more strategically about the consequences of the emerging connectivity between western China and the subcontinent through projects sponsored by Beijing.

For, China has a plan to expand its Tibet rail road into Nepal. It is expanding roadways between its Yunnan province and northern Myanmar and exploring the prospects for a rail link. Afghanistan too has been pressing Beijing to develop transportation routes between the two nations through the Wakhan corridor. Meanwhile, there is growing support in the region and beyond for trans-Asian road and rail networks.

The proposal for a rail link between landlocked Xinjiang in China’s far west and the Arabian Sea through Pakistan has been under discussion for some years. Chinese companies have apparently completed a pre-feasibility study on a rail project that must cross one of the most challenging terrains in the world.

If the two sides take the political decision to go ahead with the project during Zardari’s visit, a consortium of Chinese companies is likely to be constituted to explore in detail the engineering and financial aspects of the project.

While the technical aspects of the trans-Karakoram rail link are daunting, there is no denying the Chinese audacity in embracing projects that are grand in conception, challenging in their execution, and consequential in their impact.

During the 1970s, long before China had become rich, the People’s Liberation Army had built at great cost the Karakoram highway between Xinjiang and northern Pakistan. The self-assurance of Chinese engineers and the geopolitical ambition of Beijing’s security establishment have grown manifold since.

While India’s objections have not had much impact on either China or Pakistan, other developments have cast a shadow over some of the trans-Karakoram projects. The unstable terrain of the Karakorams demands costly upkeep of the highway, repeatedly damaged by landslides and formation of temporary lakes.

At the political level, China has been concerned about growing links between Islamist and separatist movements in the Xinjiang province on the one hand and the terrorist safe havens in Pakistan and Afghanistan on the other.

As a result, China had to often shut down the Karakoram highway. In recent months, Beijing has been pressing Islamabad to crack down hard on anti-Chinese extremist groups taking shelter on Pakistani soil.

Chinese rail plan in PoK worries India

NEW DELHI: India has expressed concern over China’s plans to build a rail link through the Karakoram ranges in Pakistan. The trans-Karakoram rail link will go through the Gilgit-Baltistan region, which is part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

The Indian government reacted with concern to the rail-link plan, but also said that it was taking counter measures. “It is definitely a matter of concern. But we are taking our counter measures and we are doing our own preparation,” minister of state for defence M M Pallam Raju said. The rail link will give China access through PoK and comes on the heels of the Tibet rail link, which comes close to the Indian border.

Noting the many areas where China and Pakistan are collaborating, Mr Raju said that both China and Pakistan had made it “very apparent” that they were “working closely together and cooperating closely” on defence and strategic issues.

The Chinese plans, according to reports, is to build the rail link to Pakistan and reach the Arabian sea through the Gilgit-Baltistan region in Pak-occupied Kashmir. The MoU for a feasibility study on building the Karakoram railway line is expected to be signed between Beijing and Islamabad during President Asif Ali Zardari’s current, ongoing visit to China. According to reports in the Pakistani media, Pakistan’s General Manager Railways (operation) Ishfaq Khattak has joined Mr Zardari’s delegation.

Reports also said that a pre-feasibility study has already been completed by two international consulting companies. The railway track is expected to be 682 km and would connect all major cities on the Pakistani side. The plan to build the railway has been around since 2004, but there now seems to be some movement on going ahead with the project. Reports said that an international consortium would be set up for the feasibility study once the MoU is signed between the two sides.

Indian concerns also centre around the fact that the rail link is envisaged to go through PoK. The Indian position continues to be that PoK is an integral part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. India in the past has expressed concern and lodged strong protests over projects in PoK. Last year, New Delhi had lodged a strong protest over Pakistan’s plans to build the Bunji hydroelectric project, which is also coming up with Chinese assistance. Pakistan and China had signed an MoU for the construction of the dam last year.

There seems to be renewed cooperation between China and Pakistan. The plan to build the rail link follows the revelation that China has agreed to build two nuclear reactors in Pakistan. India is concerned by this development considering Pakistan’s proliferation record.

Putting the Squeeze On Motorcycle Riders In Quetta

FC Humiliation Rules on Quetta Roads

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA: It seems that the government considers riding a private vehicle, particularly two wheelers, as a “serious offence” for which the security forces are harassing thousands of people everyday on the roads and public places.

For the past many days, it had become an established practice to stop the motorcyclists for snap checking and detained them for hours without asking them to produce their papers.

Millions of working hours of the nation are wasted almost daily as the motorists and two wheelers are detained in hundreds at every intersection of this Provincial Capital.

Why the people are detained and harassed? There is no Government spokesman to respond to this question of the common people nothing to do with politics.

Interestingly, no commissioned officer was seen on the spot and all the operations against the innocent and law abiding people had been assigned to the foot constables who refused to listen.

There is a law that only the gazetted officer and not below the rank of a Sub-Inspector of Police can search a person at the public place. If nothing offending was found from his possess, the aggrieved person had the right to sue the official for insulting him at a public place. The official must be sure that the man searched is not a law abiding citizen.

However, the recent massive and indiscriminate search and security check had brought the prestige of the law enforcing agencies to a zero as the people are deeply offended on such tactics.

Hostage crisis in Pakistan military compound after militant attack

ISLAMABAD: Captured militants, who were being interrogated at a Pakistani military intelligence compound near the US consulate in Peshawar, overpowered their guards today, sparking a hostage crisis in the northwestern city.

The militants overpowered guards at the army detention centre located within Peshawar cantonment and took two sentries hostage, said chief military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas.

The militants, who were being investigated by a law enforcement agency, also took control of the building located a short distance from the US Consulate and an office of the Intelligence Bureau.

Earlier reports had suggested that a group of militants had entered the high security area and engaged security forces in a gun battle.

However, Abbas clarified that no terror attack had occurred and that no militants had entered the area.

“No terrorists came to the area from outside. Security forces have cordoned off the building and all-out efforts are being made to free the hostages,” he told reporters.

“We are hopeful of resolving this problem soon,” Abbas said.

He refused to give details due to security reasons. The number of militants in the building too could not be immediately ascertained.

Local residents said they heard gunshots in the area near the US consulate at 6 am local time.

Large contingents of soldiers and policemen quickly moved into the area and sealed it off. Key roads were blocked and traffic was diverted to other routes.

“All resources are being put in place to deal with the situation,” General Abbas told media.

He avoided giving additional details and said that more information will be provided to the media later.

Peshawar’s military airbase and the city’s international airport are located a few kilometres from the building occupied by the militants.

Witnesses said the militants and security personnel had exchanged fire several times but there were no reports of casualties.

Security forces conducted a search operation in the area to check if any persons were helping the militants, sources said.

On April 5, militants armed with automatic weapons and suicide car bombs tried to storm the consulate, killing three persons. At least six attackers were gunned down or blew themselves up in that incident.

Govt. On Lookout for Motorcycle-Riding Assassins in Balochistan

[Finally, we see the beginning of movement on the pressing issue of the motorcycle hit teams roaming the highways and roads of Balochistan and Karachi.  (SEE: The Motorcycle Assassins of Pakistan Strike Again and Again, With Impugnity ;

ISI sent 1000 motorcycles to Mawlawi Jalaludin Haqqani ]

http://www.corbisimages.com/images/67/F88428EA-28FB-4EC3-8028-B683834E8705/AAMK001196.jpg

Govt harassing motorcyclists in Balochistan

Staff Report

QUETTA: The Balochistan government and security agencies are reportedly harassing motorcyclists in the insurgency-hit province, which has caused a sense of insecurity amongst the citizens.

For the past couple of days, police and other law enforcement agencies had made it a common practice to detain motorcyclists for hours without asking them to show the documents of their vehicles. The citizens’ time was being wasted as nearly all motorists had been stopped at many intersections of Quetta. The Balochistan government and the law enforcement agencies had failed to explain their action of stopping the motorcyclists at every intersection while the citizens had also failed to sort out this strange behaviour of the law enforcement agencies. No government spokesman or official was available to answer this recent move of the government despite the fact that common citizens and motorcyclists had nothing to with the functioning of the government and its subordinate agencies.

Ironically, no senior police official had been seen on the intersections, while low-ranking constables had been involved in this action, which had been irking the motorcyclists of the provincial capital of the insurgency-hit province. According to law, only a sub-inspector could search a person at a public place, but the law enforcement agencies had turned a blind eye to this rule.

Petition to the Environmental Protection Agency to Ban Lead Shot, Bullets, and Fishing Sinkers Under the Toxic Substances Control Act

Document ID: EPA-HQ-OPPT-2010-0681-0002

Document Type: SUPPORTING & RELATED MATERIALS

Docket ID: EPA-HQ-OPPT-2010-0681

Topics: No Topics associated with this document

Hide Details Document Title Petition to the Environmental Protection Agency to Ban Lead Shot, Bullets, and Fishing Sinkers Under the Toxic Substances Control Act Abstract Petition for Rulemaking under TSCA submitted by Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, Association of Avian Veterinarians, Project Gutpile and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Document Type SUPPORTING & RELATED MATERIALS Document Sub-Type Petition Author Date August 03 2010, at 12:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time Receipt Date August 23 2010, at 12:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time FR Publish Date August 24 2010, at 12:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time Media Electronic Page Count 100

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Why and How to Shut Down a Nuclear Weapons Facility

eileen fleming

“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased…to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946

[Kansas City] Close to one-hundred concerned, thoughtful citizens attended the premier showing of Countdown to Zero, at the Tivoli theater August 13th, and many of them also attended the weekend long conference that culminated on August 16, 2010, when 14 nonviolent anti-nuke activists were arrested for blocking a Caterpillar bulldozer from clearing land at the site of a new WMD Facility in Kansas City, Missouri. Read more…

Jane Stoever is a wife, mother, organizer, activist, writer, editor, and for eleven years had been a Sister of Loretto. The Catholic nuns are committed “to improving the conditions of those who suffer from injustice, oppression, and deprivation of dignity” and are famous for their opposition to nuclear weapons and also the Caterpillar company, which is one of many that enable the ongoing military occupation of Palestinians.

Jane of PeaceWorks Kansas City and her colleague, Ann Suellenthorp, also of Physicians for Social Responsibility-KC, organized the weekend of nonviolent training and Jane said, “Our next civil resistance event will be September 7th and 8th. The official groundbreaking is on Wednesday, September 8th and the good news is we have made them nervous. Jason Klumb, the regional administrator of the GSA,has called us to a meeting, which has been rescheduled twice and is now set for August 30, 2010.”

Ann added, “He wants to appease us. The only way to appease us is to do shut down the new plant and clean up the old one.”

Commenting on the movie, Countdown to Zero, Jane said she “was horrified to learn how many times we have come too close to a nuclear catastrophe; as close as a pinch of salt. Furthermore, billions of our tax dollars have been poured into our nuclear arsenal that our government uses to threaten the world with.”

Jay Coghlan, the Director of Nuclear Watch, New Mexico spoke with the crowd that had remained after Countdown to Zero ended to discuss the planned and current Kansas City Nuclear Weapons Facility. He warned, “Don’t build it up, clean it up. This is the place to stop the egregious intersection of the industrial military security complex and special deals. Unless the citizens of Kansas City organize and demand it, many will walk away from their moral responsibilities to clean up the old plant.

“The intent of the movie was to make this issue mainstream, to get people to talk about nuclear weapons, radiation, contamination, and that is a good thing. But some people claim the movie may be used for fear mongering among racists. I am no pacifist. There are real threats out there and Al Qaeda wants to kill us. I don’t want brown people to have the bomb. I don’t want white people to have the bomb. I don’t want anyone to have the bomb, but who has it are the greed-heads and weaponeers. We need to have START ratified, but not the Republicans’ congressional deal.”

When President Obama submitted the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty/START to the Senate for ratification, he also submitted a congressionally mandated classified report outlining the Administration’s plan to maintain and modernize the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal.  According to a White House fact sheet, “The plan includes investments of over $80 billion to sustain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex [new factories are in New Mexico, Tenn. and Mo.] – well over $100 billion in nuclear delivery systems to sustain existing capabilities and modernize some strategic systems” is planned to be spent by 2020.

Jay also explained that the GSA is the federal government’s business manager and often acts as the landlord of federal properties for other government agencies. In the case of the new Kansas City nuclear weapons production plant, the money trail begins and also ends with Zimmer Real Estate Services, a KC mogul that has pocketed five million dollars for selling 186 acres to the City that the feds just “happened” to pick for the new plant. Using Missouri state tax codes designed to fight urban blight, the City’s Planned Industrial Expansion Authority (PIEA) declared the site that was actively producing soybeans “blighted” so that it could raise bond money via the municipal Industrial Development Authority(IDA) and fourteen private bondholders who will reap a government guarantee that their $687 million  investment in 2010 will yield at a minimum  $1.2 billion in rent over 20 years. That’s a solid 5% annual return rate. The PIEA then gives the money to the new limited liability corporation CenterPoint Zimmer (CPZ) so it can build the new plant, and also grants the LLC a lease-to-purchase in which CPZ pays back the bonds over 20 years and thereby gains title to the plant. Until then, a municipal government owns a federal nuclear weapons components production plant! During all this time the GSA will act as the pass through agency for the funds for the manufacturing of nuclear weapons components at the new KCP.

Countdown to Zero begins with the focus on renegade terrorists getting their hands on weapons-grade nuclear material.

That fear had already rooted by 1951, as exemplified by the CIA who told President Harry S. Truman that the United States faced an enemy with “no scruples about employing any weapon or tactic” and that “nuclear weapons smuggled across porous borders threatened to devastate American cities. Sleeper cells…might already be inside the country.” [1]

In 1953, The New York Times reported that, “Officials regard the possibility of atomic sabotage as the gravest threat of subversion that this country, with its virtually unpatrolled borders, has ever faced” and that the Eisenhower administration was preparing to alert the public to the danger from “valise bombs.” [Ibid]

Declassified documents from the 1950s, obtained by The New York Times from the FBI, read like today, except Al Qaeda replaces the communist agents. During the Cold War, communism caused “Intelligence officials [to] fear that bomb parts might be delivered in diplomatic mail pouches, carried by international air travelers in their luggage or delivered by boat or submarine to an isolated beach. Communist agents already in the country might then assemble, plant and detonate the weapons.” [Ibid]

After the murder of Israeli athletes by Palestinian agents at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, American officials shifted focus to terrorists, which increased immeasurably after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, as it had been reported that Al Qaeda had actively sought a nuclear weapon since the early 1990s. We know that Al Qaeda leaders have said they would use a nuclear weapon, but they aren’t even close to building a bomb.

President Obama’s negotiations with Russia are a new start, but if that day we call 9/11 taught us anything, it should be that America’s nuclear arsenal cannot defeat ‘terrorism’ or provide security from the actions of a few violent madmen who target and murder innocent people.

American money is imprinted with “IN GOD WE TRUST” but reality is we have become a nation of hypocrites, for by our foreign policy we expose that we live by the sword.

America has a nuclear arsenal of over 10,000 weapons and nearly 2,000 remain on hair-trigger alert ever since the end of the Cold War and American taxpayers provide over $54 billion annually to maintain a nuclear arsenal that would be immoral to use.

An estimated 150 – 240 tactical nuclear weapons remain based in 5 NATO countries and the United States is the only country with nuclear weapons deployed on foreign soil.

The NPT/Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was created in 1968, and maintains that nuclear weapons proliferation can only be curtailed if nuclear countries move toward disarmament while the rest of the world is allowed to access civilian nuclear technology.

Over 185 non-nuclear states have agreed to give up the right to have nuclear weapons and the five nuclear powers that signed the NPT agreed to get rid of their nuclear weapons.

President Obama promised in Prague, “Words must mean something and violence and injustice must be confronted by standing together as free nations, as free people…Human destiny will be what we make of it.”

William Fulbright warned us, “The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership….a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures.” 

Leaders such as that will be in Kansas City, September 7, 2010 at All Souls Church to plan for a day of resistance at the Kansas City Nuclear Weapons Facility on September 8th during the official groundbreaking at Mo. Hwy. 150 and Botts Road, in Kansas City, Mo.

Contact Jane to learn more @ janepstoever@yahoo.com about why and how to shut down a new nuclear weapons facility and clean up the old one from the heartland of America.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/world/16memo.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Eileen Fleming, Producer “30 Minutes with Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member of Salem-news.com
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
Author of “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory” and BEYOND NUCLEAR:Some of my Experiences of Mordechai Vanunuand the Holy Land: 2005-2010
http://www.youtube.com/user/eileenfleming

Baku–Armenia sets conditions to Turkey

In indirect ways, the western nations are trying to take up an opportunity for reopening the Armenian-Turkish border and force Ankara into making the step, Novruz Mammedov, Head of the International Relations Department, Azerbaijani presidential administration, speaking of the possibility of reopening of the Armenian-Turkish border for transporting equipment for NATO military maneuvers scheduled for this September.

“The point is that Armenia has not closely cooperated with NATO. So the maneuvers with the participation of both Turkey and Armenia were planned in advance. They are thus trying to set Azerbaijan against Turkey – they are fraternal nations and strategic partners,” Mammedov said.

According to him, the western nations have been pursuing this policy for a while thereby testing Turkey. “After Azerbaijan gained independence, Turkey’s position on occupant Armenia has been the pivot of the Baku-Ankara relations. This policy is being pursued now as well. However, certain circles that do not want it are weighing Azerbaijan against Armenia in front of Turkey. No matter what we call it, but the reopening the border for even a day – in any form or content – may affect our relations with Turkey,” Mammedov said. According to him, Baku wants Turkey to pass the test.

“Armenia is not overtly setting conditions to Turkey. I believe Turkey will give an adequate response and will not allow the border to be opened even for an hour,” Mammedov said.

Azerbaijani servicemen not to take part in NATO exercise in Armenia

Azerbaijani side will not take part in the upcoming September 11-17 NATO exercise in Armenia.

‘We categorically declare that our servicemen will not participate in NATO military exercises in Armenia’,  said spokesman for the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan commenting on the statement of Foreign Minister of Turkey Ahmet Davutoglu that the Azerbaijani side will be presented in the NATO trainings in Armenia.

‘The reasons for this step of the Azerbaijani side are clear, we cannot be represented in the activities in the country that occupied Azerbaijani lands’, said the news service for the Defense Ministry.

Earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister A.Davutoglu said in an interview with Azerbaijan’s ANS that Azerbaijani side will also take part in the NATO exercise in Armenia to a certain extent.

Interfax-Azerbaijan

Turkey Caves–Joining NATO Exercise In Armenia

Turkey to Join NATO Exercise in Armenia

ANKARA (Trend.az)—Turkey will join other NATO alliance countries in September for a six day disaster response exercise in Armenia, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Thursday in an interview with the Azeri ANS TV station.

The exercise, organized by the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Center, is part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace initiative.

It will be held on September 11-17 and will including a command post element, and training and demonstration day. It will be based on a fictitious scenario in which a serious civil emergency erupts in the town of Arzni in Armenia’s Kotayk Province.

Davutoglu sought to play down his government’s involvement in the exercises, denying it was a signal that Ankara would soon be dropping its blockade on Armenia. “Many people are exaggerating this issue,” he said. “First, these exercises are not military; they are just related to action to be taken during earthquakes. As far as I know, Azerbaijan is joining this too. Our participation is related to the organization of field hospitals and we take part in these events only because Turkey is a NATO member.”

“As you know, we have sent field hospitals to Pakistan as humanitarian aid,” he added. “We take part in this training on humanitarian grounds, while the issue of opening borders is not on the agenda or subject to discussion.”

Armenia criticizes new UN resolution

YEREVAN – Daily News with wires

Foreign minister Edward Nalbandian leaves his office in Yerevan.

Armenia’s Foreign Ministry has warned Azerbaijan against trying to push a fresh resolution accusing Yerevan of occupying Azerbaijani lands through the United Nations General Assembly, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, or RFE/RL, reported Thursday on its website.

The ministry said such a move would hamper a peaceful resolution to the Nagorno Karabakh issue.

The draft resolution, which the General Assembly is expected to discuss on Sept. 9, upholds the right of Azerbaijanis “expelled” from Karabakh and the Armenian-controlled territories surrounding it to return to their homes. It also urges the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, to send a fact-finding mission to the conflict zone to investigate the conflict parties’ compliance with “international humanitarian law.”

Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan said the document, if adopted, would cause “serious damage” to international efforts to end the Nagorno Karabakh dispute. Armenian diplomats are now trying to prevent its passage, Balayan said, adding that Yerevan continues to believe that no international bodies except the OSCE Minsk Group should be involved in the search for a solution to the conflict.

“There is no way it won’t pass,” predicted Aleksandr Arzumanian, an opposition leader who headed the Armenian mission at the UN in the early 1990s. “The General Assembly statutes are such that even if five countries vote for and all others abstain, a resolution is deemed adopted. In such cases, most countries usually abstain.”

US Advisor Says Israel Can Destroy Lebanon Army within 4 Hours: Al-Liwa’a

Readers Number : 118

27/08/2010 A senior advisor to US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell has threatened Lebanese army commander, Jean Qahwaji that should his army initiate additional fire exchanges with Israel, the Israeli occupation army would annihilate his military within four hours, Lebanese newspaper al-Liwa’a reported Friday. According to the report, Frederick Hof spoke to Qahwaji on August 9, following the deadly border skirmish between Israel and Lebanon and informed him of the Israeli army contingency plan. The report further quotes Mitchell’s aide as telling the Lebanese commander that Israel had decided to carry out a plan “which would completely destroy the Lebanese army’s bases, centers and offices within four hours.” Three Lebanese were martyred during the Israeli aggression on the Palestinian-Lebanese borders, two Lebanese soldiers and one journalist. An Israeli Lieutenant-Colonel was killed and another officer was seriously injured. Firing began when occupation army forces entered a border enclave in order to uproot a tree. Lebanon later blamed Israel for violating UN Resolution 1701. Hof advised the Lebanese army chief to show restraint in any future border conflict with the Zionist entity. UNIFIL’s report on investigations into the border clash, which was issued on Wednesday, reconfirmed previous conclusions reached by them. The report reiterated that trees cut by the Israeli Army were located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side. It said UNIFIL sent the investigation report with findings, conclusions and recommendations to the UN Headquarters and the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations on Tuesday and to other concerned parties on Wednesday. The report also said that both the Lebanese Army and the Israeli Army “fully cooperated with the UNIFIL team during the investigation.”

The Gaza Flotilla–What Really Happened

The Gaza Flotilla–What Really Happened, posted with vodpod

Sri Lankan maid ‘Tortured With Nails In Saudi Servitude

Sri Lankan maid ‘Tortured With Nails In Saudi S…, posted with vodpod

US Special Forces–Killing Taliban Leaders In Their Sleep

Special Forces Ratchet Up Fight Against Taliban

By Matthias Gebauer in Kabul, Afghanistan

AP

US Army Special Operations Forces: Progress reported in fight against Taliban

Through nighttime attacks and drone strikes, special forces led by the United States have massively ratcheted up their hunt for Taliban. In the past three months alone, the highly secretive forces have eliminated 365 insurgent commanders.

The international troops in Afghanistan this year, under the command of the United States, have massively stepped up the hunt for top Taliban by special forces. The units, which operate secretly and are kept apart from the normal troops, have conducted hundreds of operations in recent months in an intensity not seen before in an effort to breakdown the Taliban’s resistance, weaken its leadership ranks and to eliminate networks of bomb planters.

Insiders have long known about the increased deployment of the special forces, but for the first time in the history of the nine-year war in Afghanistan, concrete figures about the deployments — which neither NATO nor the US military speaks about publicly — have been named. During the second week of August, leaders of the NATO troops under ISAF Commander David Petraeus were given a classified briefing on the massive anti-Taliban offensive, which began at the end of 2009, and progress that has been made.

SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned from reliable sources that the four-star general and his staff informed diplomats and top military officials that in the past three months alone, at least 365 high-ranking and mid-level insurgent commanders have been killed — mostly through targeted operations by the special forces, comprised of heavily armed elite soldiers from all branches of the US military. In addition, 1,395 people, including many Taliban foot soldiers, have been arrested.

The briefing on the latest progress in the war, which covered the period between May 8 and August 8, provides a rare glimpse into an aspect of the Afghanistan war that up until know has only been known by the US government and a few top politicians from other NATO member states. The military officials reported that the commanders and those arrested had been “taken out of the game.”

Special Forces Mostly Strike at Night

Since the briefing, the details have driven internal discussions about the future of the mission within the international community present in Kabul. Although the military leadership is speaking in a conspicuously cautious manner about its first small successes in the fight against the Taliban, the special forces’ actions could complicate cooperation with the Afghan government. Diplomats are concerned that the elimination of the Taliban hierarchy could conflict with the declared goal of reintegrating some members of these groups.

Above all, the spectacular statistics show one thing: The will of the military leadership to reach a turning point in Afghanstan in the coming months. The sheer number of the operations strikingly underscores that General Petraeus, like his predecessor Stanley McChrystal, wants to use the special forces to gain the upper hand in Afghanistan.

It’s the first time in the US military-led invasion of the country in which Taliban leaders have been sought in such a targeted manner. It’s also the first time so many insurgents have been arrested or assassinated in targeted killings. Western diplomats who have been briefed in recent days say that the current force of 145,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan is acting “with maximum force” right now.

For their part, military officials are taking a more sober view of the progress. Since US President Barack Obama approved an increase of 30,000 troops and announced a new strategy for the Afghanistan war in December 2009, the number of clandestine troops in the special forces has increased massively. By the summer of 2010, the number of special forces soldiers had tripled, according to the military progress report. Other details in the briefing included:

• the fact that, in almost all instances, 82 percent, the elite soldiers struck at night

• the special forces’ main target were Taliban structures in the southern part of the country, Jalaluddin Haqqani’s terror network in the east and foreign fighters with connections to al-Qaida

• regional Taliban commanders, heads of so-called IED-cells (who attack alliance troops with explosives) and al-Qaida contact persons, have been the subject of targeted air strikes or they have been killed during arrest attempts.

• the special forces, including the successor to the US military’s notorious Task Force 373, always act together with Afghan soldiers they had trained.

There are differences of opinion over the success of the special forces’ offensive. High-ranking US officers and NATO commanders are cautiously stating that they have had their first successes in limiting the freedom of movement of the Taliban leadership ranks. But it is still too early to draw any qualitative conclusions, an intelligence officer on Petreaus’ staff said.

In the district of Baghlan in northern Afghanistan, intelligence workers say, no one has been willing to step up into the role of at least one Taliban shadow governor who was targeted and eliminated by the special forces. “The leaders of the Taliban shura had appointed a successor, but the man is remaining in Pakistan,” one officer reported.

Karzai Criticizes Hunting of Taliban

But diplomats have expressed doubts over whether the robust military strategy can be reconciled with the one agreed to at a number of international conferences to find a solution through negotiating politically with the Taliban. “In the military leadership, people like to say that the best way to negotiate with the Taliban is when they are at rock bottom,” one European diplomat said after a meeting with the ISAF leadership. “But perhaps the operations have the effect of providing additional motivation for the insurgency movement.”

Most operations take place in southern and eastern Afghanistan, Taliban strongholds. But another important battleground is the Kunduz area in the north where Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, are in command. In Kunduz, where Germany has a base with 1,400 soldiers, and in Baghlan, the special forces were and continue to be deployed on missions almost every night. Dozens of insurgents have been captured or killed in targeted killings. Military officials recently reported that a senior member of al-Qaida had also been eliminated.

So far, German troops have not taken part in the deadly hunt against top Taliban. Germany’s own special elite force, the KSK, has also stayed out of the operations by the American units. But that doesn’t mean the Germans aren’t aware of what is going on. In Mazar-i-Sharif, an American serves as the deputy head of the regional command for the north. He informs his boss, Brigadier General Hans-Werner Fritz of the Bundeswehr, of his plans and the execution of the missions. German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has also been briefed in detail. So far, the German troops have merely looked on as the US forces have gone into battle.

The aggressive approach has already stirred up resentment at the Presidential Palace in Kabul. In talks with European politicians in recent days, President Hamid Karzai has regularly criticized the robust hunt for Taliban. Karzai has warned that the battle against the Taliban must not be waged in the villages and he claims that he regularly receives reports of dishonorable behavior amongst the units.

But military officials say they are doing everything they can to prevent civilian casualties. According the progress briefing, civilians in the period observed only died in 1 percent of the special forces actions. But that is the kind of collateral damage the Karzai likes to use as an opportunity to criticize the foreign troops and win public support.

The bloody progress made by the special forces could trigger similar reflexes in Karzai.

Karzai wagers on Obama’s audacity

By M K Bhadrakumar

Public corruption in Afghanistan is taking curiouser and curiouser turns. A vexatious choice arises: Betraying your country to a foreign intelligence agency – is it an act of corruption? By moral and ethical standards, it appears so. By legal standards, no doubt, it is the highest form of corruption and deserves the maximum punishment.

Those accused usually perish in long, interminable solitary confinement – or fade into oblivion after a spy exchange. In the latter category, they often go on to become alcoholics as they walk into the sunset of life and the guilt of corruption begins to eat into the vitals of their conscience, which can be regarded as the highest form of God’s wrath.

However, in Afghanistan, where the bizarre can become the order of the day, the United States holds the supreme power to both spawn corruption and, then, well, go through the motions of punishing it. Arguably, this must be one of the highest forms of self-flagellation known to mankind – outside of Shi’ism, that is.

Karzai spurns tough love
Take the burnt-out case of Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council in the governmentheaded by President Hamid Karzai.

The New York Times has made the sensational revelation that Salehi was almost nabbed by the Afghan agency tasked with an anti-corruption drive a month ago, but had to be summarily allowed to go scot-free at the personal intervention of the president. Salehi, quite expectedly, had been trained by the Americans with the noble objective of what has come to be known as “capacity-building” of Afghan state organs.

Salehi has apparently been working as a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent for donkey’s years, either betraying the functioning of the presidential office or corrupting Karzai’s policies by injecting careful doses of American thinking into them from time to time, thus rendering invaluable service to the US-led war and Washington’s regional strategies. Not only that – the CIA used him also as a sort of cashier to disburse its payments to its other agents in Afghanistan.

Salehi’s case file has now become a celebrated instance of the battle of wits between Karzai and the Barack Obama administration as it approaches a qualitatively new level of ferocity. To such an extent that at one point Karzai threatened to disband the entire US-trained anti-corruption task force and the standoff threatened to knock the bottom out of the Obama administration’s AfPak strategy. It even prompted Washington to post-haste dispatch to Kabul one of the key figures in the highest echelons of the US foreign and security policy establishment,John Kerry, chairman of the foreign relations committee of the senate.

Washington let it be known through media leaks that Kerry’s mission to Kabul was to do some “tough-talking” to Karzai, which indeed has been happening with an alarming frequency in recent years as part of the US’s “tough-love” approach to the indomitable Afghan leader who has begun holding his political ground with an increasing tenacity that threatens to dilute American overlordship of the war itself.

But tough love is a highly complicated act to perform. We do not know what transpired between Karzai and Kerry in the presidentialpalace last week. There could be more than one version of the rendezvous as the two also, according to American media reports, are great friends and get along splendidly.

At any rate, no sooner had Kerry left Kabul at the conclusion of his mission, Karzai took to the media and virtually tore into the American case file on Salehi and the entire sordid business of what constitutes corruption in Afghanistan.

Karzai made three points. First, Salehi was treated shabbily by the US-trained task force, that its acts were completely out of proportion to the charge against him, namely, that he allegedly accepted a gift of a US$10,000 car for his son for some services rendered. Surely, it was a modest gift as it could only have been a basic model of a very small car, which the status-conscious Afghan elites do not usually use. A reconditioned Nissan Micra imported from Dubai, perhaps?

It’s a proxy war
But that was not the point. Karzai was finger-pointing that when there are probably much bigger sharks in the Afghan pond, the US-led drive chose to make a horrible example of Salehi because the idea was not so much as to crack down on corruption as to discredit the presidential palace itself.

It seems anti-corruption officials last month charged into Salehi’s house in the wee hours of the morning, handcuffed him and tried to take him away. The worst part was that he was treated like a petty criminal in front of his family members and neighbors, which is an abominable thing of humiliation to happen to any Afghan with high social standing.

Two, Karzai challenged the US-led anti-corruption agency and ordered that it must work within Afghan laws and that it should be a “sovereign” Afghan body. In short, Karzai showed the Americans the door and said he intended to exercise his presidential prerogatives as the elected leader of a sovereign country and the US cannot behave as if Afghanistan were a vassal state.

Karzai has meanwhile issued a decree that the Afghan private militias that masquerade as “security agencies” and which are funded and engaged by the US and other Western countries by way of outsourcing aspects of the war are to be disbanded and merged with the Afghan security forces under the Interior Ministry within this year. These agencies provide guards or escort duties, gather field intelligence or even undertake controversial errands that are beyond the pale of the law.

Karzai in effect hit the Americans below the belt. The fact remains that the Americans have been engaging in a quaint form of warring in the Hindu Kush by increasingly subcontracting the war to American contractors. No one speaks about it, but this has inevitably led to massive corruption as the Pentagon patronizes its favorite American contractors, and evidently, it is all pork.

Like in the case of the Iraq war, the Afghan war also stinks and the US Congress is finally examining how billions of dollars have been spent by the US in the Hindu Kush since the invasion in late 2001.

Karzai understands perfectly well that the current “anti-corruption” drive by the US’s AfPak officials is a clever move to pass the buck to the Afghan side and blame the latter for all the colossal wastage of financial resources for the war provided by American taxpayers when congress comes up with its report and the fur starts to fly.

Unsurprisingly, Karzai is not willing to be made the fall guy. A third point he made, therefore, is that he is not even in charge of the gravy train running through the Hindu Kush. Afghan officials have pointed out that only a small portion – less than 20% – of the international aid flow into Afghanistan is routed through the Kabul government, whereas the remaining 80% is handled directly by the donor countries.

This acrimony as to who holds the aid strings is actually as ancient as the hills. The Americans have never questioned the veracity of Karzai’s claim, which is backed by UN officials, too. But why has it erupted with such ferocity?

The heart of the matter is that Karzai seems to suspect that an invidious US attempt is on to replace him. He would have certainly noted that the New York Times devoted a full-page article on the Afghan war recently, a key portion of which virtually demanded the Obama administration to have a rethink over Karzai’s continuance in office.

Karzai is a sophisticated politician and knows what the US did in Vietnam when if faced defeat in the war. The US simply kept replacing its South Vietnamese ally in Saigon’s presidential palace. Karzai has indeed become a political hurdle for the US. He is far too assertive to be a faithful ally and there is no certainty that he would mature into a Nuri al-Maliki, the premier in Iraq.

Most important, he insists on piloting the search for a political settlement and is increasingly showing a propensity to build a regional consensus involving Iran, Russia, India, and others. He threatens the US’s monopoly of the war and the peace process.

In essence, Karzai has concluded that the US and Pakistan have worked together to throttle his initiative to open a line to the moderate Taliban who are open to reconciliation.

The recent disclosures by the New York Times regarding the “capture” of Mullah Baradar in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi in January testify to the fact that it was a joint CIA-Inter-Service Intelligence operation. And the best claim the Americans can put forth on their performance is a preposterous explanation that they are dumb creatures and the smart Pakistanis used them as a doormat and that they were really not quite clued in on what was afoot when they swooped down on the No 2 in the Quetta shura and nabbed him in his hideout.

Karzai doesn’t think the CIA comprises such imbeciles as not to know who they are dealing with when they collaborate with Pakistan’s formidable ISI in a major field operation.

What is more ominous than all this is the secret meeting held by US officials in Bonn last month with some of Karzai’s allies from the erstwhile Northern Alliance, with the duplicitous intent of prising them away from their political tie-ups with the Afghan leader. In short, to tear apart the spider-like web of political deals that Karzai has been astutely making to broaden and deepen his support base in anticipation of the time when he will sit down face-to-face with the Taliban.

The supreme irony is that the US has been instigating Karzai’s Northern Alliance allies belonging to non-Pashtun ethnic groups by portraying the Afghan leader as an appeaser of the Taliban and tapping into their visceral fears of a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

Karzai has reason to suspect that the game played by the US’s AfPak officials is extremely devious as it happens just before the Afghan parliamentary elections due on September 8. Karzai is pinning his hopes on getting a parliament elected with which he can work in harmony, unlike the previous legislative body that was under the influence of the American Embassy in Kabul.

Can Obama rein in the Pentagon?
Karzai estimates that he would have to carry the parliament along as representing the collective opinion of the Afghan people in any political settlement. If Karzai’s plan for the parliamentary elections succeeds, thanks to his broad-ranging alliance with non-Pashtun groups, and he gets a parliament with which he can work so as to evolve a national consensus, it would lethally damage the US’s entire strategy to control and prescribe the contours of any Afghan settlement.

The core issue is, as reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post last week pointed out, that all indications are that the US has no intention of vacating its military presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia in the foreseeable future. And it is only through a pliant regime in Kabul that the Pentagon can hope to negotiate a favorable status of forces agreement. The issue is of fundamental importance to the US’s regional strategy of “containment” of China, Iran and Russia and doesn’t allow any scope for compromise.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Selig Harrison, a renowned scholar and author of Out of Afghanistan, touched on the huge political dilemma facing Obama – how to leave Afghanistan without “losing”. He pointed out that it was only by the US agreeing to a “neutral” Afghanistan that the war could be brought to a conclusive end.

But Harrison foresees that Obama will have a tough fight on his hands within his own camp in Washington as he inches toward a political settlement in Afghanistan. He wrote:

The biggest obstacle to the accord is not likely to come from Pakistan, but from a Pentagon mindset in which the projection of US power is viewed as a desirable end in of itself. Some of the 74 US bases in Afghanistan, including the airfields, are designed solely for counter-insurgency operations and might be expendable in a neutralization accord.

But the mammoth airfields at Bagram and Kandahar are projected to grow in the years ahead – ambitious new construction projects continue at both bases, despite Obama’s pledge to begin withdrawing troops from the country in the summer of 2011. Furthermore, congress is considering funding requests, totaling $300 million, to establish new bases at Camp Dwyer and Shindand, close to the Iranian border, and Mazar-i-Sharif, near Central Asia and Russia. Aware of Afghan opposition to “permanent bases”, Pentagon and White House officials now speak of “permanent access”, which would guarantee the use of these bases for intelligence surveillance operations.

Conceivably, the benefit of the doubt could be given to Obama that he is either not in the loop about Pentagon thinking or that he is “yet to address” the future of US bases in Afghanistan and Central Asia. Harrison is inclined to feel that the latter is the case.

In either case, it is Obama who will finally call the shots and decide whether the Pentagon will still use Afghanistan to “further its global power projection goals long after the Taliban and al-Qaeda are a distant memory”, Harrison estimates with a profound sense of the history of the 30-year Afghan conflict.

In sum, Karzai has an epic fight on his hands. He either pulls back his Afghan instincts of pride, self-respect and fierce independence and strikes a Faustian deal, or he treads on the Pentagon’s global strategy. It could be a fatal choice either way for him.

Ironically, Karzai’s best hope is that Obama refuses to be an “establishment president” and lives up to the promise he held out at the time of his election campaign. But the rhetoric of 2008 is now history. What matters in the hurly burly of politics is the “here” and the “now”.

The outcome of the US Congressional elections in November could prove to be a watershed event in Karzai’s tumultuous political career as much as it could be for Obama’s meteoric appearance on the world stage as a man of peace.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Red alert! The Russians are coming!

By Pepe Escobar

Hollywood executives and Washington policymakers are suckers for Russophobia. Considering the appalling level of political discourse in both these capitals of mass entertainment, certainly one cannot expect their “opinion leaders” to have read Professor Paul Kennedy’s recent expose of European history packaged as a crash course to Americans about the inevitable downsizing of the US in the emerging, multipolar new world order.

Hollywood Russophobia always emerges as caricature, as in the current, irrepressible humorless Angelina Jolie vehicle Salt – complete with the former KGB kidnapping babies to be turned into super-agents infiltrated into the US as sleeper cells, following a career path and patiently waiting to raise hell and sabotage

Western democracy in the form of killing the president of theUnited States. Jolie is as believable as one of those Slavic super-moles as Central Intelligence Agency-scripted videos of Osama bin Laden.

For its part, Washington Russophobia usually emerges as a US-built Iron Curtain in reverse, which according to the Pentagon’s full spectrum dominance doctrine rules that US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military bases will encircle Russia from the Baltic to the Caucasus and Central Asia.

So what’s the Russian response? In both Afghanistan and Iran, it carries the mark of the good chess player; discreet, silent, getting down to business, and aiming to hit the jackpot.

All jihads lead to Sheberghan
In Afghanistan, the leadership in Moscow always knew this was all about the US and NATO trying to establish a new hegemony inCentral Asia – full spectrum dominance all over again. But then Moscow found out – following the Chinese example of investing US$3 billion in mines south of Kabul – that the best of possible worlds would be to make money while the West got bogged down in a winless quagmire. Call it the Shanghai Cooperation Organization way of running rings around NATO.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just been to Moscow to be greeted by President Dmitry Medvedev with a slew of projects to the tune of US$1 billion – from a hydroelectric dam to exploitation of minerals, those same minerals that led the Pentagon to recently re-excavate its hyperbolic predictions of Afghanistan as the Saudi Arabia of lithium.

History has a way to sometimes render reality curioser and curioser. The Afghan mining industry, based in Sheberghan, in remote Jowzjan province, today controlled by General Abdul Rashid Dostum’s militias, was no less than a Soviet creation. The Uzbek warrior Dostum, currently a minister in Karzai’s government, made his career in the late 1970s pro-Soviet Afghan army before he opportunistically migrated to the mujahideen during the jihad in the 1980s, when he became one of former US president Ronald Reagan’s “freedom fighters”.

Legend has it that when Dostum visited Texas in the late 1990s he was carrying the treasure map – all the prospection done by the Soviets of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. Talk about perennial positioning; now Dostum is in the exact right place to profit from Russia’s largesse. Dr Zbigniew “The Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski may have dealt the Soviet Union a crucial blow – or Vietnam – in the form of the 1980s jihad.

But it’s the Russians who may have the last laugh. Afghanistan will always be considered by Moscow as under its sphere of influence. Russia is not only well connected to the Uzbek faction as with the Panjshir faction of the Karzai administration – via General Mohammed Fahim, Afghanistan’s vice president and uber-lord of local espionage.

New US Afghan War supremo General David “I’m always positioning myself to 2012″ Petraeus’ current overdrive to rewrite the AfPak war as the US turning the tide over the Taliban may elicit subdued roars of laughter in Moscow (not to mention in Quetta, where al-Qaeda’s leaders sit). But now Moscow can even afford to be magnanimous and let NATO supplies transit in Russian territory. The Russians know that where it matters – where the good business is, in northern Afghanistan – their future couldn’t be brighter.

All that is nuclear turns into gold
The Bushehr nuclear power plant – the first in the Middle East – launched jointly last Saturday by Russia and Iran, unmistakably establishes Iran as one of the world’s 29 nuclear power generating nations. But it’s also a major coup for the Russian nuclear industry, in this case represented by state-run Rosatom.

Six months ago, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Rosatom would be able to build 25% of the world’s nuclear plants (it currently stands at 16%). Atomstroiexport, Rosatom’s civilian construction arm, will build a major plant in Turkey, and has also set sights on Bangladesh and Vietnam. Bushehr, which has cost more than $1 billion, will generate 2% of Iran’s electricity. Of the four reactors to be built in Turkey, to the cost of $20 billion, each will produce 20% more energy than Bushehr.

Rosatom’s chief executive Sergei Kiriyenko has been spinning that Bushehr is a “big international project” which involved more than 10 European Union (EU) and Asia-Pacific countries. What no one really knows is why this has taken so long, since Russia agreed to take over in 1992 (Bushehr actually started way back in 1974 by German Kraftwerk Union, a merger of Siemens and AEG. Siemens pulled out of Iran in 1980).

Everything has been invoked to justify the non-stop delays – US and UN sanctions, Tehran’s suspicions of Moscow, Tehran actually not paying its bills on time. Now this is all water under the bridge. Kiriyenko also has made a point to stress that Bushehr “coincides with Russia’s position that any country in the world has the right to nuclear energy for peaceful use” – as long as it is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
According to the Tehran-Moscow agreement, Russia supplies the nuclear fuel for Bushehr and disposes of the spent rods (so Iran cannot use them to extract plutonium), with everything monitored by the IAEA. Hundreds of Russian engineers will remain working at Bushehr until 2013 before Tehran takes over completely.

In early August, even the US State Department via chief spokesman Philip Crowley, was forced to admit, “Bushehr is designed to provide electricity to Iran. It is not viewed as a proliferation risk because Russia is providing the needed fuel and taking back the spent nuclear fuel, which is the principal source of potential proliferation”. What Washington has focused on like a laser is the Natanz uranium-enrichment plant; a second one, under construction, in Qom; and the heavy-water reactor in Arak, also under construction.

The notion that Tehran might build a “secret” bomb factory underneath Bushehr is ludicrous; it would be tracked by multiplespy satellites in a flash. So while strident, armchair warrior US neo-cons parade their ignorance equating an internationally monitored nuclear power plant with a nuclear bomb factory, the Russians merrily use it to cash in on further businessopportunities.

Moscow knows that what’s really at stake in the whole Iran nuclear dossier is that the US – with its huge nuclear arsenal – and both Britain and France – with their small nuclear arsenals – simply don’t want to have yet another country from the developing world (like India and Pakistan) crash into their cozy nuclear weapon club. And neither is Russia interested in contending with an extra strategic challenge, a possibly nuclear-armed Iran (thus Moscow playing a constant game of geopolitical chess). What both the West and Moscow really want is to maintain the current status quo.

And that leads us to the heart of the matter; as long as the US, as well as Britain and France, don’t accept Iranian uranium enrichment, there’s simply no possibility whatsoever of extracting Iranian cooperation on a global, non-proliferation nuclear agenda. Meanwhile, the Russian nuclear industry will merrily keep cashing in.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.