Reasons for decreasing US death toll in Iraq
 

By: Seele

on: 12.11.2007 

US death toll is now in strange dynamics. The true reasons for this development are less strange but are seldom spoken out by the mainstream medias – wherefore the news about what’s behind the strange US death toll developement is already out since about 1 month, but especially the medias are still desperately trying to ‘avoid’ mentioning them.

 

Not openly spoken out is the passive US behaviour that is very likely the reason for the current low US fatality rate. An opinion I bear in particular because of the strange coincidence between several things:1. That by end August 2007/ early Sept 2007 US fatality rate of 2007 surpassed that of 2006.

(so by every fatality added to the list past that moment it becomes more visible to the public that the US Iraq situation gets worse by the year. And the more fatalites are added past that moment the more visible it becomes. Hence for political reason it makes much sense to keep the fatality rate or at least the announced number of fatalities suffered ( or both (!), very low, especially (!) past that moment in late August 2007/early Sept 2007.And since usually the month of October is THE graveyard-month of the year for the US military in Iraq, it was an absolutely strange thing that for October 2007 the US announced such low casualty rate. So by logic there must have being something going on. And even the US military felt it was in need to “justify” this very illogical “occurence” of low US casualty rate announced for October 2007. (But of course it claimed ‘the surge is a success’ being the reason behind the strange US military October death toll)2. The US low fatality announcement for October 2007 left us with two overall options.

A. The Resistance is avoiding the US forces

Eighter the Resistance has nearly abandonned resisting the occupation and was now ‘waiting out’ “the Surge”. Something that would enable the US to claim the “surge” being a victory (something which I felt was very very very unlikely) as it is clear that the Resistance would never willingly allow the US to score victory in Iraq. ( Let alone in month of October)

B. The US forces are avoiding the Resistance

Even though having larger numbers of ” boots on the ground” in Iraq, the US eighter does not sent out as much patrols as usually, or by whatever reason not as much patrols as usually are carried out (something I felt was much much more likely -> especially since I knew about two or better three facts of high significance, pointing directly into this direction( ! )

point1.

That the US administration has a strong politically interest in keeping the US casualty as low as possible following the moment of late August 2007/ Early Sept 2007 (resp. the point the where the overall fatality number of the year 2007 surpassed that of 2006

point2.

That there were reports in the MSM ( main stream medias ), resp. medias that are controlled, telling more or less openly that there is a trend in the US military to “avoid combat” by using a new tactic -> the so-called “search and avoid patrols”.

---

Search and avoid missions:

The new “search and avoid” missions on which more and more of the US patrols tend to go, as we learned from the military boys themselves, when they admitting that despite the troop numbers being up in Iraq, the true numbers of patrols being carried out is significantly down (!) as more and more US soldiers and small commanders (US low rank officers like e.g. captians etc.) silently tend to refuse to carry out the patrols their high command is demanding them to do. And instead of performing the demanded “patrols” they simply leave the base “as if going on patrol” but then after having carried out at best 1/3 of it, they simply “park” their vehicles somewhere and then wait till the time which the patrol is supposed to take is over. And then they return to their base and tell their higher commanders that they carried out the patrol and did see nothing, or tell them whatever story.

See also:

http://tinyurl.com/ysczff
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39788
http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=148&a=4078
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ26Ak07.html
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_4070.shtml

---

These sharply increasing kind of development might indeed be the true reason behind the “temporary very low US casualty figure” which the US military is so “proudly” announcing.

Moreover, by what we have come to see from 1920 Revolution Brigades, Jaish Rashideen, Jaish Mujahedeen and Jaish Naqshabandiyah – they are definitely all doing business as usual. And also their IED attacks seem to be strong as ever.

Of course the Resistance has problems defeating the 2 real MRAPs the US military has brought up, resp. the Cougar and the Buffalo, and therefore is laying somewhat low to free capacities for producing large quantities of EFPs in preparation of the arrival of larger numbers of these enemy vehicles in Iraq, but I don t think that this is the main reason for the “decreased daily casualty rate” the US military currently announces.

Like already said, more likely the true reason is to be found with the rate of “search and avoid” patrols carried out by US soldiers being up significantly, while the number of truely carried out “active patrols” is significantly down.

Of course this new trend itself would already explain a lot of ‘why’ the US casualty & fatality figure in Iraq was going down. But much more than that the very fact, that the medias reported this fact, was itself a 99,99 % guarantee for eighter: the US administration being quitely tolerating this development or that the development has become so much “business as usual” in Iraq that the MSM simply could not hid it from the public anymore, OR both (!). (As usually such negative facts about the US military are not released by the MSM at all, and if they do, then it is usually only because anyway the issue has become so much common knowledge that they simply can t hide it from the public anymore). And indeed lots of the hardcore MSM outlets still try to hide it. (use google and type: CNN+”search and avoid” , or CBS+”search and avoid”, or BBC+”search and avoid” and so on and on, and you’ll see what I mean).

point3.

One more point supporting the conclussion that it is very likey the US passive behaviour that is the reason behind the current low US fatality rate is: That we know (!) from the past developments and armed clashes between the US military and the Iraqi resistance – exemplary by the US militarY’s searching for the 3 US soldiers, which were captured by the Resistance after it ambushing a lone US forward patrol – that whenever the US military goes into offensive and massivily starts patrolling around in Iraq, carrying out searches and raids in large numbers -> it results in massive US military losses. ->

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/22/africa/search.php

Hence it follows: The US currently is not actively engaged in confronting the Resistance, bursting through villages and cities, searching for Resistance fighters, and trying to battle them. The fact that the US announced such low fatality rates for October 07 is instead proof (!) for the opposite being true, resp. that the US military is currently avoiding the Resistance.Bottom line:

Most likely the current reason for the the low US fatality figure is a mixture of the above mention 1. + the B section of 2. With each point stimulating the other. Or short. The basic thing behind the current US low fatality annoucement for Iraq is that the US administration has political reason to press for especially low fatality rate for these last month of the year, because it needs to “smoke screen” that again (!) this new year in Iraq (2007) is much worse than the year before (resp. 2006). And moreover that the whole “surge thing” and with it all the US has claimed to have achieved was a total failure and lie. The US administration is desperate to hide that things in Iraq are fast ( with big steps) getting from bad to worse and that the occupation project is collapsing rapidly. (Same as the US dollar and the whole US Empire itself)

To achieve hiding the above mentioned fact (US Iraq Occupation Project rapidly collapsing), the US administration, for politically reason, is now partly and of course silently and much likely only temporarily ‘tolerating’ the “search and avoid” disobedience tactic of its soldiers.

A fact which of course rapidly became known among the US soldiers in Iraq, thus leading to them, a) thankfully accepting this rare possibility/option/ time-window to avoid combat (without having to fear being punished for military disobedience) and b) making heavily use of it.

Bottom line is -> US administration’s politically impulse on the US military to avoid losses, spiralled into the “search and avoid patrols-thing” morphing/mutating into becoming common pratice all over Iraq so much, that it nearly spiralled out of control, what eventually forced some MSM medias to admit that these search and avoid patrols ’sometimes’ do infact ‘happen’.

(btw. you will not or only hardly find articles about ’search and avoid’ in the heaviest zionist controlled US MSM,like for example NYT, CNN, CBS, NBC, CBS, Fox etc. as they are still trying to ‘avoid’ having to admit the truth, wherefore some asian and european MSM outlets have at least run some small, very small, articles mentioning it.)

Peace

Arrestation de Mohamed Samraoui :

Sarkosy et le general de la DST Mohamed Mediene dit Tewfik font connaissance avec la justice internationale

 

NDLR: Qui veut la tete de Tewfik et ses relais parisiens ? Mohamed Samraoui est un offcier du DRS, il saurait decrypter les liens qui existent entre la creation du GIA, du GICM, du GSPC, les attentats de Casablanca, Madrid et Londres… Un jeu d’enfant pour lui. Maintenant la justice espagnole s’est dotee de la competence universelle et aujourd’hui, nous avons eu le ‘verdict’ des attentats de Madrid. Est ce que cela vous rappelle cela :

http://www.politiquedevie.net/Europe/SarkozyMadridMars2004.htm

 

Ensuite nous avons la visite officielle de Abdallah d’Arabie Saoudite en Grande Bretagne, celui-ci a accuse le gouvernement britannique et d’autres (ndlr: yisrael) d’etre derriere les attentats de Londres. En effet, le ‘protecteur d’Al Harameine’, le prince Bandar bin Sultan, agent du MI6 a recu pas mal d’informations bien avant les frappes… C’est aussi dans le lien du dessus. Vous saisissez ?

Pas encore !!!

Aujourd’hui nous avons appris que le célèbre juge espagnol Baltazar Garzon vient de se déclarer compétent pour enquêter sur l’accusation de génocide formulée par des indépendantistes liés au Front Polisario qui milite pour un Sahara occidental indépendant. Déposée en septembre 2006 en Espagne, leur plainte cible la fine fleur de l’Etat-major de l’armée marocaine : le général Housni Benslimane, le général Abdelaziz Bennani, le général Abdelhak Kadiri, le général Hamidou Laanigri et tutti quanti.

Cela fait beaucoup pour les sieurs Benslimane et Kadiri contre qui la justice française a délivré d’ores et déjà des mandats d’arrêts internationaux pour pouvoir les auditionner dans le cadre de la disparition de Mehdi Ben Barka.

Alors ? Vous faites le lien avec l’arrestation de Mohamed Samroui, quel timing !!!

Sale temps pour Sarkosy et le gouvernement francais, ainsi que le general de la DST Mohamed Mediene dit Tewfik ! Il sera bien difficle pour vous d’echapper a une juridiction internationale pour complicte d’actes de terrorisme, crimes de guerre, crimes contre l’humanite et genocide, car la troisieme guerre d’Algerie est un genocide organise… L’Espagne s’est dotee de la competence universelle en matiere de crimes de guerre et genocide.

Qui veut jouer aux Echecs ?

Voici un article publie par El sh’watan :

Samraoui. Une arrestation qui embarrasse l’Espagne

 

Voilà une affaire qui ne manquera pas de mettre davantage de piment dans les relations entre l’Algérie et l’Espagne.

L’ancien lieutenant-colonel de l’armée algérienne, Mohamed Samraoui, croupit depuis le 22 octobre dans une prison espagnole dans l’attente de son éventuelle extradition vers l’Algérie.

Objet d’un mandat d’arrêt international émis depuis un mois par la justice algérienne, Samraoui a été arrêté dans la région de Malaga (dans le sud de l’Espagne) alors qu’il participait à une conférence organisée par la Fédération internationale de jeux d’échecs par correspondance (FIJEC).

Bien que les accusations portées contre lui soient de nature grave – il est recherché pour « désertion, dénonciations calomnieuses contre l’armée et terrorisme » -, l’ex-officier du Département du renseignement et de la sécurité (DRS) encourt peu de risques d’être livré à la justice de son pays.

C’est que Mohamed Samraoui, auteur du livre Chroniques des années de sang (Paris, Denoël 2003), bénéficie depuis 1996 du statut de réfugié politique, délivré par les autorités allemandes. Si son extradition n’est pas donc envisageable dans l’immédiat, le moins que l’on puisse dire est que cette affaire tombe on ne peut plus mal.

Alors que les relations entre Alger et Madrid n’ont jamais été aussi tendues en raison de profondes divergences sur des contrats énergétiques, ce dossier risque de les rendre encore plus exécrables.

Comment cet homme dont on dit cultivé et avisé, comment ce pourfendeur des généraux algériens qu’il accuse d’avoir créé, manipulé et instrumentalisé les groupes islamiques armés (GIA) est-il tombé dans le panneau ? Amateur de jeux d’échecs, Mohamed Samraoui est un habitué des voyages à travers l’Europe pour le compte de la fédération dont il est président.

Sa chambre à l’hôtel Alay, à Balmadena (sur la Costa Del Sol), un charmant quatre étoiles avec court de tennis, piscine et bar à tapas, étant réservée depuis plusieurs semaines, Mohamed Samraoui se rend donc au cours de la deuxième quinzaine d’octobre dans la région de Malaga où sa fédération avait convenu d’organiser un tournoi.

Son séjour se déroule en toute quiétude jusqu’à ce lundi 22 octobre vers 11h30. Alors que Samraoui assistait à une conférence, deux officiers de la police judiciaire espagnole demandent à lui parler. Munis d’un mandat d’arrêt délivré par le juge d’instruction Ismael Moreno de l’Audience nationale (le tribunal compétent pour juger les crimes internationaux), ils procèdent à son arrestation en vertu d’un mandat d’arrêt international diffusé via Interpol.

Un dossier compliqué

L’intéressé n’oppose aucune résistance, c’est juste s’il demande aux policiers qu’on lui permette de remettre un cadeau à un ami. Aussitôt conduit vers le commissariat de Torremolinos (une petite commune située à 18 km de la ville de Malaga), il sera placé en garde à vue.

Tandis qu’un avocat lui est commis d’office, Samraoui est autorisé à entrer en contact avec sa femme, restée en Allemagne. Une fois la garde à vue légale (en Espagne elle dure 3 jours) achevée, le prévenu sera transféré vers le centre de détention de Soto Del Real, près de Madrid.

Il faudra attendre le 27 octobre pour que l’information soit rendue publique. La presse espagnole, un quotidien algérien (Le Jour d’Algérie) ainsi que le site internet « rue89 » évoquent l’arrestation et l’incarcération.

On s’en doute, cette affaire met les autorités espagnoles dans l’embarras. Aux organisations de défense des droits de l’homme qui s’émeuvent du sort réservé à l’ex-dissident, le ministère espagnol des Affaires étrangères assure que l’Espagne est un Etat de droit.

Alerté, le ministre de l’Intérieur, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, jusque-là tenu dans l’ignorance des faits, entreprend les démarches nécessaires pour améliorer les conditions de détention de Samraoui.

Celui-ci sera alors transféré vers le quartier VIP (Very Important Person) alors qu’un nouvel avocat, maître Manuel Ollé Sesé, sera chargé d’assurer sa défense. Juriste spécialisé en droit pénal, avocat au barreau de Madrid, celui-ci est connu dans le milieu associatif en tant que président de l’Association de défense des droits de l’homme d’Espagne (APDHE).

Selon une source proche de l’affaire, Manuel Ollé Sesé devrait incessamment introduire une demande de remise en liberté provisoire au bénéfice de Mohamed Samraoui.

Bien que le dossier de ce dernier soit compliqué en raison de ses implications politiques, les proches de Samraoui ont bon espoir que celui-ci bénéficie, au moins, d’un contrôle judiciaire. Mais en cas de refus, l’ancien officier devrait s’armer de patience, car les démarches relatives à son extradition prendront du temps avant que le dossier n’atterrisse sur le bureau du juge d’instruction. Le département algérien de la justice n’ayant pas une bonne réputation en ce qui concerne le traitement et le suivi des dossiers d’extradition (voir Les ratés d’une extradition, El Watan du 20 septembre), l’attente risque ainsi d’être longue.

Alger, Berlin, Paris puis Madrid, le parcours de Mohamed Samraoui, 54 ans, aura été celui d’un officier supérieur (il aurait été n°2 du contre-espionnage) dont la carrière, plutôt brillante du reste, finira par se disloquer sur l’autel de la « sale guerre ». Ancien haut responsable du DRS, le contre-espionnage algérien, entre mars 1990 et juillet 1992, cet ingénieur en biochimie fut au cœur de cette tumultueuse époque qui a vu la montée du mouvement intégriste, la rupture du processus électoral, l’assassinat du président Mohamed Boudiaf ainsi que le début du terrorisme islamiste.

Responsable du service de recherches et d’analyses à la direction du contre-espionnage, il prendra une large part dans la lutte contre les réseaux terroristes avant qu’il ne décide de s’éloigner du pays. Muté à l’étranger, il est désigné attaché militaire et chef du bureau de la sécurité à l’ambassade en Allemagne, avec le grade de commandant, puis de lieutenant-colonel. En Allemagne, l’officier ne chôme guère dans la mesure où cette contrée d’Europe avait la réputation d’être une terre d’asile pour les islamistes de tout acabit.

N’est-ce pas à Bonn que Rabah Kebir avait trouvé refuge avant de devenir l’un des principaux dirigeants et pourvoyeurs en armes, en munitions et en argent des maquis terroristes en Algérie ? Le séjour de Samraoui en Allemagne se déroule sans encombre jusqu’au mois de septembre 1995, date à laquelle un grave différend l’oppose à ses supérieurs.

Numéro deux du DRS, le défunt Smaïn Lamari lui aurait ainsi demandé de liquider deux responsables du FIS à Bonn, Rabah Kebir et Abdelkader Sahraoui, mais Samraoui refuse d’exécuter la décision. Info ou intox, toujours est-il que notre lieutenant-colonel est rappelé à Alger. Ayant consommé définitivement sa rupture avec les services secrets, il quitte l’Algérie en février 1996 pour la Belgique avant de regagner, peu de temps après, l’Allemagne où il obtient le statut de réfugié politique.

 

Octobre, mois du déballage

 

Jusqu’à l’année 2003, seuls les services algériens, les services allemands de l’immigration ainsi que quelques voisins de palier connaissaient le nom de Mohamed Samraoui. La mode étant au déballage médiatique sur les affres de la guerre civile en Algérie, l’homme défrayera la chronique dès l’été 2003 avec la sortie en France de son livre coup-de-poing Chronique des années de sang : Algérie, comment les services ont manipulé les groupes islamistes. Tout est dans le titre. Samraoui règle ses comptes avec les responsables militaires en racontant sa version de la guerre.

Sa thèse ? Un poil identique à celle d’un autre ex-militaire, Habib Souaïdia, auteur du désormais classique La sale guerre. Pour Mohamed Samraoui, les groupes islamistes ont été instrumentalisés par les services secrets algériens bien avant et longtemps après l’interruption du processus électoral de janvier 1992 de manière à terroriser le peuple et présenter l’armée comme le seul recours pour sauver le pays.

Fortement relayé par la presse occidentale ainsi que par la chaîne qatarie El Jazeera, l’ouvrage fera mal. D’autant plus mal que Samraoui n’est pas un bidasse lambda, un second couteau, un sous-fifre. Précédé d’une réputation d’intellectuel, il possède cette légitimité à laquelle un Habib Souaïdia ne peut prétendre : Mohamed Samraoui fut un officier du DRS, ce qui, aux yeux de beaucoup de personnes, confère à ses révélations un sens, du poids et de la crédibilité.

Délire d’un officier désavoué par sa hiérarchie, affabulations d’un dissident de l’armée en mal de reconnaissance et d’argent ou vérité sur une guerre qui n’a pas encore livré tous ses secrets, le livre de Samraoui fait date.

C’est de ce déballage jugé nauséabond dont il est aujourd’hui redevable aux yeux de la justice algérienne. Certes, Alger et Madrid sont liés par un accord d’extradition, mais le cas Samraoui est ardu. Pour l’heure, son statut de réfugié politique le met à l’abri d’un prochain retour vers l’Algérie. En attendant, cette affaire soulève des interrogations.

Pourquoi la justice algérienne a-t-elle attendu octobre 2007 pour émettre un mandat d’arrêt contre un ex-officier dont la désertion date de février 1996 et dont les premières déclarations remontent à l’année 2003 ? Pourquoi a-t-on attendu qu’il séjourne précisément en Espagne pour saisir Interpol en vue de son extradition ?

Certes, il n’est jamais trop tard pour la justice de demander des comptes, mais tout de même…

Difficile de croire que l’incarcération de Mohamed Samraoui dans une prison espagnole relèverait de la pure coïncidence.

Samy Ousi-Ali

 

Source 

 

update: Après neuf jours de détention dans une prison espagnole, Mohamed Samraoui est libéré le 31 octobre 2007 vers 17h. Il est mis en liberté provisoire. …

 

Crisis in the U.S.: “Plan B” ?

by Richard C. Cook

Global Research,

November 11, 2007

Strange events are taking place in the U.S.

 

      By August 2007, a lot of very smart people were reading the tea leaves, convinced that the upper echelons of the U.S. government had their own hidden reasons for forecasting an event even more heinous than the attacks of September 11, 2001.

      President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff had been hinting that another 9/11 could be coming.

      Figures from the U.S. military had also projected a 9/11-type event. On April 23, 2006, for instance, the Washington Post published a statement by an unnamed Pentagon source that, “Another attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets.”

      9/11 was a turning point in history, and not just because it provided a pretext for the Bush administration to use off-the-shelf plans to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. The 9/11 Commission criticized the government for failing to do enough to act on danger signs that attacks may have been afoot. But a movement has formed which argues that the reality was worse—that 9/11 was an inside job staged to further the geopolitical ambitions of an elite seeking to use U.S. military power to advance its own imperialistic agenda.

      What is indisputable is that from the 2000 presidential election through the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman termed a “revolutionary power” took control of the U.S. government.

      Krugman’s statement, contained in the introduction to his 2005 book The Great Unraveling, has not been taken seriously enough. George W. Bush had lost the popular vote to Al Gore but was named to office by a Supreme Court that rubber-stamped what Greg Palast and others have proven was an extended process of electoral fraud in Florida. The subsequent actions and policies of the Bush/Cheney administration have been in accord with its dubious beginnings.

      From the emergence of the Neocons as an ideological power base dominant over U.S. foreign policy, to destruction wreaked on the Bill of Rights by illegal surveillance of citizens, to the senseless creation of the bureaucratically monstrous Department of Homeland Security and passage of the Patriot Acts, to the initiation of “wars of choice” leading to the devastation of two nations and the killing or displacement of perhaps a million Middle Eastern non-combatants, to violation of international treaties and conventions against wars of aggression and torture of prisoners, to presiding over an economy ruined by the continued export of manufacturing jobs and the creation and deflation of the housing bubble, to the wrecking of the federal budget by over a trillion dollars of wartime expenditure, to the abandonment of the city of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, to tax cuts for the most wealthy while the income of the middle class has drastically eroded, and to threats to start another war, this time against Iran, based on deceptions similar to those which preceded the Iraq invasion, the Bush/Cheney administration has brought the U.S. to the brink of catastrophe. 

      What is now being asked is whether there was a plan that was to take place in September-October 2007 whereby the rest of the job would have been done. Speculation was that a nuclear device was to have been detonated in a U.S. city, perhaps one of the six attached to cruise missiles that were “inadvertently” carried by the Air Force B-52 bomber that flew from South Dakota to Louisiana just before Labor Day.

      Check this link from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette for the official explanation of the incident:

http://www2.arkansasonline.com/news/2007/oct/19/air-force-punishes-70-accidental-nuclear-weapons-f/.

According to the Air Force’s report, the missiles were being mothballed due to “a treaty,” but ground personnel at Minot Air Force Base “grabbed the wrong ones” and loaded missiles with nuclear warheads by mistake.

      Some have argued that these nukes were secretly bound for Iran to prepare for a nuclear attack on that country. But would such a Keystone Cops routine have been necessary to prepare for military action as a contingency to implement a possible decision coming from the highest political levels?

      Suppose, on the other hand, that one of the nukes was targeted for a false-flag domestic attack, perhaps a city like Portland, Oregon, where military exercises simulating a major terrorist incident had been scheduled and where residents actually were warning each other to leave town.

      Was the attack to trigger an economic collapse, leading as a side-effect to a payoff of billions of dollars for the placers of the “bin Laden bets” that were reportedly made in the financial markets anticipating a fifty percent decline in stock prices? Of course such an attack would be blamed on foreign terrorists. The trail of the explosion would be found to lead to Iran, resulting in war against that nation. Would the Constitution then have been suspended and martial law declared? Would citizens have been rounded up and herded into prison camps?

      Such a scenario seems unfathomable, horrendous, even incredible. But it still may have been in character for a regime whose actions have led the world to view the U.S. as the greatest existing threat to peace. Rumors about such possible events have been churning on the internet for months. 

      But the rumors have not been confined to “conspiracy theorists.” Regarding President Bush’s commitment to the sanctity of constitutional processes, Congressman John Olver expressed the prevailing view in government circles when he told twenty of his constituents at a private meeting in Massachusetts on July 5, 2007, that he could not support a movement to impeach Bush. According to an attendee, the reason the Congressman gave was that, “The President would declare a national emergency, institute martial law, and suspend the 2008 elections.”

      Therefore we might ask if it is true, as some sources have alleged, that the reason these events have not taken place was that there was a revolt by the U.S. military, which refused to carry out the false-flag attack that may have been intended?

      What then has happened differently which indicates that events may have altered or postponed such a sinister denouement to the nightmare of the last seven years?

      What has happened appears to be that the U.S. establishment has decided to move to “Plan B.” This may be defined as a decision that the sway of the Bush/Cheney regime must end and that some semblance of normality should be restored, at least in appearance, by making Hillary Clinton the next President.

      Of course part and parcel of any Hillary Clinton presidency would be the presence and participation of her husband, former President Bill Clinton. We may rightly speak of “the Clintons” as a unit in this context.

      The signs that Hillary Clinton is the President-designee have been appearing in droves. These include her rise in the polls, especially in Iowa, the emergence of an anti-Bush surge in the mega-media, especially on MSNBC, and the appointment of Democrats with ties to the Clintons at the Defense and Treasury Departments. Other signs include the emergence of a campaign by certain well-connected websites to keep tabs on pro-Neocon news commentators and offensives being launched against some particularly obnoxious right-wing media figures such as Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

      The way Hillary Clinton is being portrayed in the mega-media is of decisive importance, because media-owning conglomerates such as GE, Viacom, and Disney serve the interests of the establishment, not the public. Nothing makes it to the airwaves without the approval of the financial interests which control these giants. Also decisive was the appearance of Hillary and Bill on the cover of the October 6 edition of The Economist, long the keystone publication of the Anglo-American international financial empire.

      The Washington Post, another establishment house organ, has noted that Hillary herself is couching her election in terms of “when, not if.” The theme she is projecting is that of an anointed insider calling for “national unity.” For this she is being duly attacked by her competitors, most notably John Edwards.

      The best example of how the mega-media is telegraphing establishment intent was Chris Mathews’ lead story on Hardball on Monday night, November 5, which displayed MSNBC’s “Power Rankings” for presidential candidates. The segment began with an adulatory profile of Hillary’s campaign. Mathews then set a record for premature declaration of victory by predicting her as “the most likely winner of the Democratic nomination and presidential election” a full year before the election is even to take place.

      Mathews repeated his judgment several times in what was obviously rehearsed language, even as the members of his three-person panel of commentators were trying in vain to raise objections, including the view that Hillary might not even win the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary. Mathews repeatedly overrode his own experts with his insistence that Hillary was the MSMBC pick. 

      Oh yes, we will have the formality of a presidential election. Doubtless some fur will fly, because Hillary will always be the Clinton the right-wing most loves to hate. So we won’t see a coronation.

      It is certain, however, that the current regime will exact a price for accepting at least temporary defeat. So far the price seems to be agreement by Hillary Clinton that the conquest of Iraq is a fait accompli, that the building of the Baghdad supersize embassy will continue, that permanent military bases in Iraq will be maintained a lá Korea, and that the option of an attack on Iran will remain “on the table.”

      She has not raised her voice against any of this. The vehicle by which Clinton signed on to a possible attack on Iran was her vote in favor of the Senate resolution naming the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist sponsor. Perhaps there is also an understanding between the Clintons and the Bush/Cheney camp that the latter will not be prosecuted for crimes committed in office.

      No matter who becomes president in 2008, that person will be left with a nation in disarray. This includes a foreign policy that has been sacrificed to militaristic interests, the rise of a militant Russia now allied with China through the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, and a Latin America in open revolt against U.S. domination. Even maintaining a post-Bush foreign policy will be a challenge, given Condoleezza Rice’s legacy of a State Department whose morale is in shreds due to a vicious Neocon takeover of the foreign service that will persist for a generation or more.

      Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is a wreck, with out-of-control debt, the housing collapse in full flower, continued erosion of manufacturing jobs, a sinking dollar, a crumbling physical infrastructure, soaring oil and food prices, out-of-control illegal immigration, and hordes of well-heeled foreigners buying U.S. assets with rapidly depreciating dollars.

      The economy is in much worse shape today than when Bill Clinton took over from George H. W. Bush in 1992. It will be a miracle if the next president is able to keep the U.S. from sinking into a depression. The only qualification to this assessment lies with the large companies heavily invested in the growing Chinese economy—GM, GE, IBM, etc. But a majority of the stock of these and other corporations is owned by financial institutions, while the trickle-down effect of dividends will provide only a fraction of the purchasing power needed to keep the U.S. economy afloat.

      While the views of the American public still seem to register to a slight degree, the Democrats have failed to respond to their restoration by the electorate to power in Congress by ending the Iraq War. But by their votes in 2006 and by consistently giving George W. Bush such low ratings in the polls, Americans have delivered a message. So have the many internet sites covering the real news of the war and the economy.

      As well have the two maverick presidential candidates, Ron Paul the Republican and Dennis Kucinich the Democrat, who have been saying things not heard in the supine world of American politics for a long time. Things like getting rid of the inept handling of credit by the Federal Reserve and stopping the war in Iraq by exiting right now, without any more lies or excuses.

      But it is by no means certain that there is much immediate hope of salvaging the nation from the current debacle. The interests of millions of Americans have been severely damaged by the financial and political malfeasance that has gone on for so long. Abroad, the deaths or ruin of large numbers of people in the Middle East must be accounted for. That region is now less stable than ever, as the situation in Pakistan shows. A negotiated two-state settlement between Israel and the Palestinians seems a distant dream. Finally, sane multilateral systems for sharing of the world’s resources among nations or dealing with global warming are nowhere in sight. And a nuclear holocaust involving the U.S. vs. Russia and possibly China is a growing danger.

      Further, the U.S. economy can’t simply be “fixed.” It is too far gone for that. The elite began their takedown of the economy during the 1970s and show no signs of being able to reverse course. It started with the removal of the gold-peg to the dollar in 1971 and continued with the explosion of U.S. currency on the international scene due to the petrodollar, soaring trade and fiscal deficits, action to permanently mortgage us to military-backed dependence on imported Middle Eastern oil, a permanent tilt in favor of Israel vs. the Islamic world, and, finally, the galloping 1970s inflation.

      These events led to the Fed-induced crash of 1979-83 which left us with today’s travesty of a “service” economy. Now in 2007 the Fed is trying to engineer a “soft landing” of an economy trapped in unsustainable debt and collapsing bubbles, at least until the 2008 election. But everyone knows a crash is coming, particularly as China and other nations dump the plummeting dollar as their reserve currency.

      So what are the Clintons and their government-in-waiting planning? You would think they had something in mind. But maybe not. During the 1990s, Bill Clinton acted in full accord with the globalists’ agenda by continuing with the Reagan/Bush I privatization of the economy, with downsizing of government, and with promotion of the dot.com bubble that ended with the 2000 market crash. Unfortunately, it will not be as simple to engineer a repeat performance of even the ephemeral prosperity of the 1990s when what is lacking today is a real economic driver.

      The grievous condition of the U.S. is reflected in an epidemic of mental and emotional illness and a rising violent crime rate. It is reflected in a USA Today poll, where 72 percent of Americans say the nation is moving in the wrong direction (74 percent in a Washington Post/ABC News poll). And who knows what disasters global warming has in store?

      To face all this will require a decisive reorientation of U.S. governance. There is little in the history of the Clintons, their opportunistic style, and their passivity to the financier elite that justifies this much optimism. The financial controllers today exert more power over the U.S. economy and the nation’s politics than at any time in history. They are not giving up this power. In fact, Hillary is their “safest” choice among the Democrats in maintaining control.

      Perhaps we may want to indulge in a sigh of relief at how much worse things could have been—or may still be—if Bush/Cheney unleash even more disasters. But stay tuned. The next four years are likely to be decisive—particularly because the plan to elevate Hillary Clinton may be a trap by which she is left holding the bag for an economic collapse that would make it much easier than at present for the Neocon storm troopers to rush back in.

      What is absolutely certain is that the people of the world do not want war, regardless of their religion, race, or nationality. The people of the world want economic fairness. The people of the world want to live by honest labor, not bank credit. And the people of the world want an environment that is clean and safe for future generations. The only people who do not appear to want these things have been those who are currently in charge of the U.S. government.

      The question now is what are the American people willing to do to assure that what is truly in the best interests of the nation will prevail? Will they continue to be manipulated by the fear which has been the basis of the Bush/Cheney mode of governance? Will they continue to act as obedient puppets as it becomes harder and harder to earn a living and raise a family in an economy throttled by debt and a declining standard of living? Will they simply vote for whom they are told to support by the media and the pollsters? Or will some decide that enough is enough and resolve to take America back in 2008?

      But even if they do, can they succeed?

      While Hillary Clinton is likely the designated Democratic nominee, Rudy Giuliani leads the polls for the Republicans. Giuliani, with his own group of Neocon advisers and his militant outbursts promising more war, is the ideological godson of Bush/Cheney.

      Whoever is pulling the strings behind the scenes, it is likely obvious to them that to allow a character like Giuliani to step in while so many raw nerves are exposed among the American populace could lead to a premature explosion. Especially since Giuliani spent most of his adult life as a prosecutor putting people in jail. It’s hardly a time in the nation’s life when what is needed as head of state is an expert at slamming people into detention. 

      So what if Giuliani actually threatens to defeat Hillary while the establishment has decided to support her, perhaps just to buy time?

      The establishment is taking precautions. It seems to be doing so by starting to promote a plan that could see Ron Paul running as a third-party candidate. You can see this unfolding, for instance, in his favorable treatment on CNN’s “Situation Room.” And could Dr. Paul really have begun suddenly to raise enormous amounts of campaign cash without someone in the establishment giving a green light?

      Ron Paul as a candidate would obviously generate enormous excitement. But he could end up playing the same role as Ross Perot in the 1992 election, where Perot allowed disgruntled voters to let off steam while drawing enough votes to allow Bill Clinton to defeat George H.W. Bush.

      One way or the other, the fix is on.

      Finally, we should note that the “revolutionary power” Paul Krugman refers to is not just the Bush/Cheney/Neocon regime. They are only the most visible recent manifestation.

      The true “revolutionary power” is much less visible but may reasonably be identified with the higher echelons of the “financier elite” and “establishment” referred to throughout this article. The underlying agenda of this group seems to be to destroy the U.S. as the world’s greatest industrial democracy, turn it into a province of a globalist system under their control, and use its land and population as muscle for world monetary and military dominance.

      Can anything be done? Of course. The underlying problem is that the power and wealth acquired by the U.S. after World War II has eroded—has perhaps been squandered—as the rest of the world has grown up. Certainly, if the right people were in charge the U.S. could accept the inevitable, rebuild its failed domestic economy on democratic principles, and assume its rightful place as one of several major world powers, with the responsibility this would entail. Instead, we have been trying to hold onto what has slipped away by a continued resort to financial aggression combined with force of arms, rather than altruistic action based on enlightened ideals.

      It’s a failed mission. What has happened to America in the last decade is turning into the greatest tragedy of modern history.

      And what can ordinary people do while all this is unfolding? The best advice seems to be not to try to hoard paper assets, which the elite are able easily to manipulate or devalue. It’s to get out of debt, hone our manual skills, invest in a small business, grow our own food, stay positive, help others, work hard, eschew the consumption lifestyle, pray and meditate, be sober, and learn to think for ourselves. We might try to work within the political system if we can and want to, but should not count on easy successes, because, as the man said, “It’s a hard rain’s gonna fall.”

Richard C. Cook is a retired federal analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, and NASA, followed by twenty-one years with the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared on numerous websites. He is the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age, called by one reviewer, “the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years.”

His website is at

www.richardccook.com

____________________________________________ 

Related link : Is a second more deadly 911 now in the works

UK terror detention limit is longest of any democracy

New research piles pressure on ministers over plans to extend 28-day limit

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Monday November 12, 2007
The Guardian

 Britain’s existing 28-day limit on holding terror suspects without charge is already far longer than that for any comparable democracy, according to a study to be published tomorrow.

The survey, by the human rights organisation Liberty, was carried out by lawyers and academics in 15 countries. It shows that the four-week maximum in Britain outstrips limits in countries that have also suffered al-Qaida inspired terrorist attacks in recent years, including the United States, Spain and Turkey.

Although police in these countries also face increasingly complex terror plots with growing international dimensions, their maximum periods for pre-charge detention remain as short as 48 hours in the US, five days in Spain and seven and a half days in Turkey.

The findings are released as MPs await the publication of a new counter-terrorism bill that will propose extending detention without charge beyond 28 days.

Police chiefs have argued that complex investigations, including trawling computers and telephones for evidence of terrorist plots, mean they need the option of holding suspects for longer.

But critics have expressed concern that police have failed to bring forward compelling evidence to show the need for an extension.

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, is determined to avoid a repeat of the humiliating Commons defeat suffered by Tony Blair two years ago when he proposed a 90-day limit and saw 49 Labour MPs rebel.

Ministers have indicated they would favour a maximum of up to 56 days, but no government position has been made clear. There is evidence that Gordon Brown has not yet formed any strong personal opinion and he is said to remain “genuinely open-minded” on his preferred option.

Liberty’s experts around the world found that in comparable democracies the closest equivalent to a charge for those who have been detained in connection with terrorist activities must happen within days and not the months or even the years claimed by those who want to double the British limit to eight weeks.

The absence of a final decision has been reflected in a slippage of the publication date of the counter-terror bill. It was expected to appear by the end of this month but has now been pencilled in for December-January, with Smith only saying publicly that she hopes it will happen by Christmas.

The home secretary has claimed that carrying out international comparisons of pre-charge detention limits are so complex that they are on a level with doing a PhD thesis, while the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, has claimed that in countries such as France and Germany judicial oversight allows people to be detained for years.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said any extension of pre-charge detention would put Britain even further out of line with comparable democracies around the world: “The new prime minister is neither Tony nor Ian Blair. I have every hope that this new, damning evidence, alongside proportionate alternatives to lengthy pre-charge detention, will persuade him to think again.”

She said the Liberty study “explodes self-serving assertions about extended detention in inquisitorial Europe and other western democracies. It makes embarrassing reading for all of us in the land that gave Magna Carta to the world.”

The human rights organisation acknowledged that comparisons with other common law systems such as in Canada, New Zealand and Australia were more straightforward than those with inquisitorial civil law systems such as France and Germany, but said it had asked legal experts in each country to identify the closest equivalent to pre-charge detention.

“We found that the closest equivalent to a charge must happen within a matter of days, not months or years as Sir Ian Blair and others have suggested,” the Liberty study concludes.

It also warns that any extension of pre-charge detention in Britain could have broader implications around the world and give the green light to other governments such as Robert Mugabe’s in Zimbabwe to pass more draconian anti-terror laws: “Some states, and some individuals seeking to radicalise Muslim youths also might use the disparity to undermine the UK’s claim to civility and moral authority.”

Graphic: Detention without charge around the world

 ’I feared I’d end up dead in the woods like Dr Kelly,’ says biological warfare expert who criticised Britain and U.S.

  Fighting back: Jill Dekker was given special protection by the Belgian government after a series of ’sinister’ incidents

By GLEN OWEN and OLIVER WADESON - 

11th November 2007

An EU expert on biological warfare has told how she fears ending up ‘dead in the woods’ like scientist Dr David Kelly after an alleged campaign of intimidation by members of MI6 and the CIA.
 

Jill Dekker, a bio-defence expert based in Brussels, has reported a string of sinister incidents – including the parking of a hearse outside her house – after making a speech critical of British and American policy in the Middle East.  Her claims are included in a new book by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker which argues that Dr Kelly was murdered to silence his criticism of the grounds for going to war in Iraq.

American-born Dr Dekker has been billed at security conferences as the director of the ‘public health preparedness programme’ at the European Homeland Security Association (EHSA), a security think tank.

She was placed under the protection of the Belgian government after reporting a series of sinister incidents earlier this year.

The Belgians confirm that they mounted a three-month protection operation earlier this year for Dr Dekker, who has advised the European Commission on bio-terrorism issues, but refuse to be drawn on the extent to which her fears were wellfounded or why the protection was eventually lifted.

The EHSA bears many of the hallmarks of a ‘front’ organisation for espionage activities, although Dr Dekker refuses to say anything about it except that it answers to the French government.

Established in 2004, it holds workshops and conferences, and claims partnerships with a number of security-based thinktanks around the world.

It appears to exist only in cyberspace, with its staff, including its president, French career diplomat Richard Narich, only contactable by email. Dr Dekker is not listed on the EHSA website and the organisation was yesterday not responding to any calls.

Dr Dekker says the ‘intimidation’ against her started in March, as she was flying to Florida to give a speech on Syria’s weapons programme to an intelligence summit. She says she was subjected to a ‘heavy-handed’ interrogation by a man she suspects of being a British intelligence operative.

She believes the speech made her powerful enemies because she argued that billions of dollars spent by the US government to develop a smallpox vaccine has been wasted because scientists – including British experts – have used a different viral strain to the one she believes is being developed in Damascus.

If this is true, it means governments would have no way of protecting the public against the use of the virus by terrorists or rogue states.

She also believes that Iraq did have a biological weapons capacity which was all shipped to Syria before the outbreak of war.

She argues this was known, but was concealed from the public because the real purpose of the war was not to target weapons of mass destruction but to topple Saddam Hussein and gain a strategic foothold in the region.

When she returned to her home in Belgium after the speech she said she was subjected to an overt campaign of surveillance and harassment, including being continuously followed on foot and having cars parked outside her house with the headlights on.

On one occasion, she says she found a hearse parked outside her house with the drivers ’staring straight ahead.’ When she approached, it sped off and she pursued it, taking photographs as evidence.

After being told that Mr Baker was writing a book about the circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly’s death, she sent him an email on March 23 designed, she says, to highlight the risk she felt she was under.

Dr David Kelly, the UK’s leading weapons inspector in Iraq, was found dead in 2003

‘I’ve informed all my diplomatic friends that not only am I not suicidal, I am looking forward to my children growing up and . . . also my great career,’ she wrote. ‘Much like other people who suddenly were found dead in woods.’

A week later, she wrote: ‘The US State Department and their surrogates… continue to intimidate me and my family – every day they are outside my home, they tail me 24/7 – I believe they could try to kill me so I don’t reveal any more of my research on Syrian biological weapons.’

In a third email in April, she wrote: ‘I refuse to be intimidated by anyone who uses the tactics they used – so unprofessional even people inside can’t believe how they have acted here – it’s like Johnny English [the 2003 spoof spy film starring Rowan Atkinson as an incompetent British agent], really so amateurish. Our services just aren’t what they used to be.’

It is difficult to establish whether there is any truth to Dr Dekker’s claims of harassment, as she refuses to disclose the precise location of her home 90 minutes drive from Brussels for ’security reasons’.

She says the Belgian government extended its protection to her three months ago by making her a Belgian citizen, and is investigating her claims through its public prosecutor’s office. The Government confirms that she is now a Belgian national.

Dr Dekker has given a detailed account to The Mail on Sunday of the alleged campaign of intimidation, which she believes was led by American and British intelligence.

She tells how she was subjected to an ‘amateurish’ interrogation by the British man on the plane to Florida.

‘The plane was absolutely packed, and there was just one seat next to me that was empty. The plane was held up to let the final passenger on board,’ she said.

‘He then started asking me questions regarding my occupation, quite sensitive things about Nato and the like, to the point that I turned and said to him, ‘OK, go down the list’.

‘He then backed off but continued throughout the flight to be intrusive. He had this whole cover story about why he lived in Holland, right down to financial documents he showed me.

He asked me right out of the blue about Isotopes – now there’s a word you don’t hear everyday on a transatlantic flight.’

When she returned to Belgium after the conference she says was followed relentlessly on foot and by car, and had vehicles parked outside her house – often with darkened windows and their headlights fullon in broad daylight.

Of her encounter with the mystery ‘hearse’, she said: ‘No one in our neighbourhood had died and the agents sitting in the front wouldn’t make any eye contact, just stared straight ahead.

‘I was pretty ticked off so I decided to pull my car out and follow them. They took off so fast – they must have been driving at around 100 kph through the countryside. Then they followed me the next day with this hearse with Belgian plates all the way home.’

She says that after ‘making a few calls’, she was placed under the protection of the local police. The ‘campaign’ then stopped, having lasted just over a month.

‘It was unbelievable to me that I had to ask another government for protection against my own,’ she said. She kept a daily ‘harassment’ diary, which she has handed to the Belgian authorities.

Dr Dekker, who says she met David Kelly before the Iraq war at Wilton Park, a countryside conference centre used by the Foreign Office, agrees with Mr Baker’s conclusion that he was murdered.

Dr Kelly, the UK’s leading weapons inspector in Iraq, was found dead in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, after apparently committing suicide.

He had been highly critical of the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and in particular the infamous assertion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which he could deploy at 45 minutes notice.

Speculation about potential culprits who might have had a motive to silence him has ranged from ’special ops’ units of the intelligence services to expatriate Iraqi opponents of Saddam.

Mr Baker writes in his book The Strange Death of David Kelly, which is published tomorrow: ‘I have met Dr Dekker on two occasions and had a number of long exchanges with her. She does not strike me as the sort either who would frighten easily, or who would ginger up her story for effect.

‘Rather, she is a somewhat hardnosed, intelligent and knowledgeable woman who has succeeded well in a profession where men predominate. I therefore took it seriously when she emailed me.’

Dr Dekker emerged from the shadows of what she says has been a 20-year career as a scientist in 2005, when internet records show that she was a ‘bio-defence consultant’ for the Brussels-based thinktank New Defence Agenda.

The organisation, which bills itself as ‘platform for discussing Nato and EU defence and security issues’, names former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten and former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson among its patrons.

But critics have called it the arms industry’s ‘weapon of mass disinformation’ because of the partnerships it has established with companies such as BAe Systems, Lockheed Martin and Thales.

The International Intelligence Summit, which she addressed in Florida, described itself as ‘a nonpartisan, non-profit, neutral forum that uses private charitable funds to bring together intelligence agencies of the free world and the emerging democracies … the purpose of The Summit is to provide an opportunity for the international intelligence community to listen to and learn from each other, and to share ideas in the common war against terrorism.’

The publicity for the conference said: ‘The list of presenters will include many of the top leaders of the intelligence, espionage, counterterrorism and counter-intelligence agencies from around the free world. The Summit is intended to be the most prestigious world conference on international studies, intelligence policy, terrorism, and homeland security.’

The Summit flagged up Dr Dekker by saying she ‘regularly consults with Ministries of Public Health, Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Ministries of Defence on issues related to Mid-East state bio-warfare programmes’.

It added that she ‘has advised the European Commission on bio-terterrorism and stockpiling for Category A bio-warfare agent countermeasures; resulting in (COM (2004) 701 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament Preparedness and consequence management in the fight against terrorism’.

Asked if she knew anyone who could back up her claims of intimidation, she referred us to one of her friends, who spent 20 years as a CIA officer and now works as a consultant.

He said: “She told me what happened, and I believe it. What she described is known as heavy harassing surveillance, with the purpose of intimidating.”

Dave Thomas, the local police inspector who was entrusted with Dr Dekker’s protection, said he had done so on the orders of the Belgian ministry of the interior.

Speaking in accented English almost as good as his distinctly un- Belgian name would suggest, he said: “It is true that we were told to look after her. They said she was an important person who felt under threat.”

But he did not go into details into what action his force had taken.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said the order had come from the country’s Crisis Centre, Belgium’s emergency planning department.

He said: “Jill Dekker specialises in bioterrorism. She reported to us that she felt she was being threatened by foreign intelligence services, and we received an instruction from the Crisis Centre on March 21 that she should be protected. The protection was withdrawn on July 7.”

Last night, Mr Baker said he believed Dr Dekker could have made enemies by exposing a fallacy at the heart of military action against Iraq.

“If the war was really about WMD, then to be consistent we should also invade Syria,” he said.

“Otherwise, it suggests that it was more about giving Saddam a bloody nose.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

9/11 Truth vs Mainstream Media

Many many celebrities now speak out their doubts regarding 9/11 !

How long can Mainstream Media ignore 9/11 Truth?

Who cares ?

GAZA : Compte à rebours avant l’offensive

Offer Shelah, présentateur de “Harvest of the Week” sur la chaîne 10 a déclaré qu’”en dépit des victimes parmi les civils palestiniens, le monde montrait sympathie et tolérance pour l’action d’Israël. Ceci est dû au fait qu’Abbas continue de rencontrer Olmert, au moment même où l’armée israélienne tue les Palestiniens. Pourquoi être plus royaliste que le roi ?”
Amnon Abramovic, le présentateur de la télévision israélienne en hébreu, a déclaré pour résumer : “Notre armée a tué 10 Palestiniens en 24 heures, dont des enfants, et pourtant on n’a entendu aucune protestation.”

Par Saleh Al-Naami

Dimanche dernier, Zaher al-Orr réservait une surprise à son fils Ashraf et à son ami Mohamed Abu Herbid. Il leur a préparé le petit déjeuner avant de rentrer chez lui, après son travail de nuit. Ils étaient tous les trois gardes dans une usine d’éléments de salle de bain près du camp de réfugiés de Jabalya, au nord de Gaza.

Habituellement, ils prenaient leur petit déjeuner une fois rentrés chez eux. Mais ce matin-là allait être un matin particulier.

Un autre ouvrier, qui commençait tôt, s’est joint à eux. Les choses ne se sont pas passées exactement comme al-Orr l’avait prévu. Quelques minutes après que les hommes se furent assis pour manger, un obus d’artillerie israélien a éclaté sur leur table. Les quatre hommes sont morts.

Non seulement les tirs israéliens sur Gaza sont de plus en plus brutaux, mais les cibles aussi ont changé. Maintenant, l’aviation israélienne bombarde les bureaux, les positions et les patrouilles de la police palestinienne. Cinq policiers ont été tués dans deux postes de polices différents. Des douzaines d’autres ont été blessés.

Citant des sources à l’état-major israélien, la radio israélienne a dit que l’intensification des opérations militaires dans la Bande de Gaza visait à “punir” les Palestiniens pour les tirs sur les colonies juives environnantes.

Le Ministre de la Défense israélienne Ehud Barak dit qu’une incursion de Gaza est “imminente“. La chaîne 10 de la télévision israélienne a dit vendredi que la communauté internationale se tenait aux cotés d’Israël.

Offer Shelah, présentateur de “Harvest of the Week” sur la chaîne 10 a déclaré qu’”en dépit des victimes parmi les civils palestiniens, le monde montrait sympathie et tolérance pour l’action d’Israël. Ceci est dû au fait qu’Abbas continue de rencontrer Olmert, au moment même où l’armée israélienne tue les Palestiniens. Pourquoi être plus royaliste que le roi ? “

Amnon Abramovic, le présentateur de la télévision israélienne en hébreu, a dit pour résumer : “Notre armée a tué 10 Palestiniens en 24 heures, dont des enfants, et pourtant on n’a entendu aucune protestation.”

Le bombardement continu des Palestiniens à Gaza n’est pas un substitut à l’incursion israélienne. Plus vraisemblablement, il en est le prélude.

Dans son édition de vendredi, Haaretz cite les sources militaires israéliennes disant que la probabilité du lancement d’une campagne militaire tout azimut avait grandi depuis que l’armée avait réalisé que la punition collective qu’Israël impose aux Palestiniens n’empêchait pas le lancement de roquettes artisanales.

Selon la chaîne 2 de la télévision israélienne, un débat animé a cours entre les Chefs d’Etat Major des Armées au sujet des attaques militaires sur les postes de la police palestinienne. Bien que les postes de police soient une “cible facile“, les généraux de l’armée notent que les attaquer pourrait ébranler la sécurité à Gaza et causer ainsi davantage de complications à Israël.

Les généraux souhaitent que toute incursion à Gaza soit reportée à après la tenue du sommet d’Annapolis, pour ne pas affaiblir la position israélienne lors des négociation.

Israël a déjà rallié le soutien international pour une opération militaire à Gaza. Dans son édition de dimanche, Maariv a rapporté que lors de sa récente visite à Wahington, Barak a obtenu le feu vert des Etats-Unis pour une offensive sur Gaza. Barak, dit le journal, a emmené des officiers des services secrets avec lui. Ils auraient dit aux Américains que les groupes de la résistance palestinienne ont stocké des armes et que le Hamas avait maintenant une armée potentielle.

Selon les rapports de l’Intelligence israélienne, le Hamas a accru la contre-bande d’armes d’une manière sans précédent pour consolider ses capacités militaires. On dit aussi que le mouvement Jihad Islamique a doublé son arsenal d’armes et a réussi à recruter un grand nombre d’officiers de sécurité à Gaza après la prise de contrôle du Hamas.
Entre temps, il semblerait que les Brigades des Martyrs d’Al Aqsa affiliées au Hamas aient reçu une aide considérable, en partie du Hizbullah libanais.

Les généraux de l’armée israélienne à la retraite sont de réserve pour une campagne majeure à Gaza. Le général Yaeir Naffe, ancien commandant des forces israéliennes d’occupation à Gaza, pense qu’une incursion serait “inutile à moins qu’elle ne dure au moins deux ans.” Il met en garde sur le fait qu’à moins de rester longtemps dans la Bande, les tirs de roquettes reprendront.

Parlant à la radio israélienne en hébreu dimanche dernier, Naffe explique que “contrairement à la situation en Cisjordanie, à Gaza nous ne devons pas seulement arrêter les tirs des roquettes, mais nous devons aussi garantir que les Palestiniens ne seront pas en mesure de produire des roquettes à l’avenir.”

Si les Palestiniens réussissent à “tirer une seule roquette après notre retrait, l’opération toute entière aura l’air d’un échec“, a-t-il ajouté.

Quelques hommes politiques israéliens ont fait un lien entre l’escalade à Gaza et des motifs personnels de Barak. L’ancienne Ministre de l’Education israélienne Shulamit Aloni a dit que Barak se servait de Gaza pour devenir Premier Ministre.

Dans un entretien avec le journal Events, de Nazareth, Aloni a décrit Barak comme “l’homme le plus dangereux d’Israël, à cause de sa nature, parce qu’il est un homme de guerre, et à cause de son arrogance. Il adopte une position extrême parce qu’il pense qu’en commettant des crimes, il sera en mesure de battre Netanyahu aux prochaines élections.” Aloni a demandé que La Haye le juge comme criminel de guerre.

Les Palestiniens prennent très au sérieux les menaces d’Israël. Le Premier Ministre démissionné Ismail Haniyeh a dit dimanche qu’il savait que l’administration US avait donné le feu vert à Israël pour attaquer Gaza, et a prévenu que Gaza serait “une tombe pour les envahisseurs“.

Les Brigades Ezzedin al-Qassam, la branche armée du Hamas, a lancé un appel aux autres groupes de la résistance à Gaza pour former une “cellule d’opérations conjointes” afin de combattre l’escalade israélienne.

Abu Obeida, porte-parole des Brigades al-Qassam, ont dit que l’invasion israélienne de la Bande serait “une grande folie… ils sauront qu’ils commettent une faute énorme en envahissant la Bande. Ils disent que l’enlèvement du soldat Gilad Shalit les met en colère. Je peux vous assurer que nous kidnapperons beaucoup plus de leurs soldats s’ils envahissent la Bande“, a-t-il dit au Al-Ahram Weekly.

Le Ministre de l’Intérieur palestinien maintient que les attaques israéliennes sur la police palestinienne sont destinées à pousser Gaza au “chaos“. Le porte-parole du Ministre, Ihab al-Ghosein, a déclaré au Weekly que le ministère n’avait aucun plan d’évacuation des postes de police pour anticiper des bombardements à venir, mais qu’il n’excluait pas de le faire dans le futur.

Abu Ahmed, le porte-parole des Brigades Al-Quds, la branche armée du Jihad Islamique, a promis que les tirs des roquettes sur Israël continueraient, à la fois pendant et après toute offensive israélienne.

Pour les Palestiniens assiégés, une chose est claire : après la réunion d’Annapolis, Israël attaquera.

Source : Wa3ad
Traduction : MR pour ISM

———————————————

War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, January 8, 2009

The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.

This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.

British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon’s Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.

The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007).

The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).

The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.

The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine’s gas reserves could much larger.

Map 1

Map 2

Who Owns the Gas Fields

The issue of sovereignty over Gaza’s gas fields is crucial. From a legal standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine.

The death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de facto control over Gaza’s offshore gas reserves.

British Gas (BG Group) has been dealing with the Tel Aviv government. In turn, the Hamas government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields.

The election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 was a major turning point. Palestine’s sovereignty over the offshore gas fields was challenged in the Israeli Supreme Court. Sharon stated unequivocally that “Israel would never buy gas from Palestine” intimating that Gaza’s offshore gas reserves belonged to Israel.

In 2003, Ariel Sharon, vetoed an initial deal, which would allow British Gas to supply Israel with natural gas from Gaza’s offshore wells. (The Independent, August 19, 2003)

The election victory of Hamas in 2006 was conducive to the demise of the Palestinian Authority, which became confined to the West Bank, under the proxy regime of Mahmoud Abbas.

In 2006, British Gas “was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to Egypt.” (Times, May, 23, 2007). British Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened on behalf of Israel with a view to shunting the agreement with Egypt.

The following year, in May 2007, the Israeli Cabinet approved a proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “to buy gas from the Palestinian Authority.” The proposed contract was for $4 billion, with profits of the order of $2 billion of which one billion was to go the Palestinians.

Tel Aviv, however, had no intention on sharing the revenues with Palestine. An Israeli team of negotiators was set up by the Israeli Cabinet to thrash out a deal with the BG Group, bypassing both the Hamas government and the Palestinian Authority:

“Israeli defence authorities want the Palestinians to be paid in goods and services and insist that no money go to the Hamas-controlled Government.” (Ibid, emphasis added)

The objective was essentially to nullify the contract signed in 1999 between the BG Group and the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.

Under the proposed 2007 agreement with BG, Palestinian gas from Gaza’s offshore wells was to be channeled by an undersea pipeline to the Israeli seaport of Ashkelon, thereby transferring control over the sale of the natural gas to Israel.

The deal fell through. The negotiations were suspended:

“Mossad Chief Meir Dagan opposed the transaction on security grounds, that the proceeds would fund terror”. (Member of Knesset Gilad Erdan, Address to the Knesset on “The Intention of Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Purchase Gas from the Palestinians When Payment Will Serve Hamas,” March 1, 2006, quoted in Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Does the Prospective Purchase of British Gas from Gaza’s Coastal Waters Threaten Israel’s National Security? Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 2007)

Israel’s intent was to foreclose the possibility that royalties be paid to the Palestinians. In December 2007, The BG Group withdrew from the negotiations with Israel and in January 2008 they closed their office in Israel.(BG website).

Invasion Plan on The Drawing Board

The invasion plan of the Gaza Strip under “Operation Cast Lead” was set in motion in June 2008, according to Israeli military sources:

“Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago June or before June , even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.”(Barak Ravid, Operation “Cast Lead”: Israeli Air Force strike followed months of planning, Haaretz, December 27, 2008)

That very same month, the Israeli authorities contacted British Gas, with a view to resuming crucial negotiations pertaining to the purchase of Gaza’s natural gas:

“Both Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler agreed to inform BG of Israel’s wish to renew the talks.

The sources added that BG has not yet officially responded to Israel’s request, but that company executives would probably come to Israel in a few weeks to hold talks with government officials.” (Globes online- Israel’s Business Arena, June 23, 2008)

The decision to speed up negotiations with British Gas (BG Group) coincided, chronologically, with the process of military planning. It would appear that Israel was anxious to reach an agreement with BG prior to the invasion, which was already in the advanced planning stage.

Moreover, these negotiations with British Gas were conducted by the Ehud Olmert government with the knowledge that a military invasion of Gaza was on the drawing board and that a new political-territorial arrangement of the Gaza strip was being contemplated.

In fact, negotiations between British Gas and Israeli officials were ongoing in October 2008, 2-3 months prior to the commencement of the bombings on December 27th.

In November 2008, the Israeli Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Infrastructures instructed Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) to enter into negotiations with British Gas, on the purchase of natural gas from the BG’s offshore concession in Gaza. (Globes, November 13, 2008)

“Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler wrote to IEC CEO Amos Lasker recently, informing him of the government’s decision to allow negotiations to go forward, in line with the framework proposal it approved earlier this year.

The IEC board, headed by chairman Moti Friedman, approved the principles of the framework proposal a few weeks ago. The talks with BG Group will begin once the board approves the exemption from a tender.” (Globes Nov. 13, 2008)

Gaza and Energy Geopolitics

The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel.

What can we expect in the wake of the invasion? What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palstine’s Natural Gas reserves?

A new territorial arrangement, with the stationing of Israeli and/or “peacekeeping” troops?

The militarization of the entire Gaza coastline, which is strategic for Israel?

The outright confiscation of Palestinian gas fields and the unilateral declaration of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza’s maritime areas?

If this were to occur, the Gaza gas fields would be integrated into Israel’s offshore installations, which are contiguous to those of the Gaza Strip. (See Map 1 above).

These various offshore installations are also linked up to Israel’s energy transport corridor, extending from the port of Eilat, which is an oil pipeline terminal, on the Red Sea to the seaport- pipeline terminal at Ashkelon, and northwards to Haifa, and eventually linking up through a proposed Israeli-Turkish pipeline with the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Ceyhan is the terminal of the Baku, Tblisi Ceyhan Trans Caspian pipeline. “What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel’s Tipline.” (See Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, July 23, 2006)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11680

Mardi 13 Novembre 2007

Saleh Al-Naami

Are US Troops Helping in Israel’s War on Gaza?

 

 

Santiago de Chile, Cumbre Iberoamericana, 10 de noviembre de 2007

Zapatero está hablando para dar una lección de “respeto” democrático a Hugo Chávez, que llamó fascista a PP Aznar. Chávez intenta replicar, pero le han cortado el micrófono. Juan Carlos pierde los nervios y le dice a Chávez apuntándole con el dedo: ¿Por qué no te callas?

Santiago du Chili, Sommet ibéroaméricain, 10 novembre 2007

Zapatero est en train de donner une leçon de “respect” démocratique à Hugo Chávez qui vient de qualifier PP Aznar de fasciste. Chávez tente de répondre, mais on lui a coupé le microphone. Juan Carlos perd alors son calme et lance à Chávez en pointant son doigt sur lui : Pourquoi tu ne la fermes pas ?

Santiago de Chile, Iberoamerican Summit, 10^th of November2007

Zapatero is lecturing Hugo Chávez on democratic “respect” after the Venezuelan President called PP Aznar a fascist. Chávez tries to reply but his microphone has been cut. Suddenly Spanish King Juan Carlos loses his temper and says to Chávez, pointing his finger on him: Why don’t you shut up?

Santiago do Chile, Cimeira Ibero-Americana, 10 de Novembro de 2007

Zapatero está a falar para dar uma lição de “respeito” democrático a Hugo Chávez que chamou fascista a Aznar. Chávez tenta responder, mas tinham-lhe desligado o microfone. Juan Carlos perde a paciência e diz a Chávez apontando para ele: Por que não te calas?

The Last Dead Bull on Wall Street

By Mike Whitney

11/11/07 “ICH” — –

Whew ! What a week for the stock market. On Wednesday the market took a 360 point nosedive followed, two days later, by a 220 point belly-flop. By the time it was over, the trading pits looked more like a sausage-packing plant than the world’s financial epicenter. After the bell, downcast traders could be seen tiptoeing through the carnage on their way to the local liquor store to load up on “Stoly” and boxes of Franzia—anything that would steady their nerves and put the week behind them.

Everyone could see it coming; the train-wreck. It was mostly carry-over from the night before when Asian stocks took a thumping on reports of slower growth in the US and growing troubles in the credit markets. That put the first domino in motion. Fed chief Bernanke’s announcement that the economy will face “a sharp slowdown from the housing market’s contraction” and an “inflationary surge from sharply higher oil prices and the weaker dollar”, didn’t help either. His remarks triggered a blow-off in the currency markets while equities were frog-marched to the chopping-block.

The Shanghai market took the worst hit dropping nearly 5% before the trading-day ended. Taiwan and Hong Kong followed suit, sliding 3.9% and 3.2% respectively. Share prices in Japan fell 2%. The next morning, Wall Street crashed. It was a massacre.

This is a bear market now. The last bull was dragged from the Street on Friday with a harpoon in its chest.

The subprime contagion has now spread beyond the US and Europe to markets in the Far East. No one is fooled by Bernanke’s sunny predictions that the economy will bounce back next year with a strong showing in the first quarter. That’s baloney and everyone knows it. The economy has stumbled down the elevator shaft and is just waiting to hit bottom. Consumer confidence is flagging, housing is falling, foreign capital is fleeing, and the greenback is one flush away from the sewage-treatment plant. Bernanke’s soothing bromides are meaningless.

“I don’t see any significant change in the broad holdings of dollars around the world. Dollars remain the dominant reserve asset and I expect that to continue to be the case,” Bernanke said to the Congressional Economic Committee.

Really? So why is the greenback plummeting if people aren’t dumping it, Ben? What an absurd comment. The dollar has lost 63% against the euro and dropped to record lows against a basket of world currencies. Foreign central banks and investors have been ditching it as fast as they can before it loses more value. The dollar’s tumble has been the most dazzling currency-flameout in modern times and Bernanke is acting like he’s still asleep at the switch. It’s madness.

The greenback is getting clobbered by the Fed’s “low-interest” snake oil and the gargantuan current account deficit. If Bernanke clips rates again to bail out the stock market, the dollar will slip into irreversible respiratory failure. Food and oil prices will shoot to the moon overnight and the remains of the greenback will be carted off to the nearest boneyard.

September’s trade deficit was another blow to the waning dollar. The Census Bureau reported on Friday that the deficit clocked in at $56.5 billion. That’s $684 billion per annum! Bush has been crowing about the “shrinking deficit”, but the numbers are nothing to boast about. We’re still borrowing more than we’re producing. We’re still living beyond our means. The lower numbers just reflect the decline in home construction which is import-intensive. The fact is, we’re addicted to debt-fueled consumption and forgotten that, eventually, the trillions that we’ve borrowed from foreign creditors, will have to be repaid. If the dollar is replaced as the world’s reserve currency, then we’ll have to pay back $9 trillion of outstanding debt. We might as well hang out the “Foreclosed” sign right now and get fitted for Chinese workers-suits.

This is from Bloomberg News:

“As the dollar tumbles, concern is growing that its weakness may augur the end of the U.S. currency’s 62-year reign as the world’s specie of choice for trade, financial transactions and central-bank reserves…..The dollar owes its position as the world’s premier international currency to its status as a haven during times of turmoil, the absence of a suitable rival, weak domestic demand in other countries and plain old inertia. Geopolitics also play a role.”

Nonsense. Who believes this rubbish? The dollar is the so-called “international currency” because the Federal Reserve and its well-heeled patrons are the directors of the US-Euro-Japan banking cabal which is at the center of the global Fiat money scam. There’s nothing more to it than that. Notice the recent “unilateral” clamp-down on Iran by the US-led banking syndicate. The action was initiated without UN approval for the simple reason that the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and thousands of NGOs are just more of the Central Banks’ prime properties. Don’t expect the father to ask the child for permission to punish one of his errant children. The banks are the one’s who really call the shots and—behind the curtain of feigned respectability—they are the driving force behind the endless wars.

The Fed’s plan to “devalue” our way to prosperity appears to have hit a few ill-placed speed-bumps. The stock market is hanging by a thread and consumer confidence is at its lowest ebb since the start of the Iraq War. The falling dollar is expected to put a damper on Christmas spending and knock equities for a loop. That can’t be good for economy—especially when 72% of GDP comes from consumer spending.

We’ve already begun to see the telltale signs that the consumer is loosing ground and about to slip into a debt-induced coma.

According to data from the University of Michigan:

“Consumer confidence reached its lowest level in more than two years this month amid concerns over record-high oil prices, continued trouble in the housing market and higher inflation…Although consumer attitudes deteriorated across the board, the substantial drop in expectations contributed heavily to the sizeable decline in the overall index.”

The average working stiff doesn’t put any stock in Bernanke’s palavering. He sees what’s going on for himself every time he pulls up to the gas pump or goes the grocery store. He doesn’t need the University of Michigan to tell him he’s getting screwed; he knows it! The economy is sinking, inflation is skyrocketing, and the country is adrift. Every farthing in the public till has been shoveled into a black hole in the Middle East. Does Bernanke really think working people don’t know that? Everyone knows that. Everyone knows the economy is on life-support; just like everyone knows the country is collapsing from mismanagement. Even the flag-waving, war-mongering maniacs on the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page are starting to shutter from the avalanche of bad news. They see what’s going on and they’re scared—scared sh**less.

Unfortunately, the sudden shift in consumer sentiment is the hurting retailers who depend on Christmas to carry them through the year. We’ve already seen the sluggishness in housing and auto sales. Now it’s showing up in retail. Abercrombie, American Eagle, Ann Taylor, Chicos, Dillards, The Gap and Nordstrom are all reporting sagging sales. Walmart, Lowes and the other big-box stores are lowering their projections as well. It’s going to be a lean Christmas.

The poor US consumer is finally maxed-out and can’t tap into his home equity anymore for presto-credit. He’s mortgaged “to the hilt” and he’s already run up 6 or 7 credit cards to their limit. In fact, credit card debt is a growing concern for the banks, too.

The commercial banks are the victims’ of their own success. After years of seductive promotions and saturation mailings the credit card industry is at its zenith leaving consumers with a staggering bill of nearly $1 trillion. ($915 billion) More and more customers are finding themselves unable to make even minimum payments on their balances and defaults are piling up at a record pace. This is the next phase of the subprime fiasco and it has the potential to be nearly as disruptive as the housing meltdown. The problem is complex, too. After all, most credit card debt in the last 6 years has been “securitized” and passed on to investors in the secondary market. (pension funds, hedge funds etc.) That means we can expect more tremors in the stock market as corporate earnings go south after credit card-backed bonds are downgraded. It’s just more of the same “structured finance” chicanery; debt stacked on debt, until the whole edifice caves in.

It’s looking more and more like Reagan’s “shining city on the hill” was erected on a mountain of toxic debt. It’s a wonder it hasn’t sunk already.

The country is headed for recession and there’s nothing that Bernanke can do to stop it. The only question is whether we’ll be facing a colossal economy-busting meltdown like 1929 or a milder 5 or 6-year slump. That’s up to the Federal Reserve. If the Fed chief decides to pit himself against the falling markets by slashing rates and destroying the currency; then we are likely to be digging-out for years. But if Bernanke steps aside, and lets the chips fall where they may, then the pace of recovery will be quicker.

Whatever choice he makes, there’s no avoiding the inevitable downturn. The hammer is poised to strike the anvil. The stock market will fall, the over-extended banks and hedge funds will collapse, and the country will go into a protracted, economic tailspin. That much is certain. Economic fundamentals can only be shrugged off for so long. When markets correct it’s like a tidal-surge that sweeps-away the deadwood of bad bets and over-levered investments leaving behind a broad-expanse of empty beach.

Recession is a normal part of the business cycle. It can’t be avoided. The economy needs to unwind so debts can get written off and businesses can retool for the future. The upcoming recession is shaping up to be worse than its predecessors—a real doozey. The damage caused by the Fed’s excessive credit has been considerable. It’ll take years to mop up the red ink and set the house aright. The markets are in a shambles, investors have been battered and confidence is gone.

Structured finance has been an unmitigated disaster. It needs to be scrapped. We need a new financial system for a new epoch; a system that is heavily regulated and supervised to discourage the crooks and con-artists; a system that it maintains its essential link to the real, productive underlying economy and avoids the galaxy of complex derivatives, “securitized” liabilities, and opaque debt-instruments that have brought on the present crisis; a system that responds to the needs of working people and takes into consideration the looming problems of environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and climate change; a system that reinvests in communities, education and health-care rather than fattening the bottom-line of corporate racketeers and brandy-drooling elites. It’s time to remove the rotten scaffolding and rebuild the whole contraption brick by brick.

The system is broken. Maybe Greenspan did us all a favor by blowing it up with his “low interest” dynamite. Good riddance.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18708.htm

Bush Risks World War III with Russia, China and Iran

Two ominous developments have complicated Bush’s plans to nuke Iran. One is a warning from Putin. The other –a dramatic demonstration by China. In their wake, Bush has now said he is committed to resolving the “crisis” diplomatically. But the new line was not forthcoming until after Vladimir “Pooty Poot” Putin, stated flatly and without emotion: an attack on Iran will be considered an attack on Russia. “Pooty Poot” has nukes and will use them. High-level diplomatic sources in Tehran were reported to have told the Asia Times Online that Putin and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had agreed on a plan that would nullify Bush’s campaign to strike Iran preemptively with a nuclear weapon.China, likewise, warned America’s rogue psychopath. As if to underscore the point, a Chinese submarine popped up –undetected –in the middle of a Pacific Ocean exercise. The Sub was said to be “dangerously close” to the USS Kitty Hawk, having slipped past a US “shield” of a dozen warships and two US subs. US brass are “dumbfounded”!

We can only speculate about US ability to detect “subs”. One would have assumed advances since the making of the early 90’s film –”The Hunt for Red October”. Even so — that China has a sub that slips so effortlessly, silently past vaunted US detection technology confirms that the sub was of advanced design and equipped with advanced stealth technology. Just recently, in the comments section, I stated that China had the ability to put a nuclear sub undetected just off the US East Coast. China exceeded my prediction. I had not expected to be confirmed so quickly by events. See: Submarine Detection

The US Navy Fifth Fleet is headquartered in the Gulf State of Bahrain which is responsible for patrolling the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Suez Canal and parts of the Indian Ocean. The Fifth Fleet currently comprises a carrier group and two helicopter carrier ships. Its size peaked at five aircraft carrier groups and six helicopter carriers in 2003 during the invasion of Iraq. Presently, it is led by the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier commissioned in 1961, and on November 2, began participating in a Naval exercise in the Persian Gulf.

The Fifth Fleet’s base in Bahrain, is only 150 miles away from the Iranian coast, and would itself be in range of Iran’s new generation of anti-ship cruise missiles. Also, any Naval ships in the confined terrain of the Persian Gulf would have difficulty in manoeuvring and would be within range of Iran’s rugged coastline which extends all along the Persian Gulf to the Arabian sea.
Michael E. Salla, M.A., Ph.D, The US neoconservative agenda to Sacrifice the Fifth Fleet – The New Pearl Harbor

Bush downplays the vulnerability of the Fifth Fleet. Nevertheless, Iran, itself, has the ability to wipe out the US Fifth Fleet, currently within range of Iran’s Russian-made mobile missile launchers situated strategically in mountainous terrain overlooking the Persian Gulf. Iran is not Iraq.

The most sophisticated of Iran’s cruise missiles are the ‘Sunburn’ and ‘Yakhonts’. These are missiles against which US military experts conclude modern warships have no effective defense emphasis mine, LH. By deliberately provoking an Iranian retaliation to US military actions, the neoconservatives will knowingly sacrifice much or all of the Fifth Fleet. This will culminate in a new Pearl Harbor that will create the right political environment for total war against Iran, and expanded military actions in the Persian Gulf region.
Michael E. Salla, M.A., Ph.D, The US neoconservative agenda to Sacrifice the Fifth Fleet – The New Pearl Harbor

A new Pearl Harbor may be precisely what the Neocon mentality desires. They would be willing to go back to the well. Bush logic, meanwhile, defies logic. Just recently  Bush warned that WWIII is imminent. Therefore, he says, we must strike pre-emptively to prevent WWIII. Never mind that the pre-emptive strike will precipitate it. You can’t make this stuff up!

The US continues to fall for Bush’s idiocy!
So –who’s the bigger idiot?

Defense analyst Tim Ripley of Jane’s Defense Weekly, calls a US attack on Iran a “nightmare scenario”, a war that could not be finished. Bush should have some experience in that field. He is utterly incapable of either finishing or winning in Iraq.

Intent on war, it is not surprising that Bush tries to cover up dissenting opinions and dangers. Bush is a “man” who has proven himself impervious to logic, common sense and empathy.

He will ignore the Pentagon’s Millennium Challenge war games that resulted in the US loss of the fleet. Neoconservative kiss ups to Bush simply ignore the advise of experts. It is the nature of ideology that nothing is learned from experience.

Millions of lives were ruined by the back to back debacles of three idiots: Reagan, Bush Sr. and now a twisted twig. Millions of lives were ruined by Reagan who almost single handedly broke both the US labor movement and the US economy forever. Bush Sr was content merely to preside over the ruins while launching murderous and unjustified attacks on Panama and luring Saddam Hussein into Kuwait. Once a spook always a spook.

In the meantime, a veteran speaks out:
Iraq war is a betrayal of American democracy
November 11, 2007
By MATT HOWARD

Editor’s note: Matt Howard gave this statement at a recent protest at the Statehouse.

In 2003 I illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with 1st Tank battalion 1st Marine Division. My commander in chief unleashed the world’s fiercest fighting force upon the country and people of Iraq, and now those of us used and betrayed by him are demanding justice.

Four and a half years after our opening “shock and awe” Bush’s lies are known throughout the world, and yet he continues to act with impunity. Four and a half years later the Bush regime has unleashed a hell upon the country of Iraq that only those who have been there can truly understand.

As a two-tour combat veteran of this brutal war, I have a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about what has been done and what continues to be done in our name. We veterans know that this war is not the one being sanitized on the nightly news. It has nothing to do with the liberation of the people of Iraq; instead it has everything to do with the subjugation and domination of these people in the name of US imperial economic and strategic interests.

We did not go to war with the country of Iraq, we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.

Let me say again so that there is no misunderstanding. I stand here today as a former US Marine saying we are killing women and children in Iraq. This is the true nature of war. War lends itself to atrocities. Don’t think you can use an organization designed to kill other human beings for anything humanitarian. That has never been our mission. That was crystal clear from the moment I was forced to bury the crate of humanitarian food given to me in Kuwait.

Four and a half years later we as soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are done. We are done being told under threat of court martial to run over children that get in the way of our speeding convoys.

We are done raiding and destroying the homes of innocent Iraqis on a nightly basis.

We are done abusing and torturing prisoners.

We are done being hired thugs for the 160,000 contractors and US corporate interests in Iraq.

We are done being poisoned by depleted uranium, the unspoken Agent Orange of this war.

We are done coming home broken, from two, three, four tours of duty – only to find our commander in chief has actually tried to CUT funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs. To find our doctors being told to diagnose us with pre-existing personality disorders instead of post traumatic stress syndrome.

We are done killing for lies.

So Iraq Veterans Against the War is taking back our history – the history that has been robbed from us. We are dispelling the myth that the Vietnam war ended when the Democrats started voting against it. Instead we are spreading the truth about how the American War in Vietnam ended.

The Vietnam War ended when soldiers put down their weapons and refused to fight; when pilots dropped their bombs in the ocean.

We are re-educating the public to let them know that the power ultimately lies with the people. Just take a look at the thousands of pages of internal documents from the Department of Defense explicitly detailing how at the end of the Vietnam war the military had collapsed. It was literally in a state of mutiny. And that movement is slowly starting again. Because ultimately in every war waged throughout human history, those forced to fight quickly realize they have much more in common with those they are being told to kill than with those telling them to do the killing.

And we are re-educating the public about the true nature of sectarian violence. No, the middle east is NOT inherently violent. In fact, in the 1,400-year schism between Sunnis and Shias – there has NEVER been a civil war fought. They have always lived in the same neighborhoods and even intermarried. The United States has caused this civil war using the classic colonial techniques of divide and conquer.

George Bush is a war criminal who has violated international law, the Geneva convention and the Nuremberg standards and needs to tried accordingly for crimes against humanity.

I ask every red-blooded American today: What would you do if your homeland was savagely invaded and occupied by another country? The Iraqis will continue to resist and fight until the last American has left their homeland. Period. End the violence in Iraq? End the occupation.

We veterans are speaking out to stop the violence being perpetrated in our name. When we voted in the Democrats on an anti-war mandate, the Bush regime expanded the war. As we are marching against further occupation, the Bush regime is making threats against Iran.

And we will not continue to be silenced by the mainstream media. Top generals and bottom privates are all speaking in unison now. We know the truth about the slaughter of upwards of one million Iraqis. Why is no one listening? We will not stand by as this regime tricks the country into thinking that if you oppose the war you do not support the troops. We ARE the troops and we have never felt support from this administration. Stop mindlessly supporting the troops. Start demanding that we come home – and maybe think about apologizing to us when we get back.

Matt Howard attained the rank of corporal in the United States Marine Corps. He is head of the Vermont chapter for Iraq Veterans Against the War.

http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2007/11/bush-risks-world-war-iii-with-russia.html