5,000 Baloch youth to be inducted in Pak Army in March, 2011

[The way things are, it makes you wonder how he will find 5,000 “volunteers” from Balochistan, if they are to be volunteers.  Does this mean that Baloch have been banned from the Pak Army until now?]

Quetta: A total of 5,000 youth from all over Balochistan Province will be inducted in Pakistan Army in March 2011, said Major General Tariq Javed on Monday.

Pakistan Army in collaboration with Balochistan government is committed to play its role in the development of the province, he said at concluding ceremony of ISSB classes at Quetta Cantt.

“In pursuance of Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani’s directive, Army in collaboration with provincial government launched projects in education, health, and other sectors,” he added.

He said conversion of Sui cantt into military college, training classes in Balochistan Institute of Technical Education BITE, renovation, construction of damaged health and education structures in flood-stricken areas are some of major steps taken by Army for development in Balochistan.

Major General Tariq Javed lauded dedication of Baloch youth during training session and said Balochistan is rich in talent and efforts afoot to bring them on par with students of other provinces.

Stuxnet could have caused “new Chernobyl,” Russian ambassador says

Russian ambassador says NATO should be investigating the Stuxnet further.

By Ellen Messmer, Network World

The Stuxnet worm attack known to have struck computers at the Russian-built Iranian Bushehr nuclear plant in Iran has serious implications and could have caused “another Chernobyl,” a Russian ambassador is said to have advised NATO yesterday, according to a Reuters report.

The Reuters report says Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, called the Stuxnet virus “very toxic, very dangerous” and said it had caused centrifuges to spin out of control and was dangerous enough to have possibly caused “a new Chernobyl,” an allusion to the devastating nuclear-plant accident in the mid-1980s in Ukraine.

Is Stuxnet an Israeli-invented attack against Iran?

According to Reuters, Russian ambassador Rogozin said NATO should be investigating the Stuxnet matter.

Security experts have spent considerable time examining Stuxnetcode, with many regarding it as weaponized malware that was likely used by an enemy of Iran to slow down development of Iran’s nuclear program, with some believing that Israel or the U.S. or both having had a stealthy hand in Stuxnet’s creation as malware targeted Iran industrial control systems in the plant..

Fire in arms depot “strange”: Venezuelan president

English.news.cn

Fire burns at a Venezuelan army ammunition depot in Maracay, Venezuela, on Jan. 30, 2011. A fire set off a series of explosions at a military arms depot, killing at least one person and leading authorities to evacuate about 10,000 people from the area.(Xinhua/STR)

CARACAS, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday said that the fire in the arms depot in central Venezuela, which killed one people and wounded some 40 others, was “strange.”

According to Chavez, the fire, which began on Sunday at 4:00 a.m. local time (0830 GMT)in Maracay city, Aragua state, was suspicious as it occurred during a night in a high and large storage without electrical system and where nobody should be there at that time.

However, “everything is possible, so we will launch a scientific investigation and will get the pertinent conclusions,” he said.

Chavez went to the scene of the fire to inspect the damage caused by the fire.

Chavez congratulated the Armed Forces for their work and congratulated the firemen in charge of controlling the fire.

“We must congratulate them, because they did a heroic action, putting on risk their lives due to the risk of explosions. Without their work, it could have turned into a bigger tragedy,” he said.

Chavez also expressed his sympathy to the relatives of the only fatal victim.

Editor: Fang Yang

 

Elite Desperation Over Failing Middle East Psyops

by  Anthony Wile

Once again, the power elite manipulates the Middle East for its own gain. It is a dangerous game, especially in Egypt, which controls the Suez Canal. Because of the violence, gold is up and oil, too. And just as I finish writing this article, the UK Telegraph has released an extraordinary story. It claims that the United States leadership not only secretly backed the current uprisings in Egypt, it was actively aiding and abetting the protestors. Hello rewrite!

“America’s secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising,” the article reads. It explains that The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York. “On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011.”

What an expose! Unfortunately the story is developed from cables recently leaked by WikiLeaks. And here at the Bell, we don’t trust WikiLeaks. Julian Assange himself may be an asset of Western intel. Of course, from the perspective of Western intel, tying Egyptian yearnings for independence to WikiLeaks may have seemed a brilliant stroke. Perhaps they believe it provides both WikiLeaks and the American ruling establishment with enormous credibility: Each can be seen as supporting freedom.

But on a deeper level, it reveals the desperation and the unraveling of this entire operation. The Anglo-American power elite has apparently decided to destablize the Middle East in order to create regulatory democracies with an Islamic tinge (an arrogant assumption in my view). The ultimate goal is to butress the war on terror and deliver enhanced authoritarianism to the West – and the Western middle classes that are always the targets of the elite.

But as usual, the Internet has apparently upset elite plans. How does one run a “black ops” of this magnitude while being exposed in real time? In fact, WikiLeaks could have released these cables at any point. They did it yesterday, apparently. It is as if the collective hand of the elite has been forced.

Yes, it seems to me that with plans exposed, Western elites may have decided to take credit for the Middle Eastern uprisings. Why is it a desperate manuever? Because the averge youthful Egyptian or Tunisian is not going to look kindly on the idea that he and his world is being manipulated yet again by ruthless Western powers-that-be. This is the reason that such operations are usually kept quiet. Nobody likes to feel manipulated.

What now? We continually document the struggle between the truth-telling of the Internet and the fear-based promotions of the elite. The elite seems increasingly tortured by the Internet, which is a process not an episode. Usually elite promotions take decades to develop. The EU was 50 years in the making. Global warming nearly as long. But everything the elite is trying to do these days regarding its promotional methodologies has a rushed, error-prone feel about it.

It is not going to help relations with the Egyptian man-on-the-street to have the information broadcast that America was behind – and actively planning – the current disturbances. As of this writing, the Egyptian government has lodged a protest against American interference. US Foggy Bottom types have taken to the airwaves blathering about the “values” of American democracy, but after years of reports of American torture, Western rendition, endless drone attacks that kill women and children in Afghanistan, it’s certainly an open question as to whether America can effectively pose as a beacon of democratic values.

The ramifications are endless. Exposed endlessly on the Internet, the elite may have decided to take credit for the “democratization.” But do the Western powers-that-be really believe they control these uprisings now? A dozen powder kegs have been lit. Blowback – serious blowback – is on the way. In a sense, no matter how the elite’s involvement is portrayed, it would seem a botch. If you are going to destabilize some of the most ancient cultures in the world, you better be able to do it secretly. It’s not something you want to take credit for, or not while the operations are ongoing.

Perhaps the disclosure was planned all along to give WikiLeaks additional credibility (which it sorely needs). But the trouble is that on the ‘Net anyway there has been enormous speculation that neither Assange nor WikiLeaks are exactly what they seem. Thus, WikiLeak’s release of documents about American involvement may be viewed as manipulative itself … artificial and even unconvincing. Here are some previous Bell articles on the subject:

http://www.thedailybell.com/1717/Fall-of-Saudi-Arabia-to-End-Dollar-Reserve-System.html

http://www.thedailybell.com/1714/Tunisia-Promotion-Now-Failing.html

http://www.thedailybell.com/1711/As-Predicted-Tunisian-Islamists-Emerge.html

http://www.thedailybell.com/1691/Western-Elites-Secretly-Still-Building-Islam.html

Credit where credit is due. The above articles have benefited from the insights of reporter and author William Engdahl who understands well the essential manipulation of the late 20th century world by the powers that be. In his book Full Spectrum Domination, he pointed out that the various color revolutions that occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union were essentially manipulated affairs.

He tells us that the leading actors in these revolutions were essentially coached by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies. The end result was essentially a series of bloodless coup d’etats that left leaders sympathetic to Western style regulatory democracy in charge of the affected countries. What is going on in the Middle East is no different.

But Engdahl, as bright and sophisticated as he is, seems to see the world through a quasi-socialist prism. For him, it is governments orchestrating events and large, evil corporations coming up with the ideas that governments and fatcat politicians then orchestrate. That is why he mentions that it is the Rand Corporation that he claims came up with the idea for the current crop of “bloodless” revolutions. Our point of view is different. We ask who stands BEHIND corporations and governments. You can see a Bell article on Engdahl here:

http://www.thedailybell.com/1272/Western-Wars-Are-Preplanned.html

It seems fairly obvious that a Western power elite stands behind much of what goes on in the world today. There are central banks around the world, and they didn’t happen by accident. The world’s entire financial infrastructure was created by certain elite individuals after the Second World War, although the plans were drafted well in advance. To claim the world is run by “governments” is to miss the point. It is run by powerful banking families and their allies – mostly out of London – using the levers of power that governments provide to the truly wealthy. The mechanism of this governance is called mercantilism.

Elites are always at war with their middle classes, and the preferred techniques, in this epoch anyway, are the fear-based dominant social themes that the Bell tries to cover every day. By using these fear-based promotions, the elite attempts to stampede the middle class into surrendering both wealth and power. There is pressure for constant convergence of power; the preferred governance is regulatory democracy. In the Middle East, no doubt, the evolution of these revolutions will bring to power moderate Islamic entities that will provide a boon to yet another elite promotion: the so-called war on terror. All these promotions are interlinked.

There are other sorts of promotions that the elite uses as well, mostly to piggyback onto existing trends. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange would seem to be one of them. Aljazeera would seem to be another. Aljazeera was initially staffed by the BBC; Assange has released few leaks that harm Western powers in any significant way. By promoting Assange and Aljazeera, the elite is able to control the larger dialogue. It is a version of the Hegelian dialectic that the elite loves to use. Control both sides of the argument and the results are bound to further one’s agenda, whatever it may be.

In this case, the goal is creating much closer and better-coordinated world government run by the Anglosphere. That’s why we’ve suggested at the Bell that one of the outcomes of the Middle East unrest will likely be Islamic governments of a sort that will polarize public opinion in the West and add credibility to the current war on terror – which definitely needs a pick-me-up. If the West is to continue down the path of authoritarianism, it certainly needs to create a larger Islamic bogeyman.

It also seems to me that these revolutions could be used to destabilize a strong American ally, Saudi Arabia – and thus destabilize the dollar-reserve currency as well. (We’ve written about that.) Again, this benefits an Anglo-American power elite that is determined to transition from national currencies to one global currency – reason enough for the destruction of the dollar. The wealthiest sheiks won’t be damaged were this to occur. They’ll simply seek asylum in Britain, (or perhaps France) as so many of the West’s wealthiest allies seem to do when they are toppled.

We live in the age (era) of the Internet. The manipulations of the elite have withstood the test of time, but I would suggest that in the 21st century there is a greater perception of the manipulations than ever before. The Internet was not foreseen by the elite. So many of elite promotions are compromised now; when the elite releases a new one, it would seem that the law of unintended consequences almost immediately takes hold.

In the 20th century, the elite controlled the message and thus much of the world. In the 21st century, the power of the Internet has exposed many of these promotions and given us real insight into the current matrix of control. I have this to say about the current color revolutions: Be careful what you wish for!

No Need for a Draft When the Brightest Young Men Are Eager To Kill for a Job–Literally

[The Beast- Masters learned a great lesson from the Vietnam War–shanghai men out of their own lives and force them to fight against their wills, and they won’t fight.  After that, they learned that an “all volunteer Army” cannot function in a thriving economy.  So this time, they got it right–first they killed the economy, then they started their war, so that suddenly, a million jobs became available when there were no other jobs.  If college graduates face a choice between flipping burgers forever, with zero chance of ever paying back all those college loans, or selling their souls to the devil for a chance to “be somebody,” even though the job description includes committing murder, how many of them will be moral enough to resist the devil/recruiter’s seductive appeals?

There will never be an end to all of these little “piss-ant wars” that plague mankind until normally sane young men wise-up and  stop volunteering to be “hitmen” for the “godfathers” of American crime.]

More college grads signing up for military

BY JEB PHILLIPS

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

FRED SQUILLANTE | DISPATCH

Ben Harris volunteered as a tour guide at the Ohio Statehouse to bolster his resume, to no avail. Now he plans to join the military.

|

More than two years out of college, Ben Harris finds himself working in a chicken-finger place and living with his parents in Hilliard.

This is not what he expected as a double major in political science and communications at Ohio State University. He would like to be an educational ranger in the National Park Service, or possibly a political journalist.

He’s gone so far as to volunteer as a Statehouse tour guide to juice his resume, but no job he wants has come through.

So he’s turning to a place that does have jobs to fit his interests. He is joining the military.

“Now, it seems like a viable option,” said Harris, 25, who is still deciding between the Army and the Air Force. “I’ll get more skills and more education.”

In this tough job market, an increasing number of college graduates agree. The number of military recruits with bachelor’s degrees jumped from 2008 to 2009, then again in 2010. The only service branch without noticeable gains in that category is the Marine Corps.

The number of recruits with college degrees and no military service remains a small part of the whole.

The Army brought in 5,725 new active-duty and reserve soldiers with bachelor’s degrees out of about 83,000 recruits in 2010, said S. Douglas Smith, a public-affairs officer for the Army Recruiting Command. But that college-educated recruit class is up by about 200 from 2009 and by more than 2,000 compared with 2008.

The Navy enlisted 1,425 college graduates in 2010, up from 1,011 in 2008. The Air Force enlisted 920 college graduates into its active-duty force in 2010, up from 553 in 2008.

Like Harris, other new recruits from central Ohio say they might have joined the military even in a booming economy, with desirable jobs available. College graduates can more easily become officers, because a degree is required, and they receive paychecks while the military pays down their college debt.

“I’ve always had in the back of my head that it was either law school or working for the government,” said Josh Gibson, 23, of Plain City, a 2009 graduate of Otterbein University in Westerville. “I know the economy kind of pushed (my decision).”

So did the need to serve his country, he said. He turned down a job in deciding to join the Army.

“I always tell people when they come in, if you are joining for money, you need to walk away,” said Army Staff Sgt. Andrew Thatcher, who commands a Sawmill Road recruiting station that covers the Ohio State campus area and Dublin.

“I try to tell them it’s a lifestyle, not a job,” said Staff Sgt. Brandon Ross, a recruiter at the same station.

Still, Thatcher said, recruiters don’t have to go out and look for people as much as they used to. College graduates and others are walking into the office on their own. The average age of a recruit at the Sawmill Road station is about 26, he said.

The Marines did see a rise between 2008 and 2010 in the number of new college-graduate recruits, but that’s because 2008 was a little down from previous years. The numbers don’t fluctuate much over the long haul because of the culture of the Marines, said Maj. John Caldwell, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

“Young men and women join our ranks to become a United States Marine,” Caldwell wrote in an e-mail. “They do not see the Marine Corps as a path to something else but rather as a destination unto itself.”

Some college graduates feel exactly that way about their decisions. Kevin Saarie, 26, of Dublin has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ohio University in Athens. He has a job he has enjoyed with the Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission and no school debts.

He leaves for Army basic training in May. He plans to then attend officer-candidate school and begin a career as an active-duty Army officer.

Both of his parents were in the Air Force. He has decided a military career fits with his values and what he believes is important.

“I think it’s a great honor and privilege to serve my country,” he said.

jeb.phillips@dispatch.com

Two Key Bush Policies Have Broken the US Job Market

J.E. Robertson

There is little doubt that the United States is experiencing a long-term crisis in the scarcity of gainful employment. It is, in fact, persistently difficult for many laid off workers to find jobs even at a steep pay cut. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did a great deal to staunch the bleeding, and has helped move the economy toward a grudging reversal in job trends, but we are still saddled with two major Bush-era policy shifts that are hampering job creation almost across the board.

The first is the unprecedented giveaway of nearly $2 trillion in tax revenues, during the years 2001-2010, to mostly the wealthiest Americans. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were in fact the largest single transfer of wealth in American history, a giveaway of needed government revenues to those who least required a handout. The Bush team’s thinking was trickle-down economics to the extreme: if we give more than a trillion dollars to the wealthiest Americans, they will have to pass on that wealth by “creating jobs”.

The flaw in this reasoning was that the real impact, the real incentive of the Bush handout was: if the wealthiest interests in our society can earn more than a trillion dollars without lifting a finger, why should they waste money creating jobs? This latter logic has proven to be much closer to the economic shift we experienced in the wake of those tax cuts. American businesses began moving jobs overseas at record pace, and even pressed for the further relaxation of labor laws, so job creation wouldn’t be “so costly”.

The transfer of wealth was further exaggerated when the Bush administration persuaded Congress to overhaul bankruptcy laws, making it much harder for individuals to escape crippling debt through bankruptcy protection, while making it easier for corporations to do so. Banks whose balance sheets were riddled with bad debt resulting from mathematically unsustainable and predatory lending practices could hide their exposure by taking advantage of both sides of that bankruptcy reform.

The second major economic policy shift that took place under George W. Bush was the near total deregulation of the banking sector. Pres. Clinton had signed major bank deregulation legislation in the late ’90s, but the intention was not to give major banks carte blanche to set up a fictional trading regime which no human being could track and in which the private wealth of most Americans could be made vulnerable to systemic fraud. The Bush years, however, saw a shift in regulatory infrastructure which invited (and brought) such abuse.

Allowing major banks to not only hold deposits and make loans, but to sell stock, to convert loans into securities, to gamble with pension plans, to sell insurance, some of which was designed to insure against the collapse of their other financial products, was a calamitous miscalculation. It is what invited and brought about the worst financial abuses in generations and led to the worldwide financial collapse of 2007-2008.

If banks are not accountable for the truthfulness of their wealth claims, they have every incentive to first begin, then expand, the very risky fictionalization of wealth that we saw in the years 2001-2008. With unprecedented amounts of free cash floating around in the bank accounts of the wealthiest of the wealthy, the financial sector experienced an incredible boom in dollars invested. The comprehensive deregulation of the financial sector then allowed them to use this new economic reality to vastly inflate the value of that private wealth, by investing not in productive business opportunities, but spurious and ill-designed financial “instruments”, the true value of which was simply the point-blank multiplication of wealth.

To say that wealth is fictionalized is a specific charge: the entire financial services sector embarked on a complicated re-engineering of the meaning of investment. No longer was the smartest gamble the investment of hard cash into real businesses producing actual products and services with corresponding measurable market value; now, the focus shifted to investments in securitized investments, pools of wealth claims not corresponding to any measurable, grounded economic activity.

Building “instruments” designed to expand the financial holdings of clients was the new game. Bad loans were bundled into “mortgage-backed securities”. One could buy one-tenth of 1% of a bundle of 1,000 home loans, the total cash value of which can never exceed the contracted amount plus interest over time, in hopes that other investors will throw so much money at the same security that its financial value (wholly detached from its real economic value) will escalate wildly.

If this sounds risky, your bank could secure its other holdings against the risks of mortgage-backed securities by engaging in “credit default swaps”. The simplest way to explain these is to say that two or more banks agree to shore each other up against massive credit losses, to provide baseline security to the already improbable investment values tied to the pooling of mostly risky mortgages.

These two policy shifts saw the United States government give away $2 trillion, at the beginning of a decade which would cost nearly $2 trillion in war spending, only to throw in another $1 trillion at the tail end, to pay for the clean-up, leaving major financial institutions not only intact, despite systematic abuses, but far wealthier with respect to the average American business or household than ever before. This policy shift was undertaken deliberately by the Bush administration, and to some extent, the policy goal of putting more power into the hands of a concentrated minority of the wealthiest interests was achieved.

The current administration is dealing with the aftermath of this decade of decadence; Pres. Obama has the unenviable task of wrestling with the resulting wave of unemployment, challenging deeply held assumptions about the American genius for creating wealth and reminding citizens and politicians that free as we are, most individuals have little control over their economic circumstances. Should he raise taxes? Fine the banks? Institute wage controls on investment bankers? Ban irrationally huge executive bonuses?

His critics allege he is desperate to do each of these, and yet he has never attempted even one of them, as a response to the financial crisis. The only area where taxes have been increased during Obama’s presidency, is on the wealthiest recipients of the most expensive health insurance policies. Economists of every stripe agree this will help to bring down costs and insure more people.

Pres. Obama’s approach to the financial collapse, the government’s fiscal crisis and persistent unemployment, has been to seek solutions that will allow private markets to deal better with the challenges of the day. The bluster and character assassination from his critics has been relentless, but the fact is, he has not proposed socialist fixes to the converging crises in American markets; he has, instead, sought to make it possible for individuals and businesses to fare better, while aiming to defictionalize the investment markets without prompting a sudden collapse of values in any sector of the economy.

In this sense, Obama has been largely successful. Most economic trend lines appear to be moving in the right direction, including job-creation. In 2009 and 2010, the US economy created far more jobs than during the Bush years, 2001-2008. But employment is lagging desperately behind other economic indicators. The weakness in the US jobs market can be traced directly to these two vitally ill-conceived economic policy shifts: the massive transfer of wealth the wealthy (an incentive large enough to remove all incentives) and near total free rein to the financial sector (allowing the wealthy to isolate their wealth without losing it, undermining the capitalist-democratic model whereby wealth flows throughout the society).

Financial regulatory reform, passed by the Democratic Congress and signed into law by Pres. Obama, was a significant step in the right direction, banning some of the worst abuses, targeting crucial conflicts of interest, and instituting a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will, for the first time in US history, give ordinary Americans a regulatory watchdog specifically designed to protect against systemic fraud and abuse in the financial sector.

But we are still dealing with the bulk of the costs of these two key Bush-era policies, and the extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans may serve to stabilize the slow jobs recovery, but it is unlikely to accelerate it. We have to examine whether, as a democratic republic, we have any reason for giving such massive new wealth and such unconstrained privilege, to the already wealthy and privileged, without even asking anything in return.

In a free society, the rule of law should grant each of us the core democratic liberties that make us whole people, able to act freely in the public sphere, but the system should not be so easily redesigned to serve the personal or corporate interests of a limited few or to impede the flow of capital (as a percentage of overall investment) to ordinary people and small businesses. The folly of the Bush years was to pretend that an economy planned for the select few would work for everyone. An economy aligned to privilege market dynamics that elevate working families, citizens and communities, will enrich the wealthy, but not at the expense of everyone else.

The narcissism of the neo-cons, Egypt edition

by Jay

“It seems that a democratic revolution is sweeping the Middle East — spurred, I am sure, by American and allied actions in Iraq. (Our chattering classes will never admit this.)
– Jay Nordlinger, National Review

At last count, at least 50 Egyptians have been killed, more than a thousand injured and probably thousands arrested and imprisoned under what must be extremely frightening conditions. They have made those sacrifices and taken those risks for reasons that are very much their own, reasons born out of decades, centuries, even millenia of cruel repression and corruption.

To claim that they are instead taking such risks because they were inspired by the U.S. invasion of Iraq nine years ago is to attempt to rob them of credit for their own bravery. It is an act of theft by people who sit thousands of miles away in perfect safety, trying to boost their own self-regard by wrapping themselves in the courage of others.

– Jay Bookman

Egyptian Armored Vehicles Shelter Crowd from Police

This video from Daily News Egypt shows a street leading to Tahrir Square, where early Saturday morning, demonstrators were confronted by armed police. The police fired shots into the air, apparently a warning to go no further. Three armored military personnel carriers are seen moving into position between the protesters and the police, apparently in an effort to prevent injury to demonstrators and/or to prevent an attack by police.http://www.casavaria.com/cafesentido/

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Military Prevents Confrontation between Protest…, posted with vodpod

How Far Will a Catapault Fling a Bale of Weed?

Another ‘Pot’apult Found Near U.S.-Mexico Border

Mexico’s defense department announced that they have confiscated another catapult on Friday near the U.S. border in the town of Agua Prieta, Mexico used to fling pot across the U.S.-Mexico border.

This ‘pot’apult was discovered when U.S. National Guard were reviewing surveillance video and saw several men on the Mexican side of the border flinging packages over the border.  Border patrol notified Mexican officials immediately who investigated.

When they arrived on the scene they discovered 45 pounds of marijuana and the ‘pot’apult but none of the operators of the device.  Last week the first such catapult was found in Naco, which is near Tucson, and it was also detected by U.S. surveillance video.

Venezuela Arms Depot Fire, Explosions Kill One

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Venezuela Arms Depot Fire, Explosions Kill One …, posted with vodpod

TNK-BP Partners File Suit To Stop BP/Rosneft Share Swap

TNK-BP Partners Said to Weigh Dividend Halt as Dispute Worsens

By Torrey Clark and Will Kennedy

BP Plc’s billionaire partners in the TNK-BP oil venture may stop $1.8 billion in dividend payments as a dispute about the U.K. explorer’s alliance with Russia’s state oil company worsens, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

The partners, who act through the AAR group, last week asked a London court to halt BP and OAO Rosneft’s share swap and Arctic drilling agreement because it may erode the competitive advantage of their venture.

AAR’s board will meet tomorrow to discuss vetoing the fourth-quarter dividend and having TNK-BP start hoarding cash, the person said, declining to be identified before the meeting. The board comprises Mikhail Fridman, Viktor Vekselberg, German Khan, and Len Blavatnik.

Robert Wine, a spokesman for London-based BP, said dividend payments were a matter for the TNK-BP board and not just the Russian shareholders. AAR spokesman Mikhail Loskutov declined to comment.

The worsening dispute threatens a second breakdown in relations between TNK-BP’s shareholders. In 2008, current BP Chief Executive Officer Robert Dudley was ousted as head of TNK- BP as the billionaires and BP argued over strategy. The 50 percent holding in TNK accounts for about a quarter of BP’s output and a fifth of reserves.

BP agreed on Jan. 14 to swap a $7.8 billion stake in the company for 9.5 percent of Rosneft. The two also agreed to explore an area of Russia’s Arctic waters about the size of the U.K. North Sea.London’s High Court will consider AAR’s application for an injunction on Feb. 1.

To contact the reporters on this story: Torrey Clark in Moscow at tclark8@bloomberg.net; Will Kennedy in London at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net

Blasts, fire at Venezuela arms depot, 1 killed

[It would be nice to find-out if these are some of the Russian weapons that Chavez has been stockpiling the last few years as part of a national civilian-based civil defense system, embarked upon as a reaction to Bush threats.  There is little chance of that ever happening.  If we knew whether this was terrorism and not accidental, it would tell us that Obama has opened-up another front in his war for global dominance.]

http://static.eluniversal.com/2011/01/30/g_fire.jpg.520.360.thumb

By IAN JAMES

CARACAS, Venezuela — A fire set off a series of explosions at a military arms depot in the Venezuelan city of Maracay on Sunday, killing one person and leading authorities to evacuate around 10,000 people from the area, an official said.

Residents were being evacuated from areas within six kilometers (about four miles) surrounding the arms depot, Aragua state Gov. Rafael Isea told state television.

“This is a preventive measure because the ammunitions that were detonating are ammunitions that have a powerful impact,” Isea said.

State radio reported that firefighters were beginning to extinguish the fires after a series of smaller explosions. Earlier, Isea said that smaller explosions were continuing and firefighters were waiting for them to subside.

A woman nearby the depot was killed, probably by the explosions, he said. The cause of the fire was unclear. Three people were injured in traffic accidents amid the chaos that ensued the blasts, he said.

Cavim, Venezuela’s military arms manufacturer, said in a statement that authorities had surrounded the arms depot “to control the situation.” The company said the explosion took place at 4:45 a.m. local time (4:15 a.m. EST; 0915 GMT).

Information Minister Andres Izarra went on state television calling for calm and saying that authorities were tending to the situation.

Hyrbyair Marri Wins Asylum In British Court

Hyrbyair Marri wins his asylum appeal; I will meet the Diaspora to unite them for Baloch cause: Marri

LONDON: Britain has granted political asylum to Baluch leader Nawabzada Hyrbyair Marri, tacitly acknowledging that the life of fiery Baluch nationalist leader was at risk if returned to Pakistan. Hyrbyair Marri, one of six sons of veteran Baloch leader Nawab Khair Baksh Marri, had applied for political asylum in Britain four months ago. He had entered Britain in 2000 after sneaking out of Pakistan where he was being sought by Pakistani spy agencies on various charges. Initially Mr Marri’s asylum claim was turned down by the Home Office and stated in the refusal letter that Hyrbyair’s life will be safe in Pakistan as his father still lived in Karachi and didn’t face harassment from the state authorities. Hyrbyair took his case to the asylum and immigration tribunal where his lawyer successfully argued that not only Hyrbyair’s elder brother Balach Marri was assassinated by Pakistani secret services but also Mr Marri himself has not stepped inside Balochistan in 10 years. The immigration judge was told that from former president Pervez Musharraf to the interior minister Rehman Malik had personally threatened and warned Hyrbyair of the repercussions for his ‘what they called’ anti-Pakistan activities. The defence argued that the continuing heavy-handed military operation in areas populated by the Bugtis and Marris, coupled with the ever-deteriorating law and situation in the country rendered Hyrbyair at the potential risk and law enforcement agencies could easily take him out. Sources confirmed that, senior PPP government officials, including the foreign office, contacted the Home Office (in the UK) and assured them that Hyrbyair will be provided safety and security if returned and further assured the former Baluchistan assembly lawmaker-turned-rebel was only exaggerating threat to his life. Hyrbyair’s lawyers were successful in convincing the judge that the current civilian government was not only helpless in matters related to Baluchistan but it was also impotent in security matters concerning rest of the country as its writ was absent in even urban areas. In his evidence before the judge, Hyrbyair also criticised the British government for deliberately creating problems for him and his family on behest of the Pakistani government. The judge acknowledged that Hyrbyair Marri was a high profile figure who had annoyed the establishment by taking a stance on Baluchistan issue not sanctioned by the security establishment. Hyrbyair was arrested alongside a young Baluch rights campaigner Faiz Baluch on December, 4, 2007. They were charged on charges of inciting others to commit murder abroad. Mr Marri spent 4 months in jail whereas Faiz Baluch was detained for 8 months. After a lengthy trail of over 40 days the duo were acquitted by an ordinary British Jury of 12 men and women. Faiz Baluch, who applied for political asylum in 2002, his case, is still in a limbo and the young campaigner remains clueless about his fate in Britain. Speaking to media sources, Hyrbyair referred to his first exoneration on terrorism charges, brought on the special request of Pervez Musharraf, said that being granted asylum was nothing to be celebrated about. “It pains me more that I am not with my people who are standing steadfast against the state onslaught. I am glad though that I have been exonerated for the second time, not by the British government but by the British courts. The British government knows there are serious problems in Balochistan but doesn’t have the courage to stand up to Pakistan. The neutral immigration court has given its verdict in my favour by acknowledging the fact the meltdown in Baluchistan is for real and that life has been made difficult for those who seek independence. I knew that British justice system will not let me and the people of Baluchistan down. These are independent courts, free of political influence.” He said that now when he is able to travel, he will meet the Baluch Diaspora across the world and will galvanise and unite them for the Baluch struggle for justice and Independence. Peter Tatchell has been at the forefront of campaigning for the release of Hyrbyair Marri from the detention in Belmarsh prison. He expressed his joy that Mr Marri was granted asylum in Britain, albeit with a lot of delay. “This decision to grant Hyrbyair asylum is very significant. It is an acknowledgement by the British government that human rights abuses in Baluchistan are so widespread and grave that Mr Marri cannot return their safely. This ruling is a damning indictment of the severe political repression that exists in Pakistan. The human rights advocate added: “It is further evidence that Baluch people who want the right of self determination are at risk of imprisonment torture and assassination by the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies.

Uncertain World: Terrorism’s local roots

Weekly column by Fyodor Lukyanov

International terrorism was at the forefront of global politics in the first decade of this young century. The concept is actually relatively new.

© RIA Novosti.

Fyodor Lukyanov

After the September 11 attacks shook America to its core, the Bush administration declared war on “international terrorism” and sought to enlist others in the cause. This was initially intended to serve as the organizing principle for a new international system. But really it was the same good-versus-evil dichotomy, with international terrorism taking the place once occupied by the Soviet threat.

It seemed at first that they might succeed. The broad coalition in the “war on terror” overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan and drove them out of Kabul. But this was the high watermark for the coalition.

There was a design flaw in the war on terror. A global counterterrorism campaign must be comprehensive and rooted in cooperation, but the United States ended up using it as a tool to maintain global dominance. That drive toward dominance included exerting pressure – hard and soft – on other countries to follow America’s lead. But no one likes to be pressured.

Washington’s dubious motivation was only part of the problem. Many began to doubt that “international terrorism” really existed as a distinct phenomenon.

In the era of globalization, we are more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. The “martyrs” are no longer confined to the Middle East. They are found on the Moscow subway system and at Russian airports. However, the recent attacks in Moscow and Nalchik were not committed by the abstract international terrorists we are called on to fight. These attacks were carried out by specific Islamic groups from the Caucasus.

Terrorism today can have a global impact while still being rooted in local problems. International terrorism is, in fact, a collection of various separatist and nationalist movements. Each of these groups – in Russia, Indonesia, Sudan, Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan, China, India, Turkey or Yemen – is opposed to its respective government and calls for self-determination or the overthrow of the current regime.

Even the unprecedented attacks of September 11 were a specific extremist group’s response to U.S. ambitions in the world, which successive administrations have been pursuing since the end of the Cold War. They see America as a global empire controlling vast territories, either directly or indirectly.

As such, George W. Bush’s attempt to make international terrorism the focus of global politics was doomed from the start. First of all, the concept was overly broad and subject to various interpretations by different political leaders. Most governments tried to use the perceived terrorist threat to expand their power. U.S. intelligence agencies were granted greater authority, while Russia put an end to the direct election of regional governors.

Second, because international terrorism is a manufactured concept, it could not bring countries together to work toward a common goal. Each new country joining the coalition against international terrorism brought its own interpretation of the concept. Again, this was to be expected, as there was no common threat in actuality. Terrorists are not a monolith, even if they do share some motives and means. As a result, the war on international terrorism is at best an empty slogan and at worst a source of irritation between countries caused by the inevitable double standards.

Third, there can be no one-size-fits-all solution to terrorism, because terrorism is rooted in local grievances specific to each country.

The purpose of a major terrorist attack is to undermine a specific government, to make it look weak and ineffectual. Therefore, the initial reaction of the government is always to prove its strength by striking back with sanctioned violence.

If a quasi-state is involved, such as the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of the late 1990s or the Taliban regime, it becomes the target of revenge. Both Russia and the United States sent in troops that ultimately succeeded in destroying the basic terrorist infrastructure in Chechnya and Afghanistan, respectively. But neither knew what to do next, when the surviving enemies fled and became ghosts in the hills, posing even greater danger.

No government has found the answer yet. The illusion of stability brought by the use of overwhelming force fades very quickly, and it becomes clear that the new, unconventional war may drag on forever. Each new act of retribution swells the ranks of the enemy.

Eliminating the roots of terrorism is a long and complex process with no guarantee of success. The United States learned this lesson in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia learned it in the mountains of the Caucasus. America can at least leave these foreign lands when the situation becomes unbearable, although the terrorists could strike again on U.S. soil. Russia is not so fortunate. Russia cannot leave the Caucasus, and so it will have to keep trying to find a balance between suppression and development in its fight against terrorism.

Medvedev Peddling Russia To Davos Investors

[This is the genius moment in the complicated conspiracy to merge East and West, papering over the great divide with money.  We have reached our goals by buying our way with the world, if American capital can safely gain a certain degree of control over Kremlin reactions.  Putin and friends know who is behind this wave of “Islamist” terrorism–the same people who have been behind all the “Islamist” terrorism in Russia.  They know that it was us, yet they do not reveal the proof that their investigators must have, to the world.    If American money can ensure that American military moves are not exposed by Moscow, for fear that it will cause a rupture in the flow of vital modernization investments, then limited warfare tactics (terrorism) can safely be applied with less chance of accidentally tripping the nuclear trigger.  That is the whole idea behind the “irregular warfare” concept, conduct low-level military operations (terrorism), in order to advance the agenda without crossing the nuclear threshold.  Fear of what the covert forces (both military and economic) will do next paralyzes the will to react–the essence of terrorist theory.  Self-censorship, to avoid more unpleasantness.  This is where Medvedev is most valuable to the plotters, giving Russia the means to build on a national scale, while giving America a free pass to push its weight around in the former Soviet countries.  If it is safe to buy into Russia, then it is safe to buy into any of Russia’s former satellite countries in Eastern Europe or Asia.

World Government is just a few clicks away.]

Medvedev pitches Russian modernization to investors at Davos

Dmitry Medvedev

© RIA Novosti. Dmitri Astakhov

RIA Novosti economic commentator Maria Selivanova

President Dmitry Medvedev identified key priorities of his ambitious plan to modernize Russia in a speech Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort town of Davos.

Initially, the Russian leader was expected to deliver a keynote speech at Davos and to then attend several panel discussions on the forum’s sidelines. But he decided to cut short his stay owing to the suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Monday. He took a flight back home just a few hours after his arrival in Switzerland.

Dmitry Medvedev made Russia’s modernization plan the centerpiece of his speech at Davos to reassure the world’s largest gathering of business leaders that the investment climate in Russia is improving.

“Russia still faces quite a few difficulties in establishing rule of law and building a modern, efficient economy,” he said. “But we are undergoing dramatic changes and we are moving forward.”

Government stakes up for grabs

Medvedev’s message to his audience in Davos was that Russia’s bid to modernize will create new opportunities for doing business in the country.

One of the key priorities will be to privatize large government-owned companies in the financial and energy sectors, as well as some infrastructure assets. Toward this end, the Russian government’s list of strategic enterprises, protected against foreign ownership, has been slashed by 80 percent.

“Minority stakes will be sold off and new portfolio investors will come on board, but the companies will continue to be managed the same way as before,” argues Natalia Orlova, chief economist of Russia’s Alfa Bank. “In other words, this privatization doesn’t involve any major transformations in the structure of the economy or in the behavior of its key players.”

This means that Russia’s government will retain its key role in the national economy even after the planned selloff of some of its assets.

A special fund will be set up in Russia to help reduce risks posed by foreign investors, notably by introducing co-investment schemes. Under such schemes, intended for up to 10 years, corporate projects will be co-financed by private investors and the government, the Russian business daily Vedomosti reports. At least 20 billion roubles should be raised for the fund to begin with, says the paper, adding that over time the proportion of private investment should considerably surpass that of treasury allocations.

Russian authorities are not going to introduce any additional taxes on the financial sector in an effort to make Moscow a world financial center.

The abolition on January 1, 2011, of the tax on the sale of shares (or the capital gains tax) is expected to give a jolt to foreign investment in Russia. The Russian economy does need foreign capital. Admittedly, though, along with encouraging heavier direct investment (notably, in industrial production), a favorable taxation system may also draw more speculative capital onto the country’s stock exchange.

Investment plus technological expertise

According to Dmitry Medvedev, investors should be excited about the idea of creating a common Eurasian market, spanning the continent from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, and operating under uniform, clear-cut rules. Russia’s prospective accession to the World Trade Organization and to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will help translate this idea into reality, he said.

The Russian president promised a favorable climate for innovative, high-tech entrepreneurship and venture capital in the country. He pushed his country’s Skolkovo project as the most ambitious international high-tech project. “I’m sure we can expect new global brands to arrive in Russia in the years to come.”

Dmitry Medvedev also stressed the importance of attracting technological expertise. Projects to develop energy efficient technologies and to enhance energy security should become the driving force of Russia’s high-tech sector, he said, inviting foreign partners to contribute.

One striking example of such partnership is a recent deal between the British oil giant BP and Russia’s Rosneft.

“Owing to a high degree of uncertainty and to the constant redistribution of property in the 1990s, Russian petroleum companies now lag some ten years behind in oil recovery technology,” explains Valery Mironov, deputy director of the Russian School of Economics’ Development Center. “Which is why they have to collaborate with foreign companies in offshore recovery and deepwater drilling.”

Expanding broadband Internet across Russia will create greater opportunities for doing business in Russia, Medvedev said. Improved Internet connectivity will also make it easier for the business community to have direct contact with Russian government agencies, thus cutting down on corruption.

Improvements to infrastructure are crucial to modernization and attracting foreign investment, Medvedev said. Russia should make sure its infrastructure is accessible both to the business community and the public at large. Preparations for large-scale international sporting events, such as the Sochi Olympics in 2014 and the FIFA World Cup in 2018, are expected to give an additional boost to infrastructure development in Russia, he said.

Human resources

A competent workforce is extremely importance to investors. Russia has already relaxed its migration laws to encourage qualified foreign professionals to come and work in Russia, and is willing to unilaterally validate foreign university diplomas and academic degrees.

On the other hand, the government expressed willingness to sponsor study-abroad programs for Russians aspiring to become civil servants, scientists and engineers.

Mironov warns, however, that additional investment in personnel training programs may fail to produce the desired effect, speeding up the country’s brain drain instead.

“In order to encourage intellectuals to start their businesses here, in Russia, rather than leave upon completing a free study program, we will need to reduce existing bureaucratic barriers,” he says.

Indeed, the risk of brain drain from Russia is still quite high.

“Developed countries seek to boost exports of industrial products, and demand for qualified engineers is constantly increasing. There’re a lot of surveys indicating that developed countries will have to attract engineers from Russia, India and China in the next fifteen years, until they manage to readjust their own education systems.”

The how and the what

Observers say the modernization priorities outlined by President Medvedev at Davos are all potential steps in the right direction, but that there is nothing new about them.

“These points migrate from one speech to the next, but it remains unclear just how they’ll be executed and how the nation’s leadership see the structure of this process as a whole as well as the order in which the unveiled plans should be implemented,” Mironov says.

He holds that in order to dispel foreign investors’ doubts about Russia, it is crucial to understand where this country should be heading. And that any modernization program should come with a clear-cut strategy.

As for Medvedev’s program, in its current form it looks chaotic and disorderly, Mironov claims.

“All the points sound good enough, but it’s unclear if they can be effectively implemented in Russia’s present-day investment climate,” says Natalia Orlova. In her view, the program does not envisage any measures to make the country more competitive. And “without enhancing its competitiveness, it’d be hard to see all the proposed mechanisms functioning properly,” she believes.

Yelena Matrosova, director of the Center for Macroeconomic Studies at the company BDO, suggests that Russia should turn for advice to countries that have successfully modernized their economies. Modernization, according to her, it is not a Russian invention, and all the relevant “recipes” have already been “spelled out.”

After WWII, modernization reforms were pursued in Japan, Germany, the UK, the United States, and China. Russia would be wise to draw on their expertise as it gets down to the task of charting a roadmap for its own modernization.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

Police defuse two powerful bombs in Dagestan

Special operation in Dagestan. Archive

© Photo NewsTeam

Police have defused two powerful bombs in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said on Sunday.

The bombs were found on Sunday in the town of Izberbash, some 60 km (37 miles) to the south of the republic’s capital, Makhachkala, the committee said.

“Both explosive devices have been defused. The power of the first explosive was about 10 kg in TNT equivalent and the second about 15 kg in TNT equivalent. Both bombs were filled with metal elements,” the committee said.

The terrorist acts were prevented in Izberbash after the police checked information obtained from the interrogation of persons involved in a December 31 blast at a hotel room in southeast Moscow. The suspects were detained on January 29.

Reports say the blast at the hotel room killed a would-be suicide bomber who was assembling an explosive device.

MAKHACHKALA, January 30 (RIA Novosti)

The American and Israeli Governments secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising

The Libyan foreign security agency accused Mossad and Morocco of attempting to break Algeria

ennahar

For the first time, and officially, the Libyan External Security Agency has accused the Israeli Mossad of being behind what she described as “attempts to break the territorial unity of Algeria, Libya and Tunisia. 

• According to the agency, the Amazigh movement activists, backed by foreign intelligence services (Mossad) are leading a plan to break the Maghreb after succeeding in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen.In a communiqué of the Libyan agency, published yesterday, of which Ennahar obtained a copy, four people were arrested three days ago, two Libyan national and two Moroccans entered into Libyan territory under supposedly academic, historical, archaeological, cultural research, a cover for their activities.
  The two Moroccan nationals were released, the agency said, “in respect for the Moroccan official figures.
  The arrest occurred after a surveillance operation, to which four people arrested, Amazigh movement activists, had been submitted.
  The Libyan External Security agency directly involves an official Moroccan institution, of being behind the four spies, the twin Libyan brothers Mazigh and Maghris Bouzahar, while the names of the two Moroccans were not cited, nor for whom they work (the Moroccan Royal Institute). These re Asemhar Mahfoud and Ramou Hacen, two researchers from the centre of studies on the history and environment of the Royal Institute of Amazigh culture.
  According to data of Ennahar, the two Moroccans spies are part of a destructive project conducted by the Mossad.

  Ennahar / Ismail Fellah

Egypt protests: America’s secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising

The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning “regime change” for the past three years, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

Link to this video

By Tim Ross, Matthew Moore and Steven Swinford

The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.

On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011.

The secret document in full

He has already been arrested by Egyptian security in connection with the demonstrations and his identity is being protected by The Daily Telegraph.

The crisis in Egypt follows the toppling of Tunisian president Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, who fled the country after widespread protests forced him from office.

The disclosures, contained in previously secret US diplomatic dispatches released by the WikiLeaks website, show American officials pressed the Egyptian government to release other dissidents who had been detained by the police.

Mr Mubarak, facing the biggest challenge to his authority in his 31 years in power, ordered the army on to the streets of Cairo yesterday as rioting erupted across Egypt.

Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters took to the streets in open defiance of a curfew. An explosion rocked the centre of Cairo as thousands defied orders to return to their homes. As the violence escalated, flames could be seen near the headquarters of the governing National Democratic Party.

Police fired rubber bullets and used tear gas and water cannon in an attempt to disperse the crowds.

At least five people were killed in Cairo alone yesterday and 870 injured, several with bullet wounds. Mohamed ElBaradei, the pro-reform leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was placed under house arrest after returning to Egypt to join the dissidents. Riots also took place in Suez, Alexandria and other major cities across the country.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, urged the Egyptian government to heed the “legitimate demands of protesters”. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said she was “deeply concerned about the use of force” to quell the protests.

In an interview for the American news channel CNN, to be broadcast tomorrow, David Cameron said: “I think what we need is reform in Egypt. I mean, we support reform and progress in the greater strengthening of the democracy and civil rights and the rule of law.”

The US government has previously been a supporter of Mr Mubarak’s regime. But the leaked documents show the extent to which America was offering support to pro-democracy activists in Egypt while publicly praising Mr Mubarak as an important ally in the Middle East.

In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year.

The memo, which Ambassador Scobey sent to the US Secretary of State in Washington DC, was marked “confidential” and headed: “April 6 activist on his US visit and regime change in Egypt.”

It said the activist claimed “several opposition forces” had “agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections”. The embassy’s source said the plan was “so sensitive it cannot be written down”.

Ambassador Scobey questioned whether such an “unrealistic” plot could work, or ever even existed. However, the documents showed that the activist had been approached by US diplomats and received extensive support for his pro-democracy campaign from officials in Washington. The embassy helped the campaigner attend a “summit” for youth activists in New York, which was organised by the US State Department.

Cairo embassy officials warned Washington that the activist’s identity must be kept secret because he could face “retribution” when he returned to Egypt. He had already allegedly been tortured for three days by Egyptian state security after he was arrested for taking part in a protest some years earlier.

The protests in Egypt are being driven by the April 6 youth movement, a group on Facebook that has attracted mainly young and educated members opposed to Mr Mubarak. The group has about 70,000 members and uses social networking sites to orchestrate protests and report on their activities.

The documents released by WikiLeaks reveal US Embassy officials were in regular contact with the activist throughout 2008 and 2009, considering him one of their most reliable sources for information about human rights abuses.

Cairo Museum Vandalism Crime Against All Humanity

Looters break into Cairo museum, trash historic treasures.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Looters break into Cairo museum, posted with vodpod

“NATO expansion creates divisions”

Source: Dnevnik

NOVI SAD — Russian Ambassador to Serbia Aleksandr Konuzin has stated that there is no reason for NATO’s further expansion because it will create new divisions. Aleksandr Konuzin (FoNet, file) “Expansion policy of NATO, which represents not only a political but also a military alliance, creates new lines of division and it’s a question of security for us,” he told Novi Sad-based daily Dnevnik. The Russian ambassador repeated that this was the reason why Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had proposed construction of a new security system. He stressed that such system would enable equal security for everybody, both for the NATO countries and those that chose to be neutral, such as Serbia. Konuzin said that it was up to Belgrade, not Moscow, to determine who it would cooperate with. “Serbia obviously sees some advantages in taking part in the Partnership for Peace program,” he pointed out.

Washington Gives Encouragement To Anti-Mubarak Forces

Hundreds at anti-Mubarak protest in Washington

People demonstrate in support of the Egyptian people’s protests against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak in front of the Egyptian embassy in Washington

WASHINGTON: Hundreds of opponents of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak called at a rally in Washington Saturday for his overthrow and urged Washington to “stand on the right side of history” and cut off aid to his regime.

Amid a sea of Egyptian and American flags and protest placards in English and Arabic with slogans including “Pharaoh no more” and “Overthrow Mubarak,” the crowd, estimated at between 900 and 1,000, took turns leading chants in front of the Egyptian embassy.

“Mubarak has to go,” shouted Ayman Hodhod, standing atop snow-covered security barriers.

“America should get on the right side of history and stop giving financial aid to Mubarak because he uses it to abuse his own people,” said Hodhod, who had traveled from the midwestern state of Minnesota for the rally.

Mohammed Eid grabbed a megaphone, pointed it toward the embassy and led the protesters in chants in Arabic of “Down, down Mubarak” and “Seven million jobless in Egypt.”

As that round of noise stopped, an emotional Amal el Bahi took up a new mantra of “Mubarak must go,” shouting to the edge of hoarseness as the crowd joined in.

“It’s our country, not theirs,” el Bahi told AFP, gesturing toward the embassy, where slight movement could be seen behind a tinted glass entrance door, set back several meters (yards) from the high steel barriers and three US police officers that separated the diplomatic building from protesters.

On the brink of tears, el Bahi told AFP she has lost contact with her son in Egypt since massive street protests began there earlier this week.

Reports from Egypt have said nearly 100 people have died in the protests in Egypt against Mubarak, who on Friday sacked his cabinet and promised reforms in an effort to stem the popular uprising.

But as the violence continued in Egypt, the protesters in Washington said Mubarak’s actions and promises rang hollow, and insisted that the only thing they wanted was for him to go.

“I don’t think anyone should accept the same president for 30 years,” said a middle-aged woman who gave her name only as Nabila B.

“I want for my country the same as we have in America. I want freedom — free speech, free elections — and I don’t want the same face,” she said.

The demonstration in Washington was one of dozens across the United States, called to show solidarity with the masses who have taken to the streets in Egypt to demand Mubarak step down after 30 years of iron-fisted rule.

– AFP/fa

Disappeared Baloch student’s body found, friend hospitalised in critical state

[Pakistan’s militarists, like all militarists, cannot see the great immoral wrong that they are committing each time that they kill one of these Baloch boys in their custody.  It is no different from the situation in Colombia, where the military has often gone on human hunting safaris to eliminate political opposition.  Absolutely the same policy being followed by US Special Forces as they go on night-time hunts in Afghanistan.  Why is it that governments and the finest military forces in the world cannot do their jobs without breaking multiple international laws in the process?  Are the words of political opposition leaders so threatening that they cannot be allowed to utter one more word, justifying cutting their throats in their sleep, or dragging them away in black hoods to be tortured?]

Occupied Balochistan: Pakistan’s security forces dumped the bodies of two Baloch students in Gwargo area of Panjgor town in Thursday morning. Both of the youth had been severely tortured and shot at – luckily, one of them has survived and has been hospitalised. According to details, Abid Rasool Baksh Baloch, a 17 year old student of Prome High school who was also a member of Baloch Students Organization (Azaad) Prome Unit of Panjgore has been tortured to death by Pakistan Military Intelligence whereas another fellow Baloch student Mr.Nasir Dagarzai was found in a severely injured condition. According a note posted on Radio Gwank Balochistan, Nasir Baloch has been shot in the neck and legs but he survived miraculously. Abid Rasool Bux Baloch and Naser Baloch were abducted by Pakistan Military personnel on January 23, this year along with Mehrab Baloch, a member of BSO-azad Modal School Unit of Panjgor and Abid Saleem Baloch. They were abducted from the residence of Naser Dagarzai Baloch by the Pakistani Military Intelligence. Sources reported that women and children were beaten and harassed during the raid on Nasir’s house. Sagaar, the official website of BSO-Azad reported that Nasir Baloch has been shifted to Karachi for better treatment. Meanwhile BNM, in a press release, has strongly condemned the abduction and subsequent under-custody murder of Abid Rasool Baksh Baloch and critically injuring Nasir Baoch by occupying forces. The BNM statement termed the continuous under-custody murders of Baloch youth as the worst from of human rights violations saying that over 100 Baloch activists have been killed in past seven months. The statement further read “The deliberate silence of International Human Rights Organisations and International Community on state atrocities in Balochistan is tantamount to silent approval of state sponsored crimes against humanity in Balochistan”. On the other hand the Baloch Students Organization (Azaad) has announced a complete shutter down strike in Panjgor and denounces the role of international peace makers on the kill and dump policy of Pakistan towards Occupied Balochistan. A statement released on their website further read: “B.S.O. (Azaad) believes in the strength of Baloch nation to end the oppression and occupation of Pakistan and expects that the peace and justice loving people of the world would support Baloch nation to achieve their rightful freedom”.

Hariri Says Ousted by ‘Foreign Orders’, Not Parliamentary Consultations

Hariri Says Ousted by ‘Foreign Orders’, Not Parliamentary Consultations
Outgoing premier Saad Hariri on Saturday held broad consultations with March 14 leaders and economic and popular figures before presiding over a meeting for Mustaqbal Movement’s politburo that was dedicated to discussing the latest political developments, his press office said.
“The Mustaqbal Movement stresses its commitment to the democratic course,” a statement issued after Mustaqbal’s politburo meeting said, noting that “the parliamentary consultations conducted by the president” were held amid “fierce foreign pressures aimed at changing the rules of the democratic game.”

“Our exit from power was not the immediate result of parliamentary consultations, it rather happened according to foreign orders … executed by domestic tools,” the statement added.

During the meeting, Hariri stressed to the political bureau members that “anything related to the so-called S-S (initiative) belongs to the past now and does not exist for Saad Hariri or the Mustaqbal Movement.”

He denied approving or signing on any paper “related to the work of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and its ties with the Lebanese State.”

“There is a major difference between discussing certain ideas and approving them,” Hariri added.

He urged the conferees to “protect civil peace and coexistence among all Lebanese.”

“Each official or member in the (Mustaqbal) movement is responsible for implementing this approach,” Hariri added, calling on his movement’s members “not to be dragged into sectarian rhetoric.”

“If street action was one of the means of expressing our political stance, it should not turn at any given moment into a weapon through which we intimidate others,” Hariri went on to say.

The Exact Center of the United States of America Has Been Identified

(thanks to crowhouse.com)

Lahore shootings: As the case unfolds, the mystery deepens

By Asad Kharal / Rana Tanveer / Sumera Khan

US consulate employee Davis is escorted by police and officials after appearing before a judge in Lahore. PHOTO: REUTERS

ISLAMABAD/LAHORE: As the US diplomatic machinery moved to calm a brewing storm over Thursday’s shooting incident in Lahore involving an official attached to its consulate, peculiar details are trickling in regarding the exact identity of the man.

US Ambassador Cameron Munter is learnt to have met Foreign Secretary Salman Basheer, requesting the federal government’s intervention in the case of US official Raymond Allen Davis, who gunned down two young motorcyclists near Lahore’s Qurtaba Chowk in apparent self-defence. The case is currently being handled by the Punjab government, and Davis has been remanded into police custody for six days, according to police officials, by a magistrate.

Munter, according to well-placed sources, is said to have brought up the Geneva Convention, under which diplomats are allowed diplomatic immunity. The provincial government has so far refused to bring the international protocol into play. Other diplomats are also learnt to have tried to contact the Punjab government.

The Foreign Office is learnt to have contacted the Punjab government requesting case details. There has also been a meeting between Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Interior Minister Rehman Malik regarding the matter.  Gen. Kayani is said to have advised Malik to handle the matter with ‘extreme care’ given its sensitive nature. He also advised that, aside from the apparent diplomatic links, Davis’ military links should also be kept in mind as the case moves forward.

Also discussed was the law and order situation that could arise if Davis is granted immunity.

Who is Davis?

Meanwhile, intelligence data shows that Davis has visited Pakistan nine times since 2009.

According to records available with The Express Tribune, Allen Davis, aged 37, visited Pakistan for the first time on October 18, 2009, landing in Islamabad. His last entry into Pakistan was on January 20, 2011, when he landed in Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport.

Davis travelled using a regular passport, on which he had regular visit visas. There was no diplomatic passport.

Insiders say that Davis was performing duties as a technical advisor serving in the Intelligence and Security Wings of the US Embassy in Islamabad and the consulate in Lahore. He also made frequent visits to Karachi and Peshawar. The police are said to have recovered an identity card from Davis for the US’ Peshawar consulate.

Pakistani intelligence agencies have so far not reached any conclusion and had not submitted a report regarding the incident till the filing of this report. However, initial data suggests that police or other security/intelligence agencies had no record or intimation of Davis’ movement or participation in official events since he first arrived in Pakistan in 2009.

According to policy guidelines and security advisory issued by the Foreign and Interior Ministries, US officials are, for their own security, not meant to move around without informing security officials due to the terror threat in the country. The vehicle Davis was driving was locally-registered, and did not have diplomatic number plates.

Initial reports revolved around a possible looting attempt by the men on the motorcycles, to which Davis is said to have retaliated. Conversely, some reports rejected the robbery bid. However, it is unclear what would have provoked Davis to open fire.

A new angle to the incident, submitted in a statement by Davis himself, has it that the vehicle he was driving had had a minor collision with a Rickshaw a little before the incident. Therefore, if not a robbery, the two men could have chased the vehicle to argue with the driver.

Tristram Perry, the information officer of the US Consulate in Lahore, did not answer queries regarding Davis’ immunity, saying that he has been requested by Islamabad to not comment on the incident. “We are working with Pakistani authorities to determine the facts and work toward a resolution,” he said

FIRs against the deceased

Meanwhile, though it was initially reported that the two deceased motorcyclists had no criminal record, the police registered FIRs against them posthumously on Friday, police sources told The Express Tribune.

The complainants, Doctor Farzand and Sheharyar Malik, in a written application, state that the two had robbed them of their mobiles and cash just before the incident and were fleeing.

As evidence, the two have referred to phone logs of calls made to Rescue 1-5 about the incident right after it happened. The police say that two mobile phones were recovered from the deceased which matched the description of those the applicants had complained to 1-5 had been stolen.

However, the police had also shown the recovery of foreign currency from the deceased, which they say had also been looted. On the other hand, there is yet to be a complaint regarding the theft of foreign currency on the day of the incident.

In the FIR registered against Davis, the police have also included charges of carrying an illegal weapon – a Glock pistol and two magazines. The police also recovered a digital camera, a phone tracker with a charger.

Conversely, the police so far have no information about the other vehicle that came to rescue Davis and crushed a motorcyclist – Ibadullah – in the process. After killing the man, the vehicle fled from the scene. Davis did not disclose who was heading to his rescue, but did tell the police that, after the incident, he telephoned his Regional Security Officer who might have sent some officials for his rescue.

A police officer, on condition of anonymity, said that they had, through the Lahore Capital City Police Officer, sent a formal request to Pakistan’s foreign office to contact the US Consulate to identify those in the vehicle for their arrest.

The security of the US consulate has meanwhile been increased in light of increasing protests against the incident, The Express Tribunehas learnt.

WITH REPORTING BY SONIA MALIK AND RAMEEZ KHAN

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th,  2011.

‘America’: An experiment in terror

By Larry Pinkney

“To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave.” –Frederick Douglass

“The [Senate] Committe has not been able to determine with any greater precision the extent to which COINTELPRO may be continuing.” –Book III, Final Report of the Select Committee, 94th Congress, 2d Session, United States Senate

Terror is carried out in many forms by this nation’s corporate government against everyday people both internally and externally, and its most powerful facilitator is apathy.

As the national economy crumbles for everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people, there is in the White House a corporate/military master-president masquerading as the slave, a Congress insatiably feeding from a bottomless corporate trough, and a judiciary that makes an utter mockery of justice, constitutional rights, and human rights. Meanwhile, bloody overt and covert U.S. wars rage on in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere abroad. As contempt grows for the hypocritical and diabolical de facto policies of this nation’s government, it is everyday people at home and abroad whose lives are being torn asunder and who are quite literally dying, as the banksters and other assorted corporate gangsters grow ever richer and even more vicious.

The corporate-stream so-called “news” media of this nation has sunk to its lowest level since the very inception of the United States of America. It is pathetic as it serves as the propaganda arm, of and for, this actual one-party corporatist/military state. The corporate-stream media serves to keep everyday peoplemisinformed (or not relevantly informed at all), apathetic and lethargic, while being simultaneously terrorized. Its role is to omit, distract, confuse, and discredit:Omit – at all costs – delineating the truth and reality of what is actually occurring and why; distract attention away from how everyday people are being emotionally pimped and economically & politically emaciated by the U.S. corporate/military elite while purposely confusing the issues; and discredit – by any means necessary – those who dare to speak truth to power. Indeed, the function of this corporate-stream media is to keep people mindless, confused, and manipulated. There is no such thing in this nation as consistently serious, honest, and hard-hitting, thought-provoking journalism in the corporate-stream media, for such a thing would be absolutely unacceptable to the corporate elite who financially own the corporate-stream “news” media. Thus, the cycle of terror against everyday people in this nation and around the world is maintained and perpetuated.

It is no mere coincidence that as the horrific economic melt-down worsens for everyday people – political repression increases [i.e. de facto terrorism] in this nation. In other words, everyday people are being simultaneously terrorized both economically and politically right here at home. Moreover, the dangerous, absurd, and hypocritical political & military policies abroad, of this nation’s government, virtually guarantees a continuing cycle of blind physical terror against the people of this nation and around the world. But who cares, as long as the blood-lined financial coffers of the tiny avaricious corporate/military elite continue to be filled to the brim?! It’s time for us, everyday people, to care!

On terror, COINTELPRO, the Patriot Act & everyday people

To reiterate: Terror is carried out in many forms, both nationally and internationally.

The most obviously destructive form of terrorism is of course war, and is primarily carried out by governments, most notably our own. Nevertheless, political repression is also a virulent form of terrorism – also, more often than not, carried out by governments.

The United States government has, for many decades, been engaged in a war against its own everyday people. It is a terroristic war of political repression, and presently this form of terrorism is being ratcheted-up to a crescendo level by the U.S. government, under the auspices of the Obama administration.

People are terrorized that they will have their doors kicked in by the FBI et al, or placed on a government no-fly list, or set-up and framed on some well orchestrated bogus offense – all for, in actuality, exercising the right to political dissent against this government’s internal and/or external policies. However, this Orwellian reality, though being continued in the year 2011, by no means just began this year. It is in fact part and parcel of a long, sordid, ignored, often glossed-over and/or hidden chapter(s) of the ‘American’ government’s continuing experiment in terror against its own people.

One such continuing chapter of terror against the people of this nation is the U.S. government’s insidious program to “frame, murder, imprison, discredit and/or [otherwise] neutralize” political dissenters; known as COINTELPRO [i.e. the Counter Intelligence Program]. In point of fact, the political repression of COINTELPRO has been insidiously codified in the so-called ‘Patriot Act’ itself. The Obama/Biden administration, with the complicity of the Congress and the courts, has extended and broadened this ‘American’ experiment in terror against everyday people throughout this nation. Today, even the semblance of political transparency in government has been morphed into a disfigured relic of the past, and those who attempt to pull back the heavy curtain of secrecy and subterfuge permeating this corporate-government become targets to be “neutralize[d].” Nevertheless, an increasing amount of everyday people are becomingfed-up with these amoral, unjust, and secretive, corporate-government intrigues and are increasingly insisting upon speaking truth to power. As in the past, so today, the government invokes the nebulous, omnipresent cloak of “national security” (which really means corporate security for the elite rich) in an attempt to rationalize and defend its secrecy, subterfuge, and wars – at home and abroad.

This corporate-government is in fear of its own people and is resorting to every conceivable dirty trick to keep just plain everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people uninformed, in disarray, and under control. This is not government “of, by, and for the people.” It is a farce and a sham, and getting worse every day. It’s time to wake up and turn things around!

What we must do

There is no single answer or set of answers for bringing about the real systemic change that the people of this nation and globe need and deserve. There are many answers. However, one thing is certain: Resistance is not futile – it is absolutely essential. In order to develop viable answers for bringing about systemic change, we must be critical thinkers and come up with uncompromising and viable questions. We must stop acting as lethargic corporate drones and regain the human creativity that we have allowed the corporate/military elite to steal from us. We must reconnect with our own humanity and that of peoples globally. We must demand a full accounting from those politicians who allegedly represent us everyday people. We must educate ourselves and each other – in the truest sense of the word; and informed critical thinking and analysis is an integral part of real “education” [not brainwashing]. We must seriously educate our young people. Yes, “educate” ourselves and one another – so that we, all of us women, men, and children, Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow are, in the words of Frederick Douglass, utterly “unfit to be slaves!” Unfit to be drones! We must support, in word and deed, those who stand up for justice and human rights and who speak truth to power – for in so doing we are supporting the very best in ourselves and each other.

No more home foreclosures! No more burgeoning prisons! No more unemployment or under-employment! No more wars abroad or at home! No more corporate greed and domination! No more subterfuge and political repression! No more double-speak rhetoric! It’s time for real change – that is, systemic change.

We must organize locally, nationally, and internationally for justice and human rights. Contrary to the words from the motion picture, The Wizard of Oz; we will and must pay attention to that metaphorical “man behind the curtain.” In fact, we must rip that curtain down! We must educate, organize, and agitate for the good of the planet and the whole of everyday people! Stop looking elsewhere for all the answers when it is you, yourselves, collectively who have them within you. Humanity and Mother Earth call to us. And we must respond. Let’s get busy.

Onward, my sisters and brothers! Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book). Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

Who Has Blown Up Moscow Airport?

Andre Fomine –  Oriental Review.

Any terrorist attack immanently pursues a certain political goal. Clear understanding of this goal and an analysis of the whole set of available facts about the horrific explosion in Domodedovo earlier this week may bring us closer to the answer to the key question: who are the perpetrators and who ordered them to commit the barbaric murder of dozens of people in the airport reception hall?

There is no doubt that the ultimate aim was to destabilize Russian political system and trigger the ‘orange scenario’ on the eve of electoral season here. ‘Orange scenario’ means transition of power to the liberal opposition by organizing and funding of a small but extremely motivated and politically active protesting movement that serves as a blind ram at the decisive hour of announcing the results. Therefore the more insecure the people feel and the lower the authority of the central powers is the higher are the chances for opposition to gather a cheated mass storm rise.

Who wants a new Russian revolution? Evidently, the global oligarchic capital seeking to establish (partly restore) their control over Russian resources and other assets. All the claims about ‘lack of democracy’, ‘human rights violations’, ‘war-torn Chechnya’ etc are just a baseless trumpery aimed to hide this simple and plain motive.

Now let us have a look at the political context.

On January 20, 2011 President Medvedev returned from the Middle East, the first ever trip of a Russian leader to Palestine which was not shared with a visit to Israel. Main declaration: heconfirmed Russian support for Palestinian statehood within pre-1967 borders.

On January 23, 2011 Al-Jazeera published ‘revealing’ materials about secret Palestinian concessions to Israel proposed in 2008. So in three days after farewell ceremony with President Medvedev Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas got a ‘punishment’ from Mossad. A ‘punishment’ for the Russian president came one day later…

(for larger image)

The first shocking fact of the explosion in Domodedovo airport on January 24 is the volume of explosive. 7 kg in TNT equivalent! Circle of 30 meters of complete destruction around the epicenter. A hole of 15-20 centimeters deep in the marbled floor (area 1 on photo). The whole floor within the scene is seriously damaged with scratches from metallic filling of the bomb. At the same time, many lamps at the ceiling above the scene are untouched.

Another specific feature is the character of traumas. Almost all victims have their legs significantly damaged or torn away. Both facts indicate that the epicenter was very low and the blast wave was spreading horizontally along the floor.

No need to be an expert in forensics to conclude that apparently the bomb was inside a suitcase or a bag. Should there be a person carrying or pulling it? That is possible but not absolutely pre-conditional. Was it exactly his job to activate the device? I do not see any reason for such modus operandi of the terrorists. The drugs are very costly and for chosen scenario there is no need to waste them to train a suicide zombie. Much easier is to fool somebody with request to hand a luggage to a traveler or just to leave a suitcase among other things. Once the crowd is formed a side observer simply sends a text message with his mobile phone…

Now much more interesting thoughts. For the first time the Russian leaders recognized that this terrorist act doesn’t have any connection to Chechnya. It was crystal clear that the ‘Chechen card’ was played off long ago. So-called jamaats at the North Caucasus do not even take responsibility for the sporadic attacks on the governmental and security agencies as well as Islamic leaders condemning them. The chimerical idea of ‘Caucasian Caliphate’ has been eventually degraded to banal criminal uprising parasitizing on few facts of mismanagement by the local national clans and justified grievances of the population. It is definitely not their job. So who is behind the airport blast?

Last fall I’ve posted an interesting article by Peter Chamberlin ‘Who Is Responsible For Suicide Bomber Academies?”. He describes, among other things, the evidence of several US military veterans who were involved in developing the mind-control research programs after the World War II in the US. He also cites Chechen leader Kadyrov as saying that ‘the captured members of Riyad-us-Saliheen Brigade (a Chechnya-based terrorist organization that was active in Russia in early 2000s – OR) had confessed that Western specialists had given them mind-control drugs, which had the effect of making them like robots, who “do not think.” There are also numerous evidence that terrific ‘suicide truck bombings’ in Iraq and Afghanistan happen mostly after they pass through check-points of the PMCs…

So it is getting more or less obvious that what happened in Domodedovo last Monday was a typical subversive act, a professional special operation against the geopolitical rival. The integral component of such operation is the plausible leaks about possible perpetrators. So we’ve heard about a ‘Chechen girl bomber’ captured by the Russian security forces in December last year who ‘was planning a large-scale attack in Moscow’ and ‘two Palestinians among the victims in Domodedovo’. It very much resembles the story about a Quran and a Pilotage Guidelines left at the back seat of a car used by 9/11 hijackers.

I deliberately will not suggest any specific subversive agency that might operate in Russia and commit this act. After all, the name and location of its HQ doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that the false traces they used to impose on public opinion and international counter-terrorism experts in reality have nothing to do with Islam and Islamic values.

So-called ‘Islamic factor’ as a powerful and blind tool for achieving geopolitical goals is not a modern invention. Creation of different ersatz movements on Islamic soil is an old and charming British tradition. Immediately after the definitive collapse of original British dynasty of Stuarts as a result of ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, the real masters of the new Britain who sponsored William of Orange and brought him to power began corrupting both Christian and Islamic faiths. It can hardly be a coincidence that very soon the ideology of Islamic Protestantism preached byMuhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab (1703-1792) gained political leverage and was established in the House of Saud.

By now though, I would say that it is only the most narrow-minded people who do not see that all ‘Caliphate’ and other ‘Heaven-on-the-Earth projects’ are clandestinely controlled and managed by global elites. They need such false dichotomy in order to build up their dominance in the fire of global Chaosistan. Will Muslims be prudent enough to understand it? Hopefully they are and the mankind will avoid the worst scenario. Anyway, Russia is the last country where anti-Islamic hysteria may take any effect.

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Hezbollah is the New Government of Lebanon. Now What?

FRANKLIN LAMB

Beirut

This observer tends to get a haircut about every four months whether I need it or not.  But this morning I got more than a trim from my Hezbollah friend and barber, Abass, named after Abass ibn Ali, the brother of Hussein, both martyrs and heroes of the epic 680 a.d. internecine Muslim battle at Karbala in present day Iraq. The Battle of Karbala, for Hezbollah members and Shia Muslims generally, symbolizes the triumph of good over evil and the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for justice and the greater good of one’s family, community or “Ummah.” The reason for mentioning this is that my barber was ecstatic and claims his party has just experienced a “Karbala moment!”

When I mentioned that his statement could be taken different ways, since all the resistance fighters were killed at Karbala, Abass continued:

“Well, what I mean is that we in Hezbollah are pretty well known for kicking and keeping the Zionists out of Lebanon but our Party also seems to be catching on how to work in Lebanese and regional politics. And our people will benefit as we create social programs and honest government for the first time in Lebanese history. Do you agree that we are beginning to play the Lebanese political game pretty well?”
I do agree.

With a speed that surprised many here, and with equally surprising cross-sectarian acquiescence this morning, Hezbollah and its allies constitutionally toppled Hariri’s government, constitutionally imposed new consultations to form a new government, and constitutionally transformed a minority into a majority and vice versa.

Hezbollah is known for studying political subjects very carefully and being quite flexible when events warrant. Two weeks ago when the Party of God pulled 11 MPs from the pro-US Saad Hariri government, it was thinking about nominating former PM Omar Karami to replace Hariri. The two time former Prime Minister, Karami, is strongly pro-Syrian, supports the Resistance and Hezbollah keeping its weapons. He also has zero use for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon that will likely indict a minimum of four Hezbollah officials. Now in his eighties, Karami is still fairly spry and may have assumed the post, if Hezbollah formally offered. In fact he might have thought the job was his but in the midst of fast moving events, Hezbollah decided to opt for nominating Nigib Mikati  an American educated, Sunni billionaire who made lots of money in telecommunications  and a lot more when a South African firm bought  his company. Moreover, Sayyed Nasrallah said in his last speech that Omar Karami was the favored candidate, but the latter did not offer to take the job due to his old age. So the best thing to do was thought to be to talk to Mikati, as he is known to be a centrist and that his candidacy would have a less negative impact on the Hariri camp. Mikati is not close to Hezbollah and certainly has never been an ally.

In fact, Hezbollah, the Saudis, Europeans, and increasingly the Americans  support Mikati as a World Bank type technocrat along the lines of  former Lebanese PM Fuad Siniora or Salam Fayyad in Palestine but who can hopefully, not just ignore, but help clean up the governments rampant corruption. Hezbollah’s nominee Mikati is known as a pro western moderate who was elected to Parliament in 2009 on the US backed Hariri ticket. The US would publically endorse him except for the fact that Hezbollah nominated him with Iranian, Syrian and Saudi backing.  This hostile reactive US stance may change because Washington will find it difficult to boycott Mikati since the Europeans are endorsing him. Also, the negative international reaction to the Hariri camp violence on 1/27/11 in Tripoli and Beirut is awkward for the Obama administration to justify since the US has accused the Hezbollah led opposition of using “terrorist tactics” when some elements thought to be allied with the party engaged in similar street violence in the past. So the shoe is now on the other foot.

Some of the early winners and losers 48 hours following what the pro-US March 14 team and the US State Department are still calling “the coup”:
Saad Hariri and his US backed Future Movement: Both are big political losers this morning but Saad still has a couple of important options. For the past nearly two years Saad was told by the US Embassy that Washington wanted him to “hang tough” and refuse to compromise on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The US conceived and engineered the STL in the UN Security Council to get Syria out of Lebanon and Bashar Assad out of Damascus following the Valentine Day 2005 murder of PM Rafik Hariri and 22 others.

Saad obediently did as told and consequently lost his premiership. Hezbollah warned him several times that he would  be out if he did not disavow the STL which Hezbollah views as nothing more than a US-Israeli bludgeon to try to destroy it. When the Hezbollah led opposition pulled down his government on January 12, 2011, Saad was ready to fight to keep his job. But his US and Saudi backers “stabbed Saad in the back as did some of his closest political and personal friends,” according to a Future Movement source.
Meanwhile, both Saudi Arabia and the Obama Administration realized that Saad could not secure the 65 votes from Parliament (they were right; he got just 60) so they decided to let Syria name the non-ideologue,  Nigab Mikati, a personal friend of President Bashar Assad. Omar Karami may have been the first choice but he too was dropped because he also could not get 65 votes and had a checkered past including being too cozy with Syria. The US and the KSA decided better to let Syria back into the Lebanese Government than risk Iran taking complete control.

Saad Hariri reportedly feels betrayed by his fellow Sunni billionaire alliance member Mikati, who he got elected MP in 2009 on his personal ticket.  But in reality Mikati’s  87% election results showed that his candidacy helped Hariri’s candidates because Mikati’s name was on the ballot as part of the Hariri list. Nevertheless, their meeting yesterday morning lasted about 6 minutes and was stone cold. The Hariri TV channels including Future TV chose to publish just 30 seconds of the encounter.  When Hariri left the meeting and was asked by a journalist if he would join the Mikati government he said “Lashou.”  ( meaning: “For what?, or what’s the use?” ).

Just hours later, the March 14 alliance informed Makati that it would not participate in his government. But both may still. The Saudi’s are already encouraging Saad to swallow his pride and cooperate with the next government. Eventually the Americans will likely also after they get over their shock and sour grapes and Jeffrey Feltman talks with the French and some Europeans leaders this weekend.
This morning, Saad is said to be still inconsolable by yesterday afternoon’s private session with the US Ambassador, the motherly Maury Connelly, and repeated this morning that he will not join a government “appointed by Hezbollah.” But his March 14 movement leadership is qualifying his rejection and strongly pressing PM designate Makati to put in writing for all to see a commitment that his government will not under any circumstances accept the three Hezbollah no’s. They are:  no STL funding, no STL Lebanese judges working at the STL, and no Lebanese government cooperation with the STL including scrapping the Lebanese-UN Memorandum of Understanding pledging cooperation on such matter as arresting and extraditing those soon to be named by the STL.

March 14, including their leader Hariri, is still insisting on their price for participation, which is that the new government support  the STL and that the Lebanese government control Hezbollah’s arms.  They will lose on both demands as Hezbollah will not budge on either. Yet,  discussions are being held on how to resolve these issues and, unlikely as it may appear at the moment, solutions may be found to dissolve these ‘red lines’.

If Saad stays out of the Mikati government, he will champion the STL but he will lose more March 14th support because some of his closest team members are said to be planning to jump ship and to put politics about their claimed principles in order to grab some well-paid Cabinet chairs. March 14, via Fuad Sinoria, their Parliamentary leader is making lots of noise about Hezbollah weapons but it’s largely as a bargaining chip ploy to get good cabinet posts when the time is right.

This current March14, playing hard to get stance, suits US diplomat Jeffrey Feltman, one of the architects of the 2005 “Cedar Revolution” and who is currently on his 62nd trip to the region to assure anyone listening that he and the US government “respects the sovereignty, freedom, and independence” of Lebanon, whatever any of those words mean anymore, given US actions in the region. In Paris yesterday, Feltman repeated that there persists mutual French-U.S. concern on how the Hariri cabinet was “toppled under threat and intimidation” and he emphasized the need for the US and its allies to press for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1701 (disarm Hezbollah) and 1757 (indict and convict Hezbollah).

Jeff could be forgiven for feeling a little bit like Saeb Erekat when on 10/21/09  the soon to be ex-PA “peace negotiator” complained to George Mitchell that, “The region is slipping away like sand through our hands.” Feltman, not for the first time, is under great pressure from Washington and Tel Aviv to “do something!”

Rampant rumors circulating here include one that the US Embassy could be closed if, as expected, the US and Israel launch the expected massive international defamation and vilification campaign in the coming weeks timed to drive home the expected STL indictments that Washington believes will include key Hezbollah officials.

Hezbollah has the most direct control over the government of Lebanon including the Parliament, the next 30 seat Cabinet, and the government bureaucracy. Contrary to US-Israel claims the party is not thrilled with having the chance to run the government. Hezbollah sees itself as a resistance movement first, last, and always and many in the party do not relish its “pure mandate” being sullied or getting sidetracked by running Lebanon’s really complicated government.

Hezbollah will now push its clean government and anti-corruption agenda and get it enacted into law but the party is quite content to leave it to others to work constantly with all those self-absorbed sects and their leaders. To a large extent, it will operate through MPs who are not Hezbollah party members. It intends to immediately begin work on improving the big Four issues that all Lebanese urgently want addressed: water, electricity, pollution, traffic among others including the environment and jobs creation. Hezbollah wants to be seen as serving the people while it builds its resistance movement. It is preparing to unveil its domestic legislative agenda which will include most of the ten ‘good government’ initiatives that its ally Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri delivered to Mikati yesterday.
Hezbollah’s 12-member bloc told the new Prime Minster that it favored a government of “national partnership,” according to its head MP Mohammad Raad who advised the media: “Hezbollah did not set pre-conditions [on Mikati] and we won’t accept such a thing. We did not ask for specific portfolios and we await the formation process.”

Iran benefited with important political gains as it continues to rise and move in the region in the direction of Palestine.
The United States’ hegemony continues to recede in the region and is increasingly viewed, post Palestine Papers, as the enemy of Arabs and Muslim. Its pariah status grows because Washington continues to prop up, fund and arm the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon can is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

If Obama Was Really Serious About Fixing Things…

Shut Down The Federal Reserve, Break Up The Big Banks And 16 Other Ideas Barack Obama Could Have Proposed If He Actually Wanted To Fix The Economy

How do we fix the economy?  That is a question that tens of millions of Americans are asking right now.  Republicans are harshly criticizing the empty economic proposals being put forward by Barack Obama and the Democrats, but the Republicans don’t seem to have any real solutions either.  There is talk of cutting taxes a little bit more, reducing federal spending a little bit and getting rid of a few useless federal regulations but doing any of those things would essentially be like spitting into Niagara Falls – the effect would not really be noticeable at all.  As this column has documented over and over and over, the economic and financial problems that we are facing are so enormous that radical solutions are needed.  In essence, what we need is not an “economic bandage” or two – what we need is major reconstructive surgery.  If dramatic action is not taken, our economy is going to completely collapse.

Is anything that Barack Obama is currently proposing going to help fix the economy?  No, of course not.  As I wrote about the other day, Obama’s address to the nation was packed with empty promises and a whole lot of inspirational nonsense.  There were no real solutions to the very real problems we are facing.

So is there anything that we could do to actually start fixing things?

Yes, but the solutions are radical.  They would cause quite a bit of chaos.  They would not be easy for people to accept.

But the truth is that our economy and our financial system have terminal cancer.  If something radical is not done quickly we are going to lose the patient.

The following are 16 ideas that Barack Obama could have proposed if he actually wanted to fix the economy….

#1 We Must Shut Down The Federal Reserve

If you are not willing to accept this, you may as well not read the rest of the solutions.  The truth is that the U.S. government will never be able to solve the national debt problem until the Federal Reserve is shut down.  The U.S. government should nationalize all Federal Reserve assets and start issuing currency that is completely and totally debt-free.

Under such a system, it is conceivable that U.S. budget deficits could be eliminated entirely and that over time the entire U.S. government debt could be retired.

One of the biggest threats of going to such a system would be inflation, but remember, the United States has only had a major, ongoing problem with inflation since the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.  The U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created, and so it is hard to imagine that we would do even worse without the Federal Reserve.

In any event, it is the fundamental right of any sovereign nation to be able to issue and control its own currency.  This right was given to the U.S. government by the U.S. Constitution and it is time for the U.S. government to reclaim that right.

#2 We Must End Trade With All Nations That Allow Their Citizens To Be Paid Slave Labor Wages Or That Do Not Respect Basic Human Rights

This would dramatically reduce the “outsourcing” of our jobs and our industries almost overnight.  The truth is that it was never a good idea to put American workers in direct competition with hundreds of millions of workers that are making slave labor wages on the other side of the globe.

Trading with nations that have a similar wage structure to ours and that respect basic human rights (Canada, for example) is a very good thing.  However, all of the “free trade” agreements that politicians from both parties have been pushing down our throats for decades are literally wrecking the U.S. economy.

Since 2001, over 42,000 factories have been shut down in the United States.  This proposal would go a long way towards stopping the bleeding, and if some of these countries are willing to raise their wage levels significantly then we would be able to resume trade with them in the future on a much more level playing field.

#3 We Must Radically Reduce The Size Of The Federal Government

Our big, fat government is a big, fat drain on our economy.  We have millions of paper pushers that don’t contribute much of anything of real value.

Not only that, but some of the things that the U.S. government wastes money on are absolutely mind blowing.  There is a reason why our founders insisted that we have a very limited government.  It is time to get back to those principles.

The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the U.S. government budget deficit for this year will be nearly $1.5 trillion.

Talk about ridiculous!

I estimate that we could easily cut the size of government in half without hampering how effective it is.

We could start by abolishing the Department of Education.  After that, there are several dozen other government agencies and institutions which are worthy candidates for elimination.

#4 We Must Provide Temporary Jobs For The American People During The Economic Transition

If the Federal Reserve is shut down and the size of the federal government is cut in half, it would cause quite a bit of economic chaos.  During this transition it will be important to help people survive.

Instead of just passing out a bunch of handouts, a better alternative would be getting the American people working on something constructive.

During this time, the U.S. government could use all of the untapped labor of the unemployed to build massive infrastructure projects.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need to spend approximately $2.2 trillion on infrastructure repairs and upgrades just to bring our existing infrastructure up to “good condition”.

So there is certainly a lot to do.

These jobs would just be temporary until new manufacturing facilities are set up and jobs in private industry are plentiful again.

Having the American people produce something of value is better than just handing them endless unemployment checks.

#5 We Must Ban All Short Selling

When you allow greedy individuals the opportunity to make lots of money by betting against the U.S. economy, it gives those individuals an incentive to make sure that those bets pay off.

Yes, this proposal is controversial, but it just makes sense.  If people want to make money, it should be because a company is doing well and not because someone is failing.

#6 We Must Ban Virtually All Derivatives

Once upon a time, derivatives were for hedging risk, but that is not what they are primarily being used for anymore.

Now derivatives are being used to bet on almost anything that you can possibly imagine.

Our financial markets have been turned into a gigantic financial casino.

The derivatives bubble is somewhere in the neighborhood of one quadrillion dollars and it could burst at any moment.

These weapons of financial mass destruction must be banned.

#7 We Must Break Up The Big Wall Street Banks

The big Wall Street banks have far too much power and far too much control.  They have come to dominate our entire financial system.

In a capitalist system, too much power concentrated in too few hands is not a good thing.  The corruption that has gone on at many of these institutions is absolutely unbelievable.

These banks need to be broken up into much smaller pieces for the good of our country.

#8 We Must Initiate A Massive Law Enforcement Crackdown On Our Financial Markets

As noted above, the corruption that has been going on down on Wall Street has been absolutely sickening.  We need a massive law enforcement crackdown on all of this fraud in order to restore faith in the financial system.

Just one small example of this corruption happened during the recent housing crash.  Goldman Sachs sold mortgage-related securities that were absolute junk to trusting clients at vastly overinflated prices and then made huge profits betting against those exact same securities.

So do you think that Goldman Sachs or any of the other major players on Wall Street will ever receive more than a slap on the wrist for all the things that have gone on in recent years?

Of course they won’t – unless the American people start demanding it.

#9 We Must Order U.S. Oil Companies To Use Untapped Oil Reserves In The United States And We Must Aggressively Develop Alternative Energy Sources

Right now, the price of oil is pushing up towards 100 dollars a barrel.  If oil passes that mark, it is going to put tremendous inflationary pressure on the entire global economy.

Sadly, there is no need for such a high price for oil.  There are vast, vast reserves of oil that are virtually untapped inside the United States.  These are mostly in the western states and up in Alaska.  We have enough to supply very cheap oil to the entire country for decades.

The U.S. government needs to order these oil companies to quit playing games and to start pumping this oil.

However, it is undeniable that we also need to develop alternative energy sources.  In fact, we should set up a “Manhattan Project”-style team to aggressively pursue this goal.

In the past, U.S. oil and car companies have blatantly repressed alternative energy projects.  The U.S. government should tell U.S. corporate executives that if they ever even think of doing such a thing again that they will be locked away so fast that it will make their heads swim.

#10 We Must Stop Paying Farmers Not To Grow Food

Instead of paying farmers not to grow food, we need to find ways to encourage them to grow as much food as possible.  A horrible global food crisis is coming and we are going to need huge stockpiles of everything.

#11 We Must Secure The U.S. border With Mexico

Illegal immigration costs the U.S. economy tens of billions of dollars (conservatively) every single year.  We need to secure the border and make sure that all of our immigrants are coming through the “front door”.

#12 We Must Shut Down The IRS

Did you know that the United States has only had an income tax for less than 100 years?  For most of our history, the U.S. government got along just fine without taxing personal income.

The IRS is massive waste of time, energy and resources.  There are many alternatives that could easily replace the income tax and the ridiculous tax code that we have right now.

For example, a flat tax or a national sales tax could both potentially work, although both have their problems.

Personally, I am convinced that we could have a system that would not require any taxation of income by the U.S. government whatsoever.

Just imagine how much time, how much energy and how many resources would be saved!

#13 We Must Slash Red Tape And The Miles Of Ridiculous Regulations

In the United States today, you almost have to be insane to start up a new business.  When you consider all sources of taxation, U.S. businesses face one of the highest overall levels of taxation in the entire world.  Not only that, but U.S. businesses face miles and miles of absolutely ridiculous regulations and red tape.

As I wrote about in a previous article, if you want to do business in the United States today, you better be prepared for a regulatory nightmare….

If you plan to start a business in America today, you better get a hold of a good lawyer.  In fact, if you want to be safe, you better get a small army of lawyers.  You are going to need an expert on the federal regulations that apply to your business, you are going to need an expert on the state regulations that apply to your business and you are going to need an expert on the local regulations that apply to your business.

There are going to literally be thousands of regulations that apply to any business started inside the United States today.  There is no way that you will ever be able to learn them all.  Not only that, but the truth is that your lawyers will only be aware of a small fraction of them.

Until the regulatory environment in this country dramatically changes, companies are going to continue to be motivated to leave the United States.

#14 We Must Conduct A Massive Law Enforcement Crackdown On The Health Care Industry

It should not cost $30,000 for a one day stay in the hospital in this country.

The truth is that the American people are being ripped off big time.

We need to conduct a massive law enforcement crackdown on all the big hospitals and all the big health care companies.

We need to conduct a massive law enforcement crackdown on all the big health insurance companies.

We need to conduct a massive law enforcement crackdown on all the big pharmaceutical companies.

We also need massive medical malpractice reform.

Not only that, we also should end the monopoly of the AMA immediately.  We need to reintroduce honest, legitimate competition back into the medical system.

In addition, we need to make sure that natural health practitioners are able to compete on a fair and equal basis in this country.

As I have written about previously, the health care industry in the United States has become all about making as much money as possible.

That must change.

#15 We Must Stop Trying To Police The World

We will always need a very strong military force, but it is absolutely ridiculous that we have troops stationed in approximately 130 different countries today.

This is a tremendous drain on our national resources and we are spread way too thin militarily.  It is about time that many off these other countries started protecting themselves for a while.

#16 We Must Pull Out Of The United Nations And We Must Dramatically Reduce Foreign Aid

The United Nations is a massive waste of time, energy and resources.  We should have pulled the plug on that ridiculous globalist organization long before now.

In addition, we need to dramatically cut back on foreign aid until we get our own house in order.  We should only help the most desperate nations until we get our own economy back on track.

#17 We Must End All Of The Ridiculous Police State Measures Which Are Chasing Tourists Away From Our Soil

Tourism is a very, very important industry to the United States.  But today, all of the incredibly intrusive police state measures that the past few administrations have introduced are chasing millions of tourists away and are ruining our national reputation.

For example, there are many cultures around the globe where it would be unthinkable to have anonymous security goons feel up the private areas of women and children before they are allowed to get on an airplane.  Rather than put up with such nonsense, millions of tourists are simply going to choose to spend their money somewhere else.

#18 We Must Seize The Assets Of The Ultra-Wealthy Individuals And International Banks That Have Been Committing Fraud Against The U.S. Government For Decades

Once the Federal Reserve is shut down, it will be important to hold those that have been defrauding the U.S. government responsible.  Once a full audit of the Federal Reserve is conducted and evidence of criminal activity is uncovered, those involved should be arrested and all of their assets should be seized and frozen pending trial.

If the things that have been going on inside the Federal Reserve are ever fully exposed, it will make the whole Bernie Madoff scandal look like a nickel and dime operation.

But that is why there has never been a full, comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve since it was created back in 1913.  The American people are not supposed to see what happens inside that institution.

Unfortunately, even though economic times are a little rough, things are still good enough that the vast majority of Americans are not ready to start demanding the kind of radical changes listed above.

Not only that, but the kind of radical changes listed above would be fought against by the establishment every step of the way.  Those with money and power are not going to step aside just because “justice” demands it.

What is probably going to happen is that the “establishment politicians” that the establishment has bought and paid for are just going to continue to propose half-baked solutions to our problems as this country continues to tumble towards economic oblivion.

So what do all of you readers think?  Is there hope that someday we will see some real economic solutions implemented in this country?

British Intelligence Reports Mossad ran 9/11 Arab “hijacker” terrorist operation

 

By Wayne Madsen

British intelligence reported in February 2002 that the Israeli Mossad ran the Arab hijacker cells that were later blamed by the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission for carrying out the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. WMR has received details of the British intelligence report which was suppressed by the government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A Mossad unit consisting of six Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jews infiltrated “Al Qaeda” cells in Hamburg (the Atta-Mamoun Darkanzali cell), south Florida, and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in the months before 9/11. The Mossad not only infiltrated cells but began to run them and give them specific orders that would eventually culminate in their being on board four regularly-scheduled flights originating in Boston, Washington Dulles, and Newark, New Jersey on 9/11.

The Mossad infiltration team comprised six Israelis, comprising two cells of three agents, who all received special training at a Mossad base in the Negev Desert in their future control and handling of the “Al Qaeda” cells. One Mossad cell traveled to Amsterdam where they submitted to the operational control of the Mossad’s Europe Station, which operates from the El Al complex at Schiphol International Airport. The three-man Mossad unit then traveled to Hamburg where it made contact with Mohammed Atta, who believed they were sent by Osama Bin Laden. In fact, they were sent by Ephraim Halevy, the chief of Mossad.

The second three-man Mossad team flew to New York and then to southern Florida where they began to direct the “Al Qaeda” cells operating from Hollywood, Miami, Vero Beach, Delray Beach, and West Palm Beach. Israeli “art students,” already under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration for casing the offices and homes of federal law enforcement officers, had been living among and conducting surveillance of the activities, including flight school training, of the future Arab “hijacker” cells, particularly in Hollywood and Vero Beach.

In August 2001, the first Mossad team flew with Atta and other Hamburg “Al Qaeda” members to Boston. Logan International Airport’s security was contracted to Huntleigh USA, a firm owned by an Israeli airport security firm closely connected to Mossad – International Consultants on Targeted Security – ICTS. ICTS’s owners were politically connected to the Likud Party, particularly the Netanyahu faction and then-Jerusalem mayor and future Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was Olmert who personally interceded with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to have released from prison five Urban Moving Systems employees, identified by the CIA and FBI agents as Mossad agents. The Israelis were the only suspects arrested anywhere in the United States on 9/11 who were thought to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks.

The two Mossad teams sent regular coded reports on the progress of the 9/11 operation to Tel Aviv via the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. WMR has learned from a Pentagon source that leading Americans tied to the media effort to pin 9/11 on Arab hijackers, Osama Bin Laden, and the Taliban were present in the Israeli embassy on September 10, 2001, to coordinate their media blitz for the subsequent days and weeks following the attacks. It is more than likely that FBI counter-intelligence agents who conduct surveillance of the Israeli embassy have proof on the presence of the Americans present at the embassy on September 10. Some of the Americans are well-known to U.S. cable news television audiences.

In mid-August, the Mossad team running the Hamburg cell in Boston reported to Tel Aviv that the final plans for 9/11 were set. The Florida-based Mossad cell reported that the documented “presence” of the Arab cell members at Florida flight schools had been established.

The two Mossad cells studiously avoided any mention of the World Trade Center or targets in Washington, DC in their coded messages to Tel Aviv. Halevy covered his tracks by reporting to the CIA of a “general threat” by an attack by Arab terrorists on a nuclear plant somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. CIA director George Tenet dismissed the Halevy warning as “too non-specific.” The FBI, under soon-to-be-departed director Louis Freeh, received the “non-specific” warning about an attack on a nuclear power plant and sent out the information in its routine bulletins to field agents but no high alert was ordered.

The lack of a paper trail pointing to “Al Qaeda” as the masterminds on 9/11, which could then be linked to Al Qaeda’s Mossad handlers, threw off the FBI. On April 19, 2002, FBI director Robert Mueller, in a speech to San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, stated: “In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper – either here in the United States, or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere – that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot.”

The two Mossad “Al Qaeda” infiltration and control teams had also helped set up safe houses for the quick exfiltration of Mossad agents from the United States. Last March, WMR reported: “WMR has learned from two El Al sources who worked for the Israeli airline at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport that on 9/11, hours after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all civilian domestic and international incoming and outgoing flights to and from the United States, a full El Al Boeing 747 took off from JFK bound for Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. The two El Al employee sources are not Israeli nationals but legal immigrants from Ecuador who were working in the United States for the airline. The flight departed JFK at 4:11 pm and its departure was, according to the El Al sources, authorized by the direct intervention of the U.S. Department of Defense. U.S. military officials were on the scene at JFK and were personally involved with the airport and air traffic control authorities to clear the flight for take-off. According to the 9/11 Commission report, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta ordered all civilian flights to be grounded at 9:45 am on September 11.” WMR has learned from British intelligence sources that the six-man Mossad team was listed on the El Al flight manifest as El Al employees.

WMR previously reported that the Mossad cell operating in the Jersey City-Weehawken area of New Jersey through Urban Moving Systems was suspected by some in the FBI and CIA of being involved in moving explosives into the World Trade Center as well as staging “false flag” demonstrations at least two locations in north Jersey: Liberty State Park and an apartment complex in Jersey City as the first plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower. One team of Urban Moving Systems Mossad agents was arrested later on September 11 and jailed for five months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Some of their names turned up in a joint CIA-FBI database as known Mossad agents, along with the owner of Urban Moving Systems, Dominik Suter, whose name also appeared on a “Law Enforcement Sensitive” FBI 9/11 suspects list, along with the names of key “hijackers,” including Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour, as well as the so-called “20th hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui.

Suter was allowed to escape the United States after the FBI made initial contact with him at the Urban Moving Systems warehouse in Weehawken, New Jersey, following the 9/11 attacks. Suter was later permitted to return to the United States where he was involved in the aircraft parts supply business in southern Florida, according to an informe3d source who contacted WMR. Suter later filed for bankruptcy in Florida for Urban Moving Systems and other businesses he operated: Suburban Moving & Storage Inc.; Max Movers, Inc.; Invsupport; Woodflooring Warehouse Corp.; One Stop Cleaning LLC; and City Carpet Upholstery, Inc. At the time of the bankruptcy filing in Florida, Suter listed his address as 1867 Fox Court, Wellington, FL 33414, with a phone number of 561 204-2359.

From the list of creditors it can be determined that Suter had been operating in the United States since 1993, the year of the first attack on the World Trade Center. In 1993, Suter began racking up American Express credit card charges totaling $21,913.97. Suter also maintained credit card accounts with HSBC Bank and Orchard Bank c/o HSBC Card Services of Salinas, California, among other banks. Suter also did business with the Jewish Community Center of Greater Palm Beach in Florida and Ryder Trucks in Miami. Miami and southern Florida were major operating areas for cells of Israeli Mossad agents masquerading as “art students,” who were living and working near some of the identified future Arab “hijackers” in the months preceding 9/11.

ABC’s 20/20 correspondent John Miller ensured that the Israeli connection to “Al Qaeda’s” Arab hijackers was buried in an “investigation” of the movers’ activities on 9/11. Anchor Barbara Walters helped Miller in putting a lid on the story about the movers and Suter aired on June 21, 2002. Miller then went on to become the FBI public affairs spokesman to ensure that Mueller and other FBI officials kept to the “Al Qaeda” script as determined by the Bush administration and the future 9/11 Commission. But former CIA chief of counter-terrorism Vince Cannistraro let slip to ABC an important clue to the operations of the Mossad movers in New Jersey when he stated that the Mossad agents “set up or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation against radical Islamists in the area, particularly in the New Jersey-New York area.” The “intelligence operation” turned out to have been the actual 9/11 attacks. And it was no coincidence that it was ABC’s John Miller who conducted a May 1998 rare interview of Osama Bin Laden at his camp in Afghanistan. Bin Laden played his part well for future scenes in the fictional “made-for-TV” drama known as 9/11.

WMR has also learned from Italian intelligence sources that Mossad’s running of “Al Qaeda” operatives did not end with running the “hijacking” teams in the United States and Hamburg. Other Arab “Al Qaeda” operatives, run by Mossad, were infiltrated into Syria but arrested by Syrian intelligence. Syria was unsuccessful in turning them to participate in intelligence operations in Lebanon. Detailed information on Bin Laden’s support team was offered to the Bush administration, up to days prior to 9/11, by Gutbi al-Mahdi, the head of the Sudanese Mukhabarat intelligence service. The intelligence was rejected by the Biush White House. It was later reported that Sudanese members of “Al Qaeda’s” support network were double agents for Mossad who had also established close contacts with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and operated in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Eritrea, as well as Sudan. The Mossad connection to Al Qaeda in Sudan was likely known by the Sudanese Mukhabarat, a reason for the rejection of its intelligence on “Al Qaeda” by the thoroughly-Mossad penetrated Bush White House. Yemen had also identified “Al Qaeda” members who were also Mossad agents. A former chief of Mossad revealed to this editor in 2002 that Yemeni-born Mossad “deep insertion” commandos spotted Bin Laden in the Hadhramaut region of eastern Yemen after his escape from Tora Bora in Afghanistan, following the U.S. invasion.

French intelligence determined that other Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jewish Mossad agents were infiltrated into Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates as radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the “Muslim Brotherhood” agents actually were involved in providing covert Israeli funding for “Al Qaeda” activities. On February 21, 2006, WMR reported on the U.S. Treasury Secretary’s firing by President Bush over information discovered on the shady “Al Qaeda” accounts in the United Arab Emirates: “Banking insiders in Dubai report that in March 2002, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill visited Dubai and asked for documents on a $109,500 money transfer from Dubai to a joint account held by hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi at Sun Trust Bank in Florida. O’Neill also asked UAE authorities to close down accounts used by Al Qaeda .  . . . The UAE complained about O’Neill’s demands to the Bush administration. O’Neill’s pressure on the UAE and Saudis contributed to Bush firing him as Treasury Secretary in December 2002 ” O’Neill may have also stumbled on the “Muslim Brotherhood” Mossad operatives operating in the emirates who were directing funds to “Al Qaeda.”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Sharjah’s ruler, Sultan bin Mohammed al-Qasimi, who survived a palace coup attempt in 1987, opened his potentate to Russian businessmen like Viktor Bout, as well as to financiers of radical Muslim groups, including the Taliban and “Al Qaeda.”

Moreover, this Israeli support for “Al Qaeda” was fully known to Saudi intelligence, which approved of it in order to avoid compromising Riyadh. The joint Israeli-Saudi support for “Al Qaeda” was well-known to the Sharjah and Ras al Khaimah-based aviation network of the now-imprisoned Russian, Viktor Bout, jailed in New York on terrorism charges. The presence of Bout in New York, a hotbed of Israeli intelligence control of U.S. federal prosecutors, judges, as well as the news media, is no accident: Bout knows enough about the Mossad activities in Sharjah in support of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where Bout also had aviation and logistics contracts, to expose Mossad as the actual mastermind behind 9/11. Bout’s aviation empire also extended to Miami and Dallas, two areas that were nexuses for the Mossad control operations for the “Al Qaeda” flight training operations of the Arab cell members in the months prior to 9/11.

Bout’s path also crossed with “Al Qaeda’s” support network at the same bank in Sharjah, HSBC. Mossad’s phony Muslim Brotherhood members from Egypt and Yemen controlled financing for “Al Qaeda” through the HSBC accounts in Sharjah. Mossad’s Dominik Suter also dealt with HSBC in the United States. The FBI’s chief counter-terrorism agent investigating Al Qaeda, John O’Neill, became aware of the “unique” funding mechanisms for Al Qaeda. It was no mistake that O’Neill was given the job as director of security for the World Trade Center on the eve of the attack. O’Neill perished in the collapse of the complex.Mossad uses a number of Jews born in Arab countries to masquerade as Arabs. They often carry forged or stolen passports from Arab countries or nations in Europe that have large Arab immigrant populations, particularly Germany, France, Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

For Mossad, the successful 9/11 terrorist “false flag” operation was a success beyond expectations. The Bush administration, backed by the Blair government, attacked and occupied Iraq, deposing Saddam Hussein, and turned up pressure on Israel’s other adversaries, including Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Hamas, and Lebanese Hezbollah. The Israelis also saw the U.S., Britain, and the UN begin to crack down on the Lebanese Shi’a diamond business in Democratic Republic of Congo and West Africa, and with it, the logistics support provided by Bout’s aviation companies, which resulted in a free hand for Tel Aviv to move in on Lebanese diamond deals in central and west Africa.

Then-Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu commented on the 9/11 attacks  on U.S. television shortly after they occurred. Netanyahu said: “It is very good!” It now appears that Netanyahu, in his zeal, blew Mossad’s cover as the masterminds of 9/11.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. He has written for several renowned papers and blogs. Madsen is a regular contributor on Russia Today. He has been a frequent political and national security commentator on Fox Newsand has also appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and MS-NBC. Madsen has taken on Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity on their television shows. He has been invited to testifty as a witness before the US House of Representatives, the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and an terrorism investigation panel of the French government.

As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

Madsen is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO), and the National Press Club. He is a regular contributor to Opinion Maker.

http://www.opinion-maker.org/2011/01/british-intelligence-reports/

US warns Lebanon on militants in government

By Associated Press ,

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration on Monday warned Lebanon’s political leaders that continuing U.S. support for their country will be difficult if the militant Hezbollah movement takes a dominant role in government.

The makeup of the Lebanese government is Lebanon’s decision, the State Department said. But the larger the role for Hezbollah, the “more problematic” for relations with Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

The United States considers Iranian–backed Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization and has imposed sanctions against it and its members. U.S. officials do not meet with Hezbollah members and U.S. money is not supposed to further the group’s activities.

Crowley’s comments came as Hezbollah moved into position to control the next Lebanese government as it secured enough support in parliament to nominate the candidate for prime minister.

“Our view of Hezbollah is very well–known,” he told reporters. “We see it as a terrorist organization, and we’ll have great concerns about a government within which a Hezbollah plays a leading role.”

Crowley declined to say what the United States would do if Hezbollah’s candidate becomes prime minister and is able to form a government, but he said it would be hard to carry on business as usual if that happens.

Asked whether the U.S. would be able to continue economic support for a Hezbollah–controlled government in Lebanon, he replied, “That would be difficult for the United States to do.”

The U.S. has provided Lebanon with hundreds of millions of dollars in economic and military aid over the past five years, following the withdrawal of Syrian forces that had controlled the country for decades.

The United States called the fragile Lebanese democracy a counterweight to authoritarian and militant influences in the Middle East. Washington underwrote Lebanon’s army as a counterweight to Hezbollah, and argued that without U.S. support Iran or Syria might fill the vacuum.

Congressional critics of that policy cite a worry that the weapons and equipment could slip into the hands of Hezbollah for use against Israel. Hezbollah, which forced the collapse of the Lebanese coalition government last week, fought a monthlong war with Israel in August 2006.

Since 2006, the U.S. has provided four kinds of security assistance to Lebanon, the bulk of which has been about $500 million in sales of weapons and equipment such as mortars, rifles, grenade launchers, ammunition, body armor, radios and Humvee utility vehicles.

The U.S. also has increased its spending on military education and training for Lebanese officers and on programs designed to improve Lebanon’s ability to counter terrorism threats.

Rep. Howard Berman, a Democrat and the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was among lawmakers who last year blocked $100 million in U.S. military aid to Lebanon. They relented and allowed the money to go through after the White House gave assurances in classified briefings that the aid bolsters both Lebanese and U.S. national security and would not be hijacked by Hezbollah.

Berman’s successor as head of the committee, Rep. Ileana Ros–Lehtinen, a Republican, has raised similar concerns.

___

AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.

Chile Launching Inquiry Into Allende’s Death in a CIA-Sponsored Coup

By DJ Pangburn
In 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende was murdered in a coup led by military leader Augusto Pinochet, a neo-fascist backed by the U.S. government.

In 1973, Salvador Allende lay bloodied on the floor of the presidential palace after committing suicide.  It was a symbolic action, one that Allende carried out so that the fascist reactionaries (supported financially and logicistically by the CIA) could not use his capture for propaganda purposes.

Allende said in his farewell radio address:

“I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life… “

Pinochet had been Allende’s Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean army until he led a CIA-backed coup-d’etat that toppled Allende’s government and allowed Pinochet to assume dictatorial power and American business interests to flow freely once again.

This story is as old as the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which stated, in essence, that the Western Hemisphere was the American sphere of influence, and any European interference or further attempts at colonization would be viewed as acts of aggression precipitating war.

Translation: You, Europe, do not have the right to colonize South America; only the United States has the right.

And so it was with Chile through the puppet Augusto Pinochet.  People might argue that Pinochet was not a true fascist, but this is just semantics.  Fascism is the reactionary response to popular movements such as Communism, and, to a lesser degree, Anarchism; its only purpose being to preserve oligarchical capitalism.  We might even call Fascism, Militarized Capitalism.

And while it is interesting to argue the nature of Pinochet’s regime, it is important to remember that it was, from its inception to its last breath, supported by the United States government.  From 1973 to 1990 (the duration of the regime), five presidents held office, four of which were Republican: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush the Elder.  Pinochet was later indicted by the Chilean Supreme Court on human rights violations, but the case was dismissed.  He was later brought to trial again for allegations of torture and murder but died before justice could be served.

Now, according to the BBC, the nature of Allende’s death is being brought before the Supreme Court, along with 725 other human rights complaints committed during Pinochet’s reign.

The complaint was filed yesterday by prosecutor Beatriz Pedrals to determine how exactly Allende died.

Like JFK’s assassination, Allende’s death sparks similar emotions.  He was a popular social democratic leader who turned to Cuba and the Soviet Union when rebuked by the U.S. over American business interests.  And though Chileans and others around the globe might want to know exactly how Allende exited this planet, we all know how and why he died.

Allende was killed by Pinochet’s military and the U.S. government through the paramilitary activities of the CIA.

The Day Reagan Sold American Dictatorship To the World and Called It “Democracy”

20 Years Later: Reagan’s Westminster Speech

Published on June 4, 2002 by President Ronald Reagan

Ronald W. Reagan
Address to Members of the British Parliament
June 8, 1982

My Lord Chancellor, Mr. Speaker:

The journey of which this visit forms a part is a long one. Already it has taken me to two great cities of the West, Rome and Paris, and to the economic summit at Versailles. And there, once again, our sister democracies have proved that even in a time of severe economic strain, free peoples can work together freely and voluntarily to address problems as serious as inflation, unemployment, trade, and economic development in a spirit of cooperation and solidarity.

Other milestones lie ahead. Later this week, in Germany, we and our NATO allies will discuss measures for our joint defense and America’s latest initiatives for a more peaceful, secure world through arms reductions.

Each stop of this trip is important, but among them all, this moment occupies a special place in my heart and in the hearts of my countrymen — a moment of kinship and homecoming in these hallowed halls.

Speaking for all Americans, I want to say how very much at home we feel in your house. Every American would, because this is, as we have been so eloquently told, one of democracy’s shrines. Here the rights of free people and the processes of representation have been debated and refined.

It has been said that an institution is the lengthening shadow of a man. This institution is the lengthening shadow of all the men and women who have sat here and all those who have voted to send representatives here.

This is my second visit to Great Britain as President of the United States. My first opportunity to stand on British soil occurred almost a year and a half ago when your Prime Minister graciously hosted a diplomatic dinner at the British Embassy in Washington. Mrs. Thatcher said then that she hoped I was not distressed to find staring down at me from the grand staircase a portrait of His Royal Majesty King George III. She suggested it was best to let bygones be bygones, and in view of our two countries’ remarkable friendship in succeeding years, she added that most Englishmen today would agree with Thomas Jefferson that “a little rebellion now and then is a very good thing.”

Well, from here I will go to Bonn and then Berlin, where there stands a grim symbol of power untamed. The Berlin Wall, that dreadful gray gash across the city, is in its third decade. It is the fitting signature of the regime that built it.

And a few hundred kilometers behind the Berlin Wall, there is another symbol. In the center of Warsaw, there is a sign that notes the distances to two capitals. In one direction it points toward Moscow. In the other it points toward Brussels, headquarters of Western Europe’s tangible unity. The marker says that the distances from Warsaw to Moscow and Warsaw to Brussels are equal. The sign makes this point: Poland is not East or West. Poland is at the center of European civilization. It has contributed mightily to that civilization. It is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression.

Poland’s struggle to be Poland and to secure the basic rights we often take for granted demonstrates why we dare not take those rights for granted. Gladstone, defending the Reform Bill of 1866, declared, “You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.” It was easier to believe in the march of democracy in Gladstone’s day — in that high noon of Victorian optimism.

We’re approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention — totalitarianism. Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression. Yet optimism is in order, because day by day democracy is proving itself to be a not-at-all-fragile flower. From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

The strength of the Solidarity movement in Poland demonstrates the truth told in an underground joke in the Soviet Union. It is that the Soviet Union would remain a one-party nation even if an opposition party were permitted, because everyone would join the opposition party.

America’s time as a player on the stage of world history has been brief. I think understanding this fact has always made you patient with your younger cousins — well, not always patient. I do recall that on one occasion, Sir Winston Churchill said in exasperation about one of our most distinguished diplomats: “He is the only case I know of a bull who carries his china shop with him.”

But witty as Sir Winston was, he also had that special attribute of great statesmen — the gift of vision, the willingness to see the future based on the experience of the past. It is this sense of history, this understanding of the past that I want to talk with you about today, for it is in remembering what we share of the past that our two nations can make common cause for the future.

We have not inherited an easy world. If developments like the Industrial Revolution, which began here in England, and the gifts of science and technology have made life much easier for us, they have also made it more dangerous. There are threats now to our freedom, indeed to our very existence, that other generations could never even have imagined.

There is first the threat of global war. No President, no Congress, no Prime Minister, no Parliament can spend a day entirely free of this threat. And I don’t have to tell you that in today’s world the existence of nuclear weapons could mean, if not the extinction of mankind, then surely the end of civilization as we know it. That’s why negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear forces now underway in Europe and the START talks — Strategic Arms Reduction Talks — which will begin later this month, are not just critical to American or Western policy; they are critical to mankind. Our commitment to early success in these negotiations is firm and unshakable, and our purpose is clear: reducing the risk of war by reducing the means of waging war on both sides.

At the same time there is a threat posed to human freedom by the enormous power of the modern state. History teaches the dangers of government that overreaches — political control taking precedence over free economic growth, secret police, mindless bureaucracy, all combining to stifle individual excellence and personal freedom.

Now, I’m aware that among us here and throughout Europe there is legitimate disagreement over the extent to which the public sector should play a role in a nation’s economy and life. But on one point all of us are united — our abhorrence of dictatorship in all its forms, but most particularly totalitarianism and the terrible inhumanities it has caused in our time — the great purge, Auschwitz and Dachau, the Gulag, and Cambodia.
Historians looking back at our time will note the consistent restraint and peaceful intentions of the West. They will note that it was the democracies who refused to use the threat of their nuclear monopoly in the forties and early fifties for territorial or imperial gain. Had that nuclear monopoly been in the hands of the Communist world, the map of Europe — indeed, the world — would look very different today. And certainly they will note it was not the democracies that invaded Afghanistan or supressed Polish Solidarity or used chemical and toxin warfare in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia.

If history teaches anything it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. We see around us today the marks of our terrible dilemma — predictions of doomsday, antinuclear demonstrations, an arms race in which the West must, for its own protection, be an unwilling participant. At the same time we see totalitarian forces in the world who seek subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous assault on the human spirit. What, then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms?

Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?

Sir Winston Churchill refused to accept the inevitability of war or even that it was imminent. He said, “I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines. But what we have to consider here today while time remains is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries.”

Well, this is precisely our mission today: to preserve freedom as well as peace. It may not be easy to see; but I believe we live now at a turning point.

In an ironic sense Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxist-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then.

The dimensions of this failure are astounding: A country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people. Were it not for the private sector, the tiny private sector tolerated in Soviet agriculture, the country might be on the brink of famine. These private plots occupy a bare 3 percent of the arable land but account for nearly one-quarter of Soviet farm output and nearly one-third of meat products and vegetables. Overcentralized, with little or no incentives, year after year the Soviet system pours its best resource into the making of instruments of destruction. The constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is putting a heavy strain on the Soviet people. What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones.

The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies — West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam — it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we’ve seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.

The hard evidence of totalitarian rule has caused in mankind an uprising of the intellect and will. Whether it is the growth of the new schools of economics in America or England or the appearance of the so-called new philosophers in France, there is one unifying thread running through the intellectual work of these groups — rejection of the arbitrary power of the state, the refusal to subordinate the rights of the individual to the superstate, the realization that collectivism stifles all the best human impulses.

Since the exodus from Egypt, historians have written of those who sacrificed and struggled for freedom — the stand at Thermopylae, the revolt of Spartacus, the storming of the Bastille, the Warsaw uprising in World War II. More recently we’ve seen evidence of this same human impulse in one of the developing nations in Central America. For months and months the world news media covered the fighting in El Salvador. Day after day we were treated to stories and film slanted toward the brave freedom-fighters battling oppressive government forces in behalf of the silent, suffering people of that tortured country.

And then one day those silent, suffering people were offered a chance to vote, to choose the kind of government they wanted. Suddenly the freedom-fighters in the hills were exposed for what they really are — Cuban-backed guerrillas who want power for themselves, and their backers, not democracy for the people. They threatened death to any who voted, and destroyed hundreds of buses and trucks to keep the people from getting to the polling places. But on election day, the people of El Salvador, an unprecedented 1.4 million of them, braved ambush and gunfire, and trudged for miles to vote for freedom.

They stood for hours in the hot sun waiting for their turn to vote. Members of our Congress who went there as observers told me of a women who was wounded by rifle fire on the way to the polls, who refused to leave the line to have her wound treated until after she had voted. A grandmother, who had been told by the guerrillas she would be killed when she returned from the polls, and she told the guerrillas, “You can kill me, you can kill my family, kill my neighbors, but you can’t kill us all.” The real freedom-fighters of El Salvador turned out to be the people of that country — the young, the old, the in-between.

Strange, but in my own country there’s been little if any news coverage of that war since the election. Now, perhaps they’ll say it’s — well, because there are newer struggles now.

On distant islands in the South Atlantic young men are fighting for Britain. And, yes, voices have been raised protesting their sacrifice for lumps of rock and earth so far away. But those young men aren’t fighting for mere real estate. They fight for a cause — for the belief that armed aggression must not be allowed to succeed, and the people must participate in the decisions of government — [applause] — the decisions of government under the rule of law. If there had been firmer support for that principle some 45 years ago, perhaps our generation wouldn’t have suffered the bloodletting of World War II.

In the Middle East now the guns sound once more, this time in Lebanon, a country that for too long has had to endure the tragedy of civil war, terrorism, and foreign intervention and occupation. The fighting in Lebanon on the part of all parties must stop, and Israel should bring its forces home. But this is not enough. We must all work to stamp out the scourge of terrorism that in the Middle East makes war an ever-present threat.

But beyond the troublespots lies a deeper, more positive pattern. Around the world today, the democratic revolution is gathering new strength. In India a critical test has been passed with the peaceful change of governing political parties. In Africa, Nigeria is moving into remarkable and unmistakable ways to build and strengthen its democratic institutions. In the Caribbean and Central America, 16 of 24 countries have freely elected governments. And in the United Nations, 8 of the 10 developing nations which have joined that body in the past 5 years are democracies.

In the Communist world as well, man’s instinctive desire for freedom and self-determination surfaces again and again. To be sure, there are grim reminders of how brutally the police state attempts to snuff out this quest for self-rule — 1953 in East Germany, 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, 1981 in Poland. But the struggle continues in Poland. And we know that there are even those who strive and suffer for freedom within the confines of the Soviet Union itself. How we conduct ourselves here in the Western democracies will determine whether this trend continues.

No, democracy is not a fragile flower. Still it needs cultivating. If the rest of this century is to witness the gradual growth of freedom and democratic ideals, we must take actions to assist the campaign for democracy.

Some argue that we should encourage democratic change in right-wing dictatorships, but not in Communist regimes. Well, to accept this preposterous notion — as some well-meaning people have — is to invite the argument that once countries achieve a nuclear capability, they should be allowed an undisturbed reign of terror over their own citizens.

We reject this course.

As for the Soviet view, Chairman Brezhnev repeatedly has stressed that the competition of ideas and systems must continue and that this is entirely consistent with relaxation of tensions and peace.

Well, we ask only that these systems begin by living up to their own constitutions, abiding by their own laws, and complying with the international obligations they have undertaken. We ask only for a process, a direction, a basic code of decency, not for an instant transformation.

We cannot ignore the fact that even without our encouragement there has been and will continue to be repeated explosions against repression and dictatorships. The Soviet Union itself is not immune to this reality. Any system is inherently unstable that has no peaceful means to legitimize its leaders. In such cases, the very repressiveness of the state ultimately drives people to resist it, if necessary, by force.

While we must be cautious about forcing the pace of change, we must not hesitate to declare our ultimate objectives and to take concrete actions to move toward them. We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings. So states the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, among other things, guarantees free elections.

The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.

This is not cultural imperialism, it is providing the means for genuine self-determination and protection for diversity. Democracy already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people prefer dictatorship to democracy. Who would voluntarily choose not to have the right to vote, decide to purchase government propaganda handouts instead of independent newspapers, prefer government to worker-controlled unions, opt for land to be owned by the state instead of those who till it, want government repression of religious liberty, a single political party instead of a free choice, a rigid cultural orthodoxy instead of democratic tolerance and diversity?

Since 1917 the Soviet Union has given covert political training and assistance to Marxist-Leninists in many countries. Of course, it also has promoted the use of violence and subversion by these same forces. Over the past several decades, West European and other Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, and leaders have offered open assistance to fraternal, political, and social institutions to bring about peaceful and democratic progress. Appropriately, for a vigorous new democracy, the Federal Republic of Germany’s political foundations have become a major force in this effort.

We in America now intend to take additional steps, as many of our allies have already done, toward realizing this same goal. The chairmen and other leaders of the national Republican and Democratic Party organizations are initiating a study with the bipartisan American political foundation to determine how the United States can best contribute as a nation to the global campaign for democracy now gathering force. They will have the cooperation of congressional leaders of both parties, along with representatives of business, labor, and other major institutions in our society. I look forward to receiving their recommendations and to working with these institutions and the Congress in the common task of strengthening democracy throughout the world.

It is time that we committed ourselves as a nation — in both the pubic and private sectors — to assisting democratic development.

We plan to consult with leaders of other nations as well. There is a proposal before the Council of Europe to invite parliamentarians from democratic countries to a meeting next year in Strasbourg. That prestigious gathering could consider ways to help democratic political movements.

This November in Washington there will take place an international meeting on free elections. And next spring there will be a conference of world authorities on constitutionalism and self-goverment hosted by the Chief Justice of the United States. Authorities from a number of developing and developed countries — judges, philosophers, and politicians with practical experience — have agreed to explore how to turn principle into practice and further the rule of law.

At the same time, we invite the Soviet Union to consider with us how the competition of ideas and values — which it is committed to support — can be conducted on a peaceful and reciprocal basis. For example, I am prepared to offer President Brezhnev an opportunity to speak to the American people on our television if he will allow me the same opportunity with the Soviet people. We also suggest that panels of our newsmen periodically appear on each other’s television to discuss major events.

Now, I don’t wish to sound overly optimistic, yet the Soviet Union is not immune from the reality of what is going on in the world. It has happened in the past — a small ruling elite either mistakenly attempts to ease domestic unrest through greater repression and foreign adventure, or it chooses a wiser course. It begins to allow its people a voice in their own destiny. Even if this latter process is not realized soon, I believe the renewed strength of the democratic movement, complemented by a global campaign for freedom, will strengthen the prospects for arms control and a world at peace.

I have discussed on other occasions, including my address on May 9th, the elements of Western policies toward the Soviet Union to safeguard our interests and protect the peace. What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term — the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people. And that’s why we must continue our efforts to strengthen NATO even as we move forward with our Zero-Option initiative in the negotiations on intermediate-range forces and our proposal for a one-third reduction in strategic ballistic missile warheads.

Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that’s now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.

The British people know that, given strong leadership, time and a little bit of hope, the forces of good ultimately rally and triumph over evil. Here among you is the cradle of self-government, the Mother of Parliaments. Here is the enduring greatness of the British contribution to mankind, the great civilized ideas: individual liberty, representative government, and the rule of law under God.

I’ve often wondered about the shyness of some of us in the West about standing for these ideals that have done so much to ease the plight of man and the hardships of our imperfect world. This reluctance to use those vast resources at our command reminds me of the elderly lady whose home was bombed in the Blitz. As the rescuers moved about, they found a bottle of brandy she’d stored behind the staircase, which was all that was left standing. And since she was barely conscious, one of the workers pulled the cork to give her a taste of it. She came around immediately and said, “Here now — there now, put it back. That’s for emergencies.”

Well, the emergency is upon us. Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.

During the dark days of the Second World War, when this island was incandescent with courage, Winston Churchill exclaimed about Britain’s adversaries, “What kind of a people do they think we are?” Well, Britain’s adversaries found out what extraordinary people the British are. But all the democracies paid a terrible price for allowing the dictators to underestimate us. We dare not make that mistake again. So, let us ask ourselves, “What kind of people do we think we are?” And let us answer, “Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.”

Sir Winston led his people to great victory in war and then lost an election just as the fruits of victory were about to be enjoyed. But he left office honorably, and, as it turned out, temporarily, knowing that the liberty of his people was more important than the fate of any single leader. History recalls his greatness in ways no dictator will ever know. And he left us a message of hope for the future, as timely now as when he first uttered it, as opposition leader in the Commons nearly 27 years ago, when he said, “When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have,” he said, “come safely through the worst.”

Well, the task I’ve set forth will long outlive our own generation. But together, we too have come through the worst. Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best — a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation. For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Thank you.

Technicolor Sczenophrenic Color-Coding Terror War

DHS to Scrap Color Code Terror Alerts by April

Homeland Security Advisory System criticized for “scaring, not preparing”

Russia considers color-coded terror threat alerts

(AP) – 6 hours ago

MOCOW (AP) — Russia’s parliament on Friday gave preliminary approval to a law creating color-coded terrorist threat alerts, a measure rushed forward in the wake of the Moscow airport bombing that left 35 dead and raised questions about the country’s ability to handle attacks.

The proposed law is modeled on the U.S. system instituted after 9/11, which Washington announced Thursday it would be abandoned by the end of April and replaced with a new plan to notify specific people about specific threats. Critics had complained the general color alerts were unhelpful.

Russia’s State Duma, or lower house, unanimously approved the bill Friday in the first of three required readings.

Russia has not specified how its three-level codes would work. But the push to pass the legislation underlines Russia’s growing anxiety about its international security image as it tries to cope with terrorist attacks blamed on Islamist insurgents from the restive Caucasus region.

The measure was on the State Duma’s agenda for February, but the vote was rushed forward after the bombing at Domodedovo Airport, Russia’s busiest. No claim of responsibility for the bombing has been made, and officials have not publicly identified any suspects.

But, media reports say investigators are focusing on insurgents from the Caucasus region. Chechen rebels have claimed responsibility for a number of deadly attacks over the years, including ones against the Moscow subway system and suicide bombings of two planes that took off from Domodedovo in 2004.

The Monday afternoon explosion tore through the meeting area for international arrivals at Domodedovo. Some 180 people were injured, 129 of whom remained hospitalized Friday, according to the Health Ministry.

Authorities have not released an account of how the bombing took place, and media accounts have cited various sources as saying it was a male suicide bomber or a female, or that the bomb was remotely detonated.

The Interfax news agency on Friday cited an unidentified law enforcement source as saying that surveillance video showed an unaccompanied male suspected suicide bomber, clad in a black jacket and baseball cap, standing in the area for about 15 minutes before the blast.

Some media have shown photos of a severed head believed to be that of the bomber and say the head has been sent to a forensic laboratory for DNA analysis.

After the blast, suspicion initially fell on Chechen insurgents who have fought Russian forces since 1994 and who have claimed responsibility for an array of previous attacks, including last year’s double suicide bombing of Moscow subways that killed 40 people. However, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said preliminary evidence showed no connection with Chechnya.

In recent years, the Islamic insurgency that started in Chechnya has spread to adjacent parts of the Russian Caucasus, notably to Dagestan, where shootings, bombings and police operations against rebels occur almost daily. Late Thursday, security forces armed with rocket-propelled grenades killed two militants in an assault on a house in the village of Severny. One of the insurgents killed was identified by police as a militant commander, Adam Guseinov.

The respected newspaper Kommersant on Thursday reported that suspects in the airport bombing included a man identified as Vitaly Razdobudko, allegedly a member of an insurgent group in the Stavropol region of the Caucasus called the Nogai Brigade.

The state news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unidentified source as saying surveillance video showed Razdobudko was not the bomber. However, reports suggest he is being seen as possibly the organizer of the attack.

A half-dozen transport and police officials have been fired in connection with the bombing. President Dmitry Medvedev said after the blast that Domodedovo’s security was in a “state of anarchy.”

The attack stained Russia’s image at a vulnerable time, coming just before Medvedev’s appearance at the Davos World Economic Forum to try to woo international investment. The explosion also called into question Russia’s ability to safely host major international events such as the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 World Cup.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The website at www.jang-group.com appears to host malware–Jan. 28

The website at http://www.jang-group.com appears to host malware – software that can hurt your computer or otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting a site that hosts malware can infect your computer.

US Consulate employee was produced in court Friday on double murder charges

Court grants 6-day remand of American

Updated at: 1452 PST,  Friday, January 28, 2011 LAHORE: US Consulate employee was produced in court Friday on double murder charges, Geo News reported, a day after he shot dead two men on a motorcycle in what he said was self-defence. The US citizen was appeared before the Senior Judge Zafar Iqbal who handed over the accused to the police on six-day remand. The man, Raymond Davis was described by the State Department in Washington as an American civilian working for the US Consulate in Lahore. A third Pakistani was crushed to death by a consulate car that went to the scene to aid the man following the shooting in a busy street in the eastern city. Provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah said officials had asked the US Consulate to release the second vehicle and its driver to police. The US embassy in Islamabad has confirmed the man involved was a consular worker but said it was still trying to work out with the police what had happened. Punjab minister Sanaullah said no American pressure would be allowed to influence the criminal case.

American Shooter of Two Pakistanis Charged With Murder

American kills two men in ‘self defence’, booked for murder

* Another killed shortly after shooting when a car from US consulate crushed a motorcyclist at the crime scene

Staff Report

LAHORE: An employee of the US Consulate in Lahore shot dead two youths, while a third was crushed by the driver of a Parado, who was called by him for help, at Chowk Qartaba on Thursday afternoon.

The American, identified as David Raymond, told police that two armed motorcyclists tried to rob him. He chased them and opened fire at them near Chowk Qartaba.

Police said one of the bikers died on the spot while the other succumbed to his injuries in a hospital.

After the shooting, David made a rescue call and a team rushed to the scene in a jeep. Violating one-way traffic law, the jeep driver hit an innocent motorcyclist, who died on the spot. He sped away from the scene while police arrested David near Old Anarkali Food Street after a chase.

One of the two victims of David was identified as Faizan of Ravi Road while the other has not yet been identified. The jeep drivers’ victim was identified as Ibadur Rehman, a resident of A Block of Gulshan Ravi.

Eyewitnesses belied David’s claim and said the motorcyclists would have retaliated if they had guns.

A source in the police department said Faizan’s brother was murdered some time ago after which he started carrying weapon for self-defence.

The relatives and friends of Faizan said he had never been involved in any crime and the American’s story was a pack of lies.

Police registered a case against David on two counts late Thursday, while a case was registered against unidentified people on the application of Ibad’s brother Ijaz.

Key events in Lebanon since Hariri assassination

Key events from the 2005 assassination of Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri until Wednesday’s collapse of the unity government over a UN probe into the killing:

2005

• Feb 14: Billionaire former prime minister Rafiq Hariri is killed in a massive Beirut bombing along with 22 others. A string of high-profile assassinations targeting anti-Syrian figures follow over the next three years. Pro-Western leaders blame Syria.
• April 26: Syria, which denies any role in Hariri’s killing, pulls its troops from Lebanon after a 29-year deployment amid massive popular protests.
• Oct 20: An initial UN probe implicates Syrian agents in Hariri’s murder.

2006

• July 12-Aug 14: A 34-day war between Hezbollah and Israel kills nearly 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
• Nov 11: All Shiite ministers, including two from Hezbollah, resign from government after failed talks on granting Hezbollah and its allies greater representation.

2007

• May 20: Clashes break out between the army and Al-Qaeda inspired Fatah al-Islam in a Palestinian refugee camp. More than 400 people are killed and 30,000 displaced in 15 weeks.
• June 10: The UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is created.
• Nov 23: Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud’s term ends. Lebanese are unable to agree on a successor.

2008

• May 7: A government bid to curb Hezbollah’s power leads to a week of sectarian clashes, killing more than 100 as militants of the Hezbollah-led opposition seize large swathes of Sunni areas in Beirut.
• May 21: Rival leaders agree to a power-sharing formula in Qatar. Army chief Michel Sleiman is slotted as next president.
• July 11: Fuad Siniora forms government in which Hezbollah and its allies have veto power.
• Oct 15: Syria and Lebanon formally establish diplomatic ties.

2009

• April 29: The STL orders the liberation of four Lebanese generals detained without formal charges over Hariri’s murder since August 2005.
• May 25: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah accuses Israel of being behind a Der Spiegel report implicating his group in Hariri’s murder.
• June 7: The anti-Syrian parliamentary majority wins legislative elections.
• June 27: Saad Hariri, son of Rafiq, is named prime minister.
• Nov 9: Hariri forms a national unity government in which Hezbollah has two ministers.

2010

• March 31: Nasrallah reveals Hezbollah members were questioned by UN interrogators as “witnesses,” and warns his group would not “remain silent” if it is accused by the tribunal.
• July 22: Nasrallah says Hariri informed him the tribunal will indict Hezbollah members in connection with the ex-premier’s assassination.
• Oct 28: Nasrallah calls on Lebanese to boycott the STL and warns further cooperation is tantamount to attacking his party.
• Nov 11: Nasrallah threatens to “cut off the hand” of any who attempt to arrest Hezbollah members over Hariri’s murder, amid frenzied speculation an indictment is near.

2011

• Jan 11: The Hezbollah-led alliance announces failure of Syrian-Saudi efforts to defuse the STL crisis.
• Jan 12: Hezbollah forces the collapse of Lebanon’s unity government when 11 ministers resign, representing the Shiite party, its allies and one loyal to the president.

US and Co-Conspirators Prepare Counter-Offensive Against New Lebanese Govt.

International meeting in Paris postponed, Feltman prepares counter offensive

PARIS, By Jessy Abou Habib | iloubnan.info

US Assistant secretary and former US ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman. Photo: AFP

Paris based expert on Lebanese affairs, who requested to remain anonymous, confirmed to iloubnan.info that a meeting between representatives of countries concerned about the situation in Lebanon was to take place tomorrow in Paris; however, excluding Syria. Late on Thursday, the meeting was postponed, after a Qatari decision that followed a meeting with President Sarkozy.

Representatives of the U.S., France, Qatar, Turkey, Russia and Saudi Arabia were to meet on Friday to discuss developments in Lebanon. However, late on Thursday, the meeting was postponed, most likely after a Qatari decision following a meeting between Cheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jaber al Thani (Prime minister and Foreign minister of Qatar) and French President.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman had arrived earlier this week to Paris, coming from Tunisia. Feltman’s visit to France, was described by the expert as “multi-layered and holding a macro Middle-Eastern dimension, followed by a Tunisian one.”

Information disclosed about this visit is not homogeneous in political circles. However, rumors say Feltman is launching a counter offensive to the appointment of a new Hezbollah-backed PM in Lebanon to form a cabinet, after they toppled U.S.-backed Saad Hariri’s cabinet on Januray 12.

“There are serious rumors, that remain to be proved, that the Elysee is to give green light to the Mikati/Syrian scenario in Lebanon; however, the French Foreign Ministry and French lobby are not satisfied by the set back of Hariri’s clan,” the source told iloubnan.info.

“Feltman’s visit is a way of launching a counter-offensive on that scenario; yet, the success of this offensive remains pending,” it added.

There were two scenarios for Friday’s meeting; “if the representatives of countries see the Status Quo in Lebanon as acceptable for a while, they will issue a mild statement regarding the new to be-cabinet.” If the situation in Lebanon and dialogue go down on the road, the counter offensive is to be taken further. “They will not attack Mikati in their statement, but they will remain at the skeptical side,” the source told iloubnan.info. “As far as Thursday night, Syria remains uninvolved in Friday’s meeting, a position Syria might consider insignificant or condemn it as an aggression to its choices. “ The source evoked the possibility that the meeting postponment might be due to Syria. The specialist said that the French Foreign Ministry was “furious”, as well as Jeffrey Feltman.

When asked if Feltman’s presence is the reason for Syria’s exclusion, the source did not disregard the option.

The source said that Marwan Hamadeh and Elias Murr, who left to Paris on Wednesday ‘on private visits’ might be meeting Feltman to look into the situation in Lebanon and tell him “things cannot be left this way.”

Moreover, the source confirmed that the Elysee did not call off the visit of the President of the National Assembly to Damascus, explaining that “its President makes his own decisions.&rdquo

The Planned De-Industrialization of America, January 1, 2001

`Post-Industrial’ Southern Strategy

(from: The Planned Gutting of Industrial America: Who Did It and Why)

http://educate-yourself.org/cn/southernstrategyassaultonamerica01jan01.shtml

By John Hoefle

The heart of the Southern Strategy was the oligarchy’s plan to shift the United States from the world’s most powerful industrial economy, into a post-industrial rentier-financier empire. The industrialized cities of the North would be allowed to decay, while the relatively small cities of the South would be built up as cheap-labor service centers. As the Industrial Belt turned into the Rust Belt, the New South ascended. Houston, spurred by the oil boom, became the fourth-largest city in the country, old Atlanta became the “New Atlanta,” and sleepy Charlotte became a major international financial center. Existing cities were transformed–Dallas, San Antonio, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Miami, to name a few–while Northern cities such as Baltimore, Cleveland, and Philadelphia went into decline.

Coincident with this Southern shift, was the ascension of finance over industry. U.S. industry had largely been in the hands of the financiers since the days of J.P. Morgan’s creation of the industrial trusts, and that control was rapidly consolidated during the 1980s. Orchestrated by Bush’s masters, the speculators took over. The corporate raiders, financed by the dirty-money junk bond networks, bought up significant chunks of corporate America, and terrified the rest. The raiders’ targets, and those who feared they might become targets, turned to Wall Street’s investment banks and law firms for “protection.” As such, the leveraged buy-out/junk bond operation functioned as a giant protection racket, destroying some as a way of collecting tribute from the rest. At the same time, dirty money poured into the real estate market, notably through the giant Canadian developers Olympia & York and Cadillac Fairview. These firms built the skyscrapers which were then filled up with service workers–bankers, lawyers, accountants, clerks, and other white-collar types. Having the tallest office building became something of a fetish for the business leaders, spurring ever larger towers, which in turn were filled with ever larger numbers of white-collar workers.

The pouring of hot money into the real estate markets caused real estate prices to rise. The “wealth” created by these rising values provided more money to pump into the bubble. The rising stock market served a similar function. The cities were transformed into service centers ringed by suburbia, leaving the inner cities full of the poor and minorities, ripe for Strategic Bombing Survey decimation through drug distribution and “Negro removal.”

In the office buildings and the suburbs, the ordinary citizen was also being hooked on speculation. One of the effects of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker’s deadly interest-rate hikes in 1979-80, was that ordinary savings accounts suddenly started paying high rates of interest, giving the ordinary citizen a taste of the action. As more and more of the “little people” discovered the joys of usury, the modern “my money” era was born. That process escalated with the rise in residential real estate prices–homes were transformed from residences to “investments,” with rising equity values adding significantly to the pools of “my money.” The ordinary citizen also began making money from the rising stock market. Over time, a significant portion of the population became addicted to usury and speculation, considering it their right to make money from the manipulation of money. The speculator went from being the enemy to being the role model; the suckers now identified with the casino. The old-style productive industry became the realm of “losers,” replaced by the hot new “industries” of finance and information. Make derivatives, not steel!  (read HERE)

The Entire Arab World Is Going Over the Cliff

[We are about to see just how masterful the masters of the strategy of tension are in their meddling and attempting to turn societies against themselves in order to shape the fiery end-product.  I am certain that their egos exceed their mastery of human nature, at least any of the higher aspects of that nature.  They will continue playing around, manipulating hot-headed emotions until the whole thing takes  on a life of its own.]

Egyptian protests intensify, as clashes spread across the Middle East

Egyptian police have been fighting protesters in intensifying clashes, and demonstrations have reported from Yemen and Gabon – a sign that defiance against authoritarian rulers in the Middle East is spreading.

Riot police clash with protesters in Cairo yesterday  Photo: AP

Security forces shot dead a Bedouin protester in Egypt’s Sinai region on Thursday, bringing the death in the three days of protests to five. Police in Suez fired rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators calling for an end to the 30-year-old rule of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president. Protesters chucked rocks and petrol bombs at police lines. In Ismailia, hundreds of protesters clashed with police, who dispersed the crowds with tear gas.

Like in many other countries in the region, protesters in Egypt complain about surging prices, unemployment and the authorities’ reliance on heavy-handed security to keep dissenting voices quiet. The protests are inspired by Tunisia, where a democratic movement recently overthrew the government.

Egyptian Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei announced on Thursday he was returning to Egypt to join the protests. “Tomorrow is going to be, I think, a major demonstration all over Egypt and I will be there with them,” he said. Mr Baradei, who won the Nobel peace prize for his work as head of the UN’s nuclear agency, called on Mr Mubarak to leave office, saying “he has served the country for 30 years and it is about time for him to retire.”

His arrival could spur protesters who have no figurehead, although many activists resent his absences in recent months.

“Our government is a dictatorship. A total dictatorship,” said Mohamed Fahim, a 29-year-old glass factory worker, as he stood near the charred skeleton of a car.

“It’s our right to choose our government ourselves. We have been living 29 years, my whole life, without being able to choose a president.”

On Wednesday evening, people in Suez had tried to burn down a government building, another police post and a local office of Egypt’s ruling party before police stopped them. The government has said it intervened there against what it called ‘vandalism’.

One policeman has been killed in Cairo in the anti-government protests, unprecedented during Mubarak’s rule of a state that is a key US ally.

Al-Arabiya television reported that Egypt’s general prosecutor had charged 40 protesters with trying to “overthrow the regime”.

Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif urged citizens to exercise self control on Friday, the cabinet spokesman told reporters.

A page on Facebook announcing Friday’s protest gained 55,000 supporters in less than 24 hours and the call was then repeated by some opposition groups.

“Egypt’s Muslims and Christians will go out to fight against corruption, unemployment and oppression and absence of freedom,” wrote an activist on Facebook, which alongside sites like Twitter has been a key tools to rally people on to the streets.

US embassy official kills two men during ‘robbery’ in Pakistan

Foreigner shot 3 dead in Lahore

A foreigner gunned down two people and hit another motorcyclist by his car in Qartaba Chowk Lahore. All the three injured have succumbed to their injuries in the hospital. As per police, the foreigner named Steve David, said to be a US consulate employee, has been apprehended from Purani Anarkali. The accused told the police that he opened fire on the deceased at Qartaba Chowk, Lahore in his defence as they tried to loot him.

US embassy official kills two men during ‘robbery’ in Pakistan

Third man killed by embassy vehicle rushing to the aid of American official, who was named by local media as Raymond Davis

• Declan Walsh in Islamabad
• guardian.co.uk
The car a US consulate employee was travelling in when he was engaged in a shoot-out in Lahore. Illustration: Mohsin Raza/ReutersA US government official shot dead two Pakistanis during an apparent attempted robbery on a Lahore street this afternoon. A third man died after being run over by an embassy vehicle rushing to the scene.

Local police took the American, named by local media as Raymond Davis, into custody.

The US embassy confirmed he was an employee but did not specify his job or say why he was carrying a weapon. Pakistani television stations speculated he was a CIA agent.

Crowds of protesters burned tyres on the site of the shooting as the Punjab chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, ordered an immediate inquiry into the incident.

“The American told us that he opened fire in self-defence after one of the men pulled out a pistol,” the Lahore police chief, Aslam Tarin, told Reuters.

The shooting incident could inflame tensions in a country where anti-Americanism is rife and speculation abounds about the malign intentions of US covert officials.

Witnesses said that two men riding a motorbike, one carrying a gun, approached the American’s car on a busy street. The American drew his firearm and shot both of them.

The American called for help from a sports utility vehicle that either rushed from the nearby consulate or was following close behind, according to different versions. On the way the jeep knocked over a pedestrian who later died in hospital.

The brother of the dead pedestrian told reporters that the driver of the car should be tried for murder. “We will not take the body of my brother until the foreigner is punished. We will file a case against him so he is hanged,” he said.

Television stations showed footage of Davis – a white American in his 40s with grey hair and a plaid shirt – emerging from his white car, which had several bullet holes in the windscreen.

The identities or motives of the dead gunmen were not clear. Police officials said the American was the victim of an attempted robbery but presented no evidence to back up the statement.

Street robberies are not uncommon in Lahore, although the city is less risky than Karachi and attacks on foreigners are rare.

Pakistan is considered one of the riskiest posts for American officials, who are posted at the Islamabad embassy and consulates in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar.

A suicide bomber killed an official working for the National Security Agency outside the Karachi consulate in 2006. Gunmen in Peshawar killed an American aid official in 2008, and later that year opened fire on a vehicle carrying the consul general, who escaped unscathed.

Three US special forces officers were killed in a Taliban bomb attack in Khyber Paktunkhwa province last year.

Diplomats do not generally have permission to carry weapons although some are escorted by armed bodyguards. Security rules vary from city to city, with Lahore considered perhaps the least risky despite the threat from Punjabi militant groups.

US spies posted to Pakistan also contend with a hostile public that holds them responsible for many of the country’s ills. Last month, the CIA station chief in Islamabad, named as Jonathan Banks, had to flee Pakistan after a tribesman named him in a criminal prosecution related to CIA drone strikes in Waziristan.

Robert Gates Loves His War

[Gates wants the American people to submissively accept the idea that it is more to expand foreign wars than it is to invest in saving the homeland.  Ending the war will not end the American economy or our way of life, but continuing the war will finish-off we have of saving either one.  They want us to believe that spending our last dollar on killing another bin Laden clone will achieve something other than wasting any chance we might still have to save ourselves.  You see, America can survive the resolution of all of our mistakes if we will only change directions and begin correcting the things that we have done with our military machine.  It is the military that has brought us to the point in the great poker game where we have nothing more to bet on the next deal of the cards.  If we siphon-off the last dollar into the last B-1 bomber or Abrams tank, we will get no closer to our goal of world domination than we are now.  Gates and all the other false prophets of the military/intelligence complex have been riding high on a river of bullshit since his mentors, Reagan and Bush S. began their war on democracy.  It is past time that the American people intervened and dried that river up.

Gates is whining in the press like the high-priced big baby/bully that he is, saying don’t lay this mess on his doorstep.  Why not?  When we can trace the entire river of bullshit back to his office door three decades ago, then it is only fitting that, in the end, all the dung be delivered back to his desk.  No one believes that the sky will fall without new tanks, bombs, guns, more gas, more war, more bringing hell into the homes of millions of innocent people.

Yeah, Bob.  The fuckin’ sky is falling.]

In this photo released by the U.S. Dept. of Defense, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, left, shakes hands with Canadian Capt. Nancy Silver, while U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson looks on, upon his arrival in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2010. Gates is in Canada to attend trilateral meetings with his counterparts from Canada and Mexico. (AP Photo/Dept. of Defense, Cherie Cullen)

Gates faults Congress for ‘crisis on my doorstep’

(AP) – 1 hour ago

OTTAWA, Canada (AP) — Defense Secretary Robert Gates is accusing Congress of dumping what he calls a “crisis on my doorstep” by holding the Pentagon to last year’s spending levels.

He said this has the potential to create a $23 billion budget gap this year that could weaken a wartime military.

Gates says it is increasingly likely that Congress will not act on the Pentagon’s 2011 budget request — which would have the effect of forcing the Pentagon to make do with last year’s amount.

Gates is warning of emergency cuts to make ends meet.

Gates also says in an interview that he isn’t ready to reveal the timing of his planned retirement this year. He’s been on the job since former President George W. Bush chose him to replace Donald Rumsfeld in 2006.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Baloch Resistance Attacks–Jan. 27

Highway Bridge blown up, hand grenade hurled at Levis stations, gas pipeline damaged in blast

Occupied Balochistan: Unidentified people have hurled a hand grenade on a Levis station in Surab area of District Kharan Balochistan. The external wall of the Levy station has been damaged due to the blast, however, no casualty have been reported. Meanwhile a bridge was exploded near RD342 Levis Station on National Highway between Sui and Jaffarabad on Wednesday. According to the administration, unidentified man placed explosive materials under the bridge which exploded. Resultantly, the bridge was completely damaged and traffic was suspended. Baloch Liberation Front’s spokesman Basham Baloch in a phone call to NNI has accepted the responsibility for the attack on Levis Station on Wednesday. 26/01/2011- Gas pipeline blown up: Another gas pipeline was blown up by unknown militants in Sui area of Zafar Colony on Tuesday. According to the official sources that an explosive device was planted with gas pipeline of Well No 53 which is connected with Pirko to Sui plant that exploded with a big blast destroying the 8-inch diameter gas pipelines. Gas supply suspended to Sui gas Purification Plant from well no 53. Officials preparing plan to repair it at the earliest to restore supply to Sui plant. Case has been registered against the unknown persons and investigation is under way. 26/01/2011 – 5 Security men hurt in blast: Five security personnel sustained injuries in a landmine blast here in Sui area of Bugti Tribal Territory on Tuesday. According to official source, a security personnel vehicle was patrolling Loti gas field area from Sui to Loti, when it hit a landmine that was planted by the unknown militants. It exploded with big bang. Five people inside the vehicle received multiple wounds in the blast. Law enforcement agencies rushed to the spot and injured were taken to the PPL hospital for treatment. Law enforcement agencies cordon off the area started the manhunt for the culprits and also making investigations.(Courtesy: dailytawar & DailyBalochistan Express) Related links: http://tribune.com.pk/story/109177/la … ss-helplessness-national/ http://www.sify.com/news/hrcp-concern … national-lb1pardaghi.html http://tribune.com.pk/story/109831/se … imposed-in-balochistan-3/

Small Explosion at Davos Hotel Shatters Glass and Calm

Small Blast at Davos Hotel Shatters Glass and Calm

BY PAUL GEITNER AND CHRIS V. NICHOLSON

DAVOS, Switzerland — A small blast caused some broken glass — but no injuries — Thursday morning at a four-star hotel in Davos, not far from the main venue of theWorld Economic Forum.

Thomas Hobi, a spokesman for the police in the Swiss canton of Graubünden, where Davos is located, said there had been a “little detonation” in an underground storage area of the Posthotel Morosani around 9 a.m. local time. Some windows were broken but no one was hurt, he said.

Federal authorities have taken control of the investigation. In the tactical interests of the inquiry, they were disclosing nothing further, according to a statement issued by the attorney general of Switzerland.

The blast was the first sign of trouble at this year’s World Economic Forum, which has long attracted protests from anti-globalization, anarchist and other leftist groups.

Shortly beforehand, someone with the online tag of “Revolutionary Perspective” claimed responsibility on an Italian activist website. A post with a local time stamp of 7:28 a.m. says “We have attacked the Hotels Morosani with pyrotechnics and sugar.”

The post claimed that two explosive devices were placed in the hotel, and that the oil tank of the hotel’s heating system was contaminated with sugar. It also claimed that members of the Swiss government and representatives of UBS bank were staying at the hotel, which is located on the southwest side of the village, about a mile from the Congress Center.

Authorities did not question the authenticity of the posting. But Thomas Abegglen, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, denied that members of the Swiss government were staying at the hotel. He called the blast “a minor incident with a political dimension,” and said that the security of members of the Swiss government had not been threatened.

A spokesman for the cantonal government took issue with the term “explosive devices,” and said the detonation was caused by nothing more than “fireworks.” A spokeswoman for the forum also described the explosive as a “firecracker.”

A spokeswoman for the hotel declined to comment. The entrance to the hotel, which opened in the 19th century, is guarded and arriving guests must go through a metal detector and have their bags scanned, as is done at most of the finer hotels in Davos during the forum.

The explosion came hours before a luncheon titled “Criminals Without Borders,” which was held at the hotel as part of the forum. Among those attending were Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia, and Yury Fedotov, executive director of theU.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. News of the blast also buzzed around the Congress Center, where the big names circulating Thursday included the French President,Nicolas Sarkozy, and former President Bill Clinton.

As in past years, security has been extremely tight at Davos. Snipers clothed in black visibly patrol the roofs, and people arriving by train or car are carefully monitored. The Swiss army has deployed 4,000 soldiers to guard the gathering, as well as more than 10 miles worth of barbed wire and fencing and 1,000 sandbags.

US Consulate Employee Kills Two Pakistanis In Gun Battle

US national kills two in Pakistan

Three people were killed after a shootout between an armed US consulate employee and two Pakistani gunmen in the eastern city of Lahore today, police said.

The foreigner, identified by the US embassy as a consular employee in Lahore, was sitting in his car at a traffic signal when two men chasing him aboard a motorcycle opened fire.

The man returned the fire in self-defence, wounding the two attackers, who both died later in the hospital. Police said a consulate car that came to the scene later struck and killed a pedestrian.

Aslam Tarim, Lahore police chief, said in broadcast comments the US national had been taken into custody at a police station.

Police official Omar Saeed had earlier told Reuters the man had opened fire in self-defence. “We are investigating whether it was a robbery attempt or something else,” he said.

Pakistan is a vital US ally, but anti-American sentiment runs high in the mainly Muslim nation.

Three US Special Operations soldiers were killed in a bomb attack last year in northwestern Pakistan, where militants are very active.

Still More British-Trained Death Squads, This Time Its Bangladesh

Bangladesh ‘death squad’ trained by UK police resumes extrajudicial killing

David Cameron set to raise issue with visiting Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina after UK connection revealed by WikiLeaks

• Ian Cobain
• guardian.co.uk
Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) have received training from British police in ‘investigative interviewing techniques’. Photograph: Abir Abdullah/EPAA Bangladeshi paramilitary unit that receives training from British police has resumed killing people in so-called “crossfire” incidents that human rights groups say are extrajudicial killings.

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) – condemned by human rights group as a “death squad” – ceased the killings briefly after the existence of the British training programme was disclosed in US diplomatic cables posted on the internet by WikiLeaks last month.

However, the unit announced on 12 January that it had killed a 32-year-old man in Dhaka and since then has shot dead three more men in the capital.

According to a report published this month by the Bangladeshi rights group Ain O Salish Kendra, 133 people died in extrajudicial killings inBangladesh last year; RAB officers were said to be responsible for the overwhelming majority.

Another human rights group, Odhikar, put the figure at 127 and said that 74 died in operations involving RAB. Around 18 of those who died were said to be communist party activists.

Human Rights Watch, the New York-based NGO, has described RAB asa Bangladeshi government death squad, pointing out that senior political figures have expressed support publicly and privately for its policy of extrajudicial killings. The group has called for the UK to withdraw its support.

The leaked diplomatic cables showed that Washington is prevented by law from offering support to RAB because of its human rights abuses. RAB has admitted killing more than 600 people since its inception in 2004. Its use of torture has been documented by the UK government as well as human rights groups.

The British government does not face the same legal restraints as the US government and began offering training in late 2007, around the time that UK intelligence agencies were seeking closer counterterrorism co-operation with RAB and with Bangladeshi intelligence agencies.

Small teams of British police from forces such as West Mercia and Humberside have travelled to Bangladesh under the auspices of the National Police Improvement Agency. The leaked cables show that they offered training in “investigative interviewing techniques and rules of engagement”.

Asked whether it believed it was appropriate for British officers to be training members of an organisation condemned as “a government death squad”, and whether courses in investigative interviewing techniques might not render torture more effective, an NPIA spokesman said the courses had been approved by the government and by the Association of Chief Police Officers.

The Foreign Office, which funds the programme from its counterterrorism programme, said it was intended to provide “human rights and ethical policing skills training”. A spokesperson said: “A decision to fund a particular project is taken only after an assessment of possible impacts and human rights implications has been completed.”

Shortly after WikiLeaks posted his confidential cables on the internet, James Moriarty, US ambassador to Dhaka, said every extrajudicial killing should be investigated in a transpararent fashion by the Bangladeshi authorities.

Successive governments have promised to end RAB’s use of murder. The current government promised in its manifesto that it would end all extrajudicial killings, but they have continued since its election two years ago.

In 2009 the shipping minister, Shahjahan Khan, speaking in a discussion organised by the BBC, said: “There are incidents of trials that are not possible under the laws of the land. The government will need to continue with extrajudicial killings, commonly called crossfire, until terrorist activities and extortion are uprooted.”

Because RAB enjoys popular support in Bangladesh, with some sections of the population even voicing support for the extrajudicial killing of alleged criminals and terrorists, activists at Human Rights Watch and elsewhere argue that it will be disbanded only as a result of pressure from western governments.

The Bangladeshi prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, is visiting the UK, meeting political figures, and is to speak at the Oxford Union. On Monday Lord Howells, the Foreign Office minister, told the Lords that concerns about RAB were “exactly the sort of matter” that David Cameron would be raising when he met her. Meanwhile, the human rights lawyer Phil Shiner is considering mounting court proceedings to challenge the legality of the UK’s support for RAB.

Fictional State of the Union

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President Obama lied to the nation in his latest state of the union address, not his first lie, but surely one of his biggest ones. The state of the union is not strong; it is terrible.

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by Joel S. Hirschhorn
(libertarian)
Wednesday, January 26, 2011

President Obama lied. It was not his first time, nor will it be his last time. But it was one of the biggest possible lies. The state of union is absolutely not strong. Anyone with a smidgen of intelligence and critical thinking capability knows that in almost every conceivable way the US is in terrible shape.

Watching his overly long state of the union speech was a waste of time and very annoying. It just provided yet another basis for all the pundits and commentators to talk endlessly about it, without, however, ever noting or emphasizing the one big lie. Like the President, everyone is spinning to spread their chosen propaganda.

Imagine if the President of the USA stood up in front of Congress, the whole nation and the world with the courage to tell the truth: the state of the union is terrible, about the worst in over 100 years. And that is why Americans had to wake up, pay attention, sacrifice and join together to make things much, much better and the hell with conventional politics driven by the worst special interests and the rich.

By telling the lie that the state of the union is strong, Obama removed the necessary motivation for Americans to get their distracted and delusional minds oriented in the right direction. The nation needs to shift into crisis mode.

What if he turned around at some early point, looked straight at the Speaker of the House and said something like: this man has all the wrong ideas and is the enemy of the vast majority of Americans! Would the Speaker have cried?

What if he had the guts to speak about need to remove the power of corporate interests, especially within the financial sector?

What if he had the honesty to describe the stunning decline of the middle class?

Obama is a master of great-sounding generalities that ultimately mean nothing, nor define a specific set of legislative and executive actions. Just as Republicans are frequently criticized for not providing enough details, especially about cuts in federal spending, so does Obama practice the same con game.

The ugly truth is that China and other nations are beating the crap out of the US in just about every conceivable way and nothing the US is currently doing has the ability to change this situation and win the global competition. Just as Americans have watched once great companies disappear (Remember Polaroid?), they need to wake up to the downfall of their own country. All the talk about jobs is just another monumental deception, because there is no way that millions of new, good paying jobs will be created for many years.

In stark contrast to the empty rhetoric of Obama, at about the same time a remarkably honest report by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that provides incredibly honest criticisms and explanation of exactly what caused the economic meltdown that millions of Americans are still suffering from was ignored. If President Obama respected its findings, he would have used them as the basis for detailing his actions against the entities responsible for the Great Recession. Here is a sample of the report’s important views:

“The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire. The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble.”

The financial industry has gotten away with murder and ended up profiting enormously. No mystery because it and groups affiliated with it spent more than $3.7 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions from 1999 to 2008.

And imagine if the President would have had the guts to talk openly about the incredibly awful financial predicament of most states!

Nothing defines our delusional democracy more than a president providing delusional thinking to mostly delusional citizens. Make no mistake; this is an epidemic of bipartisan delusion. This is what makes America exceptional. A once great nation is sliding down the toilet and most everyone, especially politicians, are lying endlessly as it does, as if the nation’s decay should be ignored rather than honestly combated.

The War – Did We Sacrifice a Million Lives and a $Trillion Cash Just to Hand Our Jobs to China?

[The following article (all four parts) does as good a job as any other in explaining the goofy geopolitical rationale behind American foreign policy.  We see clearly that China is the big winner in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and in the “Pipeline Wars,” buying-up all the oil and gas, as well as the strategic minerals made available by American military efforts.  Is this an unintended consequence of multiple failed war efforts, or has the plan always been to facilitate Chinese economic interests?  I believe that this has always been the secret plan, that American corporate and govt. leaders have plotted together to wage wars of aggression, to undermine the American economy and the world economy, to deceive the people of the world…all in the name of “freedom and democracy.”

Does this reflect a secret merger between the big oil companies and the Chinese govt., or does it merely highlight the latest stage in forging a new world order?  In light of the dying American economy, does this mean a complete abandonment of the American market in order to facilitate the new Chinese growth, or is this simply another diversification of America’s multinational corporations?  In a few years time, will the US mainland be completely cut-off from all oil and gas imports, in favor of easier to service Chinese outlets?  I think that China is just the next stage in the evolution of multinationalism, the plan all along.   China is just another layer of profit-taking, that will itself be disrupted by its own internal contradictions, just like the American capitalist state has been.

In contrast to the author’s optimistic prescription for change, I have my doubts that any moderate political actions that we could take would alter the outcome that has long been planned.  It is going to take drastic political actions to save this Republic from the forces supposedly protecting us.  We have to shut down the corrupt system before we see the Powers That Be shutting it down for us.  This is way bigger than just the oil companies.]

The War – Did We Sacrifice a Million Lives and a $Trillion Cash Just to Hand Our Jobs to China?

Nicholas C. Arguimbau

While the Tea Partiers and the liberals squabble over important domestic issues, America’s corporate and military titans, at the expense of America’s workers and taxpayers and with the blessing of Congress and the President, are creating China’s economic miracle. The military, at a cost of over $1 trillion, has paved the way for China to acquire and the U.S. to lose access to vast mineral and petroleum resources. The oil industry, with U.S. government assistance, is building a safe haven in East Asia from the imminent crash of oil everywhere else, by cornering the entire supply. And foreign investment, largely American, is giving China on average nearly one million new jobs a month while American unemployment soars.

This is a four-part series. Part One discusses why and how the oil industry could create a safe haven from its own collapse, and why it might choose China for the project. Part Two discusses how East Asia became “the right market” for the world’s remaining oil reserves, endangering everyone else. Part Three discusses how the US military has turned Afghanistan and Iraq into China’s good buddies. Part Four takes a broader view of what has happened and what if anything can be done about it. Enjoy.

Part One of Four. Thinking About the War

“The war is not China’s war, but economically and socially, we can try to help.”

Liu Xuecheng,

China Institute of International Studies, Chinese Foreign Ministry, Beijing¹

“Are you a prisoner?”

Hugo Chavez, speaking to Barack Obama, April 2009²

Introduction

The War in Iraq and Afghanistan has had many victims – one million dead Iraqis, thousands of U.S. and Taliban casualties, countless U.S. soldiers with PTSD bringing the war home to their families, two U.S. Commanders-in-Chief and as we shall see, it has had one victor – the growing Chinese empire.

There are two current explanations for the war – the official “fighting terrorism” explanation, and the popular explanation on the left and in Europe that the US is a dying imperialist nation attempting to save its bloated economy by taking control of the world’s remaining oil by force. If either explanation is correct, then “the world’s only superpower,” as we were perceived and perceived ourselves a decade ago, has nothing whatsoever other than remarkably fast collapse of that status to show for its efforts – an outrageously expensive and demoralizing result. And as the “fighting terrorism” explanation has come to appear “thinner” every passing year, the world has come to perceive us, I think, as a nation of petulant children willing to kill to keep our SUVs running. That is a very sad end for the nation of Jefferson and Lincoln, the nation that pronounced:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.³

We weren’t all bad, you know, but the “dying imperialist” view leaves us no friends at all..

What if neither explanation is correct? I think you’ll agree if you read on that there has been one hands-down winner in this war: a winner of almost every battle, and that is China.. We shall see that China is working very hard at cornering the world oil market, and that the United States military, with some encouragement from the oil industry, has assisted China along its way immensely. I think the evidence shows that was probably not merely the effect but the intent of our trillion-dollar adventure in Afghanistan and Iraq, that the United States Government has accomplished EXACTLY what it set out to accomplish: a great victory for China but the final blow to American prosperity. Has our Government truly gone that low? That’s what the facts suggest.

But keep in mind the caveat of a great and good friend who read this essay in draft:

“I have learned over the years not to attribute to malfeasance that which can more easily be described as stupidity. Sometimes folks just do stupid things. So, is your article linking a bunch of stupid actions, or reflecting a larger truth? Damned if I know.”

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we need a “regime change” to root out the majority of both parties who put Wall Street and the oil industry before the people but divert us into issues that divide us so we will vote perennially for the “lesser of two evils” until we are rendered penniless and powerless. Regardless, I hope you will enjoy a little saunter through Googlespace, and I think you will find a wealth of information through the links if you wish to pursue it.

Let’s try to take a look at the last decade with open minds. One thing is clear: that if the war of the last decade hasn’t been to some extent “about oil,” that would be pretty surprising, because everything else has been to some extent “about oil.”

Look around you. Unless you are in an exceptional place, the scene is dominated by petroleum. You see (under lights more likely than not poweed by fossil fuels), walls coated in petroleum-based paint, “organic chemicals ((aka petroleum derivatives) in your food, asphalt on your roof and under your car, which runs on “petrol,” and is largely made of plastic; in the summer you wear polyester, a petroleum product, or cotton, which arguably uses more petroleum than polyester does;⁴ and in winter you warm yourself with oil or natural gas.  And so on, ad nauseum. No wonder the world uses thirty billion barrels of the stuff per year, 200 gallons per capita.

The industry associated with this has under its control something under a trillion barrels of the “conventional” (easy to access) portion of this black goop, worth maybe eighty trillion dollars, and generating about 2.5 trillion dollars per year in gross income (but it might be $8 trillion next year). No one outside the industry really knows, because the industry doesn’t like to open its books, especially on the total supply figures (which it openly exaggerates) and no one has forced the issue.⁵ It’s important to keep in mind, though, that 90% of the oil is “owned” by countries rather than companies.⁶

Who else has that sort of wealth and income to command? The United States Government, about comparable to the oil industry in gross income. Who else? Maybe the U.S. banking industry So to understand what’s going on in the world, we’d better understand something about the behavior of these three entities. Let’s start with oil.

So your boss controls all the oil. What’s your plan for the great crash?

Imagine that you are a planner for the private oil industry. You know, and your client knows, whether or not you admit it publicly, that oil is running out fast. Conventional oil,⁷ with reserves you know to be under 1 trillion barrels, has to run out completely in about 30 years if the present rate of consumption continues, and if instead consumption drops in the frequently-observed approximate “exponential decay” form, then the quantities will have to drop by 3-4% per year. Without the discovery and rapid development of several Saudi Arabias, which is pretty much impossible just in terms of time, production has to go down at the same time as demand is increasing everywhere and particularly rapidly in China.⁸ The latest report on China says its demand for oil is rising at an “astonishing 28% per year,”⁹although its more typical rate of increase is 10%/yr, which means doubling its already enormous demand every seven years. Your client has likely known the general situation since 1990 or before, but has done the best it can to keep the public unaware of the quantity of remaining oil and when production would peak.¹⁰ You know and your client knows that the myth of a long-lasting supply is what it is, and you also know that the post-oil human carrying capacity is widely seen to be and is likely actually to be AT MOST 2 billion, comparable to the preoil actual population.¹¹ Anyhow, with one billion people (and rising) going hungry now, no one says we can feed and clothe and house 9.5 billion people on zero oil (how things will be about 2050), so things are looking a bit bleak.

Your client, however, is coming upon an extraordinary one-time opportunity. Although if things go as generally anticipated there will in a generation be no more oil and therefore no more oil industry, the industry has the greatest potential for investment the world has ever known. It comes from two sources: (1) oil prices are about to burst through the ceiling,¹² giving the industry a greatly increased income from a gradually decreasing oil supply, (2) the formerly ever-rising costs devoted to oil exploration, drilling, pipeline construction, and refinery construction are likely to drop off long before the income stream ceases. So the industry is coming upon a time when it can invest trillions per year in a world in which the contraction of oil is causing contraction of economies and industries, virtually across the board, and shortly will be causing contraction of populations as well.

So what to do? Logically, the answer appears to be to concentrate all oil supplies in an area of population around 2 billion and proceed to concentrate investments in non-oil industries in that place, which will be shielded from collapse to the extent possible because (1) it will be assured dependable oil longer than any other part of the world, (2) its non-oil industries will have their foreign competition decimated or impoverished by the lack of oil elsewhere, and (3) the oil industry will be supporting an economy for as long as possible that is small enough in fact to do without oil once oil is gone. This may be the ONLY advice you can rationally give your client, because it is the only advice that would result in your client having the optimal conditions for investing its riches as its oil disappears, and for leaving the largest technically feasible human economy in the post-oil era.

But where? Given your client’s interests, the following criteria seem logical

(1) The place should be densely populated to minimize needs for oil as transportation fuel.

(2) The place should be self-sustaining for food to the extent possible without oil, a criterion seemingly at war with the first.

(3) As a general proposition, the place should have been in the past as little dependent upon oil as possible, so that there will be the fewest preconceptions about necessary or efficient or desirable allocation of the resource.

(4) To make your client happy, labor costs should be low and controllable.

(5) Environmental and health regulation of both the oil industry and other manufacturing industries should be minimal.

(6) Ideally, the place will have a government willing and able to make probusiness decisions smoothly, and to “manage” any opposition “efficiently.”

(7) There should be a solid educational system allowing the population to be “brought up to speed” quickly.

(8) The place should be physically defensible from invasion by angry or hungry hordes.

(9) Should it prove necessary, the government should be capable and willing to take population-control measures.

This combination might likely assure that the maximum percentage of the oil with which the country is supplied can be used for expansion of a manufacturing economy and therefore assure maximum income to investors.

Looks like China, doesn’t it? China and some of its neighbors as appropriate. No one else comes close.

And China’s extraordinarily rapid economic expansion strongly suggests the assistance of outside investment from some source or sources with immense economic resources at a time that most economic entities everywhere are stressed. Looks like oil, doesn’t it?

But how? The private industry can take its own steps to the extent it is free to do so, to shift oil resources to China, but in fact those steps are fairly limited because at this time, 90% of the world’s oil reserves are publicly owned.¹³ So control of the nations owning oil and control of transportation corridors for oil is essential. It should be obtained by economic and political means where possible, but by military means where necessary.

What military means? The oil industry lacks direct military might. China lacks the ability to place ground forces in large numbers in oil-producing nations. Besides, to carry out a plan in which China obtains oil supplies at the expense of the rest of the world by overt military hostilities to the extent of “drying up” everyone else is hardly the way to win friends and therefore might undermine the whole project. This needs to be a militarily mighty nation other than China, with potential “cover” for its designs, which can be controlled in its actions by the oil industry, and which will not suffer so much from the gambit that it will refuse to cooperate. Sounds like the US, doesn’t it? Probably no one else.

And finally, you’ve got to be decisive – the people short-counted on the oil are going to have to fight, for their at least temporary survival. Once you have control of the oil fields, you have to provide them security and maintain control of the shipping lanes, a task more difficult if the potential competitors have any oil of their own. So the trick, logically, is to be quick and complete and decisive.

OK, that’s a plan. Corner all the oil, using your political control over the US as necessary, send it to China (and possibly adjacent Asian nations), starve everyone else of oil, stop investing in marginal oil and oil infrastructure, and put your excess cash from “peak oil” where you’re sending the oil. EVERYONE seeking to find a safe haven for living and investing in the era of collapsing oil might logically seek out the place where the oil is going to last longest, and go there. But the oil industry has a unique advantage -the ability to pick the spot itself. Once we look at it, it is hard to see how the oil industry could avoid having this or a very similar plan.

Of course your client doesn’t understand, and maybe neither do you (so it’s a story for another day), that this plan won’t work unless corporate sociopathy and the growth imperative are abandoned, because otherwise the oil reserve cushion will disappear overnight.

All of this is almost pure , unadulterated speculation. Is there any real evidence?

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The author is a California-licensed lawyer residing in Massachusetts (e-mail narguimbau@earthlink.net). He wishes to thank Ted Cady, Peter Goodchild, Peter Hollings, Lance Rodgers and Emily Spence for encouragement and valuable input.  All rights reserved, in particular for republicatiion.

NOTES

1. Tini Tran, AP News Service, “As U.S. fights, China spends to gain Afghan foothold ,” US Independence Day, July 4, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38076136/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

2. Quoted in Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg, “Still the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?” Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, November 21, 2009. http://www.ucimc.org/content/still-land-free-and-home-brave.

3. Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm

4. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/sustainable-fashion-polyester-vs-cotton.html.

5. Nicholas C. Arguimbau, “Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply. . .” http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

6. Council on Foreign Relations -“National Security Consequences of Oil Dependency,” Oil Drum December 5, 2006, http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/12/4/121714/354

7. See definition discussed in Nicholas C. Arguimbau, “Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply. . .” http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm .

8. Nicholas C. Arguimbau, “Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply. . .” http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

9. Live Oil Prices, March 12, 2010, IEA says China oil demand increase is astonishing, http://www.liveoilprices.co.uk/oil/iea_oil_report/03/2010/iea-says-china-oil-dema nd-increase-is-astonishing.html

10. The OPEC nations traditionally inflate their reserves to justify increased sales and the governments traditionally use the OPEC figures for planning purposes Arguimbau, “Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply . . .,” http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm; only in 2010 an Oxford University study uncovered that as a result, planners had been knowingly assuming reserves implying a full decade of supply in excess of reality. Rowena Mason, “Oil reserves ‘exaggerated by one third’,” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7500669/Oilreserves-exaggerated-by-one-third.html; and no one has ever followed through on the warnings of global petroleum investment banker Matt Simmons, recently deceased, that OPEC had to open its books. EnergyTechStocks.com, “Meeting the Challenge Matt Simmons: Force All Oil Producers to Give Transparent Data,” (September, 2007) http://energytechstocks.com/wp/?p=245

11. See Pimentel et al, “WILL LIMITS OF THE EARTH’S RESOURCES CONTROL HUMAN NUMBERS,” dieoff.org/page174.htm. See also Hayes, “REINDEER, CARS & MALTHUS: POPULATION, CONSUMPTION AND CARRYING CAPACITY.” Population Press 1995,http://www.populationpress.org/essays/essay-hayes.html, Population, Carrying Capacity,http://www.umac.org/ocp/Carrying Capacity/info.html. Please note that these numbers are based upon “steady state” assumptions, but humanity has not shown itself capable of maintaining a steady state population for a reasonable time since prior to the agricultural revolution; additionally, humanity has done substantial damage to the planet in the last century, which will likely further reduce its carrying capacity for anywhere from centuries to millions of years, so this writer suspects that the true carrying capacity is substantially lower time. Nonetheless, a widely accepted estimate of carrying capacity, not the actual number, is the logically relevant figure when, as here, we are trying to ascertain what people are likely to do rather than what they ought to do.

12.See, for example, Deutsche Bank’s projection that crude oil prices will double in five years, http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/07/deutsche-bank-oil-to-hit-175-a-barrel-by-20 16-which-will-drive-a-final-stake-into-long-term-oil-demand-spurred-by-a-disrupt ive-technology-the-hybrid-and-electric-car-that-will-very/

13. Council on Foreign Relations -“National Security Consequences of Oil Dependency,” Oil Drum December 5, 2006,http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/12/4/121714/354

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The War – Did We Sacrifice a Million Lives and a $Trillion Cash Just to Hand Our Jobs to China?

Nicholas C. Arguimbau

While the Tea Partiers and the liberals squabble over important domestic issues, America’s corporate and military titans, at the expense of America’s workers and taxpayers and with the blessing of Congress and the President, are creating China’s economic miracle. The military, at a cost of over $1 trillion, has paved the way for China to acquire and the U.S. to lose access to vast mineral and petroleum resources. The oil industry, with U.S. government assistance, is building a safe haven in East Asia from the imminent crash of oil everywhere else, by cornering the whole supply. And foreign investment, largely American, is giving China on average nearly one million new jobs a month while American unemployment soars.

This is a four-part series. Part One discusses why and how the oil industry could create a safe haven from its own collapse, and why it might choose China for the project. Part Two discusses how East Asia became “the right market” for the world’s remaining oil reserves, endangering everyone else. Part Three discusses how the US military has turned Afghanistan and Iraq into China’s good buddies. Part Four takes a broader view of what has happened and what if anything can be done about it. Enjoy.

Part Two of Four. The US and Europe Aren’t “the Right Markets.”

Does “Big Oil” have the resources to carry out your plan?

For starters, is it right to assume that the oil industry has an enormous amount of money to invest somewhere else at this time and in the short-term future? Apparently, yes. As oil becomes depleted, exploratory drilling drops because it is futile, additional tankers are largely unnecessary if there isn’t additional oil, and as the industry approaches peak production there is less reason to expand refinery capacity. The industry isn’t about to announce its investment strategy, but to the extent available, statistics bear this out. When oil was a growth industry, it was necessary steadily to increase refinery capacity. But it is uneconomical to build refineries that will be unnecessary long before their useful life is over. Global refinery capacity has hardly grown at all since the early eighties, and the excess of refinery capacity over production/demand dropped from 15 mbpd (close to enough to meet the entire US demand) to zero between 1980 and the peak in production of conventional oil,¹increasingly recognized as having occurred in or around 2005. (Refineries are again being built, but overall, e.g. with several being built in China while five of Britain’s eight have “for sale” signs, “the world needs fewer oil refineries.”)² Additionally, exploratory drilling for conventional oil dropped from 11,000 wells to 3000 wells in the same period.³ . Similarly, oil tanker construction (92% of which takes place in South Korea, China and Japan) is slowing.⁴ These changes began three decades ago, which suggests, notwithstanding a stance of public denial that continued until this year,

the industry has been aware for that long of the coming peak.⁵

And then, of course, is the industry’s coming “free ride” from price escalation. It has been calculated that a 4% drop in supply could result in a 177% increase in gasoline prices(i.e. from $3/gal to $8.31/gal) and that a 15% drop in supply could result in a 550% increase in prices, (i.e. from $3/gal to $19.50/gal.),⁶ that peak oil could “soon”, according to Robert Hirsch,⁷ result in $12-15/gal gasoline, and according to the former Shell President that gas will rise to $5/gal in 2012.^.8 None of this should be too surprising, because the prices will have to cut consumption of oil generally by perhaps 20% by 2020. ⁹

While oil is sitting pretty relative to the rest of us, such figures might present almost as scary a prospect to the industry as they do to you and me. How can the oil industry get away from the oil shortages to which everyone else is about to fall victim? Well, China is increasing its demand by 10%/yr, doubling its consumption in 7 years, and (if it can keep up the frenetic pace) quadrupling consumption in 14 years. That would run the rest of the world down to zero. ZERO petroleum by 2025. Of course doubling your consumption twice in fourteen years is a pretty good trick, but then you might get fire sale prices because the oil industry is rooting for you, and buying the oil and leaving it in the ground where no one else could touch it would work as well to take the oil away from everyone else. As we shall see, China is well on its way with the potential to increase its consumption by 50% just from its overwhelming success at the 2009 Iraq oil auction. In fifteen years, all the world could be destitute except for China and its chosen few neighbors, with a population arguably not too many for a permanent global steady state, and with half a trillion barrels of oil left all to itself to tide it over to sustainability, assuming it does not pollute the world to death..

China sitting by itself with its population is far from sustainable, notably because of a massive groundwater deficit for agriculture on the North China Plain.¹⁰ The country has long prided itself as being self-supportive for food, but has more recently been considering importation of grain as an alternative to extremely expensive water importation to the North China Plain, but neither alternative should be out of reach of a nation holding most all the oil. China, after all, performs a trick that looks inconceivable: being the world’s greatest grain producer with farms averaging under an acre in size.¹¹ And were China to corner the world oil supply with enough to keep it going for a century or so, the rest of the world would be virtually defenseless to any attempts it makes to pick the plums of the remaining world’s resources. It will be said by anyone who survives,

“The sun never sets on the Chinese empire.”¹²

Is “Big Oil”moving into China as if it’s planning to stay?

Is the oil industry in fact putting down roots in the Chinese economy? Glad you asked. Yes. International oil companies have been “pumping money into China,” with BP, Shell and Exxon-Mobil “leading the surge.” They are making the sort of investment that suggests they intend to stay awhile and think their industry will, too. They’ve been building 100 gas stations per month for years, the Kuwaiti Oil Company is building one refinery in China,¹³ and Shell is building another.¹⁴ And China itself is building refineries in Nigeria and Brazil.¹⁵ This isn’t how they’d behave it they thought China was going to run out of oil in a hurry. It’s more as if they think China is cornering the market. And they should know.

Of course, there are the five billion or so people who would rather not see ALL the remaining oil going to China and its neighbors, and if it appears that’s what’s happening, may wish to intervene. Fifteen years is not much time, and while the scenario, like China’s “astonishing” January 2009 to January, 2010 28% demand increase, seems improbable on its face, there is surprisingly little to stop it. A partnership between the oil industry and China is a pretty formidable one.

What we might expect is that the United States, with the most to lose, the most military might, and endless lip service to the importance of “energy independence,” would step in to create some balance.. But consistent with Congress’ long-established subservience to oil (the industry, not the commodity), the reverse is in fact happening.

Getting the oil to the “right market”

The oil industry has long had the ability to use the US Government to steer oil resources away from the US itself. Maybe you remember the fight over construction of the pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope. This was just after peak US oil, and concerns about American oil “security,” and American “oil independence” were as strong as they are today. There were two alternative pipeline routes: up the Mackenzie River Valley in Canada, ending in the US Midwest (the environmentally preferred alternative), and down through the completely undeveloped Alaskan interior to Valdez, the oil-industry preferred alternative. To be fair, “completely undeveloped” is hardly an accurate phrase. There were native Alaskan villages in the way, the rights of which Congress swept away in favor of the oil industry with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.¹⁶ The oil industry maintained that it was important for the sake of “security” and “oil independence” that the route be entirely “on American soil.” All of that made sense until Charles Cicchetti, then an economist at John Hopkins, pointed out that from an economic point of view it made no sense to build the pipeline to Valdez rather than to the Midwest if the oil were to remain in the US, because there was a surplus of low-priced oil on the West Coast but a short supply of high-priced oil in the Midwest. . The only way the oil industry would prefer the Alaskan route, he said, was if it intended to sell to Japan rather than to the US.¹⁷ So much for American oil “independence.” The Alaskan route was chosen by Congress anyway. A restriction was placed in the bill that said the oil could not be shipped directly from Valdez to Japan, but that did not change Cicchetti’s calculus – that we needed the oil in the Midwest, and didn’t need it on the West coast. Thus the US Government was willing as long ago as 1972 to assist oil companies in reducing the supply of American oil to American citizens, all in the name of oil independence.

Since at least 1998, there has been an odd dichotomy between the perceived strategic aims of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the actual beneficiaries of our intevention.. Almost immediately after 9/11, there arose a cottage industry of “It’s about oil” writing,¹⁸ and it probably is. This writer recalls being part of the fan club and an occasional contributor .That is not the focus of this article. What is odd is the dichotomy – a confusion between a war for oil and a war for oil companies.

Columnist George Monbiot said it all on October 23, 2001, in a column titled “America’s pipe dream. A pro-western regime in Kabul should give the US an Afghan route for Caspian oil.” He argued,

If the US succeeds in overthrowing the Taliban and replacing them with a stable and grateful pro-western government and if the US then binds the economies of central Asia to that of its ally Pakistan, it will have crushed not only terrorism, but also the growing ambitions of both Russia and China. Afghanistan, as ever, is the key to the western domination of Asia.¹⁹

But what was the “Afghan route for Caspian oil” that a “pro-western regime in Kabul should give the US”? John Maresca. Unocal Vice President and former US diplomat,²⁰described it in testimony on invitation from Congress in February, 1998,²¹ in which he discussed the need to remove the Taliban so as to make way for pipelines to carry Caspian crude and natural gas across Afghanistan to the coast of Pakistan, where it could be shipped to India and China. Maresca’s testimony is a fount of information for conspiracy buffs, but it stands on its own as an indicator of US policy with regard to energy for China. Maresca said that the Caspian oil was likely “enough to service Europe’s oil needs for 11 years” if exported through a pipeline to the Mediterranean, and that the Caspian could be producing 4.5 mbpd by 2010. In 1998 China, by comparison, consumed 4.1 mbpd.²² Nonetheless, Maresca recommended against reliance on the pipeline to the Mediterranean and in favor of a pipeline across Afghanistan that would service India and China. Unocal presumably was aware that peak oil would occur in the interim, so giving oil to China was taking it from the rest of the world.

While Maresca’s testimony later proved optimistic and the oil pipeline across Afghanistan for Caspian crude, specifically endorsed by Robert W. Gee, Assistant Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department of Energy at the time of Maresca’s testimony,²³ is apparently no longer on the table, it is nonetheless indicative of what Congress was willing to give away to China. Why was this Maresca”s recommendation?

He explained that a western route, out through the Mediterranean, would not have the capability to move it to the “right markets.” The Mediterranean route was designed for export of Caspian oil to the United States and Europe,²⁴implicitly the “wrong markets.” Predictably, he mentioned Europe but not the United States in this testimony invited by the US Department of Energy. East Asia, he predicted, was “a different story altogether” and could be expected to more than double its demand before 2010. That in fact happened.

Such predictions, of course, always have an element of self-fulfilling prophecy. As discussed below, investment rather than exports is the primary driver of GDP growth in China, and foreign investments in China multiplied by ten in the six years prior to Maresca’s testimony, to a level that has been approximately 10% of the GDP ever since.²⁵ So in modern China, if one must ask “Which came first, the chicken (foreign investment) or the egg (economic growth)?” the answer appears to be, “The chicken.” Promoting oil for China, promoted foreign investment.

Next, Maresca told his listeners, twice for emphasis, that

 

“The territory across which the pipeline would extend is controlled by the Taliban, an Islamic movement that is not recognized as a government by most other nations. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders and our company..”

Maresca was asking Congress to intervene in Afghanistan in a manner that would shift oil, and ultimately jobs, to China.

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The author is a California-licensed lawyer residing in Massachusetts (e-mail narguimbau@earthlink.net). He wishes to thank Ted Cady, Peter Goodchild, Peter Hollings, Lance Rodgers and Emily Spence for encouragement and valuable input.  All rights reserved, in particular for republicatiion.

NOTES

^{1. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2006/01/chp1pdf/fig1_21.pdf ; “Conventional” oil means that which is pumped from fields on the land or under shallow water, is not under deep sea and does not come from “tar sands,” shales, etc. See Campbell, below.The “unconventional” oils exist in staggeringly high amounts, but are often useless as energy sources because the energy recovered over the energy in (“EROEI”) is numerically less than one. Even to the extent practically recoverable, none of these sources can be developed quickly enough to eliminate shortfalls in the near future.}

^{2. Martin Quinlan,”Refining: short-term improvement, long-term problems.” Petroleum Economist June 2010, http://www.petroleum-economist.com/default.asp?page=14&PubID=46&ISS=25678&SID=726819}

^{3. Colin Campbell, “Peak Oil: an Outlook on Crude Oil Depletion,”http://www.greatchange.org/ov-campbell,outlook.html .}

4. MIC, “World Ship-Building forecast shows weak-but-steady growth in oil and as tanker fleet over next five years,” http://www.micportal.com/index.php/Please%20see%20the%20MPA%20circular%20for%20full%20details%20a%20link%20to%20which%20can%20be%20found%20here:%20http:/Please%20see%20the%20MPA%20circular%20for%20full%20details%20a%20link%20to%20which%20can%20be%20found%20here:%20http:/cgvi.uscg.mil/media/Please%20see%20the%20MPA%20circular%20for%20full%20details%20a%20link%20to%20which%20can%20be%20found%20here:%20http:/www.mpa.gov.sg/circulars_and_notices/pdfs/banners/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2432:world-shipbuilding-forecast-shows-weak-but-steady-growth-in-oil-and-gas-tanker-fleet-over-next-five-years&catid=7:Tankers&Itemid=15 (2009)

5. 1980 was when Ronald Reagan was elected President. His environmental policies demonstrated a strong allegiance to the oil industry, and his support for massive public and private debt and large-scale development of unsustainable oil-guzzling suburbia, set the stage for much of America’s present predicament. Did his policies reflect what the oil industry knew would come three decades later? That’s a question for historians, if history survives the next few decades.

6. Stanton, “Is the UK ready for an oil shortage?” http://www.roadtransport.com/Articles/2008/01/30/129667/Is-the-UK-ready-for-an-oil-shortage.htm

7. speaking on CNBC, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWGsnW_NnxE

8. Cleanmpg.com http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/index.php

9. See graph in Nicholas C. Arguimbau, “Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply. . .” http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

10. “Water Policy Briefing: Choosing Appropriate Responses to Groundwater Depletion,” International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka Email:waterpolicybriefing@cgiar.org,http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/waterpolicybriefing/index.asp. This report is exclusively on the North China Plain problem. IWMI in Sri Lanka is an excellent source of materials on global water problems.

^{11. UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Agricultural Outlook 2010-2019 (2010)}

^{12. Credits to John Wilson, who is said to be the originator of “The sun never sets on the British Empire,” Answers.com, http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_’The_sun_never_sets_on_the_British_Empire’}

^{13. China: Foreign Oil Companies Boosting Investments ,” Energy Tribune January 27, 2007, http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=365&idli=1}

^{14. “Shell, CNOOC Parent in Talks on Refinery Deal, China Daily Says,” Bloomberg News, Jan 10, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-11/shell-cnooc-parent-in-talks-on-refinery-deal-china-daily-says.html}

^{15. www.glennbeck.com/2011/01/14/footnotes-research-for-t...}

^{16. (43 USC 1601-1624) — Public Law 92-203, approved December 18, 1971 (85 Stat. 688)}

^{17. Cicchetti, C.J. 1972. Alaskan Oil: Alternative Routes and Markets. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Congress placed a provision in the bill limiting direct shipment from Valdz to Japan; whether it alleviated thesituation, this writer does not know. But it could not change the fact that from an American standpoint, the oil was needed in the Midwest but not on the West Coast..}

^{18. Cvf. Ted Rall, It’s About Oil. The San Francisco Chronicle: November 2, 2001: http://articles.sfgate.com/2001-11-02/opinion/17625946_1_kazak-caspian-sea-black-sea}

^{19. George Monbiot The Guardian, Tuesday 23 October 2001}

^{http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/23/afghanistan.terrorism}

^{20. http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0.HTM}

^{21. Mr. Maresca’s testimony, made on invitation of the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, may be read at http://www.serendipity.li/wot/wsap212982.htm}

^{22. US Energy Information Administration. Independent Statistics and Analysis, International Petroleum (Oil) Consumption http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/RecentPetroleumConsumptionBarrelsperDay.xls Researchers will find the EIA data bank invaluable}

^{23. House Committee transcript at 17, http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0.HTM}

^{24. Leyla Tabasaranskaya (Senior Supply Chain Officer, Supply Chain Management Department, BP Azerbaijan Business Unit) “Baku – Tbilisi-Yhan Pipeline Project Underway,” UK Trade and Investment, http://www.touchoilandgas.com/baku-tbilisi-yhan-pipeline-a102-1.html}

^{25. FDI inflows into China 1984-2009,The rise of foreign direct investment (FDI) , Chinability, http://www.chinability.com/FDI.htm}

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The War – Did We Sacrifice a Million Lives and a $Trillion Cash Just to Hand Our Jobs to China? 

Nicholas C. Arguimbau

While the Tea Partiers and the liberals squabble over important domestic issues, America’s corporate and military titans, at the expense of America’s workers and taxpayers and with the blessing of Congress and the President, are creating China’s economic miracle. The military, at a cost of over $1 trillion, has paved the way for China to acquire and the U.S. to lose access to vast mineral and petroleum resources. The oil industry, with U.S. government assistance, is building a safe haven in East Asia from the imminent crash of oil everywhere else. And foreign investment, largely American, is giving China on average nearly one million new jobs a month while American unemployment soars.

This is a four-part series. Part One discusses why and how the oil industry could create a safe haven from its own collapse, and why it might choose China for the project. Part Two discusses how East Asia became “the right market” for the world’s remaining oil reserves, endangering everyone else. Part Three discusses how the US military has turned Afghanistan and Iraq into China’s good buddies. Part Four takes a broader view of what has happened and what if anything can be done about it. Enjoy.

Part Three of Four. Our Hand-Picked Governments in Afghanistan and Iraq Snub Us and Befriend China 

Next stop, Afghanistan

After ousting the Taliban under the guise (or the reality – take your pick) of doing something about 9/11, the US put in place Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal (you remember, the company that convinced Congress that the “right markets” were in East Asia, not the West) adviser. While the specific project pushed by Unocal’s Maresca has not gone forward, the continuing significance of Maresca’s testimony is demonstrated by the signing in December, 2010 by Karzai of a multinational agreement (not including the US) to build a natural gas pipeline, to serve points East. Maresca’s vision of the “right markets” has remained alive and well.

Shortly, with the Taliban out of the way, China arrived on the scene to get involved in a variety of resource exploitation projects, and was greeted by the Karzai administration and the Afghan public with open arms. With the Taliban gone from Kabul, Afghan-Chinese business is booming on many levels. In the decade since 9/11, trade has increased tenfold, consumer markets in Kabul, like those in the US, are packed with Chinese products, often one fifth the price of similar goods manufactured in the US or Germany or Iran, and there is a continuous stream of about 30,000 traders shuttling back and forth between the two countries.¹

At least equally important, and better known, is that China has won numerous industrial and resource-development contracts from the Karzai government in Afghanistan. China Railway Construction Group/China Railway Shisiju Group has won major railway-construction contracts. Chinese companies now dominate the Afghan cable and fiber optics markets. Chinese contractors have also received contracts for hospital, school, road and housing developments..

The crown jewel of it all is a 30-year contract to exploit what is said by some to be the largest and by others to be the second-largest undeveloped copper deposit in the world, Aynak, approximately 40 miles southeast of Kabul.. The deposit is said by one reporter to be valued at $30 billion and by another to be valued at “up to” $88 billion, yet China’s bid of $3.5 billion winning it the deal over several other bidders including Phelps-Dodge of the United States, reportedly surprised analysts who were not expecting a bid over $2 billion. Some have questioned the integrity of the bidding process, which also reportedly had no economic or environmental review, and question the over-involvement in favor of the Chinese proposal by Karzai’s mining minister, discussed in a Nature article in October, 2007, but the Karzai government denies any wrong-doing.²

None of this would have been possible without the United States’ military intervention, apparently immensely expensive to the people of the United States in dollars, lives, and loss of good will. Mathew Nasuti of Kabul Press writes:

“China is not merely winning the propaganda war. It is keeping a low public profile in Afghanistan, which keeps Muslim militant efforts focused on the very visible American military presence. While the United States Government spends an estimated $1 billion a day in Afghanistan and, more importantly, places its men and women in uniform in the line of fire, the country that benefits the most from that effort appears to be China. If the Americans and their NATO allies were not fighting and dying in Afghanistan, Chinese military forces would likely have to be deployed. The Beijing government seems happy to have the West take over its military responsibilities. As the Taliban and al-Qaeda focus on battling the very visible Western forces, China officials work behind the scenes preparing to benefit in the long-term from the primarily American effort.”³

Ironically, one of the reasons for continued presence of the United States in Afghanistan is that the Aynak mining operation faces continued threats from Taliban insurgents, and the U.S. Army’s Tenth Mountain Division patrols the area for China.⁴

Even the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, folks one would expect to find allies among American Republicans and Tea-Partiers, is whistling into the wind about what’s going on: “We’re giving tens of billions of dollars in assistance to Afghanistan, and we’re getting no credit. We need a policy on developing mines and minerals and oil and gas in Afghanistan. Otherwise, it will be dominated by the Chinese.”⁵

None of these stunning advances for China could have occurred without military intervention by the United States. Can they be reconciled with the Government’s asserted goal of routing out Al Qaeda in Afghanistan? No, because there are in fact under 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. For this we would deploy over 100 THOUSAND US troops, spend half a trillion dollars and still find ourselves regularly outmaneuvered? Can they be reconciled with the leftperceived goal of US imperialism in the sense of capture and control of the resources of a nation with the use of military force? No, because the only imperialist interests appearing to be furthered are those of the Chinese, and if conventional imperialism is involved, we are fighting FOR those we should be fighting against. No especially because US imperialist interests cannot be reconciled with providing military security for China’s mining operations.

Has George Monbiot’s prediction that our handpicking the Taliban’s successor would “crush” China’s ambitions in Afghanistan come true? Hardly. On the other hand, if the US military has been hijacked by the oil industry and China to aid in consolidating resources in Maresca’s “right markets,” then not only do the facts fit, but far from bumbling, the operation has been a tremendous success at costs that, while very high to the US taxpayer, have been negligible to the “clients.”

All of this is surely at least CONSISTENT with implementation of the conjectured plan for giving oil a Chinese safe haven in which to invest its trillions as the oil-based economies of the rest of the world, including the US, collapse. It is not a pretty picture to see the US using its military might with either the effect or the intent of depriving Americans of resources and sending them to China, while China, insisting it has nothing to do with the war, reaps the benefits. That uis unquestionably the effect, but we should take a look at what’s been happening in Iraq before jumping to conclusions about intent.

On to Iraq, the One-time Home of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq is in fact more of the same. The United States Government has never shown that Al Qaeda had a safe haven in Iraq or even that the US was making an attempt to rout out Al Qaeda. The same is true of the Taliban in Iraq. And the back-up claim of the US, that attempts to manufacture weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had to be halted, was never shown to have any factual support. This writer will not reiterate the evidence on this subject. So that left a “US-imperialists-are seeking-control-of-the-oil” explanation as the only apparently viable one.

Viable, that is, until the US “regime change” occurred and Saddam Hussein’s chosen successor began to parcel out contracts on its vast oil reserves, estimated at 110 billion barrels (vast at least in this day of declining oil). We shall look in vain for any signs of gratitude to the U.S. from the newly-installed “grateful pro-western government.”⁶

Falah Aljibury, an Iraqi energy analyst who has advised several Iraqi oil ministers as well as other OPEC nations, says that the Asian nations have been at an advantage as a result of their non-participation in the military operations that secured benefits for them.⁷ And so it certainly appears.

In an early round of sales, four small contracts were entered into, but notably, all with Asian contractors: China, Vietnam, India and Indonesia.⁸

In August, 2008, without a bidding process, Iraq entered into a 20-year contract with China to develop the small Ahdab field, near the Iranian border, expected to yield 125,000 bpd. Iraq’s spokesperson, discussing the deal with the Washington Post, emphasized that Western oil compaies had thus far only been given technical services contracts, that the contract given to China was much more lucrative, and that Iraqi officials hoped the deal with China would “refute all the rumors that say the American companies are the only ones benefitting from the American occupation.” ⁹

In 2009, again without a bidding process, Iraq gave China and its partner BP the largest contract that can or will ever be made anywhere again for oil

a 20-year contract to develop its crown jewel, the Rumaila field, said to be second only in the world to Saudi Arabia’s now-declining Ghawar field.¹⁰Longterm contracts, unique in Iraq for the Middle East, are permitted under the Iraqi regime change’s law, the terms of which were reviewed by the Bush Administration prior to its submission to the Iraqi parliament.¹¹ Those terms include the contractor sharing title to the petroleum with Iraq, but that particular provision has yet to be approved by Iraq’s parliament. With estimated reserves of 17 billion barrels and production at 2.85 mbpd, Rumaila makes the giant Alaskan Prudhoe Bay field, the largest in North America (total production to reach 13 billion barrels at a maximum production rate of 2 mbpd,¹²) look modest.

Again without a bidding process, in May, 2010, Iraq signed a contract with China and the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) to develop the Maysan oilfield complex, which contains 2.5 billion barrels. The complex is expected to yield 450,000bpd (remember that only a decade ago, that alone would have been 10% of China’s demand), and the stakes are divided 64% China, 11% Turkey, and 25% retained by Iraq. ¹³.

The American companies by appearances got their main chance in Iraq with an open auction on numerous large fields in December, 2009. The American companies were, however, according to the press, “noticeably absent.”¹⁴ Despite a very flashy televised show of transparency in the bidding process,¹⁵ the die had already been cast – the American companies had apparently already decided either that they did not want to develop Iraq’s huge oil reserves, or that they could not win on the terms Iraq was offering. The fields auctioned off¹⁶ included

Rajnoon – another “Prudhoe Bay” field, its total reserves 13 billion barrels and projected output 1.8 mbpd- successful bidder Malaysia.

Halfaya (4.1 billion barrels of reserves, projected output of 535,000 barrels per day (bpd)) – successful bidder China (50%), along with partners Total from France (25%) and Petronas from Malaysia (25%).

Gharaf (reserves of around 860 million barrels, projected output of 230,000 bpd) – successful bidder a partnership (Malaysia 60%, Japan 40% )

West Qurna Phase 2(about 12 billion barrels of reserves; projected production of 1.8 mbpd) – successful bidder Russia.

US company Exxon-Mobil, partnering with Royal Dutch Shell, had been awarded one month earlier a significant 20-year development contract for West Qurna Phase 1 (estimated reserves of 8.5 billion barrels, with an output target of 2.1 mbpd),¹⁷ but that is the only major contract awarded to a U.S. company, and there are not expected to be additional major auctions for decades. As discussed in Part Two, Exxon is actively investing in China, so the oil it obtains from Iraq may ultimately go to China rather than to the U.S.

Here in summary are the fields parceled out by Iraq in 2009 alone:

Asia  Rumaaila     2.85mbpd         primary holder China

Maysan     0.45                   primary holder China

Rajnoon     1.80                  primary holder Malaysia

Halfaya     0.535                 primary holder China

Gharaf      0.230                 primary holder Malaysia

Total Asia 5.865

Russia W. Qurna Ph 2 1.80

Exxon/U.S. W. Qurna Ph 1 2.10

France Halfaya (25%) 0.134

Malaysia is a small player in the world of oil relative to the above contracts, producing approximately 693,000bpd and consuming 536,000 bpd, with reserves of about 4 billion barrels,¹⁸ so Malaysia is likely standing in for someone else in Iraq.

Oh, yes. Part of what the US is doing in Iraq is the same as in Afghanistan: serving as security forces for the primarily-Asian and particularly Chinese oil contractors, which is apparently a major reason the Commander-in-Chief doesn’t seem to be in much hurry to fulfill his commitment to bring the troops home.¹⁹

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The author is a California-licensed lawyer residing in Massachusetts (e-mail narguimbau@earthlink.net). He wishes to thank Ted Cady, Peter Goodchild, Peter Hollings, Lance Rodgers and Emily Spence for encouragement and valuable input.  All rights reserved, in particular for republicatiion.

NOTES

1. Tini Tran, AP News Service, “As U.S. fights, China spends to gain Afghan foothold ,” US Independence Day, July 4, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38076136/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

2. Mathew Masuti, “US Losing Afghanistan to China,” Kabul Press July 19,2010, http://www.kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article19517; Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, November 24, 2007, “Afghanistan: China’s Winning Bid For Copper Rights Includes Power Plant, Railroad,” http://www.afghan-web.com/economy/china_copper.htm land ; Tini Tran, AP News Service, “As U.S. fights, China spends to gain Afghan foothold ,” US Independence Day, July 4, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38076136/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

3. Mathew Masuti, “US Losing Afghanistan to China,” Kabul Press July 19,2010, http://www.kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article19517.

4. As reported in the Asia Times, citing the Economist magazine. Syed Fazl-e-Haider “Afghan cash starts going to China, ” http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK11Df04.html.

5. As reported in the Asia Times, citing an NBC News interview of Donald Ritter, president of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce. Syed Fazl-e-Haider “Afghan cash starts going to China, ” http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK11Df04.html.

6. Cf. observations of George Monbiot in October 2001, quoted above.

7. Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer, April 5 2007: “And Iraq’s big oil contracts go to … Companies from China, India and other Asian nations are seen getting the first contracts. But don’t write off Big Oil just yet.” http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/05/news/international/iraq_oil/index.htm

8. Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer, “And Iraq’s big oil contracts go to … Companies from China, India and other Asian nations are seen getting the first contracts. But don’t write off Big Oil just yet.’ April 5 2007.http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/05/news/international/iraq_oil/index.htm

9. Amit R. Paley, Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, August 29, 2008, “Iraq and China Sign $3 Billion Oil Contract: Deal Is First of Its Kind Since Invasion,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/08/28/AR2008082802200.html

10. Friday, 24 September 2010, Jay Ruskin, “NEWS: ‘Surge of interest’ in Iraq oil contracts as BP prepares to develop Rumaila field.” http://www.ufppc.org/us-a-world-news-mainmenu-35/9930-news-surge-ofinterest-in-iraq-oil-contracts-as-bp-prepares-to-develop-rumaila- field.html. Note that the Prudhoe Bay field has had 13 billion barrels of “recoverable” oil but 25 billion barrels total. Press reports for Rumaila have not made the distinction, so there is some possibility that its “recoverable” oil is no more than Prudhoe Bay’s.

11. Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer, April 5 2007: “And Iraq’s big oil contracts go to … Companies from China, India and other Asian nations are seen getting the first contracts. But don’t write off Big Oil just yet.” http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/05/news/international/iraq_oil/index.htm

12. Wikipedia, Prudhoe Bay Oil Field, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudhoe_Bay_Oil_Field

13. “Iraq signs oilfield deals with CNOOC, TPAO,” Maktoob News, 5/17/2010http://en.news.maktoob.com/20090000470398/Iraq_signs_oilfield_deals_with_C NOOC_TPAO/Article.htm

14. Jane Arraf, Global Post, December 12, 2009, “Iraq’s giant oil fields go on auction block. Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia’s state-owned oil company win the biggest prize, the super-giant Majnoon Field,” http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/iraq/091211/oil-auction

15. The auction “was conducted like a high-stakes game show. To ensure transparency, oil company representatives brought their bids to the stage in sealed envelopes. The figures were then put up on giant screens with the winner announced to polite applause.” Jane Arraf, Global Post, December 12, 2009, “Iraq’s giant oil fields go on auction block. Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia’s state-owned oil company win the biggest prize, the super-giant Majnoon Field,”http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/iraq/091211/oil-auction

16. Pepe Escobar, “Iraq’s oil auction hits the jackpot,” Asia Times On Line, December 16, 2009, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KL16Ak02.html

17. Alarabiya.net, Thursday, 05 November 2009, “W.Qurna a prized oilfield with 8.7 bln bbls of reserves. Exxon-led group clinches Iraq’s W.Qurna contract.” (The article alternatively refers to the field as having 8.5 and 8.7 billion barrels.)http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/11/05/90303.html

18. EIA, “Malaysia Oil,” http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Malaysia/Oil.html

19. See, e.g., Ben Lando, “Major oil export development highlights security questions, July 13, 2010, http://www.iraqoilreport.com/security/energy-sector/major-oil-export-developmen t-highlights-security-questions-4814/

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The War – Did We Sacrifice a Million Lives and a $Trillion Cash Just to Hand Our Jobs to China?

Nicholas C. Arguimbau

While the Tea Partiers and the liberals squabble over important domestic issues, America’s corporate and military titans, at the expense of America’s workers and taxpayers and with the blessing of Congress and the President, are creating China’s economic miracle. The military, at a cost of over $1 trillion, has paved the way for China to acquire and the U.S. to lose access to vast mineral and petroleum resources. The oil industry, with U.S. government assistance, is building a safe haven in East Asia from the imminent crash of oil everywhere else. And foreign investment, largely American, is giving China on average nearly one million new jobs a month while American unemployment soars.

This is a four-part series. Part One discusses why and how the oil industry could create a safe haven from its own collapse, and why it might choose China for the project. Part Two discusses how East Asia became “the right market” for the world’s remaining oil reserves, endangering everyone else. Part Three discusses how the US military has turned Afghanistan and Iraq into China’s good buddies. Part Four takes a broader view of what has happened and what if anything can be done about it. Enjoy.

Part Four of Four. What’s Really Going on Here?

Several months before the 2009 auction in Iraq, MichaelEconomides, editor of the industry newspaper, Energy Tribune, had described the changing roles of the West and China in petroleum acquisition in a virtual script for the up-coming Iraqi auction:

“It is certain that large Chinese oil acquisitions will become commonplace . .. . .Almost overnight, the US and the EU will be reduced to mere bystanders while China moves into the geopolitical major leagues. Massive Chinese acquisition of energy assets will lead to a transfer of political and economic power that the modern world has rarely seen. Why the US would be willing to give up competing for what has arguably been the world’s most vital commodity and for which there is no credible alternative, is mystifying.”¹

Mystifying indeed. Economides attributed the Western lassitude to too much “philosophizing on the future of the planet.”²Hmmm. Is that what motivated the US oil companies in sitting out the 2009 auction? Somehow it seems even less likely than the idea that the war has been an aging imperialist nation’s gambit to “crush the growing ambitions of China.” We all allow our vision to be clouded on occasion by our determination to blame things on our favorite enemies. Were we “philosophizing on the future of the planet” when we killed one million Iraqis? Were we “crushing the growing ambitions of China” when we imposed “regime changes” in which the new rulers fell over backwards to give China their geological crown jewels? I don’t think so.  And yet the BEHAVIOR of both the US Government and the US oil companies is as if they do not want Americans to have oil in the future.  An environnmentally admirable position to take if the oil were not going to be used anyway, but the safe-haven-in-China motive and Maresca’s assurances that Asia is the “right market” ring more true to this observer at least, especially given that the Waxman and Kerry global warming bills were drafted apparently so that the oil industry would be saved from doing more than “peak oil” would require.  Seewww.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm (“Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply . . .”), .

Good cop, bad cop

So we go into Afghanistan, rough everyone up, put “our” man in charge and tell ‘em it’s time to have a democracy. Folks aren’t terribly impressed. Then right behind us comes China, which “hearts and minds ‘em,” and they lay out the red carpet. The scene repeats itself in Iraq, where there’s a literal red carpet at the 2009 petroleum auction.

It’s a classic “good cop bad cop” routine. For those unfamiliar with it, the routine originated in police interrogation techniques. The “good cop” ingratiates himself to the suspect, offers him food or drink, explains that he wants to get him the best possible deal and may be able to do so if the suspect cooperates. The “bad cop” is standing by, seething, seemingly willing to beat up the suspect at the least excuse if he fails to cooperate. When the routine works, the suspect ultimately does what the “good cop” wants out of gratitude for having an alternative to the “bad cop.”

In context, China, playing “good cop,” is in a strong position to negotiate favorable contracts for pipeline corridors, oil or other resources from a country that has been subjected to US military intervention. The countries holding natural resources or pipeline corridors coveted by China may choose between China’s “carpet of gold” and America’s “carpet of bombs.” ³ To the casual observer, the “good cop” and “bad cop” have conflicting goals, but in fact they are one and the same.. As Chinese analyst Liu Xuecheng puts it as quoted at the opening of this article, the US wages war while China “tries to help.”

You have to admire China’s chutzpah. China avoids blame for engaging in imperialist war, China carries off the spoils, United States soldiers bear the casualties, United States taxpayers shoulder the bill, the United States takes the exclusive blame for yet another immoral war, AND China purchases bonds, about one trillion dollars, altogether, on which U.S. taxpayers will be paying interest for decades, to cover the cost.⁴ As writer William Schneider asks, “Isn’t there something worrisome about Communist China financing operations of the U.S. government?”⁵ But that’s a question for another day.

OK, what’s goin’ on here, if it isn’t clear already?

So what IS going on here? Let’s make a list:

(1) In 1992, there began a massive foreign investment in China. Annual foreign investment multipled by more than 10 in five years to around $70 billion per year by 1997, an influx of “stimulus money” every year greater relative to the size of the GDP, than the US stimulus package of 2009. China, which had been stagnating in the years just prior to that influx, boomed. And for the last decade, investment has been by far the largest contributor to China’s GDP growth, eclipsing its phenomenal export volume,.⁶ And for the last five yearshas contributed an average of 750,000 jobs per month to the Chinese economy.One might surmise that the oil industry had something to do with that, given its abundance of cash, but this writer lacks the data.

(2) John Maresca made his famous 1998 speech on invitation of Congress and DOE explaining why the Taliban needed to be booted from power in Afghanistan to make way for a pipeline that could get oil to .”the right markets” – namely East Asia rather than the western markets.

(3) The Clinton and Bush administrations negotiated with the Taliban over the pipeline corridor up until August, 2001. The US negotiator made the famous “carpet of gold or carpet of bombs”warning shortly before the negotiations collapsed.

(4) 9/11 happened, apparently as the brainchild of Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda, and in response the “War Against Terrorism” began. At the time, these folks were in fact in Afghanistan

(5) The US delegated capture of Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda to local fighters, the “Northern Alliance,” who allowed Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda to escape into Pakistan, where we let them be. The US forces themselves went after the Taliban and ousted its government, replacing it with Hamid Karzai.

(6) These events led the left and much of the European press to conclude that a major and perhaps exclusive purpose of the US in ousting the Taliban was that the war was “for oil,” when the logical inference to be drawn was that it was for “oil companies” who wanted the oil itself to go to East Asia.

(7) China particularly, plus other East Asian nations,, have profited magnificently from the war the United States has fought at tremendous cost in Afghanistan and Iraq., and could not otherwise have profited unless they had gone to war themselves.

(8) The Energy Tribune concluded prior to the Iraqi auctions that neither the United States nor its oil companies are any longer seeking to secure oil rights for Americans, and are abandoning the field to China.

(9) The US oil companies were “no shows” at the major 2009 Iraqi auctions, and China and Malaysia secured the great majority of he contracts.

(10) Everyone agrees that China’s ability to do business in Afghanistan and Iraq has been helped, and America’s ability has been hurt, by America rather than China having had the military presence.

(11) Despite enormous expenditures of money and loss of lives, the United States has made negligible progress for itself, but has made enormous progress getting oil to the “right markets,” where its use in a declining oil industry will automatically mean that the Western markets will have substantially less.

There have been a multitude of analyses why the Afghan/Iraq war cannot be considered to be exclusively or even primarily a “war against terror,” a war against “weapons of mass destruction,” or, since we have had an opportunity to see the “changed regimes” in action, a war for US energy security. This writer submits, however, that the simplest explanation that fits all the facts,⁷ is that it has been from the start a war to ensure that as much oil and other natural resources will get to the “right markets” – namely, East Asia, as possible. Because oil production is no longer growing, every new barrel of oil for East Asia is a barrel less for the remainder of the world.

What about our hypothetical plan’s objective of depriving the “nonwnners” of as much oil as possible as quickly as possible? That is where things get scary. As noted above, the current trend has China increasing its share of oil consumption exponentially at 1%^/yr, meaning that its share, if the trend could continue, would reach 100% of the then-available total, with no one else having anything China didn’t want to give them, by 2025. With the support of the US military in the form of security, and the support of the oil industry in the form of subsidies and “no-shows,”   there is no obvious insurmountable hurdle. And as long as China and the US can continue playing “good cop bad cop” to a gullible world, China has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Could the hypothetical conspirators be so demonic? Well, there’s nothing new about this. Psychopathy is not-unheard-of even among supposedly sane U.S. geopolitical planners.⁸

If something like this weren’t happening, we would have no viable explanation for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we would have no viable explanation for what is happening to the oil industry’s probably enormous postpeak profits. And with China and the US Government working in harmony, there is no obvious reason why China will not acquire the whole remaining oil supply in short order. Is that at least part of the reason

-Microsoft is making major investments in China,⁹

-GM, raised from the dead by United States taxpayers, has put most of its

hopes for the future in China, where its sales already exceed its sales in the US,¹⁰

-business invested in only 39,000 new jobs in the US in November as compared to the 750,000 jobs per month, 45 million total over the last five years that foreign investors have created in China¹¹ and

-American oil companies were “noticeably absent” from the Iraq auction, the editor of Energy Tribune says Europe and the United States are no longer trying to compete with China for oil, and private oil companies are building refineries and gas stations in China?

Do they all know something we don’t know about where the remaining oil is going to go?

But Hold On, Oil’s Chinese Safe Haven Isn’t Quite Built Yet

There’s always a possible glitch. China has a legitimate ability to sap the American economy: the extreme disparity between wages here and there, which is ultimately unsustainable. But China does not have a legitimate expectation that the United States will provide military assistance at our taxpayers’ expense to forward Chinese imperialist designs. Nor does China have legitimate expectation that the United States will assist in creating a Chinese safe haven from the end of oil, allowing American companies to pick up their marbles and take them away with impunity, taking our jobs with them. In fact there should be no safe havens from the end of oil, because they are inconsistent with climate stabilization,. Nor does China have a legitimate expectation that it can take charge of companies built by and for Americans, leaving behind lifeless skeletons like Detroit.

The fundamental reason that this was able to occur, was that we allowed oil and banking interests to corrupt or at least control our government so completely that we cannot even call the military our own. So we must all work to end that, starting by making sure we all agree we will not allow anyone to be elected who has accepted contaminated money in their public lives. No more voting for “lesser evils” who support our particular concerns but continue to accept oil money, Wall Street money, etc. We need to end the ability of corporate “persons” to spend billions influencing elections. We need to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan NOW, and restore the constitutional principle that our presidents cannot engage in war without a declaration of war setting its boundaries. The books need to be opened as to major investments by Americans and American businesses in foreign countries, and in particular as to the use of any “bailout” funds for investment in China. Steps must be taken to preserve or replace at the cost of the investors, jobs jeopardized through foreign investment. These things are unlikely to occur while we have a Congress and President so removed from those they ostensibly represent that they will engage in war at our expense with the intent or effect to take our jobs away.

We must also remember that the pay disparity between developing countries and the US is a legitimate threat to the US economy wherever and whenever it exists. Consequently, it is in our interest to work for healthy labor conditions and fair compensation EVERYWHERE.

And we, individually and collectively, need to go all out to minimize our petroleum use because (a) it is necessary for saving the earth, (b) it is necessary for dispelling our ugly public image, and (c) if China and industry succeed with the “safe haven,” we;d better get used to it FAST.

Finally, we must remember what we did when Sputnik crossed our skies. We didn’t just whine. We started a crash program in technical education to assure that our workers would continue to offer unique talents to the world. The time has come again for that. The United States has the best educational institutions in the world (although China is rapidly outstripping us) but by no means the best educations. Over the long haul, we have to expect our paychecks to correlate better with our talents than they do today, which means doing what it takes to improve American education.

So we have our work cut out for us. We don’t have much time, because with the active support of our government and businesses and no significant opposition, China may be able to achieve 100% control of the oil reserves by 2025.  We need a government that will not “give away the store,” as both parties have become accustomed to doing with impunity.

——————————

The author is a California-licensed lawyer residing in Massachusetts (e-mail narguimbau@earthlink.net). He wishes to thank Ted Cady, Peter Goodchild, Peter Hollings, Lance Rodgers and Emily Spence for encouragement and valuable input.  All rights reserved, in particular for republicatiion.

NOTES

1. Economides, “China’s Oil Power Play,” Energy Tribune, August 27, 2009,http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/2199/Chinas-Oil-Power-Play

2. Economides, “China’s Oil Power Play,” Energy Tribune, August 27, 2009,http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/2199/Chinas-Oil-Power-Play

3. Cf. threat made by US negotiators with Taliban shortly before 9/11 concerning an oil pipeline corridor to the Indian Ocean, as quoted in the French book by two reputable investigative reporters, published November 15, 2001, “Bin Laden, la verité interdite” (”Bin Laden, the forbidden truth”):”Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.” http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=5166. The threat has never subsequently been denied by the US.

4. “Who Owns the US National Debt?” Business Insider, January 14, 2011.http://www.businessinsider.com/who-owns-the-us-national-debt-2011-1

5. William Schneider, “Re-evaluating U.S. Debt,” Atlantic Monthly, 10/ 2005, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/re-evaluating-usdebt/4396/

6. “An old Chinese myth. Contrary to popular wisdom, China’s rapid growth is not hugely dependent on exports.” The Economist, Jan 3rd 2008, http://www.economist.com/node/10429271?story_id=10429271

7. Occam’s Razor, or as Einstein put it, “Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Wikipedia, “Occam’s Razor,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam’s_razor

8. Daniel Ellsberg’s Website, September 13, 2009, “U.S. Nuclear War Planning for a Hundred Holocausts,” describing the approved US plan for eliminating one billion civilians in a nuclear first strike against the Sino-Soviet bloc, http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/us-nuclear-war-planning-for-a-hundred-holocaust s

9. See for example, CIIP.con, “Microsoft steps up its expansion in second-tier cities,” January 4, 2011, http://www.ciipp.com/en/index/view-285257.html ; Agence France-Presse, “Microsoft Plans $1 Billion Investment in China R&D,” November 13, 2008,” http://www.industryweek.com/articles/microsoft_plans_1_billion_investment_in_ china_rd_17808.aspx

10. Bloomberg News, “GM’s First-Half China Sales Surge Past the U.S.,” 7/2/10, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-02/general-motors-first-half-china-sale s-rise-48-5-pass-u-s-for-first-time.html

 

 

 

Russian TNK-BP Shareholders File Lawsuit To Stop BP and Rosneft Deal

Russian TNK-BP shareholders oppose the deal BP and Rosneft

As reported Jan. 27 the source of Itar-Tass, the Russian shareholders of TNK-BP from AAR appealed to the London court to suspend the deal between BP and Rosneft.

The representative of BP in Russia, Vladimir Buyanov confirmed the agency that the company received notice of the lawsuit and plans to present at the meeting. The court session is scheduled for February 1, 2011, he added. The same day, BP will publish reports for the 4 th quarter of 2010. As reported, on the eve of BP and Rosneft signed an agreement in Davos on strategic partnership in the development achieved two weeks earlier agreements on the establishment of a strategic alliance for joint development of hydrocarbons in the Russian Arctic. According to the agreement, Rosneft will receive as a result of 5% stake in BP in exchange for 9.5% of its shares.Companies will create a joint venture that will exploration and development of three promising oil and gas sites in the Kara Sea shelf. After the announcement of the deal became known that the Russian partners in BP’s TNK-BP – AAP has begun to explore how the deal with BP Rosneft corresponds Settlements shareholders’ agreement, TNK-BP. The paper argues that all its projects in Russia and Ukraine through implementing partners BP, TNK-BP. AAR and BP owned TNK-BP on an equal footing.

Russian Authorities Circulate Photo of Domodedovo Bomber’s Head for Possible I.D.

Islamist Suicide Bomber’s Head from Domodedovo: GRAPHIC

The pictures show the dead head of the islamist suicide bomber who blew himself up in Moscow, Russia, at the Domodedovo International Airport and the drawing of this man done by specialists from the Russian police.

Note, that he blew himself up in the hall right after the passport control bar where passengers pick up their luggage. THAT MEANS HE ARRIVED TO MOSCOW BY JET. The question is – where

 

 

 

Richard Falk Questions 911 and the Politics of Murder

[Mr. Falk caught hell for speaking-up for the right of all Palestinians to NOT be murdered in their sleep, now he is brave enough to take-on the 911 cover-up.  For this daring feat, America’s shrew in residence at the UN raked him across the coals, calling upon the gods of the Empire to strike him down, or at least get him fired.  Her call for his sacking follows Falk’s blog entry below.]

Interrogating the Arizona Killings from a Safe Distance

RICHARD FALK

I spent a year in Sweden a few years after the assassination of Olaf Palme in 1986, the controversial former prime minister of the country who at the time of his death was serving as a member of the Swedish cabinet. He was assassinated while walking with his wife back to their apartment in the historic part of the city after attending a nearby movie. It was a shocking event in a Sweden that had prided itself on moderateness in politics and the avoidance of involvement in the wars of the twentieth century. A local drifter, with a history of alcoholism, was charged and convicted of the crime, but many doubts persisted, including on the part of Ms. Palme who analogized her situation to that of Coretta King who never believed the official version of her martyred husband’s death.

I had a particular interest in this national traumatic event as my reason for being in Sweden was a result of an invitation to be the Olaf Palme Professor, a rotating academic post given each year to a foreign scholar, established by the Swedish Parliament as a memorial to their former leader. (after the Social Democratic Party lost political control in Sweden this professorship was promptly defunded, partly because Palme was unloved by conservatives and partly because of a neoliberal dislike for public support of such activities)

In the course of my year traveling around Sweden I often asked those whom I met what was their view of the assassination, and what I discovered was that the responses told me more about them than it did about the public event. Some thought it was a dissident faction in the Swedish security forces long angered by Palme’s neutralist policies, some believed it was resentment caused by Palme’s alleged engineering of Swedish arms sales to both sides in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, some believed it was the CIA in revenge for Palme’s neutralism during the Cold War, some believed it could have criminals in the pay of business tycoons tired of paying high taxes needed to maintain the Swedish maximalist version of a welfare state, and there were other theories as well. What was common to all of these explanations was the lack of evidence that might connect the dots. What people believed happened flowed from their worldview rather than the facts of the event—a distrust of the state, especially its secret operations, or a strong conviction that special interests hidden from view were behind prominent public events of this character.

In a way, this process of reflection is natural, even inevitable, but it leads to faulty conclusions. We tend to process information against the background of our general worldview and understanding, and we do this all the time as an efficient way of coping with the complexity of the world combined with our lack of time or inclination to reach conclusions by independent investigation. The problem arises when we confuse this means of interpreting our experience with an effort to provide an explanation of a contested public event. There are, to be sure, conspiracies that promote unacknowledged goals, and enjoy the benefit of government protection. We don’t require WikiLeaks to remind us not to trust governments, even our own, and others that seem in most respects to be democratic and law-abiding. And we also by now should know that governments (ab)use their authority to treat awkward knowledge as a matter of state secrets, and criminalize those who are brave enough to believe that the citizenry needs to know the crimes that their government is committing with their trust and their tax dollars.

The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that David Ray Griffin(and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008). What may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials. Is this silence a manifestation of fear or cooption, or part of an equally disturbing filter of self-censorship? Whatever it is, the result is the withering away of a participatory citizenry and the erosion of legitimate constitutional government. The forms persist, but the content is missing.

This brings me to the Arizona shootings, victimizing both persons apparently targeted for their political views and random people who happened to be there for one reason or another, innocently paying their respects to a congresswoman meeting constituents outside a Tucson supermarket. As with the Palme assassination, the most insistent immediate responses come from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, both proceeding on presuppositions rather than awaiting evidence.

On one side are those who say that right-wing hate speech and affection for guns were clearly responsible, while Tea Party ultra-conservatives and their friends reaffirm their rights of free speech, denying that there is any connection between denouncing their adversaries in the political process and the violent acts of a deranged individual seemingly acting on his own.  If we want to be responsible in our assessments, we must restrain our political predispositions, and get the evidence. Let us remember that what seems most disturbing about the 9/11 controversy is the widespread aversion by government and media to the evidence that suggests, at the very least, the need for an independent investigation that proceeds with no holds barred.

Such an investigation would contrast with the official ‘9/11 Commission’ that proceeded with most holds barred.  What has been already disturbing about the Arizona incident are these rival rushes to judgment without bothering with evidence. Such public irresponsibility polarizes political discourse, making conversation and serious debate irrelevant.

There is one more issue raised, with typical candor and innocence, by the filmmaker, Michael Moore. If a Muslim group has published a list of twenty political leaders in this country, and put crosshairs of a gun behind their pictures, is there any doubt that the Arizona events would be treated as the work of a terrorist,, and the group that had pre-identified such targets would be immediately outlawed as a terrorist organization. Many of us, myself included, fervently hoped, upon hearing the news of the shootings, that the perpetrator of this violence was neither a Muslim nor a Hispanic, especially an illegal immigrant. Why? Because we justly feared the kind of horrifying backlash that would have been probably generated by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly,  Sarah Palin, and their legion of allies. Now that the apparent perpetrator is a young whiteAmerican, the talk from the hate mongers, agains without bothering with evidence, is of mental disorder and sociopathology. This is faith-based pre-Enlightenment ‘knowledge.’

What must we learn from all of this? Don’t connect dots without evidence. Don’t turn away as soon as the words ‘conspiracy theory’ are uttered, especially if the evidence does point away from what the power-wielders want us to believe. Don’t link individual wrongdoing, however horrific, to wider religious and ethnic identities. We will perish as a species if we don’t learn soon to live together better on our beautiful, globalizing, and imperiled planet.

Statement by Ambassador Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, on Richard Falk

Susan E. Rice
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
U.S. Mission to the United Nations

New York, NY

January 25, 2011

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

I am appalled by the recent personal blog written by Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.”

In this blog post, dated January 11, 2011, Mr. Falk endorses the slurs of conspiracy theorists who allege that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were perpetrated and then covered up by the U.S. government and media.

Mr. Falk’s comments are despicable and deeply offensive, and I condemn them in the strongest terms. I have registered a strong protest with the UN on behalf of the United States. The United States has in the past been critical of Mr. Falk’s one-sided and politicized approach to his work for the UN, including his failure to condemn deliberate human rights abuses by Hamas, but these blog comments are in another category altogether.

In my view, Mr. Falk’s latest commentary is so noxious that it should finally be plain to all that he should no longer continue in his position on behalf of the UN. I would note that U.S. and many other diplomats walked out in protest in September 2010 when Iranian President Ahmadinejad made similarly slanderous remarks before the UN General Assembly.

The United States is deeply committed to the cause of human rights and believes that cause will be better advanced without Mr. Falk and the distasteful sideshow he has chosen to create.

Suspect Sought In Domodedovo Airport Bombing

Sought by the terrorist attack in Domodedovo has been missing since October

 

© RIA Novosti

A resident of Stavropol Razdobudko, the orientation at which sent in police regions in the investigation of the terrorist attack at the Domodedovo airport, along with his wife in October 2010 has been missing, said on Thursday, RIA Novosti news agency a source in law enforcement in the region.

Ukrainian Nationalists Detained With Arms Cache

IVANO-FRANKIVSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials say nine members of a nationalist organization have been arrested in western Ukraine, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service reports.

Interior Ministry officials in the Ivano-Frankivsk region has said the Trizub (Trident) members arrested on January 10 came to the region from other parts of the country and were armed. Police say they confiscated an AK-47 assault rifle, three pistols, ammunition, nine walkie-talkies, knives, two grenades, two sniper rifles, and a pump-action rifle from the activists.

Police say the group had planned to carry out antigovernment acts in the region. They said the activists were being questioned.

On January 10, leaders of Trizub said that at least 10 members of the organization have been arrested this month in connection with damage inflicted on a bust of Soviet leader Josef Stalin in the southwestern city of Zaporizhzhya on December 28.

Trizub claimed responsibility for removing Stalin’s head from the bust.

The Trizub is an ancient Ukrainian symbol that was the family crest of the 10th century Prince Volodymyr. It can be seen in various styles on many things in Ukraine, including on postage stamps and banknotes, and is on the country’s coat of arms.

Leaked Papers Confirm British Intelligence Hand in Plot Against Hamas Govt.

[This was all an American-led conspiracy against the popularly-elected govt. of the Palestinian people, lest anyone forget.  SEE: The Gaza Bombshell]

MI6 ‘drew up plan to crush Hamas’

British intelligence advised the Palestinian Authority to crush Hamas and other violent groups in the West Bank by detaining some of their leading figures, leaked documents have shown.

Flag day: a member of Hamas’ security forces at a rally to mark the movement’s 23rd anniversary in Gaza City in December Photo: AFP/GETTY

By Adrian Blomfield, Jerusalem, Richard Spencer andDuncan Gardham

In an effort to restore peace during the Second Palestinian Intifada against Israel, MI6 drew up a strategy in 2004 to help Yasser Arafat’s security forces neutralise “rejectionists” opposed to a Middle East peace deal.

Two strategy papers recommended “the detention of key middle-ranking officers” from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Al Aqsa Brigades, groups that had mounted a campaign of suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israel.

“We could also explore the temporary internment of leading Hamas and PIJ figures, making sure they are well treated,” the author of one of the documents writes.

Both papers were included in a batch of 1,600 secret Palestinian files leaked to the Al Jazeera television station, the latest tranche of which were released last night.

At the time the MI6 papers were written, the United States had stopped funding the Palestinian security forces in protest at Arafat’s failure to stop the violence.

Britain stepped in to make up the shortfall and took a leading role in trying to revive peace talks. Israel refused to resume negotiations until the Palestinian Authority had made significant progress in reining in extremist groups.

Britain has been involved in “capacity building” of Palestinian security forces over the course of a number of years under initiatives run by the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence and Department for International Development.

British intelligence services have played a “small part” in that programme, according to sources.

There has also been a “leadership training programme” that has emphasised the role of human rights and both projects were conducted at the request of the Palestinian Authority.

One Whitehall source said there were “clearly security concerns in the West Bank and Gaza” but Britain’s efforts to help the Palestinian authority deal with those concerns was based around a respect for human rights.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “It is the government’s longstanding policy not to comment on intelligence matters.”

The latest batch of papers also revealed that Israel asked the Palestinians in 2005 to kill a militant suspected of carrying out a suicide bombing.

Palestinian officials were non-committal in their response and the militant died the following month in an Israeli drone attack on his car.

Earlier disclosures from the documents have angered some Palestinians who believe that their leaders appeared overly-accommodating of Israel.

Yesterday, US officials said that the leaks had made peace negotiations harder.

A State Department spokesman said he could not “deny that this release will, at least for a time, make the situation more difficult than it already was”.

Hizbollah government will damage US relationship with Lebanon, Clinton says

A Hizbollah-backed billionaire has won enough support to become Lebanon’s prime minister, in a move that Hillary Clinton said would damage the country’s relationship with the US.

Angry protesters burn a van belonging to Al-Jazeera in the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon Photo: AP

By Richard Spencer

Hizbollah managed to forge a coalition to back Najib Mikati after bringing down the government of the pro-American Saad Hariri two weeks ago.

President Barack Obama is likely to retaliate by suspending some or all of its aid to Beirut. The US administration had earmarked $246 million (£156 million) in support this year, including $100 million (£63 million) in military aid and $37 million (£23 million) for counter-terrorism operations.

Hizbollah, which is financially backed by Iran and Syria, is listed as a terrorist entity by Washington.

Mrs Clinton, the US secretary of state, said the power shift would “clearly have an impact on our bilateral relationship.”

Israel, which already has Hizbollah ally Hamas on one side, will also be concerned by a Hizbollah-led government likely to insist on a more confrontational approach in the region.

Mr Mikati’s appointment, secured after 68 out of 125 members of parliament expressed their support, sparked a “day of rage” in Lebanon, with crowds in Beruit and towns across the north of the country blocking roads, setting tyres on fire and ransacking the offices of a prominent supporter of the new prime minister.

Mr Mikati and the man he replaced, Mr Hariri, are both Sunnis, and the protesters mocked Mr Mikati as a “traitor” for agreeing to work with Hizbollah, an Iranian-backed Shia militant group.

“They are taking us for idiots,” said a Rana Fatfat, a Sunni lawyer at a protest. “We will fight them through sit-ins and peaceful protests because we cannot match their military might.”

The latest resurgence in Lebanon’s bitter, long-running political and civil strife follows Mr Hariri’s refusal to disavow a United Nations special tribunal investigating the murder of his father, Rafiq, another billionaire former prime minister.

Mr Hariri senior was killed by a car bomb in 2005, which at the time was widely blamed on Syria. The tribunal is expected to indict Hizbollah members as having carried out the killing.

Mr Mikati will spearhead a policy of non-cooperation with the tribunal however.

Hizbollah’s triumph in securing power lay not just in withdrawing 11 sympathetic cabinet members from Mr Hariri’s government but in persuading Walid Jumblatt, the long-standing leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon, to switch the votes of his MPs.

It then had to find a friendly Sunni politician to lead the government. Under Lebanon’s constitution, the president has to be Christian, the Prime Minister Sunni and the speaker Shia.

Mr Mikati said that being backed by Hizbollah did not make him a “Hizbollah prime minister”.

“I will co-operate fully with all Lebanese to form a new government that protects their unity and sovereignty,” he said.

Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, also tried to calm Sunni fears that its seizure of the reins of power amounted to a coup.

“The new government will not be a Hizbollah government nor will it be led by Hizbollah,” he said. “We don’t want power.”

Moscow airport bomb–“False Flag” Being Pinned-On Pakistan

Moscow airport bomb: suicide bombers were part of squad trained in Pakistan

The two suicide bombers who carried out the Moscow attack were thought to be part of a suicide squad trained in Pakistan’s al-Qaeda strongholds sent to the capital to target the city’s transport system.

 

A guard uses a metal dectector on a passenger at a security checkpoint in Sochi airport Photo: AP

By Andrew Osborn, Moscow and Damien McElroy

Russian security services warned in December that there were two attack teams primed to carry out attacks, sparking fears there could still be terrorists at large who were prepared to carry out another attack.

Intelligence sources said that one of the squads was likely to have established a base, at a house in Moscow, where the suicide belts to be used in attacks were assembled.

Russian security sources said yesterday that a male and female suicide bomber from the Black Widow brigades had carried out the bombing together. The attack had been closely supervised by three accomplices, who had watched from a distance and are now being sought by the authorities.

A Russian security official said the bomb that ripped through Moscow’s Domodedovo airport was carried by a woman who mingled in the crowd at arrivals. She then either set the bomb off herself or someone else detonated it using a remote-control device.

An eyewitness said the woman had been dressed in black and had worn a veil, suggesting she may have been a ‘Black Widow’ suicide bomber from the North Caucasus region out to revenge the killing of her husband by Russian security forces.

“The explosion occurred the moment the presumed female suicide bomber opened her bag,” the security source told the RIA Novosti news agency. “The terrorist was accompanied by a man. He was standing beside her and (the blast) tore off his head.”

Intelligence services have been embarrassed by the revelation that informants had warned of an attack on an airport in the Russian capital just weeks before the incident. Security experts said the tip-off had revealed that a criminal gang based in the Moscow suburbs was assisting a Chechen bombing making squad and that a suicide cell was travelling from a training camp.

A newspaper close to Russia’s FSB security service published what it claimed was a warning to Moscow police issued in December that said there was credible intelligence that a suicide squad made up of three women and one man from Chechnya was headed to Moscow.

The memo said the team had spent time in Pakistan and Iran and that one of the women had a relative with a flat in Moscow that might be used as a bomb making factory. Another group of five Islamist militants trained in Pakistan was also expected to cross into Russia soon, it added.

An al-Qaeda linked website said that the group Islamic Caucasus Emirate, led by the rebe Doku Umarov, was poised to claim it had staged the attack. It said that Russia’s harsh military measures against independence activists in the Caucasus had provoked the attack. It said: “You disbelievers are the firewood of Hell. You will enter it.”

The daily Kommersant newspaper said security service officials were alerted to the extent of the threat when a woman accidentally blew herself up on New Year’s Eve in Moscow. It later emerged that her husband was in jail for being a member of an Islamist terror group and that she and a girlfriend had been sent to Moscow from the internal Muslim republic of Dagestan to commit an act of terror.

Russian media published a grisly picture of the male terrorist’s severed head that was being circulated around police and security services in the troubled mostly Muslim North Caucasus region to see if anyone recognised him.

The region, which includes restive internal Russian republics such as Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, is in the grip of a growing Islamist insurgency and has served as a launching pad in the past for a series of deadly strikes on civilian targets in Moscow and other cities.

Does Kyrgyz Document Prove Govt. Collusion With Terrorists?

Interim government includes terrorist into aid group

26/01-2011 08:10, Bishkek – 24.kg news agency , by Julia MAZYKINA

During June events, interim government included a terrorist, injured on January 4, 2010, by officers of special service of Kyrgyzstan, into aid group at the south of the republic.

The document, received by Kyrgyz language newspaper El Sozu, proves it. According to the document, called “temporary mandate”, signed by chief-of-staff of interim government Emilbek Kaptagaev on June 12, 2010, 13 persons were sent to the south to render humanitarian aid to effected people.

Names of all 13 persons were listed in the document. Edil Abdrakhmanov, detained in Strelnikovo village during special operation, was among them. Now he is in hospital, 6 other detainees are in pre-trial detention center of Kyrgyzstan’s State National Security Committee (GKNB).

According to the document signed by Emilbek Kaptagaev, mandate was effective till June 30, 2010. There yet were no comments of security agencies officers and authorities on the publication in mass media.

Note: Edil Abdrakhmanov and other detainees were arrested by law enforcement officers during a number of special operations in January 2011. They are suspected in attempt to organize terroristic acts all over the country, last year explosion near sports arena and terroristic act attempt near the building of Main Department of Internal Affairs of the capital.

The Provisional Government itself has prepared the terrorists?

By our hands got an amazing document. Look at this document! It is personally signed by the Chief of Staff of the Provisional Government of Emile Kaptagaevym "temporary mandate"!

According to this document June 12 (2010) of the people listed in the list, were sent to the South for the provision of humanitarian assistance. To date, one of the "patriots" – Abdrakhmanov Edil was injured in the events of January 4 (24-year-old Edil Abdrakhmanov, a native of Bishkek, the detainee during spets.operatsii in s.Strelnikovo-ca. Gezitter.kg), is in hospital. And six of the others are in custody in SCNS.

How does all this be understood? Events 4-5 January, an explosion at the Palais des Sports, the car packed with explosives near the Bishkek police department-it-all "games" Duyshobaeva? There is just such a vopros.U SCNS end sredstva.Ne is whether all this is to seek assistance from international organizations, the United States. Here’s a puzzle!

Draw your own conclusions. All bearded terrorists? And all the bearded terrorists? Bearded all Muslims? All of these bait-Duyshobaeva? Do not like it all blown up the towers in New York on September 11? And we have the Zionists, Nazis, Jews make their case hands Duyshobaeva?

Source: newspaper "EL SRAM" № 21 dated 25.01.2011 / page 2

20 Signs That The United States Is Rapidly Becoming A Totalitarian Big Brother Police State

Once upon a time, the United States was a land of unparalleled freedom.  The rest of the world envied the freedom that ordinary Americans had to think, say and do what they wanted.  But all of that has changed.  Now Americans have to fear that they will be tackled by a squad of security goons and dragged off to a detention facility somewhere if they spill a Pepsi on a flight attendant or take a few too many pictures of a public building.  The United States used to be the polar opposite of totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but now America is rapidly becoming very much like them.  Due to the fear of a boogeyman living in a cave somewhere or some guy with explosive powder in his underwear we are all being forced to give up our freedoms and learn to live in a Big Brother police state.

But have things really changed so much that we have to give up all of the cherished freedoms that our fathers and grandfathers fought and died for?  Haven’t there always been fanatics and crazies and criminals out there?  Why do we suddenly have to become so afraid of them?

In the past, Americans would not let anyone make them live in fear.  If some unbalanced individual did something bad, it wasn’t the end of the world, was it?  No, in the past Americans dusted themselves off and continued to live as free men and women.  You see, when we live in fear and radically alter our way of life just to feel a little more secure, we lose.  We have let someone else steal our freedom and our dignity.

But now in the name of “security” all kinds of bizarre proposals have been implemented on the local, state and national levels.  Somehow we think that if everything that we do is watched, monitored and analyzed we will all be safer somehow.

Maybe we are safer and maybe we aren’t, but we are certainly a whole lot less free.

The following are 20 signs that the United States is rapidly becoming a totalitarian “Big Brother” police state….

#1) A new bill being pushed by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman would allow the U.S. military to round up large numbers of Americans and detain them indefinitely without a trial if they “pose a threat” or if they have “potential intelligence value” or for any other reason the President of the United States “considers appropriate”.

#2) Lawmakers in Washington D.C. working to create a new immigration bill have decided on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would be required to obtain.

#3) Barack Obama is backing a plan to create a national database to store the DNA of people who have been arrested but not necessarily convicted of a crime.

#4) Just to get on an airplane, Americans will now have to go through new full-body scanners that reveal every detail of our exposed bodies to airport security officials.

#5) If that wasn’t bad enough, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that airport screeners will begin roving through airports randomly taking chemical swabs from passengers and their bags to check for explosives.

#6) Starting this upcoming December, some passengers on Canadian airlines flying to, from or even over the United States without ever landing there, will only be allowed to board their flights once the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has determined they are not terrorists.

#7) Organic milk is such a threat that the FDA has been conducting military style raids on Amish farmers in Pennsylvania.

#8) An NYPD officer has broken his silence and has confessed that innocent citizens are being set up and falsely arrested and ticketed in order to meet quotas.

#9) A growing number of police departments across the U.S. are turning to mobile camera systems in order to fight motor vehicle theft and identify unregistered cars.

#10) For decades, Arizona has been known as “the sunset state”, but lately many frustrated residents have started calling it “the surveillance state”.

#11) Judges and police in Florida have been caught using “secret codes” on tickets in the state of Florida.

#12) An extensive investigation has revealed that between 2003 and 2007, that state of Texas quietly gave hundreds of newborn baby blood samples to a U.S. Armed Forces laboratory for use in a forensics database.

#13) A 6-year-old girl was recently handcuffed and sent to a mental facilityafter throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#14) One 12-year-old girl in New York was recently arrested and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk.

#15) In Florida, students have been arrested by police for things as simple as bringing a plastic butter knife to school, throwing an eraser, and drawing a picture of a gun.

#16) When a mother on a flight to Denver spanked both of her children and cussed out a flight attendant who tried to intervene, she suddenly found herself handcuffed and headed for prison.  Why?  She was charged with being a domestic terrorist under the Patriot Act.

#17) A new global treaty may force U.S. Internet service providers to spy on what you do online.

#18) A leaked Obama administration memo has revealed plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres of land from Montana to New Mexico.

#19) 56 percent of Americans questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll said that the U.S. government has become so large and powerfulthat it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.

#20) But one other recent poll found that 51 percent of Americans agree with this statement: “It is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”

Karzai opens Afghan parliament, taunts West

By Hamid Shalizi

KABUL

(Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai inaugurated parliament on Wednesday, ending weeks of political infighting, but took a dig at the West saying “foreign interference” had been a serious problem.

Western diplomats called the event a “big day” for Afghanistan, but the comments exposed the often frayed ties between Karzai and his backers and in private officials warned of a bigger battle ahead between the president and his new parliament.

Afghanistan’s government was plunged into political crisis last week when Karzai decided to delay the opening of the assembly by a month so a special poll court he set up could have more time to investigate fraud in the September 18 election.

Washington is pressing Karzai to demonstrate good governance as it looks to withdraw U.S. forces from an unpopular war now in its tenth year, and the latest showdown has renewed concern about the president’s credibility as an ally.

Under huge pressure from winning candidates, who threatened to take their seats in parliament this month with or without him, and in the face of criticism from the United Nations and countries supporting Afghanistan with troops and cash, Karzai backed down and agreed to a Wednesday inauguration.

Karzai, who has already accused Western powers of meddling in a fraud-ridden presidential poll that saw him re-elected in 2009, said foreign interference in last year’s parliamentary vote was one of the things that sullied the results.

“During the election process we faced serious problems in protecting people’s votes, preventing fraud and from the interference of foreigners,” Karzai said in his opening speech to members of the assembly shortly before they were sworn in.

“We must ‘Afghanise’ government institutions and the elections. Undoubtedly, elections convened by the Afghans will be more transparent, less expensive,” he said.

The president’s relations with the West have often been rocky and tension came to a head last year over the presidential poll.

But the international community needs signs of progress in Afghanistan as it prepares to start handing over security. Karzai still has nearly four years still in office, and is granted wide-ranging powers by the constitution, so his role is key. The United Nations, which had expressed “deep concern” last week at Karzai’s decision to delay the inauguration, offered a determinedly upbeat interpretation in his latest remarks.

“I think what he meant is that he wants in the future to have much more involvement of the Afghans in their own elections and we agree,” said Staffan de Mistura, the top envoy in Kabul.

SPECIAL COURT

Karzai’s comments appeared to be sparked by criticism over his creation of a special election tribunal, the legality of which has been questioned by diplomats, MPs and rights groups.

The president is thought to be unhappy with the new make-up of the assembly, which although not necessarily united, now faces a more vocal and coherent opposition bloc.

“The special court is key. I think we can expect to see the president using what he says are legal powers to try to remove some parliamentarians,” said a senior Western diplomat.

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Palestine Leaks: PA Killed Its Own People to Establish “Gun Authority”

26/01/2011 New documents revealed on Al-Jazeera television showed an extensive clandestine cooperation between Israel’s security services and those of the Palestinian Authority what drove Washington and Tel Aviv to confess the “great” role of the PA intelligence that admitted it assassinated Palestinians for establishing “one authority one gun and the rule of law.” The “Palestine papers” uncovered that Israel and the PA held various meetings on security issues. One document details how Israel and the PA planned together an assassination of a commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement still loyal to the idea of armed struggle against Israel and refusing to accept the new Fatah and PA strategy of peaceful negotiations.. Former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz demanded in 2005 that Hassan al-Madhoun, an operative of the military wing of Hamas, be assassinated. Then-interior minister of the Palestinian Authority Nasser Yusuf apparently replied that orders were given to the PA chief of security in Gaza at that time, Rashid Abu Shabak, to take care of the matter. Weeks later, on 1 November 2005, Al-Madhoun was later killed by an Israeli bomb attack along with Izzeddine Al-Qassam brigades’ military commander Fawzi Abu al-Qarea. And in a document dated 17 April, 2009, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat is reported as telling US official David Hale: “We have had to kill Palestinians to establish one authority one gun and the rule of law.” Others revelations from the Palestinian Papers outline major concessions Palestinians offered during talks, which were rejected by Israel. They include: ·         a formal offer to allow Israel to annex all but one Jewish settlements built in occupied East Jerusalem ·         an international committee to take over Jerusalem’s Haram Al-Sharif (Temple Mount), which houses Masjid Qubbat As-Sakhrah (Dome of the Rock) and Al-Aqsa Mosque – Islam’s third holiest site ·         limiting the number of Palestinian refugees returning to 100,000 over 10 years ·         establishing a special unit of Palestinian security forces to battle “terrorists” with the consent of Israel, and they’d receive special advanced weaponry ·         a meeting between Erekat and U.S. Army Lieutenant General Keith Dayton to influence Israel’s security forces to minimize its entries to Palestinian cities so that PA forces could maintain credibility among people. Dayton promised an agreement that Israeli entries would only occur under cover of night ·         Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad opposed the opening of Gaza’s border crossings, fearing that this would be interpreted as a victory for Hamas, who rules the Gaza Strip ·         PA considered a British proposal for dealing with the smuggling tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border. Al-Jazeera and the Guardian began revealing on Sunday more than 1,600 documents detailing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In one of the security coordination meetings between Israel and the PA, Saeb Erekat said that the PA was forced to kill their “own people” in order to prove that it was establishing law and order in territories under its control. Erekat was referring in this instance to an incident in Qalqilyah in which Palestinian police killed six Hamas members, and in which two of the police officers were killed in the firefight. Speaking on Tuesday, Erekat accused al-Jazeera of mounting “the most severe smear campaign in the history of journalism”.