Former SAS soldier blows apart Miliband denial of UK torture involvement

(Updated: Gagged by court but – video – still speaks at rally)

on: 29.02.2008

“As of 1940hrs 29/02/08 I have been placed under an injunction preventing me from speaking publicly and publishing material gained as a result of my service in UKSF (SAS).

I will be continuing to collect evidence and opinion on British Involvement in extraordinary rendition, torture, secret detentions, extra judicial detention, use of evidence gained through torture, breaches of the Geneva Conventions, breaches of International Law and failure to abide by our obligations as per UN Convention Against Torture. I am carrying on regardless “
Ben Griffin, Former UK Special forces trooper, speaking at World at War conference

video: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=537&Itemid=1

Ben Griffin, the ex-SAS trooper who this week revealed the extensive British collaboration with US rendition and torture, was served with an injunction immediately after speaking at the London World Against War rally last night. The government is trying to gag Ben to prevent any more revelations about British involvement in the US policy of kidnapping people and sending them to secret centres for interrogation and torture.

This statement was prepared and read by Ben Griffin, ex-SAS soldier, at a press conference on Monday 25 February 2008.

Our government would have us believe that our involvement in the process known as Extraordinary Rendition is limited to two occasions on which planes carrying detainees landed to refuel on the British Indian Ocean Territory, Diego Garcia. David Miliband has stated that the British Government expects the Government of the United States to “seek permission to render detainees via UK territory and airspace, including Overseas Territories; that we will grant that permission only if we are satisfied that the rendition would accord with UK law and our international obligations; and how we understand our obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture¹.” (Taken from a statement given to the House of Commons by the Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Thursday 21 February 2008)

The use of British Territory and airspace pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of Extraordinary Rendition in the first place. Since the invasion of Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001 UKSF has operated within a joint US/UK Task Force. This Task Force has been responsible for the detention of hundreds if not thousands of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq. Individuals detained by British soldiers within this Task force have ended up in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Bagram Theatre Internment Facility, Balad Special Forces Base, Camp Nama BIAP and Abu Ghraib Prison.

Whilst the government has stated its desire that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed, it has remained silent over these other secretive prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. These secretive prisons are part of a global network in which individuals face torture and are held indefinately without charge. All of this is in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions, International Law and the UN Convention Against Torture.

Early involvement of UKSF in the process of Extraordinary Rendition centres around operations carried out in Afghanistan in late 2001. Of note is an incident at the Qalai Janghi fortress, near Mazar-i-Sharif. UKSF fought alongside their US counterparts to put down a bloody revolt by captured Taliban fighters. The surviving Taliban fighters were then rendered to Guantanamo Bay.

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003 this joint US/UK task force appeared. Its primary mission was to kill or capture high value targets. Individuals detained by this Task Force often included non-combatants caught up in the search for high value targets. The use of secret detention centres within Iraq has negated the need to use Guantanamo Bay whilst allowing similar practice to go unnoticed.

I have here an account taken from an interpreter interviewed by the organisation Human Rights Watch (http://hrw.org/reports/2006/us0706/2.htm). He was based at the detention and interrogation facility within Camp Nama at Baghdad International Airport during 2004. This facility was used to interrogate individuals captured by the joint US/UK Task Force. In it are the details of numerous breaches of the Geneva Convention and accounts of torture. These breaches were not the actions of rogue elements the abuse was systematic and sanctioned through the chain of command. This account is corroborated by an investigation carried out by NYT reporters into Camp Nama and the US/UK Task Force, which appeared in the New York Times on March 19 2006. Throughout my time in Iraq I was in no doubt that individuals detained by UKSF and handed over to our American colleagues would be tortured. During my time as member of the US/UK Task Force, three soldiers recounted to me an incident in which they had witnessed the brutal interrogation of two detainees. Partial drowning and an electric cattle prod were used during this interrogation and this amounted to torture. It was the widely held assumption that this would be the fate of any individuals handed over to our America colleagues. My commanding officer at the time expressed his concern to the whole squadron that we were becoming “the secret police of Baghdad”.

As UK soldiers within this Task Force a policy that we would detain individuals but not arrest them was continually enforced. Since it was commonly assumed by my colleagues that anyone we detained would subsequently be tortured this policy of detention and not arrest was regarded as a clumsy legal tool used to distance British soldiers from the whole process.

During the many operations conducted to apprehend high value targets numerous non-combatants were detained and interrogated in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of civilians in occupied territories. I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured.

The joint US/UK Task Force has broken International Law, contravened The Geneva Conventions and disregarded the UN Convention Against Torture. British soldiers are intimately involved in the actions of this Task Force. Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett David Miliband, Geoff Hoon, Des Browne, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown. In their respective positions over the last five years they must know that British soldiers have been operating within this joint US/UK task force. They must have been briefed on the actions of this unit.

As the occupiers of Iraq we have a duty to uphold the law, to abide by the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture. We are also responsible for securing the borders of Iraq on all counts we have failed. The British Army once had a reputation for playing by the rules. That reputation has been tarnished over the last seven years. We have accepted illegality as the norm. I have no doubt that over the coming months and years increasing amounts of information concerning the actions of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will be become public.

Whilst the majority of British Forces have been withdrawn from Iraq, UKSF remain within the US/UK Task Force.

¹Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.”

Ben Griffin
25 February 2008

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=533&Itemid=27

---

Court gags ex-SAS man who made torture claims

Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian
29th February 2008A former SAS soldier was served with a high court order yesterday preventing him from making fresh disclosures about how hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture.

Ben Griffin could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law. Griffin, 29, left the British army in 2005 after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the “illegal” tactics of US troops.

He told a press conference hosted by the Stop the War Coalition this week that individuals detained by SAS troops in a joint UK-US special forces taskforce had ended up in interrogation centres in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Guantánamo Bay. He had not witnessed torture himself but added: “I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured.”

Referring to the government’s admission that two US rendition flights containing terror suspects had landed at the British territory of Diego Garcia, Griffin said the use of British territory and airspace “pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of extraordinary rendition in the first place”.

The Ministry of Defence said it did not comment on special forces’ activities.

In a separate move, the media have been prevented by a court order from reporting a court martial of six SAS soldiers charged with a conspiracy to “defraud of a value of about £3,000″.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/feb/29/military.law

The Commander-in-Chef Cooks Up a Storm:

 Recipes for Disaster in Iraq 

 2008/02/29

It’s clear that as a war president our Commander-in-Chef has really whipped up a storm in the White House kitchen between the moment he launched his invasion on March 19, 2003 and the present. Think of it as a tale of two recipes.

By Tom Engelhardt and Frida Berrigan
(Tom Dispatch)

In the week that oil prices once again crested above $100 a barrel and more Americans than at any time since the Great Depression owed more on their homes than the homes were worth; in the year that the subprime market crashed, global markets shuddered, the previously unnoticed credit-default swap market threatened to go into the tank, stagflation returned, unemployment rose, the “R” word (for recession) hit the headlines (while the “D” word lurked), within weeks of the fifth anniversary of his invasion of Iraq, the President of the United States officially discovered the war economy.

George W. Bush and Laura Bush were being interviewed by NBC’s Ann Curry when the subject turned to the war in Iraq. Curry reminded the President that his wife had once said, “No one suffers more than their president. I hope they know the burden of worry that’s on his shoulders every single day for our troops.” The conversation continued thusly:

“Bush: And as people are now beginning to see, Iraq is changing, democracy is beginning to take hold. And I’m convinced 50 years from now people look back and say thank God there was those who were willing to sacrifice.
“Curry: But you’re saying you’re going to have to carry that burden… Some Americans believe that they feel they’re carrying the burden because of this economy.

“Bush: Yeah, well —

“Curry: They say — they say they’re suffering because of this.

“Bush: I don’t agree with that.

“Curry: You don’t agree with that? Has nothing do with the economy, the war? The spending on the war?

“Bush: I don’t think so. I think actually, the spending on the war might help with jobs.

“Curry: Oh, yeah?

“Bush: Yeah, because we’re buying equipment, and people are working. I think this economy is down because we built too many houses.”

In other words, in honor of the soon-to-arrive fifth anniversary of his war without end, the President has offered a formula for economic success in bad times that might be summed up this way: less houses, more bases, more weaponry, more war. This, of course, comes from the man who, between 2001 and today, presided over an official Pentagon budget that leapt by more than 60% from $316 billion to $507 billion, and by more than 30% since Iraq was invaded. Looked at another way, between 2001 and the latest emergency supplemental request to pay for his wars (first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq), supplemental funding for war-fighting has jumped from $17 billion to $189 billion, an increase of 1,011%. At the same time, almost miraculously, the U.S. armed forces have been driven to the edge of the military equivalent of default.

It’s clear that as a “war president” our Commander-in-Chef has really whipped up a storm in the White House kitchen between the moment he launched his invasion on March 19, 2003 and the present. Think of it as a tale of two recipes:

George Bush’s Commander-in-Chef Mission Accomplished Baghdad Victory Stew
Ingredients:

3 tablespoons, Iraqi extra virgin oil no olives

A “sea” of crude oil (and the necessary no-bid contracts to protect it)

Misinformation and disinformation (including Iraqi mushroom clouds and 9/11 Saddam pork links)

Shock ‘n awe-tichoke cruise missiles and B-1 bombers (in quantity)

130,000 American troops (Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki suggested that, for this victory stew, “several hundred thousand” American troops were needed, but he was hustled out of the kitchen.)

1 head of Saddam Hussein

Spices:

1 bunch, coalition of the dilling, finely chopped

1 cup, Congressional authorization for war

2 sprigs of Iraqi exiles

Embedded reporters (to taste)

Dough for accompanying Iraqi flatbread, $50-60 million worth (Top Bush economic advisor Larry Lindsey suggested that $200 billion might be a more reasonable figure, but he, too, was promptly ousted from the kitchen.)

Flower petals (edible and in season)

To prepare:

In a heavy casserole, heat extra virgin Iraqi oil over a medium flame.

Add disinformation (mushrooms and links) and sauté until brown; repeat process. (You cannot repeat too many times.)

Add sprigs of Iraqi exiles.

Pour in cup of Congressional authorization for war. Stir vigorously as this tends to evaporate.

Pour in sea of crude oil. Raise heat to high. Quickly add shock ‘n awe-tichoke cruise missiles and B-1 bombers. Cover tightly and bring to a boil. (If this “decapitation” cooking process works and you suddenly find yourself with the head of Saddam Hussein, add it as well.)

Stir in 130,000 American troops. Grind in embedded reporters (to taste). Add chopped coalition of the dilling. Bring back to a boil.

Cover, lower the heat, and simmer, stirring periodically, for three weeks.

Remove to a platter. Serve piping hot, otherwise “stuff happens.” If possible, hire Shiite waiters to strew edible flower petals atop the victory stew at the table for dramatic effect.

In fact, we know who sat down to that “table” in the years after 2003 to eat more than their fill. It was, of course, a cast of characters from the war economy.

The Feasters (a non-inclusive list):

Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR): Until April 2007 a subsidiary of Halliburton, KBR garnered $20.1 billion in Iraq contracts from the Bush administration. The company reported a $2.3 billion profit in 2006. According to a Center for Public Integrity investigation, KBR was the single biggest corporate winner from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In terms of the dollar value of its Iraq contracts, it received nine times as much as the second largest Iraq contractor, DynCorp.

Halliburton: In 2002, Halliburton was number 37 on the Pentagon’s list of top 100 contractors with $500 million in contracts. By 2006, it was number six, with $6.1 billion in contracts, an increase of more than 1,000%.

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Peter W. Singer puts this in context, noting in a September 2007 policy paper that “the amount paid to Halliburton-KBR for just that period is roughly three times what the U.S. government paid to fight the entire 1991 Persian Gulf War. When putting other wars into current dollar amounts, the U.S. government paid Halliburton about $7 billion more than it cost the United States to fight the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the Spanish American War combined.”

Bechtel: In all, Bechtel was granted about $3 billion in contracts for work in Iraq between 2003 and 2007. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, some of its projects included: $1.075 billion for repairs to power stations and the electrical grid; $210 million for water and sanitation projects; $109 million for surface transportation repairs, including roads and railways; and $90 million for repairing or replacing buildings. The company ran afoul of investigators for not finishing many of the jobs it started. Stuart Bowen, the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, issued a report in 2006 that repeatedly cited Bechtel mismanagement, including for the construction of the Basra Children’s Hospital, a project that was supposed to be completed by December 2005 at a cost of $50 million. By July 2007, costs had soared to between $90 million and $131 million. The company was dropped from the project which to this day remains uncompleted.

Blackwater: According to investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater, the notorious private security company, has won about $1 billion in State Department contracts.

Lockheed Martin: This company is the largest recipient of Pentagon contracts. It received $26.6 billion in contracts from the Pentagon in 2006, a 36% increase over 2005. Since 2003, when the war against Iraq began, the company has seen its Pentagon contracts jump 20% or nearly $5 billion. Lockheed Martin’s slogan, “we never forget who we’re working for,” clearly refers to the Pentagon, the company’s best customer by a long shot. According to the Orlando Business Journal, “Lockheed Martin Corp. reported profits up 9.6 percent last quarter… The Bethesda-based defense contractor posted fourth-quarter 2007 net income of $799 million, or $1.89 per share, compared with $729 million, or $1.68 per share in the same quarter a year ago… Sales rose in every category of Lockheed’s business except its aeronautics division.”

Boeing: In 2003, the number two recipient of Pentagon contracts received $17.3 billion worth of them. By 2006, the Pentagon had upped that figure to $20.3 billion. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Boeing’s net income rose a better-than-expected 4 percent, to $1.03 billion, or $1.36 per share” in the fourth quarter of 2007. The paper went on to note that the company “expects to build on its strong results from 2007, when its net income jumped 84 percent…to $4.07 billion… on sales of $66.39 billion.”

Northrop Grumman: The third largest recipient of Pentagon contracts recorded a net profit of $454 million for the last quarter of 2007, according to Reuters. In 2003, the company took in $11.1 billion in Pentagon contracts. Three years later, that figure had jumped nearly 50% to $16.6 billion.

General Dynamics: According to analysts, because the work of General Dynamics is concentrated on Army systems, it has reaped the most direct benefits of all the large weapons makers from the Iraq war. “The combat-systems business… it’s a cash cow for them, it’s a solid business,” said Eric Hugel, an industry analyst for Stephens Inc. The New York Times reported that fourth-quarter 2007 earnings for General Dynamics were up 42%. “For all of 2007, General Dynamics had net earnings of $2.1 billion,” up 11% from $1.86 billion in 2006.

The Oil Majors: The oil majors have not actually entered Iraq (yet) in any significant way, but they have profited enormously from the havoc the Iraq War has unleashed in the Middle East as well as from the fact that, in these years, less Iraqi oil has been heading to market than in the worst years of the Saddam Hussein era. The Washington Post reported, for instance, that Exxon Mobil set new records for quarterly and annual corporate profits in 2007, breaking its own 2006 record by making $40.6 billion. Chevron was next in line with an almost 30% increase in profits from 2006 to 2007. The Post went on to note that profits from the five biggest international oil companies have tripled since 2002.

Parsons: This Pasadena-based engineering and construction company has been awarded more than $5 billion in contracts to rebuild the country’s health care and security facilities as well as its water and sewage systems. With Worley Group of Australia, Parsons has also received $800 million in contracts to restore Iraq’s northern oil infrastructure. In negotiating its Iraq reconstruction contracts, Parsons built in an additional bonus of up to 12% for good performance. Fortunately for taxpayers, good performance has been in short supply. Awarded a $75 million contract to build a police academy, Parsons typically cut corners. In the “completed” project, the bathrooms leaked waste water into student barracks to such an extent that one room was dubbed “the rainforest.” The Pentagon terminated one contract when an audit found that, after two years’ work, only six of the 142 health clinics Parsons had signed on to build were completed.

All in all, the Commander-in-Chef whipped up quite a meal back in 2003. As late as March 2006, he was still trying to serve a version of it at a “strategy for victory” event (though he was no longer accompanying it with a desert of Cakewalk Ice Cream Cake).

Finally, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the invasion, the war economy seems to have had its fill. Now, the rest of us are being seated at a table with an oil-stained tablecloth, uncleared places, dirty dishes, used silverware, and bones strewn everywhere. Of course, it’s for a multi-trillion dollar meal and, for us, it’s a pay-as-you-go affair. (Bring your home mortgage papers with you.) Oh, and when you get your bill, note that the tip, a 150% gratuity, is already included. (Another thing, skip the ice water in those dirty glasses. Cholera is passing around Baghdad right now.) This time, however, the President is offering us a new dish, a special anniversary recipe:

George W. Bush’s Commander-in-Chef Losing Mulligatawny Soup
Ingredients:

At least 140,000 American troops

Tens of thousands of private security contractors

Nearly 4,000 dead Americans

Tens of thousands of wounded Americans

From several hundred thousand to a million or more dead Iraqis

4.5 million Iraqi refugees or internally displaced persons

4 million hungry Iraqis

Assorted Shiite militias and death squads

Assorted Kurdish militias

80,000 U.S.-armed Sunni “concerned citizens” (militias)

At least 24,000 Iraqi prisoners in American jails

Thousands of Sunni insurgents.

Hundreds (or thousands) of Al-Qaeda-in-Mesopotamia militants “and  al  CIA-Qaida”

Hundreds of foreign jihadis and suicide bombers.

Up to 10,000 Turkish troops.

Numerous Iranian agents

Crude oil (where available)

Water (polluted)

Hundreds of IEDs (roadside bombs)

361 U.S. Army unmanned drones operating in Iraqi airspace

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of explosives released by U.S. Air Force planes

Dough for accompanying Iraqi flatbread, now possibly $3 trillion — and rising.

To prepare:

Heat whatever crude oil is available in the largest kettle you can find until smoking. Dump in all ingredients in whatever quantities in any order you choose. (Warning: popping oil, shield eyes.) Add polluted water. Bring to a roiling boil at highest heat. Cook for as much — or as little — time as you want. Pour the soup, boiling hot, across the table (no need for bowls) and dig in.

Bon appétit! Happy anniversary!

And keep in mind, for the next 11 months our Iron (Commander-in-) Chef will still be in the kitchen cookin’ up a storm and undoubtedly hummin’ to himself:

“War! — huh — yeah —
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh.”

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute’s Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture’s crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.

Frida Berrigan is Senior Program Associate with the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. She is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus and a contributing editor at In These Times magazine. She is the author of reports on the arms trade and human rights, U.S. nuclear weapons policy, and the domestic politics of U.S. missile defense and space weapons policies. She can be reached at berrigan@newamerica.net

http://www.mathaba.net/rss/?x=583668

 Into the Valley of Catastrophe:

 Crusade of Surge and Siege

By: Manuel Valenzuela

on: 28.02.2008

America and her puppet allies in the region have made a vital and egregious error, for in inducing high levels of indigence, uneducation and dissatisfaction, in allowing despotism to rule and the voice of the people to disappear, thereby creating a Molotov cocktail of anger and resentment aimed at the Empire and Arab leaders, they have fostered instability and resistance, some in the form of anti-Americanism, some in the form of terrorism, most in the form of a society that grows more eager for change every year. Together with a perception that America has embarked on a Crusade of Surge and Siege against the Muslim world, and that her armies are engaging in mass murder and destruction of Muslim peoples, the only avenue for change is being found inside the mosques of radical ideology.

Barbarians At the Gates

From the very beginning, the American crusade of surge and siege – with much of it predating the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; think to early 20th century agreements with Saudi royalty of protection for petroleum, or the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected nationalist leader, or CIA coups and installing of tyranny, or support for Saddam, or provocations of war, or fanning the flames of violence, or importation of billions worth of weapons – has been a catastrophe for the people of the Middle East. For years the United States has guided policy and fates in the region, with its unchallenged domination of and immoral support in the regimes of the Middle East causing a complete devolution of a dynamic, intelligent and proud amalgam of peoples, continuing a stagnation of a civilization that has given humanity so much, and which has so much yet to offer.

It has been the support of tyrants, dictators, generals, kings, princes and sheiks which has had the most profound effect in the lives of tens of millions of Arabs and Muslims, altering, perhaps indefinitely, the very foundations of a culture, and religion, that has for centuries been bombarded by the Judeo-Christian values of the western world. From Napoleon to Hitler, from the British Empire of old to the American Empire of today, from French domination of the Levant to the ceaseless criminality of Little Sparta in Palestine, the Middle East has been invaded, colonized, raped, pillaged, oppressed and exploited by western powers for decades.

It has been divided and torn apart according to the desires of colonial powers; it has been invaded countless times by Christian Crusaders seeking some combination of god and glory, power and control, hegemony and imperialism. Throughout European, and later American, interventions in the region, countless numbers of Arabs and Muslims suffered and died. It has been the west, and not the peoples of the Middle East, that have for centuries been the aggressors, the barbarians at the gates of Muslim cities, those doing the invading and occupying, those raping and pillaging, those with the messianic delusion to convert and civilize and control the Arab world.

It has been the west that thinks itself the superior race, thinking Middle Easterners inferior, sub-human heathens. It has been the west that ignores the plight of the dehumanized and the oppressed, all the while enjoying the spoils of plunder, over time becoming morbidly obese with the gluttony and greed cheap oil engenders.

The people of the Middle East were not, after all, the ones responsible for the Napoleonic Wars, nor the creators of two World Wars, nor the destroyers of entire cities, nor the barbarians giving rise to Holocausts, or thousand year old persecutions, nor the ones responsible for the death of tens of millions of human beings during the 20th century. The people of the Middle East were not planting puppet regimes throughout Europe and the Americas, nor were they wishing to convert, civilize and control the western world. They are not the ones in pursuit of imperialism and hegemony.

They were not bombing and killing and seeking vengeance outside their region until after the Second World War, after America, with help from her allies, decided the Middle East was to become part of its sphere of influence. Indeed, for centuries living in peace and respect, in the same lands, cities and neighborhoods, Arabs of Muslim, Christian and Jewish faith have long maintained a balance of tolerance between Muslim majority and Jewish, Christian minorities that has only been disrupted with the arrival, and the manipulations and gross injustice, of the western colonial powers.

For decades preferring to control the region by proxy, in a clandestine manipulation of populations and territory, the United States has become a catastrophe upon the peoples of the Middle East. Its vast assortment of puppets and castrated proctors have proceeded to decimate the lives and futures of millions, over the years maintaining a firm grip over nations through the devastation of freedoms and liberties and rights, along with the implementation of authoritarian and despotic policies. Unwavering in its support of these tyrants, America has condemned millions to the brutality of dictatorships, to the censorship by despots, to the corruption of incompetents, to the regressive policies of control, to the backwardness of monarchs.

Sponsoring Tyranny

Possessing the largest, most plentiful and best developed oil fields known to man, one would be inclined to believe the Middle East a bastion of equality and justice, with standards of living equal to or surpassing those of the industrialized world. We would expect a thriving democracy pregnant with the freedoms and liberties inherent in wealthy nations. We would also expect, as we do with rich European and American nations, that the countries of the Middle East would possess a high degree of education among its population, allowing for rule of law and foundations of secularism to prevail. We would expect a thriving middle class, with employment at levels supportive of such dynamics. We would expect peace and balance.

Instead, in the land of black gold there exists not a shred of democracy, nor an ounce of freedom and liberties, nor an appearance by redistribution of oil wealth. In the lands where humankind first developed civilization, Machiavellian authoritarians rule, police states flourish, and backwardness prevails. Here, where a few elite are reaping the bountiful rewards of having oil below their feet, or having the lands deemed strategic to the Empire, accumulating millions and billions of dollars in profit, building majestic palaces and living the lives of gods, the vast majority struggle to survive and make a decent living. Here, in the land of kingdoms and fiefdoms and gold-plated palaces, the majority of Arabs and Muslims live in indigence, finding work only as the serfs enabling their Arab lords to live in luxury. Millions manage to survive only because their masters throw a few insignificant crumbs and bones their way, a minute sum of the enormous oil and gas windfall they greedily ensnare for themselves.

While millions subsist on meager jobs, millions more struggle to find meaningful employment. Unemployment in the region is therefore high, with military-age males the hardest hit. Without employment there is no source of income to survive; there is no morale to feel proud of; there is no sign of opportunity, no sign of a future. With an education that is insignificant, for that is how kings and dictators want it, millions have no option but to become easy targets to the propaganda and the manipulations of their lords.

Indeed, in order to better control the population, education has become a tool of indoctrination, with millions of dollars invested by the elite into religious institutions that brainwash and mold vulnerable minds to the fantasy of theology and the backwardness of extremist ideology. Subsidized and sponsored by the same kings and tyrants, these schools, rather than move society forward towards progressive goals, instead succeed in devolving into backwardness and fundamentalism. Many Muslims simply have no choice but to attend these schools, for oftentimes they are the only schools around, in the process helping indigent families cope with the realities of daily life.

So long as ignorance prevails, and as long as knowledge and leanings of modernity are sequestered and mired in the inescapable grip of poverty, the Middle East’s despotic leaders will remain secure and without fear of their own people. So long as their people are not educated to the methodical condemnation of their lives by kings and despots, leaders will reign, sitting on the thrones of gold, feasting on the spoils thrown at them by the Empire. This reality the Empire tolerates and even encourages, for a controlled, undereducated and powerless people are more likely to remain compliant and passive than those who see with open eyes the pillage of their land and the injustice of their leaders.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon of fundamentalist religious indoctrination, together with lack of education and feelings of injustice, oppression and inequality lends itself to the fomentation of extremism, just as it does in any culture, especially a form of extremism which lashes out both at domestic despotism and foreign control and support of that same despotic rule. Using fundamentalist theology to manipulate desperate minds experiencing desolate, unfulfilled lives, radical men of Islamic faith reach out to the many whose lives have been castrated by leaders supported by the Empire.

Radicalism in the Middle East, born of frustration, oppression and lack of opportunity, growing due to inequality, unfairness, injustice and persecution, nurtured by a corrupted and hijacked interpretation of modern Islamic faith, and manifesting itself through violent acts of terrorism, is a symptom of the disease called market colonialism, of an imperialism that cares nothing for people living in misery and perpetual suffering, where the west props up and supports and finances its cadre of despots and tyrants in the region, with their full array of crimes against humanity being protected by the Empire itself, at the expense of the native populations, in order to control the region’s, and the world’s, most valuable resource. Turning to Islamic extremism, then, is a symptom of anger, of hopelessness, of the presence of the Empire itself.

Islamic fanaticism, like its American, and Christian counterpart, thrives on the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the ignorant, and in those searching for meaning to lives heavy in suffering and pain. Like all forms of fanaticism, the Islamic variety grows and thrives by listening to the angry and the oppressed, providing answers and solutions that help maintain a semblance of understanding in a cruel world. It is those who have become easily manipulated and easily deceived that fanaticism aims to reach, for in these lost souls new, molded flames can be lit.

Thus, by combining the fanaticism all theologies possess with the living, walking carcasses left behind by America’s propped up tyrants and kings, gorging on the spoils of oil, too greedy to share with their people, together with American interference in the region, a grassroots resistance is birthed that finds solace and solutions in the beliefs of the past, thinking, rightly, that the devastation of their lives is a result of modernity –albeit a debased form of it – and its corruption by authoritarians sponsored by the west.

Deceived by extremism to hate all things western, because the root of their ills is indeed a product of the western world, they fail to see the reality that true fault lies not in western progressiveness, which is humanitarian, communal and universal in nature, but in the despotic character and oppressive policies of leaders that will not free their subjects to the great virtues of real democracy.

Here, America and her puppet allies in the region have made a vital and egregious error, for in inducing high levels of indigence, uneducation and dissatisfaction, in allowing despotism to rule and the voice of the people to disappear, thereby creating a Molotov cocktail of anger and resentment aimed at the Empire and Arab leaders, they have fostered instability and resistance, some in the form of anti-Americanism, some in the form of terrorism, most in the form of a society that grows more eager for change every year. Together with a perception that America has embarked on a Crusade of Surge and Siege against the Muslim world, and that her armies are engaging in mass murder and destruction of Muslim peoples, the only avenue for change is being found inside the mosques of radical ideology.

Error Personified

Instead of giving Middle East populations a larger share of the oil bonanza pie; instead of decreasing the verticality of the hierarchical pyramid, thus making society more just, fair and equal, with better standards of living, better education and more progressiveness; instead of allowing the Empire a just, balanced and reduced access and control to oil; instead of banning the pillage of revenues and resources, where capital benefits only the elite; instead of investing in enlightened education, helping to bring out of darkness millions of minds; instead of using oil revenues and investing in the wellbeing of their people; instead of halting billion dollar purchases in the west’s defense industry, amassing arms for wars that will never come, using weapons sales to funnel petro dollars back to the Empire; instead of alleviating hardship, resentment and anger; instead of sponsoring freedom and liberty and greater rights; instead of abiding by and protecting human rights; instead of encouraging an open, democratic society, the American amalgam of dictators, tyrants, kings, princes, sheiks and generals have done the complete opposite, thereby cementing in stone continued resistance, continued acts of terror, continued anti-Americanism and continued efforts to violently overthrow the region’s rulers.

In order to suppress, repress and control those elements seeking to bring down the region’s tyrannical regimes, the leaders of these states have created a ruthless police state based on oppression, fear, intimidation and paranoia. To combat the anger prevalent in the population, America’s puppets must enhance a surveillance and spying society, creating a police state that has perfected the art of despotic rule. Torture, disappearances, the evisceration of human rights, unlawful arrests, persecution and false imprisonment are but some of the weapons used by these rulers. Yet the Empire maintains firm support of these leaders, a fact not lost on the population at large.

Right to assembly, right to free speech, freedom of the press, the right of habeas corpus, the right to a fair trial, the right of due process and of protections against unreasonable search and seizure are freedoms not afforded to the peoples of the Middle East. These are freedoms and rights America does not care to ask or demand of its puppets. Free elections and the will of the people are but hollow dreams that cannot be given to the masses, for if allowed to vote, tyrants and kings and dictators and generals would be thrown out. To the Empire, democracy is only democracy when the people elect America’s chosen leaders, her new puppet upgrade. If the masses elect someone other than America’s champion, democracy becomes null and void, the will of the people become obsolete and collective punishment becomes policy, and state-sponsored terror. To the Empire, democracy is valid only when fraud or theft returns to power her most loyal and obedient proctors.

The people of the Middle East do not hate the Empire for its freedom and liberties, nor for its way of life. On the contrary, they would love the same freedoms and liberties, the same respect for human rights, and perhaps a better standard of living than they presently enjoy. They hate the Empire for its transgressions in the region, for its continued support for tyranny, for its hypocrisy in talking democracy and systemically supporting despotism, for its rape and pillage of both land and people, for its addiction to oil that has brought nothing but ruin to the people of the region, for its one-sided support for Israel and its apartheid and state-sponsored terrorism in Palestine, for its genocide and destruction of Iraq and its people, for promising Afghan reconstruction but only succeeding in furthering a decline to a failed state, for its quite obvious indifference to the misery and suffering of Arab and Muslim peoples, for its continued Crusade of Surge and Siege that only threatens to engulf the region in flames and further decimate the lives of millions.

Democracy and freedom cannot prosper in these conditions, for despotic rule and free societies are mutually exclusive. In fact, the populations of these nations have very few, if any, freedoms and rights to speak of, and millions are handcuffed to the heavy handed rules and regulations of the state, many of which resemble those of the Middle Ages. When democracy is spoken of, it represents illusions and mirages, not the will of the people, but the charades of the elite. In the Middle East, democracy is a whispered demand, yet an unfulfilled reality. It remains a dream of millions, and an enemy of the few. In the Middle East of reality, and not that of American fiction, tyranny dominates and democracy is nonexistent and all the while, American hypocrisy festers in the mind of the disillusioned.

Of course the United States is fully aware of the methods used by its tyrants to control the population, yet the support, whether diplomatic, financial and militarily, is as constant as it is unwavering. This tacit support of tyranny by the Empire, even when it speaks of bringing freedom and democracy, speaks of the high level of hypocrisy and duplicity inherent in the Empire. That American sponsored tyranny has catapulted the region into backwardness, that it has furthered the evolution of fanaticism, that it has given rise to resistance and terror, that it has made impotent the infinitesimal attempts at building democracy, and that it has created decades of suffering, poverty, oppression and lost opportunity can only be denied, as it usually is, inside the Empire itself. Inside the fires of imperialism, that is to say inside the Middle East, this truth is well known, and understood.

That human beings resent despotism and tyranny is a self-evident truth; that they build resistance and resentment to colonial machinations and imperialist assaults on their lives is earthly reality. That most human beings want simply the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness without barriers or hindrances or the control of the state is an absolute manifestation of who we are. To be human – and yes, the people of the Middle East are, in fact, human – is to seek and want justice, fairness, equality and fundamental human rights. It is to fight oppression and stand for dignity and honor.

What we abhor as a species are illegal, aggressive invasions and brutal occupations of innocent states, exploitations and repression of the individual and criminality and mass murder that is allowed to transpire and go unaccountable. What the people of the Middle East want is exactly what the western world already has. What they want is freedom from imperialism, freedom from tyranny, freedom to exploit their own resources, for their own benefit, for their present and future generations. What they seek is a chance to be human at the dawn of the 21st century.

What they ask is that they be seen the same as any other person in this planet, possessing the same emotions, fears and opinions, the same behaviors and desires. What they seek is the empathy and understanding for the lives they must endure, the tyranny they must live under and the Crusade of Surge and Siege the Empire has imposed on them.

So close your eyes, contemplate reality and not spoon-fed fantasy, envision and empathize, try to understand alien pain and suffering, put yourself in the shoes of the millions being strangulated by the Empire, and prepare to enter the fires of imperialism.

Read Parts 1, 2 and 3 at

www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com

 

False Flag Prospects, 2008

Top Three US Target Cities

 

 

 

By Captain Eric H. May

Global Research,

APFN

February 28, 2008

The easiest way to carry out a false flag attack is by setting up a military exercise that simulates the very attack you want to carry out. As I’ll detail below, this is exactly how government perpetrators in the US and UK handled the 9/11 and 7/7 “terror” attacks, which were in reality government attacks blamed on “terrorists.”

Although ill health keeps me from working as hard in the area of false flag analysis as I used to, the urging of independent editors and brother intelligence officers has prompted me to write this essay. I’ll keep it short for readers with limited time, but I will include invaluable links for those who want to delve deeper and understand better.

My aim, as a former military intelligence officer who spent five years with the U.S. Army 75th Division conducting military war games, is to convince the American people that the “next 9/11″ — constantly promised by officials and the media — is likely to be carried out under the guise of future military exercises. If the American people are aware of pending exercises and the danger they represent, then the exercises cannot “go live” and effect the very terror events that they are supposed to be rehearsing against.

Military Exercises

The 9/11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the 7/7, 2005 attacks in the United Kingdom both have smoking guns proving that the mass murderers were not foreign terrorists but domestic tyrants. Each country’s government was conducting military exercises that simulated the exact events that were to occur.

The US 9/11 Commission stumbled across strong evidence of treason by Dick Cheney when it interviewed Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, who was present in Cheney’s famous command bunker as Flight 77 sped toward Washington, DC. Cheney was at the center of national military exercises simulating terrorist hijackings of US aircraft — at the very time that those hijackings were occurring in real life. On May 23, 2003, Secretary Mineta testified:

“During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, “The plane is 50 miles out.” “The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to “the plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the Vice President, “Do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”

9/11 Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton failed to follow up on the bombshell revelation, and quickly switched the topic. Thanks to YouTube, Mineta’s astounding revelation and Hamilton’s amazing reaction are both viewable on a three minute clip:

In the case of the 7/7 London railway bombings, there is same-day evidence in a BBC interview with former Scotland Yard anti-terrorism agent, Peter Power, who was a contract employee working in government exercises:

POWER: “At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.”

BBC HOST: “To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?”

POWER: “Precisely.”

For a one minute excerpt containing the statements above, refer to

 

Mainstream Media

It goes without saying that serious media inquiry would quickly ferret out the facts demonstrating high treason in the cases of 9/11 and 7/7. It also goes without saying, unfortunately, that the traitors behind the two false flag attacks understood this very well, and would not have done what they did without a green light from a collaborative media.

Three World Trade Center buildings collapsed in New York City on September 11, 2001: WTC 1 and WTC 2 (the Twin Towers) in the morning, and WTC 7 (the Salomon Building) at 5:20 p.m. EST. Given that all three buildings were said to be unexpected collapses by all official sources, there is no good reason — except for complicity — to explain how it is that the BBC reported the collapse of WTC 7 twenty minutes before it happened:

Fox news damned itself by announcing that WTC 7 had collapsed — even as it showed a live shot of downtown New York with WTC 7 still standing. A few seconds later the building collapsed, understandably confusing the newscasters:

The owner of all three buildings was Larry Silverstein, who had recently doubled the insurance value of the Twin Towers. Amazingly, “Lucky Larry,” later stated in a PBS interview that he and the New York Fire Department agreed to a controlled demolition of WTC 7. Since skyscrapers are not wired for demolition — unless someone intends to demolish them — Silverstein’s statement is an admission that 9/11 was an inside job:

   

“The Noble Lie”

I believe that on the strength of the five YouTube links above an objective investigation would have more than enough evidence to warrant impeachment of Bush and Cheney on a charge of high treason, and to summon a grand jury that would indict many others on charges of high treason against Larry Silverstein and other apparent 9/11 collaborators. I believe that the American people, if presented with a single news story containing the five YouTube links above, would demand that the case of high treason be carried to its logical conclusion.

Congress, though, won’t impeach the president. The mainstream media, for which I used to write, will not investigate and report the story. The military that was used as a tool to mass murder American citizens will not take action against traitors in uniform who knew exactly what they were doing on 9/11, or the many more uniformed dupes who thought they were conducting military exercises until the events of 9/11 occurred. To this day there have been no adverse actions — which would require investigation and evaluation — against any military person involved in what even official apologists call the greatest defense failure in American history. All of this shows that the fix is in, and that we are in a fix.

The high officials, media executives and military officers who are bound by law and ethics to serve the American people have become a textbook example of a grand conspiracy. To look at it from their point of view, they are historic actors who are beyond good and evil, who must stimulate the American people to a necessary geostrategic adventure by any means necessary. To them, the official account of the 9/11 “terror” attacks is what Plato once described as the “noble lie,” a necessary falsehood told to a childlike public in order to direct it maturely. The simple fact is that 9/11 has justified an attempt to seize and control the ultimate geostrategic resource: oil. He who controls Middle East oil controls the world.

Top Three US Target Cities

Last year I published “Next 9/11, Summer 2007?” in response to the same kind of requests that have led me to publish this essay as a 2008 update. My 2007 three most likely cities for the next 9/11 were Houston, Chicago and Portland. This year the same three cities are still most endangered, in light of the fact that the US military has designated Texas, Indiana and Oregon as three of its four target states in the 2008 version of its Noble Resolve military exercises. Granted, Chicago is in Illinois, not Indiana, but Indiana is quite close, and has been used to stage forces for terror exercises conducted in Chicago in recent years.

It may come as a surprise to people not acquainted with military preparations that the same cities remain on the list even though analysts like me have publicized them widely. There are considerable difficulties in setting up the political, police, military and media players necessary to support a false flag attack. While many in the 911 truth movement believes that national military forces can simply hit any city at any time, it’s not so easy — thank God. Fortunately, this means that those of us who study false flag prospects and focus on most likely targets; regrettably, this means that target cities can’t breathe easy just because they have detected, exposed and preempted a single false flag attempt.

Here is a brief target analysis of the top three cities:

Primary Target: Houston. Over the past four years military and police veterans like me have been alerting the public to government exercises aiming at the nuclear destruction of Houston petro-suburbs. Five times in those four years we were able to predict to within a day major petrochemical explosions in those petro-suburbs. The odds against this kind of accuracy are astronomical. As the center of Big Oil and the Bush Family, Houston remains the most endangered city in America. Any patriotic group, like mine, trying to alert its home city to the dangers of a false flag attack should read my recent article, “The 1/31 Nuke: Proof for Ron Paul” about the successful interdiction of a 2006 attempt against Texas City:

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/08/01/28/may.htm

Secondary Target: Chicago. While Houston is the most endangered city, the most endangered building — the best candidate to be the next World Trade Center — is the Sears Tower. Official sources have pronounced it just that ever since the original 9/11 attack, when they said it was on the Al Qaeda hit list. Larry Silverstein, who bought the Twin Towers two months before 9/11, led a group that purchased the Sears Tower on 3/11, 2004, the day of the Madrid bombings. Federal officials have been pointing to Chicago and its Sears Tower as Al Qaeda targets since the original 9/11 attacks, and have repeated the threat ever since. In May 2006,, the government scheduled secret 9/11-type exercises in Chicago, while Chicago Mayor Daley was docked conveniently away in Israel for his first visit there. I sent a widely read communiqué to Illinois Governor Blagojevich as part of a successful Internet attempt to shut down the pending false flag attack:

http://tekgnosis.typepad.com/tekgnosis/2006/05/ghost_troop_com.html

Tertiary Target: Portland. Portland, called “Little Beirut” by Bush cronies because of its enmity to Bush 41 and Bush 43, only made my top three list last summer, when it was designated as a target for a nuclear attack by successive exercises Noble Resolve and TOPOFF. The language in an official press release stated the case plainly enough: “Noble Resolve will coordinate with officials in Oregon to model a nuclear attack on Portland.” In the course of researching Portland for a series of articles I wrote about the city and its exercises. I discovered that Stanford and Harvard had prepared a detailed nuclear fallout map for it, that national military commanders and state National Guard commanders were telling different stories about what the exercises were trying to accomplish, and that Portland’s The Oregonian newspaper was doing everything it could to avoid investigating the frightening anomalies. I wasn’t at all surprised that the last day of the exercises found the Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff in downtown Portland, which was largely closed down by an “unexpected” bomb threat. For another professional perspective on how great the danger was — and may be again — I refer the reader to the analysis of my colleague, Major William B. Fox (USMC):
http://www.lonestaricon.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=2006&z=186

Postscript

“Good morning. At this moment, somewhere in the world, terrorists are planning new attacks on our country. Their goal is to bring destruction to our shores that will make September the 11th pale by comparison.” — George W. Bush, Feb. 13, 2008

I can’t think of a more important question than the one of where the next 9/11 will be attempted. Common sense dictates to all of us who understand the truth about 9/11 that its perpetrators must strike again. Indeed, every directive, act and decision of our post-9/11 unitary executive, cowards Congress and Judas judiciary has increased the power of the federal government to wage the Global War and impose the Homeland State.

Why on earth would those already guilty of high treason, mass murder and war crimes fail to follow up on their earlier efforts? They understand quite well that the Global War is going badly and the Homeland State is becoming onerous, and that only a reapplication of false flag terror will force the American people to proceed with our post-9/11 national insanity.

Still, for every one person who republishes or constructively comments on this essay, there will be another who employs division, abuse and ridicule against me or anyone else who asserts the common sense point that false flaggers will continue to false flag, just as murderers will continue to murder and robbers will continue to rob. It’s Newtonian in its simplicity: things continue to drift the way they are drifting until they are stopped.

We can only stop the deadly drift of America by understanding 9/11 and anticipating the next 9/11. Many of the vociferous voices impeding our understanding and anticipation are performing a vital service for treason. The federal government once used counterintelligence programs (COINTELPRO) against the Vietnam era antiwar and civil rights movement, and common sense would suggest that they are using it again in the post-9/11 era, this time against the antiwar and 911 truth movement. The most dangerous voices of all our those from false friends who have infiltrated us to confuse us until the traitors who carried out 9/11 can repeat their performance.

Captain May is a former Army military intelligence and public affairs officer, as well as a former NBC editorial writer. His political and military analyses have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Houston Chronicle and Military Intelligence Magazine.

For more information, or his interview schedule, refer to his homesite:

http://www.spiritone.com/~pazuu/pow-mia/Ghost_Troop_Captain_Eric_H_May.htm

---

© Copyright Eric H. May, APFN, 2008The url address of this article is: http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=8165

---

Russia Quietly Starts to Shift Its Oil Trade Into Rubles

By: ANDREW E. KRAMER

on: 28.02.2008

Americans surely found little to celebrate when the price of oil settled above $100 a barrel last week.They could, though, be thankful that oil is still priced in dollars, making the milestone of triple-digit oil prices noteworthy at all.Russia, the world’s second-largest oil-exporting nation after Saudi Arabia, has been quietly preparing to switch trading in Russian Ural Blend oil, the country’s primary export, to the ruble from the dollar. Industry analysts and officials, however, say that this change, if it comes, is still some time off.The Russian effort began modestly this month, with trading in refined products for the domestic market.Still, the effort to squeeze the dollar out of Russian oil sales is yet another project notable for swagger and ambition by the Kremlin, which has already wielded its energy wealth to assert influence in Eastern Europe and former Soviet states.

“They are serious,” said Yaroslav Lissovolik, the chief economist at Deutsche Bank in Moscow. “This is something they are giving priority to.”

Oil trading is nearly always denominated in dollars. When Middle Eastern oil is sold to Asia, for example, the price is set in dollars.

Similarly, Russia’s large trade with Western Europe and the former Soviet states in crude oil and natural gas is conducted in dollar-denominated contracts. Gazprom, the natural gas monopoly, set the price of gas in Ukraine at $179 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2008, for example. There are no proposals yet to switch gas pricing away from dollars.

As a result, companies and countries that buy petroleum products are encouraged to hold dollar reserves to pay for their supplies, coincidentally helping the American economy support its trade deficit.

Russia would like to change this practice, at least among its customers, as a means of elevating the importance of the ruble, a new source of national pride after gaining 30 percent against the dollar during the current oil boom.

In a speech on economic policy this month, Dmitri A. Medvedev, a deputy prime minister and the likely successor to President Vladimir V. Putin in elections on March 2, said Russia should seize opportunities created by the weak dollar.

“Today, the global economy is going through uneasy times,” Mr. Medvedev said. “The role of the key reserve currencies is under review. And we must take advantage of it.” He asserted that “the ruble will de facto become one of the regional reserve currencies.”

Other oil-exporting countries are also chafing at dealing in the weakening dollar.

Since 2005, Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, has tried to open a commodity exchange to trade oil in currencies other than the dollar. The Iranian ambassador to Russia said Iran might choose rubles to free his country from “dollar slavery.”

To be sure, some economists have dismissed the project as improbable, given the exotic nature of a security — oil futures contracts denominated in rubles — that would blend currency risk with the dollar-based global oil market.

Ruble-denominated futures contracts for Ural Blend, the main Russian grade, would be attractive only if the dollar continues to depreciate, said Vitaly Y. Yermakov, research director for Russian and Caspian energy at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

“There is a big distance between the desire to trade commodities for rubles and the ability to do so,” he said.

All this has not stopped the Kremlin from trying.

In a sign of the government’s seriousness, a new glass-and-marble high-rise home for a ruble-denominated commodity exchange is rising this spring in a prestigious district in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city after Moscow. The exchange will occupy three floors of the 16-story tower on Vasilievsky Island, one of the islands that make up the historic city center.

The director of the St. Petersburg exchange, Viktor V. Nikolayev, said that the intention was to move slowly and gain market acceptance; the government will not strong-arm sellers or buyers onto the exchange, even in an industry dominated by the state.

Web-based trading for refined products like gasoline or diesel is being introduced in three phases for domestic customers, beginning with government buyers like the Russian navy or municipal bus companies. Private brokers will be allowed to trade in March; futures contracts will be introduced in April.

Mr. Nikolayev said no timeline had been established for trading for export on the exchange, which also handles grain, sugar, mineral fertilizer, cement and esoteric financial products like Russian government beef and pork import quotas — all in rubles.

“We are in Russia, and the currency is rubles, not euros, not dollars,” he said. “We don’t want to depend on the rise or fall of the dollar.”

“We will trade in rubles, to strengthen the ruble,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/business/worldbusiness/27place.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

Earth tremor felt across England

(Update: suggestions that it wasn’t an earthquake)

People from across large parts of England have reported an earth tremor.

The BBC received calls from people in Yorkshire, the Midlands, Manchester, the Thames Valley, Norfolk, Preston, Newcastle and London about a “quake”.

The tremor was felt at about 0100 GMT and lasted for nearly 10 seconds but it is unclear if it has caused any damage.

The British Geological Survey said it believed the quake was of the magnitude of 5.1 and said the epicentre was close to Grimsby in north-east Lincolnshire.

A spokesman said it was the biggest earthquake to hit England since 1990 and could be of a level to cause minor damage to buildings.

The West Midlands was hit by an earthquake in 2002 in the Dudley area that reached a magnitude of 5.0 and caused damage to homes.

And last year an earthquake measuring 4.3 hit Folkstone in Kent, causing widespread damage.

Jemma Harrison, 22, in Bury, Greater Manchester, said: “It was really bad. I was fast asleep and woke up and the room was shaking and there was a loud bang and alarms were going off.”

Natasha Cavey, in Tipton in the West Midlands, said: “All my cupboard doors flew open and the whole house shook, it was unreal. I can’t believe it.”

David Somerset, 41, from Driffield near Beverley in East Yorkshire, said: “I have never felt one as strong as that one before. I was in my sitting room and the grandfather clock was rattling rather violently.

“It was very strong, I felt the whole room moving.”

Previous recent significant tremors:

April 2007 – Kent (magnitude 4.3)
December 2006 – Dumfries and Galloway (magnitude 3.5)
September 2002 – Dudley, West Midlands (5.0)
October 2001 – Melton Mowbray (4.1)
September 2000 – Warwick (4.2)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7266136.stm

---

Local reports at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7266146.stm

---

Privatised nuclear storage base at RAF Faldingworth
27.02.2008 05:27

Check out this coincidental old Royal or US Air Force base near Market Rasen: Faldingworth.

Last listed, I kid you not, as used for “Explosives Testing and Storage”.
http://tinyurl.com/2mr7zr

here’s something?
from 2 weeks ago?
Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked

MP says West Lindsey council must stop explosions at airfield
http://www.marketrasenmail.co.uk/news/MP-says-West-Lindsey-council.376 9112.jp

AREA MP Edward Leigh lays responsibility for dealing with the contensious explosions at Faldingworth airfield firmly at the door of West Lindsey District Council – specifically on the shoulders of chief executive Duncan Sharkey.

“I will tell him he must use enforcement powers to close the company down,” he told an angry meeting of residents at Newtoft last Friday.

“They have the power but they have been reluctant to do it. Duncan Sharkey is the chief executive and he should get a personal grip on it.”

This is the second wave of explosions rocking villages around the former RAF station, causing damage to properties and misery for residents. Little has changed from the episode 18 months ago when West Lindsey took noise nuisance readings.

Pensioner Sheila Blenkinsop of Newton by Toft, is only now having damage repaired that was caused by the September 2006 explosions, and has to pay an Insurance excess of £1,000.

“It’s just as bad as last time,” she said. “The blasts are going on four days a week.”

Newtoft’s Dom Pavia said it was ‘absolutely horrendous’. “There is a blast every 15 or 20 minutes. Video cameras I’ve set up to record the blasts and vibrations have been knocked over. There are cracks appearing in my walls and chimney breast and ceilings have dropped.”

Mr Leigh accepted there had been some progress since 2006 in that enforcement officers had been able to get onto the site.

“They’re saying it is vital work in the national interest,” he said “but it must be possible to do that and be aware of residents.”

He advised residents to ‘band together and take legal action’.

“It is a scandalous state of affairs. I don’t think there is any doubt these cracks are down to these explosions and you would be perfectly entitled to take legal action against the company,” he said.

Mr Sharkey insists the council is working with both the site operator and local residents to resolve the issue.

“Our aim is to strike a balance with this company, which has 34 full-time employees and carries out a perfectly lawful business, with the wishes of the local community who want disruption kept to an absolute minimum,” he said.

He said the site was licensed by national government and West Lindsey’s role was to m
ake sure no statutory nuisance was being caused.

“Last year there was a breach in the regulations and the council stopped a different company from operating. On this occasion noise tests have not produced readings which amount to a statutory nuisance and the site owners have installed vibration equipment at the nearest property to the tests which are also monitoring the position.

“It is not, and never will be, West Lindsey’s intention to close down lawful businesses which provide employment for local people. More than 100 people are employed by this project both directly and indirectly.

“However, the residents have to be considered too and we will continue to work with both parties to minimise any disruption and inconvenience.”

Alan Longden, at Faldingworth, believes the company is just going to carry on.

“They don’t look at the impact it is having on the surrounding area. They’ve got a licence but that doesn’t look beyond the site itself. The problem is that it is in flat open countryside, surrounded by villages. It should be on a remote site.”

The full article contains 548 words and appears in Market Rasen Mail newspaper.

Last Updated: 12 February 2008

Yes, I felt it, my neighbour was still up, he felt it too, another friend rang me (at 1am), says he and his mum we’re stood on their doorstep waiting for aftershocks !!!

BBC FiveLive had a usgs.gov official on stating the epicentre was 20 miles south of Grimsby, strength varies between 4.7 and 5.7 on the richter scale

http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/recent_events/uk_special/market_rasen _27_feb_2008.pdf

http://www.iris.edu/seismon

From wikipedia – mustn’t get carried away but……

RAF Faldingworth was an airfield used by RAF Bomber Command during and after World War II. It was located close to the village of Faldingworth in Lincolnshire. It was used during the war by number 300 (Polish) Squadron and a memorial is now in place to them at the end of the main runway.

Faldingworth entered service life as Toft Grange decoy airfield and later as a satellite airfield of RAF Lindholme. Late in 1943 it became a satellite of RAF Ludford Magna.

After the war the base was used for storage of weapons. becoming a nuclear weapons store in 1957. It closed in 1972 and was later used by BMARC as a weapons test site.

Current Ordnance Survey maps show the remains of a typical wartime bomber airfield, with the former storage site overlaying the south-western part of the airfield, about 2km east of Spridlington. There is a cluster of RAF-built housing north-east of the airfield area, and a group of RAF buildings used as an industrial estate.

Blimey! Could it have been an underground nuke?

Tony Gosling
Homepage: http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=13768

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392386.html?c=on#c190066

IRAQ OIL TO BE SHIPPED TO ISRAEL

U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan

By Amiram Cohen

The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister’s Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a “bonus” the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.

The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.

The National Infrastructure Ministry has recently conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter.

National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky said yesterday that the port of Haifa is an attractive destination for Iraqi oil and that he plans to discuss this matter with the U.S. secretary of energy during his planned visit to Washington next month. Paritzky added that the plan depends on Jordan’s consent and that Jordan would receive a transit fee for allowing the oil to piped through its territory. The minister noted, however, that “due to pan-Arab concerns, it will be hard for the Jordanians to agree to the flow of Iraqi oil via Jordan and Israel.”

Sources in Jerusalem confirmed yesterday that the Americans are looking into the possibility of laying a new pipeline via Jordan and Israel. (There is also a pipeline running via Syria that has not been used in some three decades.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=332835&con

Oil Trades Near Record as U.S. Dollar Falls, Commodities Surge

By Christian Schmollinger

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil traded near a record in New York as a weakening dollar spurred investors to buy commodities that are priced in the U.S. currency.

Brent oil, the benchmark for two-thirds of world supply, rose to a record $100 a barrel in London as the dollar, which is used to price crude, fell to an all-time low against the euro. New York futures yesterday reached $101.43. The UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index increased to the highest ever, on gains for wheat, sugar, copper, cotton and cocoa.

“The general strength of commodity prices would instantly improve sentiment toward the oil price, said David Moore, commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd. in Sydney. “The softness in the U.S. dollar has had a valuation effect on the oil price.

Crude oil for April delivery rose as much as 47 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $101.35 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was trading at $101.08 at 12 p.m. in Singapore.

Yesterday, crude futures settled at $100.88 a barrel, a gain of $1.65, or 1.7 percent. It was the highest close since trading began in 1983.

The dollar weakened to $1.5047 per euro, the lowest since the European single currency was introduced in 1999, before trading at $1.4994 as of 12:02 p.m. in Singapore. The dollar declined against all of the world’s 16 biggest currencies in the past 12 months apart from the Korean won and South African rand.

“The dollar has fallen against the Canadian dollar, the Aussie dollar and also the Brazilian real, so all the major commodity currencies are up, said Tetsu Emori, fund manager at Astmax Ltd. in Tokyo. “In U.S. dollar terms the commodity prices should be rising, including crude oil.

Brent, Funds

Brent crude for April settlement climbed as much as 53 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $100 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange, the highest since trading began in 1988. It was at $99.65 at 12 p.m. in Singapore, Yesterday, the contract gained $1.78 to $99.47 a barrel, a record close.

Hedge-fund managers and other large speculators increased net-long positions, or bets on higher oil prices, in the week ended Feb. 19, according to a Commodity Futures Trading Commission report.

Investors have pushed prices higher in the past six years as they put money into energy because returns outpaced those of other markets.

“Crude oil is just chasing the other commodities, said Astmax’s Emori. “The fundamentals haven’t changed so there is no reason to buy except it’s being pushed up by fresh money inflows.

OPEC To Meet

OPEC crude-oil supply will fall 200,000 barrels a day, or 0.6 percent, to 32.45 million barrels a day this month, according to preliminary estimates from PetroLogistics Ltd. The group supplied 32.65 million barrels a day in January, data from the Geneva-based tanker-tracking service showed.

Ministers from the 13 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are scheduled to meet in Vienna on March 5 to discuss oil quotas. OPEC produces more than 40 percent of the world’s crude oil.

Chakib Khelil, Algerian oil minister and the OPEC president, said on Feb. 24 that the group might cut output at the meeting because of an expected decline in demand in the second quarter.

OPEC agreed in September to increase their output by 500,000 barrels a day starting Nov. 1.

“Bear in mind that when they increased production by a half a million barrels one reason was to make sure the Northern Hemisphere winter was adequately supplied, said Commonwealth Bank’s Moore. “Now that we’re past the winter, the rationale for that increase is unwound effectively.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBuWIFK2jP6I&refer=home

A History Of US Secret Human Experimentation

 

3-25-3: (Health News Network) 1931 Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, infects human subjects with cancer cells. He later goes on to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama, and is named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. While there, he begins a series of radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients.

1932 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study begins. 200 black men diagnosed with syphilis are never told of their illness, are denied treatment, and instead are used as human guinea pigs in order to follow the progression and symptoms of the disease. They all subsequently die from syphilis, their families never told that they could have been treated.

1935 The Pellagra Incident. After millions of individuals die from Pellagra over a span of two decades, the U.S. Public Health Service finally acts to stem the disease. The director of the agency admits it had known for at least 20 years that Pellagra is caused by a niacin deficiency but failed to act since most of the deaths occured within poverty- striken black populations.

1940 Four hundred prisoners in Chicago are infected with Malaria in order to study the effects of new and experimental drugs to combat the disease. Nazi doctors later on trial at Nuremberg cite this American study to defend their own actions during the Holocaust.

1942 Chemical Warfare Services begins mustard gas experiments on approximately 4,000 servicemen. The experiments continue until 1945 and made use of Seventh Day Adventists who chose to become human guinea pigs rather than serve on active duty.

1943 In response to Japan’s full-scale germ warfare program, the U.S. begins research on biological weapons at Fort Detrick, MD.

1944 U.S. Navy uses human subjects to test gas masks and clothing. Individuals were locked in a gas chamber and exposed to mustard gas and lewisite.

1945 Project Paperclip is initiated. The U.S. State Department, Army intelligence, and the CIA recruit Nazi scientists and offer them immunity and secret identities in exchange for work on top secret government projects in the United States.

1945 “Program F” is implemented by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). This is the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoride, which was the key chemical component in atomic bomb production. One of the most toxic chemicals known to man, fluoride, it is found, causes marked adverse effects to the central nervous system but much of the information is squelched in the name of national security because of fear that lawsuits would undermine full-scale production of atomic bombs.

1946 Patients in VA hospitals are used as guinea pigs for medical experiments. In order to allay suspicions, the order is given to change the word “experiments” to “investigations” or “observations” whenever reporting a medical study performed in one of the nation’s veteran’s hospitals.

1947 Colonel E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Comission issues a secret document (Document 07075001, January 8, 1947) stating that the agency will begin administering intravenous doses of radioactive substances to human subjects.

1947 The CIA begins its study of LSD as a potential weapon for use by American intelligence. Human subjects (both civilian and military) are used with and without their knowledge. Operation Artichoke

1950 Department of Defense begins plans to detonate nuclear weapons in desert areas and monitor downwind residents for medical problems and mortality rates.

1950 In an experiment to determine how susceptible an American city would be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of bacteria from ships over San Franciso. Monitoring devices are situated throughout the city in order to test the extent of infection. Many residents become ill with pneumonia-like symptoms.

1951 Department of Defense begins open air tests using disease-producing bacteria and viruses. Tests last through 1969 and there is concern that people in the surrounding areas have been exposed.

1953 U.S. military releases clouds of zinc cadmium sulfide gas over Winnipeg, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, the Monocacy River Valley in Maryland, and Leesburg, Virginia. Their intent is to determine how efficiently they could disperse chemical agents.

1953 Joint Army-Navy-CIA experiments are conducted in which tens of thousands of people in New York and San Francisco are exposed to the airborne germs Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii.

1953 CIA initiates Project MKULTRA. This is an eleven year research program designed to produce and test drugs and biological agents that would be used for mind control and behavior modification. Six of the subprojects involved testing the agents on unwitting human beings.

1955 The CIA, in an experiment to test its ability to infect human populations with biological agents, releases a bacteria withdrawn from the Army’s biological warfare arsenal over Tampa Bay, Fl.

1955 Army Chemical Corps continues LSD research, studying its potential use as a chemical incapacitating agent. More than 1,000 Americans participate in the tests, which continue until 1958.

1956 U.S. military releases mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Ga and Avon Park, Fl. Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials test victims for effects.

1958 LSD is tested on 95 volunteers at the Army’s Chemical Warfare Laboratories for its effect on intelligence.

1960 The Army Assistant Chief-of-Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) authorizes field testing of LSD in Europe and the Far East. Testing of the european population is code named Project THIRD CHANCE; testing of the Asian population is code named Project DERBY HAT. Opeation Dirty Tricks

1965 Project CIA and Department of Defense begin Project MKSEARCH, a program to develop a capability to manipulate human behavior through the use of mind-altering drugs.

1965 Prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia are subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic chemical component of Agent Orange used in Viet Nam. The men are later studied for development of cancer, which indicates that Agent Orange had been a suspected carcinogen all along.

1966 CIA initiates Project MKOFTEN, a program to test the toxicological effects of certain drugs on humans and animals.

1966 U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.

1967 CIA and Department of Defense implement Project MKNAOMI, successor to MKULTRA and designed to maintain, stockpile and test biological and chemical weapons.

1968 CIA experiments with the possibility of poisoning drinking water by injecting chemicals into the water supply of the FDA in Washington, D.C.

1969 Dr. Robert MacMahan of the Department of Defense requests from congress $10 million to develop, within 5 to 10 years, a synthetic biological agent to which no natural immunity exists.

1970 Funding for the synthetic biological agent is obtained under H.R. 15090. The project, under the supervision of the CIA, is carried out by the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, the army’s top secret biological weapons facility. Speculation is raised that molecular biology techniques are used to produce AIDS-like retroviruses.

1970 United States intensifies its development of “ethnic weapons” (Military Review, Nov., 1970), designed to selectively target and eliminate specific ethnic groups who are susceptible due to genetic differences and variations in DNA.

1975 The virus section of Fort Detrick’s Center for Biological Warfare Research is renamed the Fredrick Cancer Research Facilities and placed under the supervision of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) . It is here that a special virus cancer program is initiated by the U.S. Navy, purportedly to develop cancer-causing viruses. It is also here that retrovirologists isolate a virus to which no immunity exists. It is later named HTLV (Human T-cell Leukemia Virus).

1977 Senate hearings on Health and Scientific Research confirm that 239 populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969. Some of the areas included San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Key West, Panama City, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.
1978 Experimental Hepatitis B vaccine trials, conducted by the CDC, begin in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men.

1981 First cases of AIDS are confirmed in homosexual men in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, triggering speculation that AIDS may have been introduced via the Hepatitis B vaccine

1985 According to the journal Science (227:173-177), HTLV and VISNA, a fatal sheep virus, are very similar, indicating a close taxonomic and evolutionary relationship.

1986 According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (83:4007-4011), HIV and VISNA are highly similar and share all structural elements, except for a small segment which is nearly identical to HTLV. This leads to speculation that HTLV and VISNA may have been linked to produce a new retrovirus to which no natural immunity exists.

1986 A report to Congress reveals that the U.S. Government’s current generation of biological agents includes: modified viruses, naturally occurring toxins, and agents that are altered through genetic engineering to change immunological character and prevent treatment by all existing vaccines.
1987 Department of Defense admits that, despite a treaty banning research and development of biological agents, it continues to operate research facilities at 127 facilities and universities around the nation.

1990 More than 1500 six-month old black and hispanic babies in Los Angeles are given an “experimental” measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected to their children was experimental.

1994 With a technique called “gene tracking,” Dr. Garth Nicolson at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX discovers that many returning Desert Storm veterans are infected with an altered strain of Mycoplasma incognitus, a microbe commonly used in the production of biological weapons. Incorporated into its molecular structure is 40 percent of the HIV protein coat, indicating that it had been man-made.

1994 Senator John D. Rockefeller issues a report revealing that for at least 50 years the Department of Defense has used hundreds of thousands of military personnel in human experiments and for intentional exposure to dangerous substances. Materials included mustard and nerve gas, ionizing radiation, psychochemicals, hallucinogens, and drugs used during the Gulf War .

1995 U.S. Government admits that it had offered Japanese war criminals and scientists who had performed human medical experiments salaries and immunity from prosecution in exchange for data on biological warfare research.

1995 Dr. Garth Nicolson, uncovers evidence that the biological agents used during the Gulf War had been manufactured in Houston, TX and Boca Raton, Fl and tested on prisoners in the Texas Department of Corrections.

1996 Department of Defense admits that Desert Storm soldiers were exposed to chemical agents.

1997 Eighty-eight members of Congress sign a letter demanding an investigation into bioweapons use & Gulf War Syndrome.

ª 1998-2000 Health News Network

Link

US efforts to scuttle Iran-UAE ties fail

 

 

 

By Kimia Sanati

TEHRAN – Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)have begun top-level talks to boost economic relations, despite efforts by the United States to disrupt trade ties and an unresolved territorial dispute over the three strategic islands of Abu Mousa, the Lesser and the Greater Tunb in the Strait of Hormuz.

The UAE is already Iran’s top trade partner with bilateral trade reaching US$14 billion, according to official sources.

The US, concerned about Iran’s plans to develop nuclear know-how, “has tried to hurt the Iranian economy through unilateral sanctions,” an observer in Tehran told Inter Press Service (IPS).

“They consider UN sanctions too mild to achieve enough pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear program. To bring the Iranian economy to its knees the US has been encouraging and even putting pressure on all Iran’s trade partners, including the UAE, to stop dealing with Iran. This can and has hurt much more than the UN sanctions.”

At the forefront of efforts by the US to curb local trade with Iran are foreign banks with branches in the UAE. These continue to deal with firms that have Iranian partners, “but they are more cautious – they scrutinize them more when extending facilities”, Nasser Hashempour, executive deputy president of the Dubai-based Iranian Business Council, said this month, according to a report on the MiddleEast Online website.

UAE-based branches of international banks have “asked most Iranian individuals who have personal accounts with them to close their accounts”, Hashempour said.

Many international banks, including British-Asian bank HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Swiss giants UBS and Credit Suisse, have stopped dealing with Iran in line with sanctions imposed by the US to pressure Tehran into halting its program of uranium enrichment, the report said.

Yet “stopping trade with Iran is in no way in the best interests of the UAE, which has the greater share of the lucrative trade relations, and hence their big dilemma is whether to relent to the US pressure and keep Americans happy or serve their own national interests and economy”, the observer said.

Bilateral trade between the UAE and the US fell 25% to $2.67 billion during the first quarter of last year compared with the same period of the previous year, according to the BusinessIntelligence Middle East website, citing US Department of Commerce data. UAE imports from the US fell 26% to $2.36 billion in the period compared with a year earlier, while UAE exports to the US fell by 7% to $307.6 million, cutting by 29% the UAE balance of trade deficit with the US, the website reported.

Trade between the US and the UAE declined 16% to $5.43 billion during the first half of 2007, ArabianBusiness.com reported, citing the US Bureau of Statistics.

Last May, Iran’s President Mahmud Ahmadinejad became the first Iranian president since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to visit the UAE. This was reciprocated last week by Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid, prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, in a rare, top-level visit. He reiterated his country’s stance, expressed earlier at a joint press conference with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, that Iran had a right to peaceful nuclear technology.

Importantly, the sheikh also said Iran was no threat to regional states. “Allegations by aliens the US that Iran is a threat to the region are vague, as regional states share a lot of historic and contemporary common grounds,” the UAE premier was quoted by reporters as saying.

“The UAE prime minister’s visit is proof that US policies will not have any impact in the region,” Ahmadinejad said during his meeting with Sheikh Mohammad.

Ahmadinejad has offered to provide regional Arab countries that have their own nuclear ambitions with Iranian nuclear know-how. Referring to Iran’s nuclear technology, he told the visiting UAE prime minister that Iran was fully prepared to “put its valuable achievements” at the UAE’s disposal.

The visit, a little more than a month after one to the UAE by US President George Bush, sparked speculation about a nuclear message being relayed by the UAE prime minister to Tehran.

Iran’s ambassador in the UAE, Hamid-Reza Assefi, rejected the speculation. Sheikh Mohammad “just informed us of his country’s stance regarding Iran’s nuclear issue and said Iran had a right to have access to peaceful nuclear technology”, the Iranian ambassador was quoted as saying by semi-official Fars News Agency.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), of which the UAE is a member, acknowledges all nations’ right to peaceful nuclear energy but has concerns about a nuclear Iran. Other members are Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain.

A report, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), by the US intelligence bodies in December 2007 seems to have put the minds of Iran’s Arab neighbors at greater ease as to the nature of its nuclear program. The report said that Iran’s nuclear program had not been of a military nature since 2003.

The NIE report has done little to alter Bush’s policy towards Iran. In January during an official visit to the UAE, he accused Iran once again of sponsoring terrorism. The US president said Iran’s actions threatened the security of nations everywhere and promised that the US was rallying friends to confront the Iranian danger before it was too late.

Bush’s customary rhetoric against Iran was not well received in the UAE and in other countries in the region. “Unfortunately, the focus of this epoch-making visit to Abu Dhabi and Dubai has been on the US preoccupation with Iran, rather than America’s strong and healthy relations with the UAE and other Gulf allies,” UAE’s pro-government Khaleej Times wrote.

“Just as the Gulf countries have healthy relations with the West, including the US, they also have historical, cultural and economic ties with Iran,” the newspaper wrote. “The UAE happens to be Iran’s biggest trading partner. This is why the UAE and other Gulf countries wouldn’t want any more confrontation and conflict between the US and Iran. The Middle East and Gulf region, already suffering from two conflicts, cannot afford any more tensions. Peace and only peace is the way forward.”

The US has been trying to paint Iran as a scarecrow to the Arab nations, particularly to the Persian Gulf states, an observer in Tehran told IPS. “But Arab nations seem to be increasingly disillusioned with US policies. The GCC countries say they will not allow any attacks on Iran from their soil. They seem to be more worried by a nuclear Israel that is continuing its aggressive policies without any hindrance,” the observer said.

“Before the UN began to impose sanctions on Iran to stop its nuclear program and the US stepped up its unilateral sanctions, the thriving economy of the UAE, and Dubai in particular, was seen as a serious threat to Iranian economy here,” he said.

“Capital flowed, and still flows, from Iran to Dubai in huge sums in search of safety and profits. Iranian investors are now holding somewhere around $300 billion in capital in the UAE. The trade volume between the two countries was up by 25% last year. The Emirates are profiting in terms of money while Iran benefits by the trade between the two countries that enables its economy to meet the domestic demand for imports,” he added.

The greater part of Iranian imports from the UAE consists of re-exports from the country. This enables Iran to lay its hands on things the unilateral US sanctions have made difficult or impossible to acquire from other sources. The fact is reflected in the figures for the trade volume in the Iranian fiscal year that ended in March 2007, during which the UAE’s share of the $11.7 billion non-oil exports between the two countries was $9.2 billion.

The US lobbying has made things harder for Iranians and their trade partners in the rest of the world but they have found ways of circumvention. Many Iranian companies have registered in the UAE to continue their business and unofficial money transfer channels have taken the place of banks.

“For quite a few years my firm has been importing machinery parts, re-exports from Europe and elsewhere in fact, from Dubai,” the chief executive of an importing company told IPS in Tehran. “Things went rather smoothly in the past, but recently one main Canadian supplier said they couldn’t deal with us directly or they’d be boycotted by the Americans. They suggested that we register a company in Dubai. We had to find a local partner to hold 51% of the shares according to local regulations.”

At the same time, “international banks where we had our accounts asked us to close them and said they would no longer accept letters of credit from Iran’s Saderat and Melli banks, which have several branches in the UAE. This has made us deal in cash and use unofficial money transfer systems, which raises the end price of the imported goods for us,” he said.

Besides economic factors, the issue of the disputed islands was brought up during the UAE premier’s visit. Iran is prepared for talks with the UAE to “remove misunderstanding over the Persian Gulf Island of Abu Mousa”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini was quoted by Islamic Republic News Agency as saying following the UAE premier’s visit.

The territorial dispute between the two countries over the three islands dates to 1971 when the seven states comprising the UAE gained independence from Britain.

While insisting on its non-negotiable sovereignty over the disputed islands, Iran says it favors talks to resolve the issue. The UAE has in the past sought to settle the issue of the islands that it calls “occupied” through the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

In May 2005, the UAE officially appealed to the UN to arbitrate on the issue of the disputed islands. The UAE’s claim has repeatedly been backed by the GCC members and other Arab states.

 

 

————————

————————

Obama’s “Coalition of the Willing” Against Iran?

 

Continuity rather than Change in US Foreign Policy

by Ali Fathollah-Nejad

Global Research, November 20, 2008
- 2008-11-19

A Mere Atmospheric Change in Obama’s Foreign Policy: U.S. London-Based Pundits See Rather Continuity Than Change

LONDON – After Barack Obama’s victory in the U.S. presidential elections last week, discussions about what direction an Obama/Biden Administration is likely to follow are gaining momentum.

Invited by the London Middle East Institute (LMEI) on 11 November to speak about the foreign policy of the next U.S. administration, the London-based American analyst Jonathan Paris anticipated an Obama foreign policy much in line with the one of the current Bush administration.

The main areas of concern, he asserted, would be Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. Focusing extensively on the latter, Paris said that sanctions will be kept up with even the aim of aggravating those. Meanwhile, one should not “beg” Russia to join the efforts by the P5+1 – i.e. the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany – to increase pressure on Iran. Rather would it suffice to wait for Russia to join an anti-Iran “coalition of the willing.” Moscow has so far been reluctant to Washington’s insistence to impose further sanctions on Tehran. According to Paris, who like Norman Podhoretz is an adjunct fellow at the neoconservative U.S. think-tank Hudson Institute, Washington’s overall goal would be to “win over” Russia so to avoid any opposition to its preferred policies.

Drawing on Obama’s campaign announcement to enter into direct negotiations with Iran, Paris stressed that this would test the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s willingness to come along. Although proponents of a thus-designed “overture” vis-à-vis Tehran expect the Iranian leadership to repudiate, other experts point out that such an outcome is far from obvious with the Iranians being seriously interested in normalizing ties with the United States. Paris reiterated that Israel could only attack Iran with U.S. support.

Paris, a Middle East fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York from 1995 to 2000, stated that other spotlights would be Pakistan – which he described as constituting the “prize” –, “the most pivotal state in the Middle East,” Egypt, with President Hosni Mubarak’s succession pending, and Iraq where “corruption” of the Baghdad government would be the core problem without mentioning Obama’s promise to withdraw occupation forces there. While tackling the so-called “rogue states,” of course China would be a central focal point for Washington’s foreign policies, Paris added.

Multilateralism “Yes,” Multipolarity “Not So Fast”!

Paris, who is also a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, classified a future president Obama opting for “cooptation” rather than confrontation, a characteristic attributed to the Bush Administration. While he approved multilateralism, he cautioned against multipolarity whose dawn he commented with occurring “not so fast.”

He described the decision-making process of the forthcoming administration to be “bottom-up,” implying that Obama will be very much acting upon advise given to him. Paris conceded that only “atmospheric change” would come during an Obama presidency.

A few days earlier on 5 November, Mark Fitzpatrick, at a panel on “nuclear futures after the U.S. elections” at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, stated that establishing a weapons-of-mass-destruction free zone in the Middle East could not be found among the top-ten list of an Obama administration. Fitzpatrick, an American senior fellow for non-proliferation at the IISS, said that the main obstacle to launching a regional conference to such an end would be the lack of “mutual recognition” between Israel and Iran. However, he did not mention Iran’s “grand bargain” offer of spring 2003 to the U.S. which inter alia included a de facto recognition of the state of Israel. Washington at that time ignored this remarkable Iranian overture that included Tehran’s willingness to settle all controversial issues in U.S.–Iran relations.1

Fitzpatrick presaged that a future president Obama would command U.S. marines in the Persian Gulf to start communicating with the Iranian navy in order to avoid any confrontation provoked by misperceptions. In terms of nuclear disarmament, he proposed that in the first 100 days of the new administration, the U.S. could de-alert the status of its nuclear arsenal, but preferably doing so only when Russia acts likewise.

In sum, both London-based U.S. analysts did not signal any change of an Obama administration’s foreign policy stance especially when compared to the Bush administration’s second term. Their remarks implied that the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2002 and 2005 which formed the basis of President George W. Bush’ s foreign policy agenda and which included the Bush/Wolfowitz preventive strike doctrine would not be revised. According to veteran U.S. Middle East expert William R. Polk the removal of the George W. Bush’s NSS, which “threatens Iran with destruction,” would be an absolute prerequisite for any serious change in Washington’s world policy.2 The American pundits rather upheld the belief that there will be continuity in Washington’s strategic outlines and actual policies with Obama and that the only change that could be expected will occur in terms of rhetoric.

Notes

1 See Gareth Porter (2006) “Burnt Offering. How a 2003 secret overture from Tehran might have led to a deal on Iran’s nuclear capacity—if the Bush administration hadn’t rebuffed it,” The American Prospect, Vol. 17, No. 6 (June), pp. 20—25.

2 See Ali Fathollah-Nejad (2008) “Iran Falling into the “Net” of a “Worldwide Policy”: On the U.S. Foreign Policy Doctrine and Its Present Dangers – Exclusive Interview with William R. Polk,” Global Research, 16 October.

Ali Fathollah-Nejad (M.Sc. cum laude, M.A., B.Sc., B.A.) was educated in bi-national study programs in France (Sciences-Po Lille), Germany (U Münster) and the Netherlands (U Twente) covering the fields of political science, sociology, law, history, and economics. His current main areas of research are U.S. and EU policies vis-à-vis Iran and the new geography of power in the 21st century.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11058

 

 

Iranian Commander: Bush’s Iran War Plan Delivered to Obama

The Bush administration has created the required infrastructure for attacking Iran and delivered his war plan to Obama, a senior Iranian military official said Saturday, adding that Obama’s election has provided Iran with a one-year opportunity to increase preparedness.

Addressing a meeting to mark the start of the Week of Basij (mobilization of volunteer forces), lieutenant commander of the General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces Major General Gholam-Ali Rasheed said that US President George Bush has established the infrastructures required in the region for posing a threat to Iran.

“The United States’ threats have now found a structural form. They have done the planning for reaching the necessary preparedness to wage a war (against Iran) through setting up military bases, holding (security) pacts, etc.,” he said.

The General viewed “northwestern and southeastern Iran as well as the southwestern province of Khuzestan as vulnerable points” the US forces are likely to use if they want to invade Iran, and underlined that the aforementioned areas should become invulnerable within the next one year.

He further urged military officials to leave war rhetoric and expression of foreign policy views to politicians and “accelerate measures to boost Iran’s deterrent power”.

Considering that the country is now under threat, he said, we should consider measures to prevent entering the stage of actual war.

US forces attacked a Syrian village near the borders with Iraq on October 26, and the raid on Sukkariyah, which took place almost simultaneously with an air raid on a Pakistani village, has raised speculation about the likelihood of similar unilateral strikes by the US troops on other regional states, including the Islamic Republic.

Speculation that Israel could also bomb Iran mounted after a big Israeli air drill in June. In the first week of June, 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters reportedly took part in an exercise over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece, which was interpreted as a dress rehearsal for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.

Israel and its close ally the United States accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, while they have never presented any corroborative document to substantiate their allegations. Both Washington and Tel Aviv possess advanced weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear warheads.

Iran vehemently denies the charges, insisting that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Iran has, in return, warned that it would target Israel and its worldwide interests in case it comes under attack by the Tel Aviv.

The United States has also always stressed that military action is a main option for the White House to deter Iran’s progress in the field of nuclear technology.

Iran has warned that in case of an attack by either the US or Israel, it will target 32 American bases in the Middle East and close the strategic Strait of Hormoz.

An estimated 40 percent of the world’s oil supply passes through the waterway.

In a Sep. 11 report, the Washington Institute for the Near East Policy says that in the two decades since the Iran-Iraq War, the Islamic Republic has excelled in naval capabilities and is able to wage unique asymmetric warfare against larger naval forces.
According to the report, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGCN) has been transformed into a highly motivated, well-equipped, and well-financed force and is effectively in control of the world’s oil lifeline, the Strait of Hormuz.

The study says that if Washington takes military action against the Islamic Republic, the scale of Iran’s response would likely be proportional to the scale of the damage inflicted on Iranian assets.

Meantime, a recent study by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a prestigious American think tank, has found that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities “is unlikely” to delay the country’s program.

Intensified threats by Tel Aviv and Washington of military action against Iran contradict a recent report by 16 US intelligence bodies which endorsed the civilian nature of Iran’s nuclear plans and activities.

Following the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and similar reports by the IAEA head – one in November and the other one in February – which praised Iran’s truthfulness about key aspects of its past nuclear activities and announced settlement of outstanding issues with Tehran, any effort to impose further sanctions or launch military attack on Iran seems to be completely irrational.

The February report by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, praised Iran’s cooperation in clearing up all of the past questions over its nuclear program, vindicating Iran’s nuclear program and leaving no justification for any new UN sanctions.

The UN nuclear watchdog has also carried out at least 14 surprise inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites so far, but found nothing to support West’s allegations.

Also in another report to the 35-nation Board of Governors, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei confirmed “the non-diversion” of nuclear material in Iran and added that the agency had found no “components of a nuclear weapon” or “related nuclear physics studies” in the country.

The IAEA report confirmed that Iran has managed to enrich uranium-235 to a level “less than 5 percent”. Such a rate is consistent with the construction of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear arms production, meanwhile, requires an enrichment level of above 90 percent.

The Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog continues snap inspections of Iranian nuclear sites and has reported that all “declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities.”

Mohammed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently said that Iran remains far from acquiring capabilities to develop nuclear weapons as it is still lacking the key components to produce an atomic weapon.

“They do not have even the nuclear material, the raw unenriched uranium to develop one nuclear weapon if they decide to do so,” said the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency.

Following the said reports by the US and international bodies, many world states have called the UN Security Council pressure against Tehran unjustified, demanding that Iran’s case be normalized and returned from the UNSC to the IAEA.

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8709020565