Is America’s new declinism for real?

By Gideon Rachman

Texas A&M is not the obvious place to pick if you want to discuss American decline. The university sends more of its graduates straight into the military than any other civilian college in the U.S. Its officer training corps prowl the campus in crisply pressed uniforms and knee-high leather boots, greeting each other with brisk “howdys”. Agonized introspection and crises of confidence are not Texan traits.

But last week the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M hosted a conference designed to discuss the latest, markedly gloomy world view issued by America’s intelligence establishment. Every four years the National Intelligence Council — which oversees America’s baroque collection of intelligence agencies — releases a global trends report, which is given to the new president.

The latest report, published on November 20, has made headlines around the world. The front page of Britain’s Guardian newspaper shouted “2025: the end of U.S. dominance”. For once, the headline is broadly accurate. As the NIC frankly notes, “the most dramatic difference” between the new report and the one issued four years ago is that it now foresees “a world in which the U.S. plays a prominent role in global events, but the U.S. is seen as one among many global actors”. The report issued four years ago had projected “continuing U.S. dominance”.

The NIC report has made people sit up because it comes from the heart of the U.S. security establishment. But it is part of a broader intellectual trend in America: a “new declinism”. This mood marks a complete break with the aggressive confidence of the Bush years and the “unipolar moment”. Its starting assumption is that America, while still the most powerful country in the world, is in relative decline.

Three developments have fed the new declinism. First, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have underlined that U.S. military supremacy does not automatically translate into political victory. Second, the rise of China and India suggest that America’s days as the world’s largest economy are numbered. Third, the financial crisis has fed the notion that the U.S. is living beyond its means and that something is badly wrong with the American model.

This gloomy mood was captured by the opening address to the NIC’s conference, given by none other than General Brent Scowcroft himself, returning to the institute named after him. The general noted that the U.S. had found itself in a position of huge global power after the end of the cold war, which was “heady stuff”. But “we exercised that power for a while only to realize that it was ephemeral”.

This new awareness of the constraints on American power is reflected in a number of new books and articles. The most influential is probably Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World, which is said to be the only book on foreign affairs read by Barack Obama this year. Although Mr. Zakaria strives to present the rise of China, India and “the rest” as unthreatening to the U.S., the inescapable conclusion is that the Bush years marked the apogee of American power.

Another influential book to capture this new mood is Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power. Professor Bacevich, a conservative historian and military veteran whose son was killed in the Iraq war, argues: “American power … is inadequate to the ambitions to which hubris and sanctimony have given rise.” Richard Haass, who as head of the Council of Foreign Relations is arguably the doyen of the foreign policy establishment, is another important voice arguing: “The United States’ unipolar moment is over.”

But as William Wohlforth of Dartmouth College reminded the NIC conference in Texas last week, America has been through phases of declinism before. The current debate is reminiscent of the arguments unleashed by the publication in 1988 of Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Professor Kennedy’s argument that previous great powers had succumbed to “imperial over-stretch” resonated in the U.S. at a time when many were worried by Reagan-era budget deficits and Japan’s growing economic power.

But the “declinism” represented by Prof Kennedy was quickly dissipated by victory in the cold war, Japan’s lost decade of economic growth and the high-tech boom of the Clinton years. All this set the stage for a resurgence of American confidence and the swagger of the Bush presidency.

Odd as it is to recall now, there were people during the early phases of the cold war who were also genuinely worried that the USSR might outperform the U.S. There was also a national crisis of confidence caused by the Vietnam war, when Richard Nixon warned his fellow countrymen they risked looking like a “pitiful, helpless giant”. In the 1980s, Japan became the new challenger to American supremacy. Now it is China.

Professor Wohlforth argues that the NIC report reflects “a mood change, not a change in the underlying assessment of power”. As he says, rising powers do not always complete their climb and economic strength does not always translate into political power.

This is all true. But there are still reasons for thinking that the new declinism may be more soundly based than its predecessors. China has a record of sustained and dynamic economic growth that the Soviet Union was never capable of. And China’s sheer size makes it a more plausible challenger than a relatively small nation, such as Japan.

This time it really does feel different. But then it always does, does it not?

(Source: The Financial Times)

Left Out of the Bailout: The Poor

Left Out of the Bailout: The Poor

By MARK KUKIS

As the roster of corporations and financial institutions in line for government bailouts seems to grow, some public-policy advocates in Washington are calling on policymakers to focus more efforts on the nation’s poorest. The ranks of the destitute are growing quietly but alarmingly as much of the world focuses on troubles surrounding Wall Street. “Recent data show poverty is already rising quite substantially,” says Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “There is a strong potential for more hardship and destitution than we have seen in this country in a number of decades.”

Greenstein’s center released a new study on Monday projecting a sharp rise in the number of people living below the poverty line, which is roughly $21,200 annually for a family of four, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. An estimated 36.5 million Americans currently live below the poverty line, but those numbers will probably increase by as many as 10.3 million if current projections for the depth and duration of the recession hold true. According to the center’s analysis, the number of poor children will grow by as many as 3.3 million. And the number of children in deep poverty, those in families living on less than half the wages of the official poverty line, will climb by as many as 2 million. (See pictures from John Edwards’ tour of poverty-stricken America.)

Signs of the recession’s impact on America’s impoverished are increasingly apparent, Greenstein says, pointing to a dramatic rise in food-stamp caseloads in recent months. The number of people using food stamps has risen 9.6%, or roughly 2.6 million people, from August 2007 to August 2008, the last period for which data are available. Food banks around the country are reporting longer lines even as donations are falling.

By historical comparison, the expected rise in the number of impoverished in this recession is relatively normal. During the recession years of the 1980s, the number of people in poverty rose by 9.2 million, an increase of more than a third. The recession of the 1990s was not quite as deep but still increased the number of people in poverty by 6.5 million. But those falling into poverty now face harder prospects and need more government help, Greenstein says, because many social safety nets have been cut away since past economic downturns. (See pictures of the recession of 1958.)

A number of policy changes at both state and federal levels have left basic cash-assistance programs scarce, the center’s study argues. State general-assistance programs were largely eliminated across the country in the late 1980s and early ’90s, except for programs benefiting the disabled. On the federal level, only about 40% of families eligible for cash assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program actually receive it. That is about half the percentage of families eligible for the program’s predecessor (the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program) that received benefits during the recessions of earlier decades.

President-elect Barack Obama voiced new concern over the economy on Monday when announcing picks for his White House economic team, saying a new economic-stimulus package was needed right away in addition to the ongoing efforts to pump more than $700 billion in federal rescue funds into ailing businesses like Citigroup. There was no indication how any of that round of spending will reach the growing numbers of the nation’s neediest.

It’s been a quick slide from economic superpower to economic basket case.

Hey U.S., welcome to the Third World!

It’s been a quick slide from economic superpower to economic basket case.

Rosa Brooks

Dear United States, Welcome to the Third World!

It’s not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome you to the community of states in desperate need of international economic assistance. As you spiral into a catastrophic financial meltdown, we are delighted to respond to your Treasury Department’s request that we undertake a joint stability assessment of your financial sector. In these turbulent times, we can provide services ranging from subsidized loans to expert advisors willing to perform an emergency overhaul of your entire government.

As you know, some outside intervention in your economy is overdue. Last week — even before Wall Street’s latest collapse — 13 former finance ministers convened at the University of Virginia and agreed that you must fix your “broken financial system.” Australia’s Peter Costello noted that lately you’ve been “exporting instability” in world markets, and Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister of India, concluded, “The time has come. The U.S. should accept some monitoring by the IMF.”

We hope you won’t feel embarrassed as we assess the stability of your economy and suggest needed changes. Remember, many other countries have been in your shoes. We’ve bailed out the economies of Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea. But whether our work is in Sudan, Bangladesh or now the United States, our experts are committed to intervening in national economies with care and sensitivity.

We thus want to acknowledge the progress you have made in your evolution from economic superpower to economic basket case. Normally, such a process might take 100 years or more. With your oscillation between free-market extremism and nationalization of private companies, however, you have successfully achieved, in a few short years, many of the key hallmarks of Third World economies.

Your policies of irresponsible government deregulation in critical sectors allowed you to rapidly develop an energy crisis, a housing crisis, a credit crisis and a financial market crisis, all at once, and accompanied (and partly caused) by impressive levels of corruption and speculation. Meanwhile, those of your political leaders charged with oversight were either napping or in bed with corporate lobbyists.

Take John McCain, your Republican presidential nominee, whose senior staff includes half a dozen prominent former lobbyists. As he recently put it, “I was chairman of the [Senate] Commerce Committee that oversights every part of the economy.” No question about it: Your leaders’ failure to notice the damage done by irresponsible deregulation was indeed an oversight of epic proportions.

Now you are facing the consequences. Income inequality has increased, as the rich have gotten windfalls while the middle class has seen incomes stagnate. Fewer and fewer of your citizens have access to affordable housing, healthcare or security in retirement. Even life expectancy has dropped. And when your economic woes went from chronic to acute, you responded — like so many Third World states have — with an extensive program of nationalizing private companies and assets. Your mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now state owned and controlled, and this week your reinsurance giant AIG was effectively nationalized, with the Federal Reserve Board seizing an 80% equity stake in the flailing company.

Some might deride this as socialism. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Admittedly, your transition to Third World status is far from over, and it won’t be painless. At first, for instance, you may find it hard to get used to the shantytowns that will replace the exurban sprawl of McMansions that helped fuel the real estate speculation bubble. But in time, such shantytowns will simply become part of the landscape. Similarly, as unemployment rates continue to rise, you will initially struggle to find a use for the expanding pool of angry, jobless young men. But you will gradually realize that you can recruit them to fight in a ceaseless round of armed conflicts, a solution that has been utilized by many other Third World states before you. Indeed, with your wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you are off to an excellent start.

Perhaps this letter comes as a surprise to you, and you feel you’re not fully ready to join the Third World. Don’t let this feeling concern you. Though you may never have realized it, you’ve been preparing for this moment for years.

AMERICA ~~ THE FALSE NATION

November 26, 2008 at 9:02 am (DesertPeace Editorial, History, Opinion)

Reflections of an ‘unAmerican’ American

As a child in elementary school I was taught many songs about ‘my’ history. One that comes to mind was called ‘My Country Tis of Thee’….

“Land where my fathers died”…… what a confusing line to someone whose father was very much alive…..

Was the system trying to force an identity onto me?

And what about the tales we were told about the Pilgrims, the first Thanksgiving, etc. , etc. What possible significance could these have to a child whose parents immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe just a few years earlier?

And what about the students of Afro-American heritage…. why were they denied a true picture of what really happened to their ancestors? Not until Alex Hailey wrote the book ‘Roots’ were many of the facts exposed.

We were told that America was a ‘melting pot’….. that’s fine, but what about the ingredients in that pot? The school I attended was in a working class Jewish community in the southern part of Brooklyn. We were ‘taught’ that America was a ‘Christian’ nation. What was ironic about this is the fact that those that taught us this were for the most part Jewish. So, just what did that mean? Were we to lose our identity as Jews and start calling ourselves Christians? Christmas and Easter were both Holidays for us, yet we did not celebrate them at home. Did that make us ‘unAmerican’? Somehow the term ‘melting pot’ did not fit, it was more like a slow cooker where the ‘minority ingredients’ were either burnt away or totally blended in with the other ones in the mix.

There was a sprinkling of non Jews in my school, there were Puerto Ricans whose families moved up north to secure a better life. There were a handful of Afro- Americans as well as some students of Chinese origin. All had a culture of their own, and all were denied that culture…. it just wasn’t American. It was a confusing situation for all of us.

When John Kennedy threw his hat in the ring to become the next President we hear ramblings that he did not stand a chance because he was a Catholic. Were Catholics not Americans? Were we forever to be ruled by the predominant WASPS? Again, a very confusing situation. Brings to mind a joje that my grandmother used to say to me; You are American born, that means that one day you can become the President…. of the local synagogue…. There was allot of truth in what she said, yet, I was to feel proud to be an American….

The Cold War presented new challenges to our ‘nation’….. “America, love it or leave it!” WTF????? Was dissent not allowed? Was criticism not allowed?? What about the ideals set down by our ‘Founding Fathers’ when the ‘nation’ was established? Was all of that merely documents to be viewed in museums? Were we to believe that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were totally outdated and invalid? On one hand we were taught about the glorious principles of ‘our’ Revolution, on the other hand we were taught that to believe in those principles was unAmerican. Whatever happened to the concept of ‘We the people’? should that be changed officially to ‘We the Sheeple’? Again, a most confusing situation.

So, I ask, where do all of the above ramblings and reflections leave us today? I can only surmise that America is in reality a false nation with false prophets…. am I wrong?

Thanksgiving: A National Day of Mourning for Indians

Following are excerpts from a statement written by Mahtowin Munro (Lakota) and Moonanum James (Wampanoag), co-leaders of United American Indians of New England. Read the entire statement at www.uaine.org.

Mahtowin Munro

Every year since 1970, United American Indians of New England have organized the National Day of Mourning observance in Plymouth at noon on Thanksgiving Day. Every year, hundreds of Native people and our supporters from all four directions join us. Every year, including this year, Native people from throughout the Americas will speak the truth about our history and about current issues and struggles we are involved in.

Why do hundreds of people stand out in the cold rather than sit home eating turkey and watching football? Do we have something against a harvest festival?

Moonanum James

Of course not. But Thanksgiving in this country—and in particular in Plymouth—is much more than a harvest home festival. It is a celebration of pilgrim mythology.

According to this mythology, the pilgrims arrived, the Native people fed them and welcomed them, the Indians promptly faded into the background, and everyone lived happily ever after.

The pilgrims are glorified and mythologized because the circumstances of the first English-speaking colony in Jamestown were frankly too ugly (for example, they turned to cannibalism to survive) to hold up as an effective national myth.

The pilgrims did not find an empty land any more than Columbus “discovered” anything. Every inch of this land is Indian land. The pilgrims (who did not even call themselves pilgrims) did not come here seeking religious freedom; they already had that in Holland.

Leonard Peltier

They came here as part of a commercial venture. They introduced sexism, racism, anti-lesbian and -gay bigotry, jails and the class system to these shores. One of the very first things they did when they arrived on Cape Cod—before they even made it to Plymouth—was to rob Wampanoag graves at Corn Hill and steal as much of the Indians’ winter provisions of corn and beans as they were able to carry.

They were no better than any other group of Europeans when it came to their treatment of the Indigenous peoples here. And, no, they did not even land at that sacred shrine called Plymouth Rock, a monument to racism and oppression which we are proud to say we buried in 1995.

The first official “Day of Thanksgiving” was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor Winthrop. He did so to celebrate the safe return of men from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who had gone to Mystic, Conn., to participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot women, children and men.

About the only true thing in the whole mythology is that these pitiful European strangers would not have survived their first several years in “New England” were it not for the aid of Wampanoag people. What Native people got in return for this help was genocide, theft of our lands and never-ending repression. We are either treated as quaint relics from the past or are, to most people, virtually invisible.

When we dare to stand up for our rights, we are considered unreasonable. When we speak the truth about the history of the European invasion, we are often told to “go back where we came from.” Our roots are right here. They do not extend across any ocean.

National Day of Mourning began in 1970 when a Wampanoag man, Wamsutta Frank James, was asked to speak at a state dinner celebrating the 350th anniversary of the pilgrim landing. He refused to speak false words in praise of the white man for bringing civilization to us poor heathens. Native people from throughout the Americas came to Plymouth where they mourned their forebears who had been sold into slavery, burned alive, massacred, cheated and mistreated since the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620.

But the commemoration of National Day of Mourning goes far beyond the circumstances of 1970.

Can we give thanks as we remember Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier, who was framed up by the FBI and has been falsely imprisoned since 1976? Despite mountains of evidence exonerating Peltier and the proven misconduct of federal prosecutors and the FBI, Peltier has been denied a new trial.

To Native people, the case of Peltier is one more ordeal in a litany of wrongdoings committed by the U.S. government against us. While the media in New England present images of the “Pequot miracle” in Connecticut, the vast majority of Native people continue to live in the most abysmal poverty.

Can we give thanks for the fact that, on many reservations, unemployment rates surpass 50 percent? Our life expectancies are much lower, our infant mortality and teen suicide rates much higher than those of white Americans. Racist stereotypes of Native people, such as those perpetuated by the Cleveland Indians, the Atlanta Braves and countless local and national sports teams, persist. Every single one of the more than 350 treaties that Native nations signed has been broken by the U.S. government. The bipartisan budget cuts have severely reduced educational opportunities for Native youth and the development of new housing on reservations, and have caused cause deadly cutbacks in healthcare and other necessary services.

Are we to give thanks for being treated as unwelcome in our own country?

When the descendants of the Aztec, Maya and Inca flee to the U.S., the descendants of the wash-ashore pilgrims term them “illegal aliens” and hunt them down.

We object to the “Pilgrim Progress” parade and to what goes on in Plymouth because they are making millions of tourist dollars every year from the false pilgrim mythology. That money is being made off the backs of our slaughtered Indigenous ancestors.

Increasing numbers of people are seeking alternatives to such holidays as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. They are coming to the conclusion that if we are ever to achieve some sense of community, we must first face the truth about the history of this country and the toll that history has taken on the lives of millions of Indigenous, Black, Latin@, Asian, and poor and working-class white people.

The myth of Thanksgiving, served up with dollops of European superiority and manifest destiny, just does not work for many people in this country. As Malcolm X once said about the African-American experience in America, “We did not land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us.” Exactly.

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Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Protest AIPAC and Gaza Hunger in San Francisco, December 9th

Stop AIPAC!

Confronting the Lobby for

Militarism & Occupation

The election of a new President has excited many, yet we are well aware our work has just begun if we want a change in US policy in the Middle East. If we are to make meaningful change then we must make our presence known on the streets, we must educate others, we must continue to step up our dissent.
December 9th in San Francisco will be one such opportunity. See below.

While we are disappointed in many of the decisions President-elect Obama has already made (see Obama and AIPAC) , particularly in his appointments, we do hope that the enthusiasm that has created in this election  will now be continued to put pressure on the new administration and congress to change US policy. Change comes from a broad-based movement of the people, not the whims of political leaders.
Do keep in mind, more opportunities for action to defeat AIPAC’s agenda also mean the need for more funding, so don’t miss the appeal below.

Help spread the word. Forward this email. PLEASE use this Forward Option.

Hey, did you miss an issue of the newsletter? You can always go to our archives.

Protest AIPAC and Gaza Hunger in San Francisco Tuesday, December 9th- 5-7pm Join a diverse community of peace/human rights activists as we protest this “Inaugural” AIPAC membership dinner at the Hilton Tower. Boasting that the new venue holds 1,400 people, AIPAC will invite politicians from every level of government. We will be outside saying that AIPAC’s extremism does not represent the people of the Bay Area. The event will include a “Die-In” to protest the deadly siege of Gaza  at 6pm, becasue  we believe it reprehensible our political leaders Feast with a lobby for Sanctions that produces Hunger in Gaza.  Hilton Hotel near Union Square,  333 O’Farrell Street, San Francisco Map

END THE F.E.D. DEMONSTRATIONS IN 39 CITIES ACROSS AMERICA

END THE F.E.D. DEMONSTRATIONS ACROSS AMERICA, NOT REPORTED IN UK MEDIA, NOR BY REUTERS

the Federal Reserve System is not Federal;
it has no reserves;
and it is not a system at all,
but rather, a criminal syndicate.

From November, 1910,
when the conspirators met on Jekyll Island, Georgia,
to the present time,
the machinations of the Federal Reserve bankers
have been shrouded in secrecy.

Today, that secrecy has cost the American people a three trillion dollar debt,
with annual interest payments to these bankers
amounting to some three hundred billion dollars per year…

How to Make a Citizen’s Arrest of a War Criminal

Karzai says US, NATO created ‘parallel’ government

Karzai says US, NATO created ‘parallel’ government

By FISNIK ABRASHI – 3 hours ago

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — President Hamid Karzai criticized the U.S. and other foreign countries for creating a “parallel government” in the countryside during a blunt overview of Afghanistan’s problems before a U.N. Security Council delegation.

Karzai called Tuesday for the international community to set a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan and asked why — given the number of countries involved and the amount of money spent — the Taliban remains so powerful.

“This war has gone on for seven years, the Afghans don’t understand anymore, how come a little force like the Taliban can continue to exist, can continue to flourish, can continue to launch attacks,” he asked.

With an entire NATO force in Afghanistan and the entire international community behind them, “still we are not able to defeat the Taliban,” Karzai told the gathering at his presidential palace.

Karzai — facing re-election next year and making increasing overtures to conservative Afghan tribes most likely to vote for him — has been criticized for being ineffective and weak, while his government was accused of deep-seated corruption.

The president’s Tuesday comments appear to be a response to that criticism and lay the blame for the deteriorating security situation and other woes on the international community.

Foreign governments, the United States in particular, have been ramping up military and aid efforts in Afghanistan. The U.S. has some 32,000 troops in the country, but military leaders say up to 20,000 more could be sent to Afghanistan next year.

President-elect Barack Obama has said he will increase America’s focus on Afghanistan. Despite that, Karzai for the first time said a timeline for the end of the war needs to be set.

“If there is no deadline, we have the right to find another solution for peace and security, which is negotiations,” Karzai said.

International forces have set up a countryside system of joint military and civilian teams whose primary task is not combat but reconstruction and development. But Karzai said the presence of the so-called provincial reconstruction teams, or PRTs, has undermined provincial governments.

“The problem here is, in a diverting play, the presence of the international community has created a parallel government to those such as of the Afghan government that are functioning. The PRTs in certain parts of the country have become a parallel structure to the governor of the province,” he told the U.N. team.

Karzai did not elaborate on how the reconstruction teams had created parallel governments, but the significant amount of international aid attached to them would wield substantial influence in impoverished regions.

He also complained that private security companies “have become a parallel structure to the security forces of Afghanistan,” employing thousands of Afghans, most with criminal backgrounds, who are “equally as harassing to the Afghan population as Taliban and other terrorist outfits.”

An estimated 40,000 private security guards are employed in Afghanistan, a senior NATO official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the figure.

Security has deteriorated in Afghanistan since the presidential elections in 2004, because the international community lost focus and allowed the Taliban to regroup and create sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan, which were not addressed until last year, Karzai said.

“Rather than conducting the war against terrorism, and the sanctuaries, we began to conduct this war in the villages of Afghanistan where there were no terrorists,” Karzai said. He said bombings and operations in the villages must stop, a demand he has made repeatedly in the face of civilian deaths from U.S. and NATO bombings.

Despite billions of dollars in aid and major construction finished since the a U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban in 2001, Karzai said Afghan people have not seen security. He called for more investment to develop and quickly expand the army and police force.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said its troops killed 25 militants and detained 10 more in operations in the east and south of the country, which are centers of the Taliban-led insurgency.

On Wednesday, troops killed 15 militants and detained four others in a raid on a compound associated with a roadside bombing network in southern Kandahar province, the military said in a statement.

Another 10 militants were killed during raids in eastern Paktia and Paktika provinces on Tuesday, the statement said.

More than 5,500 people — mostly militants — have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year according to an Associated Press tally of figures provided by Afghan and Western officials.

Russian mayor killed near Georgia rebel region

Posted: 26 November 2008 1722 hrs

	Smoke floats over the site of an explosion at the Russian peacekeepers base in Tskhinvali

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia, : The mayor of the capital of Russia’s North Ossetia province was shot dead Wednesday, said officials in the region, which neighbours the Georgian separatist enclave of South Ossetia.

“The mayor has died,” a hospital source told AFP, after Vladikavkaz Mayor Vitaly Karayev was delivered to an emergency room following the incident.

“It happened around 9 a.m. (0600 GMT) in the courtyard of his home as he was going out. He received several bullet wounds as he stepped outside. Evidently it was a sniper,” a regional interior ministry source told AFP.

North Ossetian President Taimuraz Mamsurov confirmed that the mayor had been killed and said he was about to hold an emergency meeting of regional security officials to discuss the situation, the Interfax news agency reported.

North Ossetia shares a border and close ethnic ties to South Ossetia, the separatist Georgian region at the heart of August’s brief war between Russia and Georgia.

The region also has a history of attacks carried out by Chechen rebels, including the 2004 school hostage crisis in the North Ossetian town of Beslan, which led to the deaths of over 330 hostages, many of them children.

Russia: U.S. hit embassy car in Baghdad

[FOLLOWING ORDERS?]

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia is accusing U.S. troops of running a car carrying Russian diplomats off the road in Baghdad.

The Foreign Ministry tells ITAR-Tass and Interfax that three diplomats and some of their guards suffered bruises.

The ministry says a group of U.S. armored personnel carriers overtook a convoy of three Russian embassy cars headed to the airport, according to Interfax. The ministry says one APC deliberately swerved into the lead Russian car, trying to push it off the road, the agencies reported. It says the car was severely damaged and almost overturned.

The Foreign Ministry did not immediately comment.

Capt. Charles Calio, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad, says they are looking into the reports

Al Qaida, CIA Creation of Convenience

Fidel Castro On al Qaida, “Spawned By the Monster Itself”

Stella Calloni

Her book Operation Condor denounces a number of atrocious crimes recently committed by the United States against the Latin American peoples. It is a basic text to understand the true meaning of the Yankee imperialism. It is the most objective and detailed denunciation I’ve read to this day, written with great style and eloquence. She offers an impressive list of outstanding figures, both military and civilian, vilely murdered inside and outside their respective countries, including such prestigious personalities as the Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the Chilean Generals Schneider and Prats, presidents of other nations, and the conspiracy in Chile which led to the death of Salvador Allende and the establishment of a fascist government. There were U.S. Presidents directly involved, like Nixon, Reagan and Bush, sr. Stella is known in our country for that work.

But it was the paper presented by the Argentinean author to the International Conference “Revolution and Intervention in Latin America”, recently held in Caracas, that drew our attention to her again. She sent a copy of the paper to us in Cuba.

She refers to a silent invasion in many areas: disinformation as a weapon, the neocolonization of Latin America, the “backyard” as the “strategic reserve” of the empire, operative counterinsurgency, the “soft” blows, the informatics intoxication, the actions of leftist groups in coordination with the extreme right putschist sectors; the powerful enemy deliberately assaulting the soul of the peoples, their culture and identity; advanced colonialists and belated colonialisms.

The author reminds us of the brutal invasion of Panama on December 20, 1989, preceded by a disinformation campaign which in this case made roads into progressive and leftist sectors. She recalls the manipulation by the media of the reasons advanced by the United States to invade the small nation of little more than two million inhabitants, –a country divided by a colonial enclave sustained there by the hegemonic power since the first years of the past century– and to the still puzzling reaction of Latin America which paralyzed before that incredible and flimsy excuse. She says that it is ignored until today that thousands of people died there. “Panama was the Guernica of Latin America.”

Then she points out that the United Nations was a “paper presence in all those conflicts.”

Al-Qaeda, spawned by the monster itself, is the typical example of an enemy located by the hegemonic power where it needs it to justify its actions, the same way that throughout history it has produced enemies and attacks to favor its domination plans. The pretext of the National Security of the United States as a justification for its crimes preceded the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

Thus she goes on raising irrefutable arguments and proofs. Her paper presents a short summary in no more than 20 pages. She expresses sincere admiration for the revolutionary processes in Cuba and Venezuela and their courageous struggle in the vicinity of the neocolonial metropolis.

The meaning of that struggle can be understood just by recalling some words said by George W. Bush, a President with only 58 more days to complete his term as leader of the empire.

While the crisis is battering the world, he stated at the APEC summit in Lima that:

“Over the decades, the free market system has proved the most efficient way…

“The third great force for economic growth in this region is the limitless potential of free peoples […] any government that is honest with its people […] will have a partner in the United States of America.

“…our partners can be confident that the compassion agenda of the United States of America will continue.

“We shall continue to inspire the world.

“God bless you.”

Only an incurable cynic could make such statements. And while he said that in Lima, news kept coming in from the United States on the seriousness of the crisis and the rising unemployment. The car industry companies urgently asked for a share of the $700 billion allocated to tackle the most severe crisis in scores of years. It has been said that the bankruptcy of only one of the big enterprises in that sector would leave two and a half million workers unemployed. These are skyrocketing sums of money and of people affected in the country pretending to be a market beacon.

The elections in Venezuela today are complex due to the situation created by the rainfall, the number of polling stations, the high number of registered voters in each of these, the use of the media and the great amount of money used by the oligarchy and the imperialists to bewilder the voters. But the Bolivarian government acts with dignity as it cares about the damages caused by the excessive rains while fighting with the firmness and determination inspired by the just causes.

Whatever the results of the elections at the regional and local levels, it will not be easy to put out the flames of the Revolution.

We believe in the truths said by Calloni as much as we distrust the cynical lies said by Bush.

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 23, 2008
11:36 a.m.

Obama to retain Gates as defence secretary

Gulf News Archive

Gates took over the US Department of Defense from the combative Donald Rumsfeld in 2006

Agencies Published: November 26, 2008, 08:47

Washington: United States President-elect Barack Obama is likely to retain current Defence Secretary Robert Gates in his cabinet, media reports said on Wednesday. News website Politico said the Bush-appointed Gates had agreed to keep his position in the new Democratic cabinet. The report added that retired Marine General James Jones is likely to be named national security adviser. Politico also quoting Democratic and Republican officials as saying the announcements would be made early next week when Obama unveils a national security team including New York Senator Hillary Clinton as his nominee for secretary of state. Officials at Obama’s transition office declined to comment on the report. <!– document.write(‘<SCR’+’IPT src=”http://gulfnews.advertserve.com/servlet/view/banner/javascript/zone?zid=69&pid=0&random=’+Math.floor(89999999*Math.random()+10000000)+’&millis=’+new Date().getTime()+'” language=”JavaScript” type=”text/javascript”></SCR’+’IPT>’); //–> <font color=”#000000″ size=”2″ face=”Verdana”> <A href=”http://gulfnews.advertserve.com/servlet/click/zone?zid=69&amp;pid=0&amp;lookup=true&amp;position=1&#8243; target=”_top”> <IMG src=”http://gulfnews.advertserve.com/servlet/view/banner/image/zone?zid=69&amp;pid=0&amp;position=1&#8243; height=”250″ width=”250″ hspace=”0″ vspace=”0″ border=”0″ alt=”Click Here!”> </A> </font> News channels ABC and Fox also reported that Gates would stay on at the Pentagon, which had been widely suggested as a possibility for weeks. A former CIA director, Gates was president of Texas A&M University when President George W. Bush asked him to take over the US Department of Defense from the combative Donald Rumsfeld in 2006.

America’s Hidden War in Somalia

“Nobody Is Watching “

America’s Hidden War in Somalia

By Paul Salopek
Tribune correspondent

November 24, 2008 “Chicago Tribune” — – To glimpse America’s secret war in Africa, you must bang with a rock on the iron gate of the prison in this remote port in northern Somalia. A sleepy guard will yank open a rusty deadbolt. Then, you ask to speak to an inmate named Mohamed Ali Isse.

Isse, 36, is a convicted murderer and jihadist. He is known among his fellow prisoners, with grudging awe, as “The Man with the American Thing in His Leg.”

That “thing” is a stainless steel surgical pin screwed into his bullet-shattered femur, courtesy, he says, of the U.S. Navy. How it got there — or more to the point, how Isse ended up in this crumbling, stone-walled hellhole at the uttermost end of the Earth—is a story that the U.S. government probably would prefer to remain untold.

That’s because Isse and his fancy surgery scars offer what little tangible evidence exists of a bare-knuckled war that has been waged silently, over the past five years, with the sole aim of preventing anarchic Somalia from becoming the world’s next Afghanistan.

It is a standoff war in which the Pentagon lobs million-dollar cruise missiles into a famine-haunted African wasteland the size of Texas, hoping to kill lone terror suspects who might be dozing in candlelit huts. (The raids’ success or failure is almost impossible to verify.)

It is a covert war in which the CIA has recruited gangs of unsavory warlords to hunt down and kidnap Islamic militants and—according to Isse and civil rights activists—secretly imprison them offshore, aboard U.S. warships.

Mostly, though, it is a policy time bomb that will be inherited by the incoming Obama administration: a little-known front in the global war on terrorism that Washington appears to be losing, if it hasn’t already been lost.

“Somalia is one of the great unrecognized U.S. policy failures since 9/11,” said Ken Menkhaus, a leading Somalia scholar at Davidson College in North Carolina. “By any rational metric, what we’ve ended up with there today is the opposite of what we wanted.”

What the Bush administration wanted, when it tacitly backed Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in late 2006, was clear enough: to help a close African ally in the war on terror crush the Islamic Courts Union, or ICU. The Taliban-like movement emerged from the ashes of more than 15 years of anarchy and lawlessness in Africa’s most infamous failed state, Somalia.

At first, the invasion seemed an easy victory. By early 2007, the ICU had been routed, a pro-Western transitional government installed, and hundreds of Islamic militants in Somalia either captured or killed.

But over the last 18 months, Somalia’s Islamists—now more radical than ever—have regrouped and roared back.

On a single day last month, they flexed their muscles by killing nearly 30 people in a spate of bloody car-bomb attacks that recalled the darkest days of Iraq. And their brutal militia, the Shabab or “Youth,” today controls much of the destitute nation, a shattered but strategic country that overlooks the vital oil-shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden.

Even worse, in recent days Shabab’s fighters have moved to within miles of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, threatening to topple the weak interim government supported by the U.S. and Ethiopia.

At the same time, according to the UN, the explosion of violence is inflaming what probably is the worst humanitarian tragedy in the world.

In the midst of a killing drought, more than 700,000 city dwellers have been driven out of bullet-scarred Mogadishu by the recent clashes between the Islamist rebels and the interim government.

The U.S. role in Somalia’s current agonies has not always been clear. But back in the Berbera prison, Isse, who is both a villain and a victim in this immense panorama of suffering, offered a keyhole view that extended all the way back to Washington.

Wrapped in a faded sarong, scowling in the blistering-hot prison yard, the jihadist at first refused to meet foreign visitors—a loathed American in particular. But after some cajoling, he agreed to tell his story through a fellow inmate: a surreal but credible tale of illicit abduction by the CIA, secret helicopter rides and a journey through an African gulag that lifts the curtain, albeit only briefly, on an American invisible war.

“Your government gets away with a lot here,” said the warden, Hassan Mohamed Ibrahim, striding about his antique facility with a pistol tucked in the back of his pants. “In Iraq, the world is watching. In Afghanistan, the world is watching. In Somalia, nobody is watching.”

From ashes of ‘Black Hawk Down’

In truth, merely watching in Mogadishu these days is apt to get you killed.

Somalia’s hapless capital has long been considered the Dodge City of Africa—a seaside metropolis sundered by clan fighting ever since the nation’s central government collapsed in 1991. That feral reputation was cemented in 1993, when chanting mobs dragged the bodies of U.S. Army Rangers through the streets in a disastrous UN peacekeeping mission chronicled in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.”

Yet if Mogadishu was once merely a perilous destination for outsiders, visiting today is suicidal.

For the first time in local memory, the airport—the city’s frail lifeline to the world—is regularly closed by insurgent mortar attacks despite a small and jittery contingent of African Union peacekeepers.

Foreign workers who once toiled quietly for years in Somalia have been evacuated. A U.S. missile strike in May killed the Shabab commander, Aden Hashi Ayro, enraging Islamist militants who have since vowed to kidnap and kill any outsider found in the country.

The upshot: Most of Somalia today is closed to the world.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way when Washington provided intelligence to the invading Ethiopians two years ago.

The homegrown Islamic radicals who controlled most of central and southern Somalia in mid-2006 certainly were no angels. They shuttered Mogadishu’s cinemas, demanded that Somali men grow beards and, according to the U.S. State Department, provided refuge to some 30 local and international jihadists associated with Al Qaeda.

But the Islamic Courts Union’s turbaned militiamen had actually defeated Somalia’s hated warlords. And their enforcement of Islamic religious laws, while unpopular among many Somalis, made Mogadishu safe to walk in for the first time in a generation.

“It’s not just that people miss those days,” said a Somali humanitarian worker who, for safety reasons, asked to be identified only as Hassan. “They resent the Ethiopians and Americans tearing it all up, using Somalia as their battlefield against global terrorism. It’s like the Cold War all over again. Somalis aren’t in control.”

When the Islamic movement again strengthened, Isse, the terrorist jailed in Berbera, was a pharmacy owner from the isolated town of Buro in Somaliland, a parched northern enclave that declared independence from Somalia in the early 1990s.

Radicalized by U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is serving a life sentence for organizing the killings of four foreign aid workers in late 2003 and early 2004. Two of his victims were elderly British teachers.

A dour, bearded man with bullet scars puckering his neck and leg, Isse still maintains his innocence. Much of Isse’s account of his capture and imprisonment was independently corroborated by Western intelligence analysts, Somali security officials and court records in Somaliland, where the wounded jihadist was tried and jailed for murdering the aid workers. Those sources say Isse was snatched by the U.S. after fleeing to the safe house of a notorious Islamist militant in Mogadishu.

How that operation unfolded on a hot June night in 2004 reveals the extent of American clandestine involvement in Somalia’s chaotic affairs—and how such anti-terrorism efforts appear to have backfired.

Interrogation aboard ship

“I captured Isse for the Americans,” said Mohamed Afrah Qanyare. “The Americans contracted us to do certain things, and we did them. Isse put up resistance so we shot him. But he survived.”

A scar-faced warlord in a business suit, Qanyare is a member of Somalia’s weak transitional government. Today he divides his days between lawless Mogadishu and luxury hotels in Nairobi.

But four years ago, his militia helped form the kernel of a CIA-created mercenary force called the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism in Somalia. The unit cobbled together some of the world’s most violent, wily and unreliable clan militias—including gangs that had attacked U.S. forces in the early 1990s—to confront a rising tide of Islamic militancy in Somalia’s anarchic capital.

The Somalis on the CIA payroll engaged in a grim tit-for-tat exchange of kidnappings and assassinations with extremists. And Isse was one of their catches.

He was wounded in a CIA-ordered raid on his Mogadishu safe house in June 2004, according to Qanyare and Matt Bryden, one of the world’s leading scholars of the Somali insurgency who has access to intelligence regarding it. They say Isse was then loaded aboard a U.S. military helicopter summoned by satellite phone and was flown, bleeding, to an offshore U.S. vessel.

“He saw white people in uniforms working on his body,” said Isse’s Somali defense lawyer, Bashir Hussein Abdi, describing how Isse was rushed into a ship-board operating room. “He felt the ship moving. He thought he was dreaming.”

Navy doctors spliced a steel rod into Isse’s bullet-shattered leg, according to Abdi. Every day for about a month afterward, Isse’s court depositions assert, plainclothes U.S. agents grilled the bedridden Somali at sea about Al Qaeda’s presence.

The CIA never has publicly acknowledged its operations in Somalia. Agency spokesman George Little declined to comment on Isse’s case.

For years, human-rights organizations attempted to expose the rumored detention and interrogation of terror suspects aboard U.S. warships to avoid media and legal scrutiny. In June, the British civil rights group Reprieve contended that as many as 17 U.S. warships may have doubled as “floating prisons” since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Calling such claims “misleading,” the Pentagon has insisted that U.S. ships have served only as transit stops for terror suspects being shuttled to permanent detention camps such as the one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But Tribune reporting on Isse indicates strongly that a U.S. warship was used for interrogation at least once off the lawless coast of Somalia.

The U.S. Navy conceded Isse had stayed aboard one of its vessels. In a terse statement, Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet that patrols the Gulf of Aden, said only that the Navy was “not able to confirm dates” of Isse’s imprisonment.

For reasons that remain unclear, he was later flown to Camp Lemonier, a U.S. military base in the African state of Djibouti, Somali intelligence sources say, and from there to a clandestine prison in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Isse and his lawyer allege he was detained there for six weeks and tortured by Ethiopian military intelligence with electric shocks.

Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and office of prime minister did not respond to queries about Isse’s allegations.

However, security officials in neighboring Somaliland did confirm that they collected Isse from the Ethiopian police at a dusty border crossing in late 2004. “The Man with the American Thing in His Leg” was interrogated again. After a local trial, he was locked in the ancient Berbera prison.

“It doesn’t matter if he is guilty or innocent,” said Abdi, the defense lawyer. “Countries like Ethiopia and America use terrorism to justify this treatment. This is not justice. It is a crime in itself.”

Tales of CIA “snatch and grab” operations against terror suspects abroad aren’t new, of course. President George W. Bush finally confirmed two years ago the existence of an international program that “renditioned” terrorism suspects to a network of “black site” prisons in Eastern Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan.

As for the CIA’s anti-terror mercenaries in Mogadishu, they may have kidnapped a dozen or more wanted Islamists for the Americans, intelligence experts say. But their excesses ended up swelling the ranks of their enemy, the Islamic Courts Union militias.

“It was a stupid idea,” said Bryden, the security analyst who has written extensively on Somalia’s Islamist insurgency. “It actually strengthened the hand of the Islamists and helped trigger the crisis we’re in today.”

In the sweltering Berbera prison, Exhibit A in Washington’s phantom war in Somalia had finished his afternoon prayers. He clapped his sandals together, then limped off to his cell without a word.

A sinking nation

The future of Somalia and its 8 million people is totally unscripted. This unbearable lack of certainty, of a way forward, accommodates little hope.

Ethiopian and U.S. actions have eroded Somalis’ hidebound allegiance to their clans, once a firewall against Al Qaeda’s global ideology, says Bryden. Somalia’s 2 million-strong diaspora is of greatest concern. Angry young men, foreign passports in hand, could be lured back to the reopened Shabab training camps, where instructors occasionally use photocopied portraits of Bush as rifle targets.

Some envision no Somalia at all.

With about $8 billion in humanitarian aid fire-hosed into the smoking ruins of Somalia since the early 1990s—the U.S. will donate roughly $200 million this year alone—a growing chorus of policymakers is advocating that the failed state be allowed to fail, to break up into autonomous zones or fiefdoms, such as Isse’s home of Somaliland.

But there is another possible future for Somalia. To see it, you must go to Bosaso, a port 300 miles east of Isse’s cell.

Bosaso is an escape hatch from Somalia. Thousands of people swarm through the town’s scruffy waterfront every year, seeking passage across the Gulf of Aden to the Middle East. Dressed in rags, they sleep by the hundreds in dirt alleys and empty lots. Stranded women and girls are forced into prostitution.

“You can see why we still need America’s help,” said Abdinur Jama, the coast guard commander for Puntland, the semiautonomous state encompassing Bosaso. “We need training and equipment to stop this.”

Dapper in camouflage and a Yankees cap, Jama was a rarity in Somalia, an optimist. While Bosaso’s teenagers shook their fists at high-flying U.S. jets on routine patrols—”Go to hell!” they chanted—Jama still spoke well of international engagement in Somalia.

On a morning when he offered to take visitors on a coast patrol, it did not seem kind to tell him what a U.S. military think tank at West Point had concluded about Somalia last year: that, in some respects, failed states were admirable places to combat Al Qaeda, because the absence of local sovereignty permitted “relatively unrestricted Western counterterrorism efforts.”

After all, Jama’s decrepit patrol boat was sinking.

A crew member scrambled to stanch a yard-high geyser of seawater that spurted through the cracked hull. Jama screwed his cap on tighter and peered professionally at land that, despite Washington’s best-laid plans, has turned far more desperate than Afghanistan.

“Can you swim?” Jama asked. But it hardly seemed to matter. Back on dry land, in Somalia, an entire country was drowning.

psalopek@tribune.comCopyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds

By Yvonne Ridley

WHEN the HG Wells classic War of the Worlds was turned into a movie for the silver screen in 1953 the West was in the grip of the Cold War.

The film adaptation of the alien invasion was designed to send out a subliminal warning message to those who viewed communism as something exotic which jointly aroused curiosity and excitement.

As both the novel and film plots develop it becomes clear the Martians aren’t looking for friends and allies, they simply want to take over the planet, destroying great city after city, crushing civilisations underfoot.

Substitute Martians for Russians and what the cinema viewing public got in 1953 was a lecture from Hollywood reflecting the US government’s hysterical Cold War attitudes.

So why am I raking over events of the past? Well my recent trip to Afghanistan triggered this trip down Memory Lane when I found a dog-eared copy of the HG Wells novel in my bedside cabinet.

But it wasn’t the thought of new Russian threat, or even the spectre of the old Red Peril which occupied my mind; it was the all pervading presence of the US military.

From the heavily-armed, loud-mouthed US grunt who I witnessed swearing and shouting at bewildered Afghans as they entered their own country at Torkham, to the remedial and intransigent mouth piece for the dark US military site of Bagram, scene of at least two murders and countless tortures, it was clear to me that Afghanistan is in the grip of aliens.

The Americans, it seems, are about as welcome as the parasitic terminators in War of the Worlds.

Long gone is the heady rush excitement experienced by Afghans after the fall of the Taliban when Bush and Blair ushered in their troops with promises to liberate and educate.

Far from re-building Afghanistan the military forces, especially the Americans, are now viewed with a deep hatred and revulsion.

And how have I reached this conclusion? Well not by talking to politicians camped inside Kabul although even Afghan leader Hamid Karzai is more vocal in his criticism these days about the US presence in his country.

I simply went out and spoke to ordinary people … Pashtun, Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks, both men and women and the youth, especially the youth.

Unlike most journalists who embed with the military, (and this is no criticism of my colleagues who are often dictated to my insurance companies and security firms) I actually travelled around Afghanistan unescorted venturing into some of the most dangerous, volatile spots to sit down and engage with ordinary people.

I even got caught up in the middle of a firefight between Afghan police and Taliban fighters on the road to Ghazni – narrowly escaping a hail of bullets (the film-maker I was with, captured the whole terrifying episode so you can make your own judgment about my ordeal when our documentary is broadcast on Press TV in 2009).
We managed to move around Afghanistan, largely undetected by those who would do us harm, by avoiding driving in convoy with a crew of armed guards and four-wheel-drive vehicles. In fact our bright yellow saloon with boy racer modifications and go-faster flame red stripes attracted little attention.

But, with the exception of less than a handful of people, I can tell you with great authority that the Afghan people detest the presence of the Americans in their country – and for a whole raft of different reasons.

The first is their arrogance and refusal to even try and embrace or understand the codes, cultures and expected behaviour of those living in Afghanistan. Like any guest, you try and keep to the house rules of your host and this is something the Americans have failed to do. In truth, they haven’t even made an effort.

Several Afghans I spoke to (all Tajiks) showed me evidence of their damaged cars and told how US convoys will simply plough through traffic jams to create their own fast lanes, bumper bars crushing and shunting to the side any vehicles trapped in their path.

When they take to the open road, the drive so slowly as to cause huge jams in their wake, but if you attempt to overtake their convoys you will be shot at. They do exactly the same in Iraq.

At one point we were kept to 20 mph on an open stretch of road on the outskirts of Kabul where we could have expected a clear run.

A local traffic cop told me he was so sick of these actions but it seems that the American military, and those tagging on in their wake – the ubiquitous Blackwater and other private security firms – are impervious to the wanton destruction and hatred they cause.

“They are above the law and I am powerless,” he told me.

A young man from Kandahar revealed how anyone who publicly criticises the Americans is likely to get a ‘visit’ from the US military.

He says he was jumped on, knocked out with a liquid cosh – a hypodermic in his shoulder – and woke up in a cell to loud rock music. He was released 18 hours later with various threats ringing in his ear about “adjusting his attitude”.

The American bully boys also seem happy to settle old scores between warring communities, rival families and warlords by calling in US Airstrikes … and on the subject of airstrikes just how many innocent men, women and children have been massacred in the indiscriminate actions of the cowardly Top Guns who never have to account for the slaughter of the innocents?

And then there are the prisons, secret and otherwise, in the control of the US. One day I sat down with a government official from the Peace and Reconciliation movement set up by Hamid Karzai to try a nd heal old wounds … how do you pacify a family when their 86-year-old relative has been carted away, shaved, shackled and abused before being released may be a year later?

I sat and looked through all the mugshots he showed me of the ex-Bagram detainees. Young boys who should be in school, grandfathers and great grandfathers with long, white, flowing beards. How can the Americans just arrest these people and keep them in dark sites for months and years on end without explanation or justification?

And then I had my intelligence insulted by the Bagram media people who are either simple or without morals or really have no idea what is happening in their own backyard. Even though, armed with proof including names and prison reference numbers and personal details, I was told categorically: “There are no women or children in Bagram”.

And then there are the Afghan women, those amazingly strong, resillient females who have been horribly betrayed by George W Bush and Tony Blair who continue to justify the invasion of Afghanistan “to liberate the women”.

I can tell you, with the exception of a few, there are no career women emerging from the rubble in Kabul or elsewhere in Afghanistan.

One told me: “I hated the Taliban. They killed two of my uncles. The Americans have now murdered 16 of my cousins, now ask me who I hate more. I wish the Taliban were back.”

That is not something you expect a woman from the Shamali Plains to say.

And of course, I will never forget Sawara Khan from Bermil who lives just three miles away from a US base near the Pakistan border at Shkin in Paktika whose entire family of nine children from a babe in arms to her teenage daughter were slaughtered in their sleep by a rogue missile strike.

“We did a wrong and we mis-targeted,” a media spokesman told me at the time – of course now they don’t even say sorry and come out with lukewarm promises of investigations.

I visited Kabul University – where in February 2002 more girls than boys passed the entrance exam; strange when you consider the Bush-Blair propaganda that the Taliban did not allow girls to be educated – to deliver a lecture.

When I was asked more closely about my views of the American occupation (their words not mine) I was a little hesitant not wanting to stir up a hornet’s nest, but I spoke truthfully saying it was clear to me the US and the Brits had over-stayed their welcome.

There was not one voice of dissent but instead I was greeted with universal agreement. I admit I was taken aback.

These are the people Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister should be talking to and engaging before he talks about sending in more troops to Afghanistan. These youth represent the future of Afghanistan and at the moment very few see a bright future for their country until the US leaves.

And by the way, Mr Brown should really take note of this – few in Afghanistan can differentiate between the Brits and the Americans which I know is a constant frustration for the British military.

Now you won’t read this sort of report in mainstream media for several different reasons. Firstly, as I said before most journalists when visiting Afghanistan go embedded and therefore only see what the military wants them to see.

And trust me, having tried to engage with the media machine in Afghanistan and experienced at first hand their long distance relationship with the truth, they know even less than their Pentagon briefers in Washington.

Secondly most mainstream media do not want to incur the wrath of the Bush Administration or the faceless mandarins in Whitehall and Downing Street who are trying to bully editors to put a gloss or spin on Afghanistan.

Thirdly, some elements of the media pay vast sums of money to security firms as part of an insurance requirement. These secu rity officers usually go for the safest option of telling journalists not to venture outside of Kabul.

Finally, it really isn’t safe to travel around Afghanistan. While I was in the region two Brits were killed – a charity worker and security guard while several other westerners had been kidnapped and later released by criminal gangs.

And when I said I spoke to all sorts of Afghans I suppose you could also say I did speak with some members of the Taliban who are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of more US and British soldiers pouring into their country.

“It makes for a bigger target,” I was told.

It also might be worth considering, that because of misplaced arrogance, military incompetence and adopting a position which puts them all beyond the reach of the law, the US military has now become the Taliban’s finest recruiting officers.

I’m not sure how anyone is going to get the message through that the American military are now the chief problem in Afghanistan and no longer the solution.

But it might be worth sending Barack Obama’s Afghanistan adviser a copy of the HG Wells classic to read before he gets the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And write a simple message on the inside cover: “Substitute Americans for Martians.”

Pakistan in the worst ever hands

Eric margolis writes: “India is now making her maritime strength felt right to the mouth of the Red Sea, in the oil exporting Gulf, along Africa’s east coast, and all the way south to Fiji and Australian waters. In the event of war with Pakistan, India’s navy could blockade its coast and cut off all imports of oil, quickly bringing Pakistan to its knees.”

Pakistan is already on its knees. Don’t we see the daily butchery of its people and troops by the invading drones, bombing raids and artillery barrage? And don’t we hear the prime minister and the Pakistani ambassador, representing Zionist interests, saying we cannot go to the UN to even complain about the illegal raids and violation of its territorial sovereignty? What else being on its knees mean when Pakistan is dangling its nuclear bombs under its belt, has a standing army of 550,000, at least, has a defence spending of $3.3 billion, or 4.2 percent of GDP, and is getting kicked from right to left by the occupation forces from Afghanistan.

The prime minister days, “we’ll chalk out a strategy” to defend attacks on Pakistan. What does “we will” mean? When will we see this “will”? When will it be able to defend itself? Issuing a few al-Qaeda and Taliban related names after every attack is a good face saving formula but it raises many questions which no one is willing to address.

If the Pakistani intelligence is so accurate that they can pin point terrorists in a “compound,” why do they waste time in sharing the information with the occupation forces and inviting them to violate international law and Pakistan’s sovereignty and come all the way from Afghanistan to attack Pakistan? Why not act on their own?

First of all, releasing names of terrorists after every attack is part of the lies and deceptions. If these are not lies, the next question is, how come intelligence of all the allies in terror together can pin point low-level operatives, but not the high-value targets Osama and Zawahiri? Because they are not there at all, or the warlords want them to stay alive and at large so that the war of terror could go on to take out the real high value target: Pakistan?

PIRATES OF SOMALIA

— November 24, 2008

`Pirates of the Caribbean’ and cute little Johnny Depp they are not. Somalia’s pirates tote AK-47’s and RPG rockets, chew the narcotic shrub qat, use satellite cell phones for their negotiations, and are just about the only people in strife-ravaged Somalia these days who have a regular job.

The Strait of Malacca between Singapore and Indonesia used to be the world’s leading haunt of pirates, the 20th Century’s version of the fabled Spanish Main. No more. Now it’s the waters off the Horn of Africa and the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.

This year alone, brazen Somali pirates have attacked 95 vessels.
The corsairs still hold 16 ships and up to 300 sailors. Among them, a Ukrainian freighter loaded with T-72 tanks whose ultimate destination remains a mystery, and now a Saudi supertanker laden with 2 million barrels of oil valued at US $110 million. The pirates demand $25 million ransom for the vessel and Filipino crew.

Somalia’s pirates have shown an amazing ability to board underway vessels in the dark, which is like trying to climb a wet, oily six story building moving at 25 km per hour with ropes and ladders. The poorly paid, mainly Asian crews of the attacked vessels quickly surrender.

Western powers have increased naval patrols off the Horn of Africa. Russia is also sending warships to the region. The US is sending more warships. Not since the two Barbary Wars of 1801-1805, and 1815, in which the fledgling US Navy and Marine Corps covered themselves with glory fighting North African pirate states, has America been so involved in counter-piracy action.

The current piracy epidemic underlines the urgent need to bring stability to war-torn Somalia, where millions face famine and epidemics. Somalia has been in anarchy since 1991 when its former dictator, Gen. Siad Barre, was overthrown. Since then, the nation has splintered into semi-independent regions fought over by warring clans, sub clans and militias.

In 2006, a stable, popular government was finally established in southern Somalia, a moderate Islamist movement known as the Islamic Courts Union. It was quickly marked for death by the Islamophobic Bush administration which claimed, quite falsely, that the Courts Union was in league with al-Qaida.

Under cover of the Christmas holiday in December, 2006, the US and its regional ally Ethiopia invaded Somalia and overthrew its government. A new puppet government, supported by Ethiopian troops, claimed to run the country. National resistance against the US-Ethiopian invasion began immediately and continues to this day. Meanwhile, millions of Somalis were left to starve.

According to the UN, disease and famine in Somalia are now worse than in Darfur. Yet the world has turned its back on suffering Somalia. Unlike Darfur, which became a `cause célèbre’ for America’s Christian far right, no one cares about Somalia – or at least no one did until Somalia pirates began preying on international commerce.

One of the more interesting aspects of the Somalia pirate drama involves India. In a dramatic move, an Indian frigate, INS `Tabar,’ stole the limelight by sinking a Somali pirate mother ship off the coast of Oman. `Tabar’ had previously driven off other Somali buccaneers.

I first saw `Tabar,’ a Soviet/Russian Krivak-III missile frigate, under construction at St. Petersberg’s Baltisiskya Zavod yards. This beautiful, elegant warship carries the new Russian/Indian `BrahMos,’ the world’s deadliest supersonic anti-ship missile, and the Israeli `Barak’ missile system. `BrahMos’ was designed to sink aircraft carriers. The only navy that operates carriers in the Indian Ocean besides India is the United States.

`Tabar’ was on station in the Gulf of Aden escorting Indian merchantmen and ships of other nation. Her presence is the latest sign of India’s growing maritime power, a subject about which I have been writing for two decades. India is now making her maritime strength felt right to the mouth of the Red Sea, in the oil exporting Gulf, along Africa’s east coast, and all the way south to Fiji and Australian waters. In the event of war with Pakistan, India’s navy could blockade its coast and cut off all imports of oil, quickly bringing Pakistan to its knees.

Many Indian strategists regard the vast Indian Ocean as their nation’s `mare nostrum,’ or exclusive sphere of influence. India’s steady naval expansion is designed to protect its commerce and long coasts, and exert Delhi’s growing influence around the oil-rich Gulf and South Asia. India’s navy is also keeping a weather eye on the evolution of China’s fleet from a coastal defense force into a true blue water navy. Just last week, a senior Chinese official caused a stir in Washington by hinting his nation was planning to build its first aircraft carrier ( the US has eleven).

India’s fleet includes an aircraft carrier; a refitting ex-Soviet carrier on order, the `Admiral Gorshakov;’ at least 16 modern submarines, plus a series of nuclear-powered ones being built; 48 surface warships; a powerful naval air arm, and advanced reconnaissance satellites. The `Akula attack sub in which a score of Russian sailors and technicians recently died after fire-extinguishing Freon gas was accidentally released, is believed to be destined for the Indian Navy.

India’s growing naval might will soon challenge the Indian Ocean’s premier naval power, the United States, which regards the Gulf oil routes and Arabian Sea as its own pond. India’s acquisition of Russian `Akula’ class nuclear-powered subs that do 40 knots submerged; the deadly BrahMos missiles; and the Russian heavy, TU-160 long-ranged bomber have the US Navy warily watching.

In another important event barely noticed in the West, on 14 November, an Indian space probe hit the moon. If India can deliver a probe to the moon, the same launchers and guidance systems can deliver nuclear warheads to North America, Europe or Australia. India is testing a new 5,500 km medium ranged ballistic missile, `Surya,’ which is expected to be upgraded into a true inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) carrying nuclear warheads with double the range. India is also deploying a submarine-launched, nuclear armed ballistic missile.

India’s rapid development of strategic weapons systems and nuclear warheads has been greatly accelerated and aided by the new US-Indian nuclear accords, US high speed computer technology, and nuclear weapons technology from Israel, India’s second largest arms supplier.

India is also emplacing new Agni-II intermediate missiles along the tense Tibet border, in response, says, Delhi to more than 100 Chinese nuclear-armed missiles on the Tibetan plateau targeted at India

The lesson to be drawn from all this is that India must be a force to be reckoned with in the Indian Ocean and Gulf as it advances its own oil, trade and political interests which will may one day come to compete with those of the other two regional superpowers, the United States and China.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2008

How Zionist Pirates Hijacked America

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How Zionist Pirates Hijacked America

By Christopher Bollyn

I watched the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, to see what realities of modern foreign intelligence operations would be exposed to the world. I didn’t have to wait long. After the opening car chase along Italy’s Lake Como, Bond arrives in Siena with Mr. White in the trunk of his car. “M”, Bond’s MI6 chief, interrogates Bond’s captive beneath Siena’s Piazza del Campo, as the traditional horse race known as il Palio is being run. White mocks British intelligence bragging that his organization has operatives infiltrated everywhere while MI6 doesn’t even know it exists. At that point, one of his infiltrators, a senior MI6 agent, shoots the guards allowing White to escape.

Later, “M” asks how British intelligence can fight an organization they don’t even know about. The unknown organization, known as Quantum, turns out to be exploiting “climate change” threats to acquire monopoly control over natural resources, such as the water of Bolivia. Quantum controls governments from the left and the right and is able to arrange a coup d’état in a matter of weeks.

Quantum’s villian Dominic Greene is played by Mathieu Almaric.

Quantum’s chief villain is played by the French actor Mathieu Amalric, whose mother is a Polish-born Jew. During production, Almaric said that he had modeled his character on Britain’s Tony Blair and the French president Nicolas Sarkozy: “I’ve been taking details, the smile of Tony Blair, the craziness of Sarkozy. He’s the worst villain we’ve ever had. He’s really dangerous. In fact he walks around thinking he’s in a Bond film.”

“He’s the worst villain we’ve ever had.”
Take your pick: Nicolas Sarkozy and Tony Blair

Almaric’s comments are a refreshing example of free speech. If an American actor were to express such thoughts about George W. Bush and the “War on Terror” he would probably find himself blacklisted and out of work. We saw how the Dixie Chicks were punished, in “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” for meekly protesting the illegal aggression against Iraq by saying they were “ashamed” that Bush was from their home state of Texas.

It should be remembered that the previous French administration, whose foreign minister is now being dragged into court by Sarkozy, was the only government who supported the principles of international law and reminded the world that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was illegal, something that does not change with the passage of time. Win or lose, a war of aggression remains a war of aggression.

M’s predicament and Almaric’s comments articulate the political reality we are living in. We live in criminal times in which our governments, whether in France, Britain, the United States, or elsewhere, are controlled by a foreign intelligence organization that most of us are completely unaware of. This reality hit home when I was attacked by a squad of undercover tactical police at my house outside Chicago in August 2006. Despite the fact that three heavily-armed men wearing body armor, lacking uniforms or badges, assaulted me and TASERed me while I was pinned down in handcuffs, I was prosecuted for assaulting them and resisting arrest by allegedly doing three push-ups with two men on my back! Had I stayed in Chicago I would have probably been sent to the notorious Cook County Jail for a year, where I might have been “suicided” by the Zionists that run Chicago.

In my case, the chief prosecutor, the judge, and the court clerk were all Zionist Jews. I felt like a Palestinian in an Israeli military tribunal. It was clear from the beginning that I was being prosecuted because of my journalism. Betrayed by lawyers who play by the rules of the corrupt system they are part of, I discovered that the police had conspired to attack me, a serious federal offense. I even obtained evidence showing that the undercover tactical unit, supposedly responding to my 9-11 call to identify themselves, had planned to use violence against me.

My articles about electronic vote fraud in Chicago and Israeli connections to 9-11 had made me a special target in my home town, Zionist-controlled Chicago. The powers in Chicago that targeted and prosecuted me will soon be the rulers of the United States when Barack Obama becomes president.

Today, the United States government is like the Sirius Star, a huge ship that has been hijacked by a small band of Somali pirates. Like the Sirius Star, effective control of the U.S. and our foreign policy is in the hands of a dedicated band of Zionist and Israeli pirates who have hijacked the American ship of state to suit their agenda.

The difference is that the passengers and crew of U.S.S. America don’t even realize that the ship has been taken over by a gang of pirates. They might notice that the ship seems to be on a precarious and illogical course but they assume, and are assured that it is still under the control of their chosen leaders. The controlled mass media is like the public address system on the ship assuring the passengers that all is well — as the vessel is sinking.

9-11 & THE WAR ON TERROR

As I have written about for 7 years, the evidence indicates that the false-flag terror attack of 9-11 was the long-planned opening gambit designed to draw the United States into the Zionist grand strategy known as the “War on Terror,” in which U.S. forces are deployed to wage war against the foes of Israel. The Zionist strategic plan was to have the U.S. military provide for Israel’s defense. This meant that the American people and government had to be turned against the countries of the Middle East that resist Israeli occupation and hegemony.

The bizarre idea that the United States should wage a “war against terror” was first articulated in the 1980s by Benjamin Netanyahu, the American-educated son of the former executive secretary of the Irgun terrorist organization, in his books and articles. Netanyahu, the current head of Israel’s extreme right-wing Likud party, may become the next Israeli prime minister. If Netanyahu is elected, both the United States and Israel will be ruled by the sons of Zionist terrorists.

As the United States invaded Iraq in October 2003, Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad told the leaders of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference: “Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.”

State Department spokesman at the time, Joseph Adam Ereli called Mahatir’s remarks offensive and inflammatory. “We view them with the contempt and derision they deserve,” he said. Ereli is an Israeli whose father, Eliezer, served in the Hagana, the Zionist terrorist organization that was behind the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 and other atrocities.

With the lives of millions of Iraqis destroyed, with hundreds of thousands of Americans killed or maimed and untold billions of dollars wasted, the Obama White House will be the third administration to manage the fraudulent “War on Terror” since it began in 2001. Obama is clearly reading from the Zionist script when he calls for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan; the wars must go on.

9-11 was evidently planned at least two decades in advance, as the comments made by former Israeli intelligence chief Isser Harel in 1980 clearly indicate. In order for the Zionists to achieve the desired results from their spectacular false-flag terror attack it was necessary to have dedicated Israeli agents in key positions within the U.S. government before 9-11. I have exposed several high-level U.S. officials involved in the “War on Terror” who are actually Israeli nationals. These officials are the sons of Russian Jewish Zionists from the Hagana or Irgun terrorist organizations of the 1940s who were placed in key positions of power in the 1990s.

It is not a coincidence that the key U.S. officials controlling the 9-11 investigation or the subsequent wars are Israeli nationals whose fathers or mothers were Zionist terrorists or Mossad agents. It needs to be understood that these individuals were raised and trained to serve Israel as Zionist agents within the U.S. government. Israeli military intelligence is the real-life Quantum, the secret organization that has infiltrated the U.S. government, that has agents everywhere and controls both sides of the aisle, governments from the right and the left, and the mass media.

Fidel Castro, a Sephardic Jew, is the minder behind Hugo Chavez.
Rafi Eitan, the Israeli cabinet member and spymaster who ran the Jewish spy Jonathan Pollard, is Castro’s business partner and the largest land-owner (of stolen land) in Cuba. So who is really behind Chavez and Castro?

Michael Chertoff, Rahm Emanuel, and Dan Senor, are three Israeli nationals who I have written about who fit this profile. They have all played crucial roles in the past two decades to advance the Zionist agenda.

Michael Chertoff, an Israeli national and the son of a Mossad agent, played the most important role in creating the “War on Terror” by destroying the evidence of Israeli involvement in 9-11. As Asst. Attorney General in charge of the criminal division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice in 2001, Chertoff oversaw the non-investigation and egregious criminal destruction of evidence by having the steel from the World Trade Center sent to Asia to be recycled without a proper examination. Previously, as U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, Chertoff managed the prosecution of “the blind sheikh” and other government-run “terrorists” from the first bombing of the WTC. Chertoff remains in his control position as head of the Dept. of Homeland Security. He even has control over all information given to the lawyers for the victims of 9-11.

Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli and son of an Irgun terrorist, is the power behind Barack Obama. Emanuel was behind the financing of the campaigns of Bill Clinton and Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago. Emanuel, “thug-in-chief” of the Democratic party has dominated the party’s agenda in Congress. Small wonder there has been no impeachment of President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Emanuel will be Obama’s chief of staff, the central person controlling the White House and the president.

Daniel S. Senor, is an Israeli-Canadian who was Director of the Coalition Information Center at CENTCOM HQ in Qatar during the initial phase of the Iraq war. He later served as Senior Advisor to L. Paul Bremer III, proconsul of occupied Iraq and administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), whom he advised on a variety of policy and communications issues. Senor, one of Israel’s most highly placed agents during the war, went to Baghdad in mid-April 2003 where he remained as a high-level CPA authority through June 2004, when Bremer secretly fled the country.

Senor lived and studied in Israel and has family there. His father, James, was national director of the Canadian Society for the Weizmann Institute of Science and worked at the Jewish Agency in Israel, the central organ of the global Zionist network. Previously, Dan worked at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israeli lobby in Washington. His sister, Wendy Senor Singer, heads AIPAC’s office in Jerusalem, and his brother-in-law, Saul Singer, is a right-wing editor of the Jerusalem Post. Dan was a director of the US-Israel Business Exchange and clearly a well positioned Zionist agent prepared to manage the occupation and the hostile takeover of assets of Iraq, but he wasn’t alone.

JOSEPH ADAM ERELI

When the Iraqi cabinet approved a pact with the United States that will allow American forces to stay in Iraq for three years there was only one American response reported in the press, the words of Joseph Adam Ereli, the Israeli:

Joseph Adam Ereli

“This is an important and positive step,” said U.S. Embassy spokesman Adam Ereli.

Our Israeli spokesman, Adam Ereli, seems to be running the show in Iraq and Bahrain, where he is the U.S. Ambassador. His State Dept. bio shows that he has held similar positions all over the Middle East and speaks French and Arabic. They obviously chose to leave out Hebrew because it probably wouldn’t look good on his resume. With an Israeli father who served in the Hagana, it is most unlikely that Ereli does not speak Ivreet, the Slavic-based language with Hebrew words spoken by the Russian Jews that occupy Palestine.

In April 2007, Joseph A. Ereli was nominated by President Bush to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the State of Bahrain. This guy really thinks he is in a Bond film.

Ereli (right) thinks he is in a kosher Bond film,
seen here with American and Bahraini admirals.

Here is what Ereli’s official bio says:

Ambassador Adam J. Ereli arrived in Baghdad 31 May 2008 to serve as the Public Affairs Counselor at the United States Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq from 2008 to 2009.

From 2007 to 2008 he has served as Ambassador to Bahrain. He will return to the post when his tour in Iraq is completed in 2009.

Prior to his appointment as Ambassador to Bahrain, Ereli was Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy for Overseas Communications, based in London. There he oversaw regional communications hubs in Brussels and Dubai, and the Arab Media Outreach Center in London.

Prior to serving in London, Mr. Ereli was Deputy Spokesman of the Department of State from 2003 to 2006. As Deputy Spokesman, he oversaw the Office of Press Relations, Office of Regional Media Outreach, Office of Broadcast Services, the website, the Foreign Press Centers, and the Press Office at USAID. Mr. Ereli served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar, from 2000 to 2003.

He joined the Foreign Service in 1989 and has served abroad as a Junior Officer in Cairo, Egypt, Program Officer in Damascus, Syria, Cultural Affairs Officer in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Public Affairs Officer in Sanaa, Yemen. In Washington, Mr. Ereli served as Director of the Office of Press and Public Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and as Director of the Office of Press Relations in the Bureau of Public Affairs.

Mr. Ereli earned a B.A. in History from Yale University in 1982 and an M.A. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1989. Before entering the Foreign Service, he worked as a journalist and human rights activist in Paris, France. He speaks French and Arabic.

Joseph Ereli’s biographies do not provide the names of his parents, Eliezer and Ruth Roberta (born White of Chestnut Hill, Mass.) Ereli. His Israeli father, who confirmed to me that he was born in Tel Aviv, came to the United States in October 1949 and again in March 1956. When he flew from Paris to New York in 1949 the diligent purser noted that his name had been Eliezer Kaplan before he became Mr. Ereli.

I spoke with Eliezer at his home in Houston on November 18 and asked him if his name had been Kaplan previously. He confirmed this but said he did not remember when his name had been changed. I asked him if he was related to Eliezer Kaplan, one of the founders of the state of Israel who had raised the necessary funds for the Zionist state. Ereli said he had never heard of Eliezer Kaplan, which is hard to believe. He is probably related.

I asked if he was born in Tel Aviv, which he confirmed, and asked if he had served in the Hagana or the Irgun. He said he had served in the Hagana. When I asked if he was related to Eliezer Kaplan he decided to cut the conversation off.

UK Foreign Secretary Miliband has got the whole Iran nuclear issue the wrong way round

Wednesday, November 26, 2008 By Kaleem Omar Tony Blair may be history, but there are still plenty of British politicians left in the Labour Party government who are only too willing to serve as poodles to US President George W. Bush and his neo-con cabal, even in the waning days of Dubya’s presidency. One such politician is British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, whom Iran on Monday accused of having Zionist ties after he said that the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is “the most immediate threat to Middle East stability.” This, of course, is a case of Miliband toeing the line that Bush and members of his administration have been peddling for years, despite the fact that Iran has repeatedly insisted that its uranium enrichment programme is not aimed at making nuclear bombs but at manufacturing fuel for the nuclear power reactor it is building with Russian help to generate electricity for Iran’s national grid. The Bush administration continues to claim that Iran is “the most immediate threat” to Middle East stability, just as it used to claim back in 2002 and in the first three months of 2003 that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that – in Bush’s words – “posed an immediate threat to the national security of the United States…” In fact, of course, as the whole world knew long ago, Iraq did not possess any WMD and posed no threat whatsoever to the mighty United States. The whole Iraqi WMD thing was a lie cooked up by the Bush administration as an excuse to invade and occupy Iraq. When no WMD were found there by a 1,400-member team of US weapons inspectors and intelligence agents sent into Iraq by Bush after the invasion, wags promptly dubbed the so-called Iraqi WMD “weapons of mass disappearance.” Then-US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly lied to the media about Iraq possessing WMD, going so far during one media briefing at the Pentagon to assert that not only did the US “know” that Iraq had WMD but also “knew” where they were. Of course, the US “knew” no such thing. The whole thing was an outright lie, which eventually resulted in the Bush administration ending up with a massive amount of egg on its face. The only “discovery” made by the US weapons inspectors during their 18-month-long search of so-called “suspect” Iraqi sites was that of a trailer, which the Bush administration initially claimed with fiendish glee was “a mobile laboratory for making chemical weapons.” Only two days later, however, it came out that the mobile laboratory was in fact a facility for manufacturing gas for weather balloons. Within hours of this news hitting the news wires, a highly embarrassed US CIA hurriedly removed all references to the so-called “mobile laboratory for making chemical weapons” from its web site. Now, we have British Foreign Secretary David Miliband claiming that the “prospect” of Iran having nuclear weapons poses “the most immediate threat” to Middle Eastern stability” and appealing to Tehran’s neighbours to put pressure on Iranian President Mohmoud Ahmadinejad. In saying what he did, Miliband conveniently choose to ignore the fact that the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Commission (the UNís nuclear watchdog body) has said on more than one occasion that its inspectors have found no evidence that Iran is making a nuclear weapon. Miliband also choose to ignore the fact that in September last year, US intelligence agencies submitted a National Intelligence Estimate to President Bush stating that Iran was “at least ten years away from making a nuclear weapon.” Even if we were to assume that Iran’s uranium-enrichment programme is aimed at making nuclear weapons (although there is no evidence to this effect), the US National Intelligence Estimate’s “ten years” time frame hardly constitutes “the most immediate threat” to Middle East stability – as falsely claimed by Miliband. In fact, of course, the only country in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons is the Zionist state of Israel. According to the latest estimates, Israel has about 400 nuclear weapons in its arsenal and a variety of aircraft and missiles capable of delivering the weapons to all the Arab states and Iran. Israel also has the fourth most powerful conventional army in the world (after the United States, Russia and China). On top of all this, Israel has long had an American nuclear umbrella, which successive US administrations have said they would use in support of Israel in the event of its existence being threatened. This commitment will be carried forward by the administration of US President-Elect Barack Obama after he takes office on January 20 next year. In August 2008, Obama publicly stated that he had a deep and abiding commitment to Israel’s security. He had nothing to say, however, about who will protect the beleaguered Palestinian people from the on-going acts of state terrorism unleashed on them by Israel. In his anti-Iran diatribe on Monday, British Foreign Secretary Miliband, too, had nothing to say about the threat to Middle East stability posed by Israel’s nuclear arsenal. In October this year, Miliband warned of a possible nuclear arms race in the Middle East “if Iran was allowed to press ahead unchecked with a uranium enrichment programme.” Again, however, he had nothing to say about Israel’s nuclear weapons programme, which began back in the late 1950s. The Jewish lobby in Washington is so influential that no American politician dares to say anything critical against Israel. Back in the 1980s, during the Reagan presidency, when then-US Defence Secretary Harold Brown was mildly critical of Israel at a press conference (saying that Israel should not deal so harshly with the Palestinian people), the Jewish lobby created such a fuss that Reagan had to sack Brown within 48 hours. The only American president who ever criticised Israel’s nuclear programme was John F. Kennedy. In early 1963, he wrote a letter to the Israeli prime minister saying that Israel should stop pressing ahead with its nuclear weapons programme. Six months later, Kennedy was dead – assassinated in circumstances that have remained a mystery to this day. It is now widely believed by many in the United States that the Warren Commission report into Kennedy’s assassination was a cover-up job, designed to throw a veil of obfuscation over the identity of the real perpetrators and pin the blame on a lone American gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. A lot of Americans, however, are convinced that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was behind the assassination – which had all the hallmarks of a highly professional hit. AFP and Reuters – both Western news agencies – reported on Monday that: “World powers, fearing that Iran might make atom bombs under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, have offered Tehran incentives and talks in return for a halt to uranium enrichment.” But why have these same Western World powers had nothing to say for decades about Israel’s known nuclear weapons programme – the details of which were revealed at exhaustive length some years ago by the well-known American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in his authoritative book “The Samson Option.” Hersh is no ordinary hack; he is the same journalist who broke the story about the My Lai massacre of 350 women and children carried out by US soldiers in Vietnam in the 1960s. He is also the one who broke the story about the torture of Iraqi detainees by American soldiers at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in 2004. I mention these facts in order to make the point that Hersh is an investigative journalist of the highest credibility. AFP and Reuters reported on Monday that: “Iran has ignored five UN resolutions demanding a suspension of uranium enrichment, which can supply nuclear fuel as well as the fissile core of an atom bomb in high purification.” But neither of the two Western news agencies made any mention of the fact that Israel has ignored dozens of UN General Assembly resolutions demanding that it immediate vacate the Arab territories captured by it during the Arab-Israel war of 1967 – which, it should be remembered, was started by Israel and not by the Arab states. In blatant disregard of these UN General Assembly resolutions, Israel continues to occupy Syria’s Golan Heights, the Palestinian West Bank and the Gaza Strip to this day. It also remained in utterly illegal occupation of southern Lebanon for twenty long years, following its unprovoked invasion of Lebanon in 1982 when Ariel Sharon (aka “The Butcher of Sabra and Chatillia”) was the Israeli defence minister. He later became Israel’s prime minister. When he was prime minister, he ordered Israeli army bulldozers to demolish the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin. Scores of Palestinian refugees were reported to have been buried alive under the rubble.

Gates Announces Plan to Make National Guard a Homeland “Operational Force”

Gates Announces Plan to Make National Guard

a Homeland “Operational Force”

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
November 25, 2008

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered the Pentagon to conduct a “broad review” to determine if the military and the National Guard and Reserve can “adequately deal with domestic disasters,” including “a catastrophic attack on the country,” according to the Associated Press. Gates’ order falls on the heels of an earlier report released by the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves urging the Pentagon to “use the nation’s citizen soldiers to create an operational force that would be fully trained, equipped and ready to defend the nation.”

Gates plan for a review of the National Guard’s role is especially troublesome in the wake of the Pentagon’s announcement in September that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team would be deployed domestically by Northcom beginning October 1.

Gates and the Pentagon are obviously in the process of implementing the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007. The act changed federal law so that the Governor of a state is no longer the sole commander in chief of their state’s National Guard during emergencies within the state, a direct violation of Article I, Section 10 and Clause 3 of the Constitution. As original envisioned by the founders, who rightfully feared standing armies, active and reserve military organizations were to be limited in size and scope and complemented by citizen-soldiers. The the John Warner Defense Authorization Act has finally put to rest the idea that these citizen-soldiers will not be federalized.

It can be argued that the Warner bill is simply a culmination of earlier piecemeal violations, including the Militia Act of 1792, the Insurrection Act of 1807, and in particular the Militia Act of 1903, the latter allowing for the creation of the National Guard of the United States as the primary organized reserve force for the U.S. armed forces. Gates is simply announcing a fiat accompli – the merging of the Department of Defense and the National Guard into one cohesive force that will be deployed domestically in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act which substantially limited the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. In the past, maintaining order during domestic disasters was the responsibility of local and state law enforcement, although the National Guard was on occasion called in cases of civil unrest.

Gates plan for a review of the National Guard’s role is especially troublesome in the wake of the Pentagon’s announcement in September that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team would be deployed domestically by Northcom beginning October 1.

“Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks,” the Army Times reported on September 30. The battle-hardened brigade, straight out combat duty in Iraq, will engage in “specialty tasks” usually reserved for local law enforcement. In addition, the brigade will use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded… designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them,” an especially chilling prospect in light of growing predictions of civil unrest as the economy worsens.

If the Pentagon plan is realized, the National Guard will receive training for “homeland defense and civil support missions, as opposed to the warfighting now consuming them.” The Associated Press admits Gates’ effort is designed to “integrate reservists into the modern day military and consider treating them on a more equal basis to the active duty troops.”

Arnold L. Punaro, former chairman of the commission, welcomed Gates’ recommendations and declared that improving the military’s role in homeland defense and enhancing the clout of the reserves “represent a historic break with the past.” It also represents a “historic break ” with the Constitution of the United States.

Gates and the Pentagon realize the United States does not face a serious external terrorist threat. Instead, it faces in the not too distant future a reaction on the part of the citizenry to the banker engineered deconstruction of the economy and the social and political chaos that will undoubtedly follow. The National Guard, along with the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team and other military troops, will use the “nonlethal package… designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals” mentioned by the Army Times.

Gates’ “operational force that would be fully trained, equipped and ready to defend the nation” has nothing to do with Osama bin Laden and his cave-dwelling terrorists — or another Hurricane Katrina for that matter — but it has everything to do with preventing the people from rising up and taking back their country.

US has never advised Israel against Iran strike: Olmert

Olmert and Bush. Photo courtesy of AFP.

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Nov 25, 2008
The United States has not pressured Israel to rule out military action in order to halt Iran’s nuclear program, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Tuesday after talks with President George W. Bush.The outgoing prime minister, who ends what is probably his last visit to Washington in office, said he had “spoke at length with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the president on Iran.”

“There is a basic, deep understanding about the Iranian threat and the need to act in order to remove threat,” he told reporters.

Israel considers Iran its greatest threat, because of Tehran’s accelerating nuclear program and repeated statements by its leaders predicting the Jewish state’s demise.

Israel — the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power — and the United States accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, while Tehran has insisted its program is entirely peaceful.

The Jewish state has refused to rule out military response to the nuclear standoff and Olmert said on Tuesday that the Bush administration has never advised them against such action.

“I don’t remember that anyone in the administration, including in the last couple of days, advised me or any other of my official representatives not to take any action that we will deem necessary for the fundamental security of the state of Israel, and that includes Iran,” Olmert said.

As Bush prepares to leave the White House on January 20 and with Olmert set to step down amid a corruption scandal after February elections, the premier wanted to clinch new US commitments on Iran before president-elect Barack Obama takes office.

Officials said Olmert would press Bush and Congress to allow Israel to purchase dozens of F-35 stealth fighter jets, which would considerably boost the Israeli air force’s ability to carry out long-range strikes.

The Pentagon has announced that Israel had asked to buy up to 75 jets, but Congress has yet to give the 15-billion dollar (12-billion euro) deal a green light.

Over the past year, the United States has considerably increased its already tight defense ties with its ally, giving the Jewish state an unprecedented 10-year, 30-billion dollar defense aid commitment.

Obama government: The perfect tool for a face-lift of US imperialism

Steve Mavrantonis

There is no doubt that the election of Barack Obama to the US presidency expressed the strong desire of millions of American people for a change in the grim reality of their lives, which was worsened further by the current economic crisis. It is also an indisputable fact that this election represents a complete failure of the policies followed by the Bush administration.

Furthermore all available data indicates that Obama was voted in by the millions of marginalised, poor, unemployed, African-Americans, Latinos and other migrants: in other words the victims of capitalist crisis but, as well, by the middle and upper income strata and the social elite. It must not be forgotten that Obama himself is a product of this elite. No doubt Obama’s election it is also “symbolic” as an African-American occupier of the White House tends to dispel the strong racist attitudes the American society is fraught with.

All of the above factors surely make this election in the eyes of ordinary people look very attractive and creates a lot of expectations and illusions that the new president elect is going to do wonderful things and change the US policy in favour of the people.

In my view the election of Obama must be seen under the light of real facts and in connection with the class policies of American imperialism and the aims of the capitalist power structure in the US.

Obama’s government rather than bringing about the desired change to the American people and the peoples of the world, is more likely to act as the perfect tool for a face lift of US imperialism.

His election was the most advisable choice for the USA’s ruling class which aims at using this suitable “tool” in order to hem in the people’s consciousness by promoting carefully chosen ideas such as the “American dream” so that American imperialism can continue to play a major global role in a world where even the slightest reference to US created abhorrence.

Obama’s victory is being used by the various capitalist trusts and the media industry, which is also controlled by capitalists the world over, as the “coming of the Messiah”. However despite the undisputed capacity of the new president in rhetoric, his “charismatic” personality and his declarations that he intends to “unite the ordinary people with Wall Street” and the “rich with the poor”, the only thing he is really committed to is the defence of the interests of the most powerful sections of America’s elite and the multinationals.

The new Messiah is a direct product of the powerful American establishment so that once more the people are trapped in all sorts of illusions, they chose enthusiastically the “lesser of the two evils” and accept joyfully the “solution” offered by the ruling class, which is responsible for all the sufferings of not only the American people but the peoples of the entire world. By promoting and facilitating Obama’s victory, the US ruling class managed to have the obvious dissatisfaction of millions of people (socially excluded, poor, unemployed) defused so as to allow big US capital to continue its activities unhindered.

It is no surprise therefore that some of his bigger sponsors in his long race to the White House were all those who set up and caused the unprecedented monetary-credit bubble of Wall Street and were part of the scandal with housing loans, such as Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and others.

One of his more faithful supporters, during the pre-election campaign, was Kenneth Griffin, a real big shark, General Manager of Citadel, one of the companies that set up the swindle with the “toxic debt” of the hedge funds. Why shouldn’t the Wall Street giants, the multinationals sponsor Obama heavily? They are going to receive billions of dollars from the Poulson scheme, introduced by the Bush administration and supported straight away by Obama. Why shouldn’t they support him when he made it abundantly clear: “I am a market man ……I love the market”?

As for the “symbolism” of an African-American president, in the current circumstances, not only in the US but world-wide, a black president was needed in order to deceive easier the southern states of America and help control the Chinese and Russian purchasers of oil reserves in Africa.

The working people in all countries must not have any illusions that there is going to be a real change by the new “charismatic”, African-American US president. The same imperialist policy, determined by the US military-industrial complex, is going to continue. It is to be expected that imperialism’s aggressiveness, both the US and European, will be intensified in the antagonism with other forces that are entering the global game.