Monday, February 28, 2011

Prepare for the end of Pax Americana/Judaica in the oil kingdoms...and beyond


Prepare for the end of Pax Americana/Judaica in the oil kingdoms...and beyond.

The Targets: MENA and way beyond in EURASIA.....


Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz


Remarks at the Defense Programs Conference, Arlington, Va., March 2, 2011

DOWNLOAD COMPLETE SPEECH


Some Excerpts

"From ongoing operations to future acquisition programs, the Department of Defense is strengthening its efforts to distinguish between capabilities that are actually required versus those that are merely desired. This will translate to approximately 100-billion dollars in DoD-wide efficiencies over the next five years, which then can be transferred to war-fighting capabilities and requirements, and modernization or recapitalization efforts."

"looking to the future, we are planning our force structure to be at least equally versatile, including being prepared for higher-end conflict involving aggressive actors. To that end, we continue to recognize the growing interconnectedness in the land, maritime, air, space, and cyber environments, and the need to strengthen Joint and Inter-agency collaboration. We know that now, more than ever, our ability to operate in any single domain relies on a substantial level of control in the others. This complexity increasingly requires a wide-angle view of the operating environments, to ensure that our domain control efforts are undertaken through close collaboration with our Joint partners, and that our intended effects span multiple domains as necessary."

There are many ways to view this moment of strategic inflection, so to conclude, I offer only three thoughts for your consideration today.

First, we require more efficiency, agility, and responsiveness, as I have outlined so far. If we are to address the root causes of explosive cost growth in many of our Major Defense Acquisition Programs, we must be innovative in advancing immature technology more efficiently. We must be firmly committed to stemming the tide of readiness shortfalls and widening gaps in manufacturing technology. And, we must work to shift the manufacturing focus earlier in the acquisition process, so that we can deliver better, rapid-response solutions where 10- to 15-year development cycles are insufficient in keeping pace in our highly dynamic environment.

Second, we require straight, candid talk from everyone—investors, manufacturers and service providers, and the government. We need honest and realistic evaluations of requirements and capabilities, pricing and time-lines, and development and delivery. With the confluence of ongoing fiscal pressures and strategic uncertainty, there is no trade space to do otherwise, so as I said recently, we can’t afford to over-promise and then under-deliver. Quite simply, there is neither time nor patience
......

February , 2011 -- A new political landscape for the Arabian peninsula

The status quo enthusiasts at the State Department and its unofficial overseers at the Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, among others, are desperately trying to come to grips with the collapse of Pax Americana/Judaica in the Middle East and North Africa.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/03/03/israels-hidden-faces-a-long-days-night-for-us-all/

For decades, the power centers of the United States and Israel have been content to rely on intractable Arab dictators like Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, and a series of octogenarian Saudi kings, to maintain the status quo in the Middle East. Using the bogeyman of "Al-Qaeda" and "Islamists" to mask the suppression of the Arab popular masses, U.S., and quietly, Israeli interests, have supported the Arab strongman as a hedge against full democracy in the Middle East. Republican and Democratic administrations in the United States, heavily influenced by the Israeli Lobby, as well as Labor, Likud, and Kadima governments in Israel have been content to overtly or covertly cuddle Arab dictatorships in Tripoli, Cairo, Tunis, Sana'a, and Riyadh, while mere lip service has been paid by those regimes to the Palestinian cause, and the status quo reigned supreme in the region...

As seen with the electoral victory of Hamas in Palestine after the Bush administration pushed for free and fair elections for the Palestinian parliament in 2006 and substantial electoral support for Hezbollah and allied political parties in Lebanon, not to mention the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in post-military tutelage Turkey, democracy in the Middle East can be detrimental for the interests of U.S. neoconservatives, corporate globalists, and Israeli and North American Zionists.

Feeding into Israel's desire to maintain the status quo has been the close financial relationship its major companies, particularly the Mossad-linked Zim Shipping, has maintained with Arab regime companies like Dubai Ports World. In addition, an overarching secret relationship between Mossad and Arab spy chiefs like Egypt's Omar Suleiman, the chief of Egypt's General Intelligence Directorate, and various Saud family chiefs of Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Directorate, has ensured for Israel a heretofore secret relationship between Tel Aviv and various Arab dictatorships and monarchist regimes from Morocco to Syria, to Bahrain.

For the CIA, the collapse of client regimes in the Arab world threatens to unmask the involvement those regimes had with the CIA's secret kidnapping and torture 'extraordinary rendition" program. If the Saudi regime collapses, there is a distinct possibility that embarrassing documents could be released on the biggest neocon and Zionist conspiracy of all time: the 9/11 attack on the United States that ushered into being a darkly draconian "new world order" that not only trashed the U.S. Constitution but saw the Pentagon engage in the wholesale murder of Muslims around the world in a bloody "new crusade" with the deployment of the infamous White House Murder INC, and armed drones, "precision-guided" missiles," contract assassins, and cluster bombs.

The status quo supporters in Washington and Tel Aviv realize that popularly-elected Arab governments, after they sort out their domestic problems, will take a new look at Israel's genocidal treatment of the people of Lebanon and Palestine and U.S. and Israeli military and commercial interests throughout the Middle East and North Africa. U.S. military and intelligence bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Syria, Iraq, Djibouti, Morocco, Egypt, Libya, and Algeria will be put on the chopping block and leave the Pentagon's global imperialist construct faster than a head leaves the body of some unfortunate convicted criminal on a block in Riyadh's infamous "chop chop square."

Attempts by everyone from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Qaddafi to the pro-Israeli and neocon propagandists at CNN and Fox News to discredit the Arab uprisings by linking them to Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the fake CIA and Mossad contrivance known as "Al Qaeda" have been proven to be mere pabulum for the ignorant consumers of what passes for "news" these days...

And while President Obama and his UN ambassador, Susan Rice, celebrate the independence of Africa's newest Pentagon and Zionist vassal state of South Sudan, they find it difficult to swallow the re-appearance of an independent South Yemen and an autonomous Shi'a Houthi region in post-Saleh Yemen. In addition, the popular revolt against the Barzani and Talabani ruling oligarchs in Iraqi Kurdistan poses a distinct threat to U.S. oil company plans and "Greater Israel" desires by Zionist expansionists for Iraqi Kurdistan...

It is clear that the popular revolt of the Arab people that is sweeping across the sands of North Africa and the Middle East will soon sweep across "Saudi" Arabia. The Saudi propaganda machinery has been working overtime to hype the recent return of the ailing Saudi king, Abdullah, to the country from surgery in USA... One Saudi police official stated: "
King Abdallah's return is good news for all people in the Kingdom because everybody loves him."

After the Saudi regime's lack of response to disastrous flooding in Jeddah and a nationwide crackdown on anything that looks like a public protest by Arabia's increasingly restive youth, the comment by police official
Brigadier Yahiya Al-Biladi is worthy of the televised statement of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, dubbed
"Baghdad Bob," Saddam Hussein's disingenuous minister of information during the U.S. military's initial occupation of Baghdad, that there are "no American troops" in Baghdad as an American tank appeared behind him.

The Saudi regime is clearly worried over the recent rise of Arabia's first opposition political party, the
Al-Ummah Islamic Party, a coalition of Arabian democratic opposition, as well as moderate Islamic factions.

Despotic regimes like those of Qaddafi, Mubarak, Saleh, Assad, Nouri al Maliki in Iraq, Israel, and the Saudis will always rely on the specter of "terrorists" to legitimize their continued hold on power. Writing in the London-based newspaper Al Quds al Arabi on February 14, Arabian academic
Madawi al-Rashid described the phenomenon with regard to the Saudi regime: "As is always the case with shaking systems, the Saudi regime will turn to its survival mechanisms. It will bring up the danger of terrorism to horrify the people and the outside world. The legions of allegiance with their long lists of pictures of sleeping cells and active cells will appear at the right moment. The pictures will show the booby traps and the computer discs to show how important the regime is in combating the looming danger. The regime may also resort to the government media organs specialized in producing horror documentaries with their fictitious pictures and well known chants. Then the hypothetical media will appear and air the farewell letters that usually precede the bombing operations."

Supporting this intelligence agency construct of the phony "Al Qaeda" will be operations like the Washington-based "Search for International Terrorist Entities" (SITE), a Mossad operation that feeds fake "Al Qaeda" video and audio tapes, in addition to statements pulled from dubious websites, to the U.S. corporate media for maximum air time and print space.

Dr. Al-Rashid correctly predicts what will happen as the Saudi regime is pushed against the ropes: "
The Saudi regime may also resort to smaller dangers, such as Huthism on the southern border. It will also ring the alarm bell against sleeper cells that it discovers on the coasts of the Gulf. It will then turn to the hotline with Obama to warn against vipers and the heads of vipers hoping to find a listening ear. The Saudi regime is experiencing its worst days although one man's meat is another man's poison since its treasury is overflowing with dollars due to the rise in oil prices because of the repercussions of the Egyptian crisis... However, this regime is groaning under the weight of real fears concerning its continuance in view of it being the sole regime taking a stand that is hostile to the aspirations of the enraged people of the largest Arab country in addition to it being the safe haven of deposed dictatorships. The Saudi regime has lost a central ally [Mubarak] who was capable of softening Arab stands against it. It has also been deprived of the most important side in the evil so-called axis of moderation. Moreover, Saudi influence has eroded in sensitive regions, such as Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and now Egypt for supporting the stubborn tyrant."

As if on cue from Riyadh and the Saudis' allies in Washington, the Saleh regime in Yemen has warned about the Houthi threat in north Yemen and "Al Qaeda" in the secessionist south. The State Department continues to insist that core members of the Al-Ummah Party in Arabia are "terrorists" linked to the fantasy "Al Qaeda."

Dr. Al-Rashid provides a roadmap for the future of the Arabian peninsula, a "road map" that is discomforting to the "road map" makers of the State Department and its Israel Lobby masters: "
The Saudi regime has nothing left except frail alliances with small Arab mini-states that will play an important role in the coming stage since they are subject to the coming explosion. After Egypt, the Saudi regime will put its financial weight behind Yemen and the sergeant. Although this weight will not be decisive in confronting the will of the Yemeni people, it will try as much as possible to postpone the revolting pocket in the south until further notice."


Already, the U.S. and British puppet regimes on the Gulf are beginning to feel the domestic political heat. Bahrain's opposition is now calling for the ouster of the Al-Khalifa royalist family; Kuwait's Sabah royal clan, propped up by U.S. military forces, has brutally put down protests by that nation's stateless Bidoon nomadic people; and Oman, which has only experienced peaceful protests, has now seen its first violent opposition to the regime of Prince Charles' good friend, Sultan Qabus bin Said.

Omani helicopters have attacked protesters on the Globe Roundabout, renamed by protesters "Reform Square," in the northern port town of Sohar with tear gas and "shells." Two protesters were reportedly killed in the attack. Omani protesters reacted by burning down a police station and the governor's residence and vandalizing a supermarket. Protests against the corrupt Qabus regime have spread from Muscat, the capital, to Shinaz in the north, Sur to the south of Muscat, and Salalah in the far southern and independent-minded Dhofar province, which borders secessionist South Yemen where the Southern Mobility Movement (SMM) is leading the opposition to the Saleh regime. Anti-Sana'a demonstrations have hit Mukallah, the capital of South Yemen's Hadhramaut region, mirroring the protests against the Muscat regime taking place in Salalah to the north.

When the Arab revolt finally reaches the United Arab Emirates, it will come from Oman and first hit one of the poorer emirates, Fujairah, which, unlike the wealthier emirates on the Gulf, is on the Arabian Sea, north of Muscat and Suhar, Oman. Lying within Fujairah and near the port town of Khor Fakkan, often used by vessels of the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquartered in Bahrain, is an Omani enclave, which itself contains a Fujairan exclave, a geographic situation in which the Omani revolt will be certain to have an effect. While their fellow UAE citizens in Dubai and Abu Dhabi enjoy luxurious shopping centers, golf courses, and hotels, the people of Fujairah have been confronted with steep food prices and the use of their emirate as a garbage dump for the wealthier emirates on the Gulf and a MOSSAD listening station across from Isran.....

King Farouk of Egypt, ousted in a 1952 CIA-orchestrated military coup code-named by Langley "Project FF" -- or "Project Fat Fucker," said in 1948, "The whole world is in revolt. Soon there will be only five Kings left—the King of England, the King of Spades, the King of Clubs, the King of Hearts, and the King of Diamonds."

It is now 2011 and the whole world is in revolt again. King Farouk's prognostication may be playing out six decades later. De facto "kings" like Mubarak, Qaddafi, Saleh, Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, have been or are being swept away with the potentates of the Gulf and the Assads in the queue. Next on the chopping block are U.S.-supported African dictators like Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, Blaise Campaore in Burkina Faso, Ali Bongo in Gabon, Paul Biya in Cameroon, and a number of others. There are renewed stirrings against U.S.-backed regimes in Thailand, Afghanistan, South Korea, Philippines, Colombia, Panama, and other countries.

The world has never been more united in opposition to the global elites and oligarchs who actually run the planet. But as the peoples of the world unite against the globalists billionaires and their uniformed centurions, the dangers have also never been greater. Currently, the "cognitive infiltrators" and professional agents provocateurs have been content to sow dissension among the forces of opposition to the global elite. With that strategy failing, the elites are prepared to take more direct action, the bloody type we have already witnessed being used against demonstrators on the streets of Tunis, Cairo, Tripoli, Baghdad, Mosul, Sana'a, Aden, Damascus, Manama, Kuwait, Sohar, and Algiers.

The momentum, for the time being, is with the people of the world in their joint struggle with the elites and their military and media battalions. In a Cuban prison sits a CIA spy, Alan Gross, joined in Pakistani jail cells by CIA agents Raymond Davis and Aaron Mark DeHaven, alias Ahmed Haroon, because Cuba and Pakistan can now stand up to an arrogant Central Intelligence Agency and an equally arrogant Obama administration. Both countries are now in a position to demand the swap of their citizens in the United States, imprisoned on trumped up "terrorism" charges, in return for the repatriation of the hapless CIA spies...

The changing face of regions of the world where the United States has held supreme dominance for the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union means that the Pentagon, rather than plan for war, should prepare for permanent retreat... National Security Agency eavesdroppers in places like Djibouti, Beirut, and Bahrain should start packing up their head phones and code books, the Navy should prepare to pull its fleet out of Bahrain and head back to Norfolk and Jacksonville, and the expat employees of the Saudi Arabian American oil company (ARAMCO) should start making reservations for one-way flights home from Arabia. BP should be prepared to renegotiate Libyan oil contracts with a post-Qaddafi government and illegal Jewish settlers on the West Bank should start contemplating what veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas suggested they ought to do: move back to Europe and America.

With the collapse of Pax Americana/Judaica and the redrawing of Middle Eastern and South Asian maps comes a stark new reality: it will no longer be business as usual for those who have called the shots for so long. It is about time...

Don't take your eyes off the Gulf
By Pepe Escobar

Picture a feudal, or neo-medieval, paradise, the former home of legendary Sindbad the Sailor, absolutely ruled by an unmarried, slim, lute-playing septuagenarian who prefers to live alone in his palace; paradigm of discretion Sultan Qabus bin Sa'id. That, in a nutshell, is Oman.

Oman practices Ibadi Islam - neither Sunni nor Shi'ite - also found in selected latitudes in northern and eastern Africa. This couldn't be further apart from Wahhabism, or al-Qaeda style jihadi fanaticism. In Omani terms, Ibadi Islam involves finding the right mix between tribal custom and the state apparatus (Qabus is very fond of consultations with tribal leaders).

Washington - and London - absolutely love Qabus; the graduate of the Sandhurst military academy in Britain is a lover of Mozart and Chopin, and his strategic acumen is compared to Singapore's founding father Lee Kwan Yew. (When I went to Oman I actually felt I was in an Arabian Singapore. It helped that I had lived in Singapore. Everything in Oman is too neat - and too Disneyland-perfect, in a Singaporean Stepford Wives way.)

American love is helped by the sultan having given a big hand to George H W Bush during the first Gulf war in 1991 against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and extending the favor to George W Bush, allowing for 20,000 US troops to hang out in Oman before the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. To top it off, the deepest stretch of the exceedingly strategic Strait of Hormuz - essential for the navigation of supertankers in the Persian Gulf - lies in Omani territory.

Sorry to intrude on your idyll
Qabus, in power since 1970, may still not be an object of revulsion in his Gulf of Oman paradise. But his - and Oman's elites - time may be running out under the relentless great 2011 Arab revolt clock.

In The Economist's shoe-thrower index, Oman is in no less than sixth place, right behind Hosni Mubarak-deposed Egypt and way ahead of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali-deposed Tunisia and Khalifa-in-peril Bahrain. Half the population of less than three million is less than 21 years old. Unemployment is rife - especially among the youth carrying a useless diploma. Of a total of up to 40,000 high school graduates a year, only a few find a job.

This could not but spell major trouble. Bloggers and tweeters from Oman stress there have been demonstrations in Sur and the crucially strategic ports of Salalah (in the south, near Yemen) and Sohar (where the police used live ammunition, killing a 15-year-old boy; the Omani police - as well as the Mukhabarat - is trained in Jordan). No less than 3,000 protesters were fought with tear gas. The road from Sohar to al-Ayn - across the border in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - was shut down.

The protesters are basically complaining about miserable wages, compared to relentless, rising inflation; and that most jobs go to foreigners (employed by foreign corporations) or to Omanis from the capital Muscat.

Peaceful protesters say they won't relent until they get better pay. The sultan has preemptively raised the national minimum wage from US$316 a month to $520; protesters want "not less than $1,300". And more: better pensions; free further education for all Omanis; and even the resignation of the government. During the weekend, the sultan also reshuffled his cabinet and the government announced 50,000 more jobs, plus unemployment benefits. The protesters' reaction: "Mere words".

What's also crucial is that none of this is being fully reported in the Gulf. Al-Jazeera is eerily quiet. Al-Arabiyya - a House of Saud mouthpiece - is also very quiet. Not to mention broadcasters in Oman itself. Al-Jazeera has been heavily criticized in many quarters for weeks on its sloppy coverage of Bahrain - compared to a 24/7 blitzkrieg when it comes to Egypt or Libya. This has raised ample suspicion that for the emir of Qatar, there's "fight for democracy" (in northern Africa) and "fight for democracy" (in the Gulf).

Dire straits
Sohar - the former home of Sindbad - 80 kilometers from the UAE border and 200km from the capital Muscat, deserves very close attention. It is Oman's industrial powerhouse - harboring one the world's biggest port development projects plus a refinery, a petrochemical complex, an aluminum smelter and a steel factory. Oil workers in Sohar are now becoming protesters. It's not far fetched for them to block pipeline exports as a means of pressuring the sultan. Oman pumps around 860,000 barrels of oil a day and exports roughly 750,000 barrels.

The global economy knows the Persian Gulf is its number one oil hub. The paranoid notion that the Strait of Hormuz would be shut down by Iran in a war against the US/Israel was always a chimera fabricated by neo-cons. Reality is now spelling another scenario; real democracy intervening in "beacon of stability" Oman.

From the point of view of the global economy, the fight for democracy could become a nightmare scenario. Were both Libya and Oman to go totally out of the market, the global economy would lose 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, 3% of what it consumes. There's no evidence Saudi Arabia could compensate for it without pushing their equipment and infrastructure to the limit. Translation; oil may go beyond $150 a barrel in a matter of days. And this without even factoring possible March protests in Saudi Arabia.

Oman is not exactly an accident of history like the Gulf sheikhdoms - which were basically a "string of pearls" in the British empire's naval highway along the Indian Ocean. No wonder imperialist-in-chief Lord Curzon called them "petty Arab chiefships" (arguably that has not changed much under imperial US administration). As far as Washington is concerned, Oman remains the proverbial "stable US ally" - with its highly US-trained navy attached and, crucially, deployed right at the mouth of the exceedingly strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Oman is not exactly a recent family hacienda established in the desert - like the House of Saud. The ruling dynasty - al-Bu Sa'id - has been in power longer than the US has been a country.

But let's add some juice to all this "stability". Oman has harbored one of the most sophisticated opposition movements in the whole Arab world - largely embodied by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman. Some of its leaders were co-opted by the sultan, but the progressive, modernizing impetus remain.

As much as the US State Department goes out of its way to stress Oman respects human rights, political rights remain close to zero. No free press, no free speech, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of religion. Oman may not be ultra-repressive Saudi Arabia, or Wild West Yemen - but it's not Scandinavia either (Washington think tank types insist on comparing the sultan to Scandinavian prime ministers).

The great 2011 Arab revolt is, to quote Bob Dylan, "driving 90 miles an hour in a dead-end street" in Bahrain; is about to make a pit-stop in Saudi Arabia; and it has already hit Oman. The septuagenarian sultan has diabetes, no heirs to his throne, and is now officially puzzled by unemployed youth and angry workers right at this doorstep. Beware of humanitarian imperialism possibly rearing its ugly head in Libya. But all eyes should focus on the Strait of Hormuz; on the Omani, not the Iranian, shore....


U.S. Wavers on 'Regime Change' LOL-- The wailing Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON—After weeks of internal debate on how to respond to uprisings in the Arab world, the Obama administration is settling on a Middle East strategy: help keep longtime allies who are willing to reform in power, even if that means the full democratic demands of their newly emboldened citizens might have to wait.

Instead of pushing for immediate regime change—as it did to varying degrees in Egypt and now Libya—the U.S. is urging protesters from Bahrain to Morocco to work with existing rulers toward what some officials and diplomats are now calling "regime alteration."

Read more ....


Comment: When I read the following ....

Instead of pushing for immediate regime change—as it did to varying degrees in Egypt and now Libya—the U.S. is urging protesters from Bahrain to Morocco to work with existing rulers toward what some officials and diplomats are now calling "regime alteration."

.... I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally .... the White House is starting to appreciate the consequences of what their actions and words may mean in the Middle East, and that maybe a more prudent and less vocal policy is in order.

I guess the realization that the following scenario is now possible in the Middle East, made them wake up to what is happening there. In addition, their eyes are now on this country, and they are fearful of what may happen there, especially on the price of oil.

Now if they can also realize the following .... I will be even more optimistic on our future in the Middle East....




The strategic assumptions behind "Operation Libya" are reminiscent of previous US-NATO military undertakings in Yugoslavia and Iraq.


In Yugoslavia, US-NATO forces triggered a civil war. The objective was to create political and ethnic divisions, which eventually led to the break up of an entire country. This objective was achieved through the covert funding and training of armed paramilitary armies, first in Bosnia (Bosnian Muslim Army, 1991-95) and subsequently in Kosovo (Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), 1998-1999). In both Kosovo and Bosnia, media disinformation (including outright lies and fabrications) were used to support US-EU claims that the Belgrade government had committed atrocities, thereby justifying a military intervention on humanitarian grounds.

Ironically, "Operation Yugoslavia" is now on the lips of US foreign policy makers: Senator Lieberman has "likened the situation in Libya to the events in the Balkans in the 1990s when he said the U.S. "intervened to stop a genocide against Bosnians. And the first we did was to provide them the arms to defend themselves. That's what I think we ought to do in Libya." (Clinton: US ready to aid to Libyan opposition - Associated, Press, February 27, 2011, emphasis added

The strategic scenario would be to push towards the formation and recognition of an interim government of the secessionist province, with a view to eventually breaking up the country.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23548

.....
I think Fareed Zakaria’s “Are America’s Best Days Behind Us?” in the latest issue of Time Magazine provides a sober reflection of where we have recently come. Ironically, the trip wire to revealing all this may have actually been 9/11. Had we thought carefully about our relationship with Israel we might possibly have actually avoided that catastrophe by realizing that it dictated appropriate security measures in airports long before that fatal moment. Add to this our Congressional support for sub-prime loans which helped initiate our slide into domestic economic decline which became expanded exponentially by expensive involvement in Iraq, encouraged by doctored “intelligence”, which could have been avoided by intelligent leadership with the integrity to question that “intelligence” even in the face of career-ending implications, followed by further extended involvement in Afghanistan, a “country” that has, to this point, done little to improve its population’s living conditions and which is located on China’s border, but the Chinese fail to participate in these operations even though they annually hold exercises with their Shanghai Five members in the region. So “what’s up” with our political-military-economic “leadership in what used to at least appear to be the greatest country on earth. And, by the way, if we think we have to pinch average American citizens with more taxes and less benefits, what about the wonderful upper echelons of the system expected to keep us on even keel? And YES, I believe Ali points out an aspect that should be kept in mind in all religions, but that is sadly, and fatally, ignored, that we, and our ostensible “leaders”, should accept responsibility for ourselves/themselves and our world, to preserve and nurture all that is good within it, to work and struggle to make it into one of peace and plenty, beauty and harmony, freedom and justice...


Supporting democracy and freedom worldwide is just a smokescreen our great leader--including most of our previous leaders and other world leaders--use to obfuscate their real intentions. What Obama and most of the other mafia states support is the criminal oligarchy intent on owning the world's natural resources, including the people. The impetus for freedom and democracy has, and always will, come from the ground up. You don't have to leave home to see power being concentrated in corporate state and taken from the people. While our Constitution is being shredded by the Patriot Act, Obamabush... talks about spreading democracy in the ME but will never support it....

The Opera Benghazi, the next Les Miserables, will soon be coming to a theater near you.

The code language is growing. "'They have betrayed us," Ahmed Malen, one of the revolutionary volunteers pasting anti-Gaddafi posters on walls in Benghazi. "If they kill us all, the west will have blood on its hands. They do not believe in freedom. They are cowards.'"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/15/libya-rebels-last-stand-benghazi

Tight spot.

Puppets to the left of us, puppets to the right of us and we're struck in the middle with fools....

Does a country have karma?

We had a chance to wear the mantle that xxxx chose to don all those years ago, and we squandered it.

I don't know what to think about my country right now. I wish I felt like the flag I fought for represented something tangible, but I think now only the hopes and dreams of what was remain. Our leadership has let down those who came before us.

Maybe in some future, the Stars and Stripes and all of our legacies will inspire some civilization to make the world better. I hope they know that they know we were not always what we became.


.....

It always seems to me that thinking of the US-Israel relationship as the dysfunctional one between an enabling individual and an addict makes a lot of sense. In this analysis Israel is the addict, the US is the enabler, and the neo-Cons are the pushers....
March 24, 1933, the day that the London Daily Express displayed the banner headline: "Judea Declares War on Germany." "Jews of All the World Unite."

I have been curious about the Jews and Zionism ever since I took a dislike to Israel/USA and the most infamous White House Murder INC, in the Levant.... about 12 years ago.... And after 11 years of trying to find the very first instance of anti-Semitism and persecution and 'the causes' all the way back to creation I basically decided that Jews were a tribe that decided being victims was a handy tool for beseeching various Kings and Queens throughout history for special protection in return for their services to whatever rule....services that usually made the Jews very unpopular with the common masses. Needless to say history has many victims and persecuted ethnic and religious groups but the Jews, unlike most other victims, made it their specialty.
Then the Zionist of the 1800's turned it into a full blown cult. And it's been the longest running con game in the universe ever since.

If you've ever tried to have a sane and logical conversation with a Zionist, with all their religious mysticism and 'people-hood" and victim hood and their inferiority complex posing as superiority...forget it..you can't get through to that kind of primitive mentality.

Jacqueline Rose, a Zionist (lite) herself, wrote a book 'The Question of Zion' in which she theorized that Zionism attracted mentally mal-adjusted individuals. I am sure she would include the Christian Zionist too although she didn't mention them specifically.

Best book written that busts all the myths Jews created around themselves/ Israel/Zionism:

"The Invention of the Jewish People" by Shlomo Sand

http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844674223

If you are a Christian Zionist you will hate it because science and real history destroys the whole Jewish narrative about Jews as "unique people" with a right/claim to 'self determination" in Israel....

That line of thinking in the DC Intel community is so hypocritical it made me laugh....
As an American I find that to be an evil's smile, with the smirk..., to be our national icon similar to Buddha's.



Saturday, February 26, 2011

The White House Murder INC.





MP and Ex-Minister Mr. Elie Hobeika, RIP: He who sows to the Spirit, will from the Spirit reap eternal life... Our Lebanese heroes who gave their lives on the altars of the nation also taught us that he who has faith in the nation, in liberty, and in the rights of its citizens will defend them with absolute vigor and most honorable dedication, and will not fear any threats, threat of oppression, the loss of position or property, or the disappearance of "Thyself" in a Fiery Syro/Israeli Car BOMB, orchestrated by the most infamous White house Murder INC, with CIA's Blessing, logistics, utter disinformation for plausible deniability and more....The US/Israeli Ziocons are cowardly and despicable individuals who should be locked up for life for their barbaric war crimes and extra-judicial assassinations....

The Syrian Alawite/Donmeh thugs of the infamous White House Murder INC, are puppets in a children's Punch and Judy show....but with deadly consequences for their victims since 1973....
What authorized activity goes on in secret is, of course, not for public consumption for reasons of security, sources, methods, and so on.....


http://newhk.blogspot.com/2011/01/obama-perpetuates-utter-lies-between.html


http://newhk.blogspot.com/2011/01/components-of-white-house-murder-incs.html


....

The CIA trains terrorists and assassins and the Obama administration has the nerve to maintain a state sponsors of terrorism list of other nations....

March , 2011 -- A terrorist training base that specializes in car bombings

For some three decades, local residents near a top secret terrorist training base have reported on hearing explosions, seeing sudden flashes of light and night time flares, and noticing small planes and "black helicopters" arriving at and departing from a small airfield on the base. The airspace over the base is off-limits to unauthorized aircraft.

The base is not in Pakistan's restive Waziristan region or in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley but in northeastern North Carolina on Albemarle Sound, near the town of Hertford. Officially known as the Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity, the base which was once a Navy Supply Center, actually serves as a paramilitary training course for the CIA and allied intelligence and paramilitary services, including Israel's Mossad and Britain's Special Air Services (SAS). On march 20, 1998, The New York Times reported that during its existence, Harvey Point trained 18,000 foreign intelligence operatives from 50 different countries.

Among those terrorists trained at Harvey Point were those who worked for the Chilean military junta of General Augusto Pinochet, El Salvador's death squad chief Roberto D'Aubisson, Egypt's General Intelligence Directorate, Katangan secessionist leader Moise Tshombe, Angola's UNITA guerrilla force, Colombian counter-insurgency personnel, Laotian anti-communist paramilitary forces, and Arab cadres who would later join Osama bin Laden's forces fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan. One can only contemplate how such regulars and irregulars from the far-flung corners of the world reacted to eastern North Carolina cuisine, including the barbecued pork, hush puppies, and steamed crabs.

First used to train anti-Castro Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1960, the base has seen Amine Gemayel's Lebanese military intelligence train for the failed March 8, 1985, west Beirut car bombing assassination attempt against Lebanese Shi'a spiritual leader Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, who was also known to be a leading figure in Hezbollah... Although Fadlallah escaped assassination, the car packed with 440 pounds of dynamite leveled an apartment building and a movie theater, killing 85 innocent people, including women and children, and injuring some 300 others...

As the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon stands ready to indict key members of Lebanese Hezbollah for the February 15, 2005, massive car bombing that took the life of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, it is noteworthy that it has been the CIA's infamous White House Murder INC, along with its Syro-Lebanese allies and Mossad agents trained at Harvey Point who have specialized in the urban car bombing tactic used so often over the past several decades in Lebanon... And as we previously reported, it was these same elements -- CIA, Mossad, and their Syro-Lebanese assets -- that jointly carried out the Hobeika and Hariri car bombing assassinations....

An article titled "CIA Missions Have Mysterious N.C. Roots" in the June 28, 1978, Virginia-Pilot and Ledger-Star reported that the Harvey Point base, described as an annex of the CIA training base at Camp Peary, Virginia, was being used to train CIA operatives in car bombings. The paper noted that every few days, Navy trucks hauled batches of new passenger vehicles into the base and every few days cars that were totally demolished were trucked out of the base. Some local residents described the vehicles: some had their hoods blown off while others were smashed flat.

In December 1999, a rumbling from the base, which lasted for up to five seconds, was so strong that thousands of people in the region believed it to be an earthquake. The US Geological Survey said it did not register any quakes in the region.

In 2009, the CIA conducted a security survey of the Elizabeth City water plant and found that security controls were lacking. The CIA pressed local officials to beef up security for the plant.

Former CIA operative Robert Baer wrote in his book, "See No Evil," that his two weeks of training at Point Harvey was, for all purposes, an "advanced terrorism course." Baer was trained in the use of plastic and other types of explosive materials. It is believed that former CIA and Chilean DINA intelligence agent Michael Townley, convicted in 1978 for the 1976 car bombing assassination in Washington, DC of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his American assistant, Roni Moffitt. Townley became part of the federal witness protection program in 1978 after his conviction in the murder of Letelier. However, Townley was spotted in Stockholm in 1986 a week before the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.

After 9/11, CIA paramilitary operatives who were assigned to the agency's Special Activities Division (SAD) and deployed against the Taliban in Afghanistan were first trained at Harvey Point.

Northeast North Carolina: Center of global terrorist training activity and home to CIA's Harvey Point car bombing training facility and Xe (former Blackwater) false flag terror camp.

With the current controversy raging about the roles that acting CIA station chief in Pakistan Raymond Davis and suspected CIA agent Aaron DeHaven, both jailed in Pakistan -- Davis for murder of two Pakistani nationals and DeHaven for visa violations -- may have played in false flag terrorist attacks in Pakistan, there is an interesting footnote to Harvey Point. Just north of the CIA terrorist training facility, past Elizabeth City, lies the sprawling Moyock, North Carolina training facility of the company formerly called Blackwater and now known as Xe Services. Now known as the United States Training Center, the Moyock facility is on a former U.S. Navy installation that once hosted a U.S. Naval Security Group Activity listening station that was part of the National Security Agency's global signals intelligence eavesdropping network.

Harvey Point is used by Navy SEALS/Underwater Demolition Teams for training. Blackwater founder Erik Prince had served as a Navy SEAL and many of his early Blackwater employees were ex-SEALS. Their numbers were later supplemented by retired CIA officers. Navy SEALS/UDT and CIA teams trained at Harvey Point in the 1980s for the illegal planting of mines in Nicaraguan waters. In 1990, personnel trained at the base unsuccessfully attempted to capture Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar in the secret "POKEWEED" operation.

In 2008, the U.S. government used an eminent domain acquisition to procure the Moorman Pine tract adjacent to Harvey Point for use by the CIA base. The owners of the tract acquired the property in 2002 for a golf and residential project. The owners settled with the government for $5.8 million.

The operations of Harvey Point and Moyock appear to complement one another and jointly place a huge secretive CIA footprint in northeast North Carolina....


"The Point" is terrorism central and it has been for decades....

March , 2011 -- Harvey Point's "distinguished" alumni....

Our article on the CIA's highly-secretive Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity near Hertford, North Carolina apparently rattled more than a few cages in upper echelon Washington, perhaps so much so that we experienced a communication outage on March 3 that was blamed by AT&T on a degraded cell phone tower in south Arlington, Virginia.

We spoke to a number of military personnel who served in the Tidewater, Virginia area who were unfamiliar with the Harvey Point base, once known as a U.S. Navy Supply Center, but which has existed for some five decades as a CIA's "special operations" training facility under Defense Department "cover."

Complementing the CIA's agent training facility at Camp Peary, Virginia, just outside Williamsburg, Harvey Point was once known as "Isolation Tropic", as opposed to Camp Peary, also known as "Isolation" or "The Farm." Harvey Point is sometimes referred to by CIA officers as "The Point."

The CIA has good reason to be silent about the operations at Harvey Point. For decades, under the guise of "counter-terrorism" training, Harvey Point has been training terrorists, including members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, anti-Castro commandos of Brigade 2506 and Alpha 66, the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), Amine Gemayel's military intelligence assassins, Israel's Sayeret Matkal commandos, Angolan guerrillas of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), Chechen guerrillas, the secret police of the infamous Greek colonels' junta, and the Honduran death squad Movimiento Anti-Communista Hondureno (MACHO), as well as CIA Latin America cocaine smugglers used in "Operation Pseudo Miranda" during William Casey's reign at Langley. The latter operation was described by former CIA operative Kenneth C. Bucchi in his 2000 book, "Operation Pseudo Miranda: A Veteran of the CIA Drug Wars Tells All." The training of the CIA cocaine smugglers, according to Bucchi, was conducted at Harvey Point and the Tonopah Test Range (Area 52), located 70 miles northwest of the CIA's top secret testing facility at Area 51 in Nevada.

Through the auspices of the International Police Academy, using the conduit of a CIA proprietary called International Police Services, Inc. (INPOLSE) of Washington, DC, foreign police officers were sent to Harvey Point for training in bombings, arson, and assassinations. There is some evidence in Guyana that members of Jim Jones's People's Temple and their Guyanese security liaison officers also received training in weapons use at Harvey Point.
Jonestown is widely believed to have been a CIA MK-ULTRA mind control operation with the cover story that most of the Americans who died there did so after drinking poisoned Kool Aid. In fact, most were shot to death at close range.

In 2009, the archives of the Health Ministry of Guyana was gutted by a fire caused by an arson attack. Suspiciously, a contingent from the US Southern Command based in Miami was dispatched to Georgetown to "investigate" the fire. On October 24, 1979, almost a year after the Jonestown massacre, Vincent Teekah, Guyana's Minister of Education was assassinated by a gunshot at close range. On June 13, 1980, Guyanese opposition leader Walter Rodney was assassinated by a car bomb. Guyanese Defense Force officers were among those trained at Harvey Point and the CIA was linked to the assassinations of Teekah and Rodney.

One of Harvey Point's graduates was General Ziaur Rahman, who is believed to have participated in the assassination of Bangladesh President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on August 15, 1975, along with members of his family and staff. One of the generals involved was believed to be Ziaur Rahman who is alleged to have been working for the CIA. Two of Sheikh Mujib's daughters escaped assassination since they were visiting West Germany at the time. One is Bangladesh's current prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wazed. Ziaur Rahman became president in 1977 after serving as the de facto leader since the coup. Immediately, Ziaur Rahman reversed Sheikh Mujib's secular and socialist policies, turning Bangladesh into an "Islamic" republic tied to the West. On May 30, 1981, Ziaur Rahman was assassinated by a group of army officers.

Harvey Point was also involved in the training of other Islamists. In his 2000 book, "Unholy Wars," this editor's late friend John Cooley, the longtime Middle East correspondent for ABC News, wrote that Harvey Point was used to train the Afghan mujahidin, including many irregulars who would later end up in the ranks of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's "Al Qaeda" organization. At Harvey Point the Afghan guerrilla fighters learned about "sophisticated fuses, timers, and explosives; automatic weapons with armor-piercing ammunition, remote-control devices for triggering mines and bombs." Cooley further described the Afghans' CIA training at Harvey Point, Camp Peary, and Fort Bragg. It included honing the Afghans' local skills of local Afghan skills of throat cutting and disemboweling, as well as more sophisticated training in bombing commercial aircraft, buses, cars, limousines, power plants and transmission towers, office buildings, airport terminals, hotels, movie theaters, and hotels.

Prime Minister Hasina recently forced Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammed Yunus off the board of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank and cited as one of the reasons Yunus's micro-loan program, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize, as "sucking blood from the poor" with micro-loan program. President Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, worked on micro-loan programs for the Ford Foundation, among other organizations, in Pakistan and Indonesia.

Harvey Point has also been used by Los Alamos National Laboratory to conduct nuclear material detection testing. In a 1998 paper delivered to the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management Conference in Naples, Florida, technical details of the work at Harvey Point are described as follows:

"Quantrad Sensor, Inc. (QSI) licensed the Ranger (TM) technology from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in 1997. The Material Control and Accountability group at LANL uses the Ranger (TM) for in situ nuclear material (NM) confirmation measurements, medical isotope entry/exit confirmations, hand scanning, and shipper confirmations. QSI is developing new applications by adapting the LANL software to identify unknown isotopes for nuclear smuggling and other national security scenarios.

Initial efforts at Harvey Point expanded the existing LANL NM confirmation software to include more isotopes and a nontechnical display. After Harvey Point, QSI replaced the ruggedized detector (≈1 0%) with a higher-resolution detector (7.5%) and developed a real-time pattern recognition system, RangerMaster. As a basis for RangerMaster, a spectrum for each isotope in the library was simulated with SYNTH. Careful analysis of the SYNTH spectra revealed that all the isotopes in the library could be identified with a unique set of regions of interest (ROIs). Initial validation of RangerMaster (TM) was done with the SYNTH spectra and the archived data from Harvey Point. Next, actual field tests were conducted at hospitals and the DOE Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) operated by Bechtel."

Bechtel has long maintained a cozy relationship with the CIA. Before World War II, Steve Bechtel formed a military-industrial complex partnership with John McCone. McCone later became the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and later, director of the CIA. The CIA has used Bechtel to provide cover for non-official cover CIA operatives abroad.

While the U.S. Army's "School of the Americas," now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation, has been called the "School of the Assassins," Harvey Point can justifiably be called the "School of the Terrorists." And furthermore, the American taxpayers fund both operations without even a whimper from members of Congress. America: stick a fork in it, it's done....

UPDATE: On November 24, 2010, The Daily Advance of Elizabeth City, North Carolina ran a story about the fuselage of a Boeing 727 being transported through eastern North Carolina from Laurinburg to Harvey Point via Edenton on North Carolina highways. The plane was being hauled by Waff Contracting Company of Edenton and the photograph of the fuselage was taken by Debra Waff. One poster on the paper's website expressed outrage that the paper would publish the photo and news of the fuselage transport: "The transport of the fuselage was unannounced for a reason. IT WAS NONE OF THE NEWS MEDIA'S BUSINESS! What goes on at Harvey Point, or any military other bases, is really a matter of national security and does not need broadcasting to the public."

Strange goings on at Harvey Point with North Carolina highways looking like airport runways.

On December 10, 2008, The Virginia Pilot reported that Al Waff, the general superintendent of Waff Contracting, was kidnapped by a man with a semi-automatic handgun outside his Edenton home and was forced to drive the unknown assailant to Mobile, Alabama. Waff was not robbed but the assailant forced Waff to remove the battery from his cell phone during the drive. Waff was not harmed in the car jacking.


Corruption, Murder and War Crimes, that's the odious White House Murder INC,.....

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Has Israel really been caught so flat-footed on geo-political developments?


The sheer blatancy and shamelessness of the Lobby's efforts continues to amaze....

Has Israel really been caught so flat-footed on geo-political developments? NO...It's a team effort in order to foster Hundreds of Tribes with Flags from MOSSADISTAN in Southern Sudan to China's Uighur Province ...the Kissinger Plan lives on...

Excellent:
Divide and Conquer Strategies in America

See below: In the world of CIA/MOSSAD...., the playbook never seems to change....LOL



The annual Herzliya Conference held in Israel is a useful indicator of Israeli foreign policy, national security planning, and Diaspora management. It is convened and hosted by the Institute for Policy and Strategy and held on the Campus of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) located at Herzliya, Israel. For Americans interested in the politics and policy of international Zionism, the presence of US “experts” is of special interest.


The just concluded 11th annual conference, February 6-9, fielded a number of US present and former officials and experts. Noteworthy officials included James Woolsey (Fmr. Director CIA), Douglas Andrew Smith (US Asst Sec Homeland Security), Alan Vershbow (Asst Secdef ISA), Robert Wexler (Fmr. Congressman D-FL), Larry Summers (Fmr. US Sec Treasury), Ronald Lauder (Fmr. Ambassador, Pres. World Jewish Congress), Gen. (ret.) James Jones, Mary-Beth Long (Fmr. Asst Secdef ISA), and Dov Zakheim (Fmr. DOD Comptroller).


US pro-Israel think tanks were represented by Danielle Pletka (American Enterprise Institute), Ayan Hirsi Ali (American Enterprise Institute), Clyde Prestowitz (Economic Strategy Institute), Ariel Cohen (Heritage Foundation), Kenneth Weinstein (Hudson Institute), Peter Berkowitz (Hoover Institution), Brian Katulis (Center for American Progress), Patrick Clawson (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), and Mark Dubowitz (Foundation for the Defense of Democracies). Judith Miller (Fmr. New York Times) represented US journalists.


The overall focus of the conference is Israeli national security. Various panels considered such topics as: “Can the World Live with a Nuclear Iran?”, “The New Global Balance of Power: The Shift to the East”, “All the Eggs in One Basket? America’s Place in Israel’s Foreign Policy”, “Securing the Future of Israel and the Jewish People”, “The Broader Middle East Game: The US, Europe and Regional Stability,” “Is Israel Losing Europe”, “Turkey a Cause for Concern?”, “The Iranian Challenge: Political Alternatives and Beyond”, and significantly “Dilemmas In US Policy in the Middle East: Stability vs. Democracy?”.


Curiously, possible Republican presidential candidate Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi presented concluding remarks at the panel on “International Sanctions and Iran’s Domestic Arena”. One wonders who wrote those remarks for him although one can understand the visit to Israel as his first primary.


The excellent and fascinating website of the annual Herzliya Conference is well worth a view:


http://www.herzliyaconference.org/eng/


The power behind the power in USA and their favorite sweet heart deal with "Court Jews", AIPAC and the "Lobby" as a whole....


It's the US Government agencies who are most benefiting from the arrangement with the "Lobby" and its "Court Jews"...always has, always will...until something BIG Gives somewhere...but there is no sign of that YET...we are still in a Honeymoon phase as far as I can see.... But, depending on how "revolutions" go in MENA and beyond....we might witness some changes to that sweet heart deal....

In the world of CIA, the playbook never seems to change...


AIPAC, JINSA and all other "Court Jewish" PACs and ORGs. are a convenient Cover for CIA, NSA, DIA, NRO, FBI, DEA, and all the other 18 US Intelligence agencies to hide behind...Hence no need to do any significant disclosures to Congress or its Intelligence Committees about any significant covert activities or extra-judicial operations spanning decades. The only exceptions, which won't be repeated anytime soon, were BCCI or Iran-Contra, to name a few ...

AIPAC is a perfect "cover", it gives overwhelming control of Congress to CIA without having to move a finger...and to Hell with the Foreign Policies of Foggy Bottom or any Justice for Palestinians, Lebanese, or Freedom, the rule of law, good governance and Democracy in faraway places...

AIPAC & Co. and all the other 18 US Intelligence agencies are priceless for CIA, and the Middle East can go to Hell as far as they are concerned, and that has been proven to be the case since the 1960s!

AIPAC, Jstreet, Jinsa, WINEP, their coteries etc. and all the NGOs, NED, Freedom House, USAID or the likes, work hand in hand with CIA and their Israeli counterparts everywhere... The world is changing fast. Will that change the equation described here above???


Has Israel really been caught so flat-footed on geo-political developments?


“All the Eggs in One Basket? America’s Place in Israel’s Foreign Policy” panel to discuss how to detract tail from dog? Arrogance. If I was a journalist covering US Foreign Policy I think I'd live in Tel Aviv rather than Washington...

One would think that the Lobby would anticipate some possible effects of those changes, particularly on US policy, and perhaps shrewdly engage in more subtle, sophisticated means of subverting US interests to Israel's....


http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/717/the-revolution-against-neoliberalism

....

The whole Egyptian Army/security apparatus is beholden to the USIsraeli Empire...and will NOT live up to expectations. I have no doubt that the new regime will be different and better than the one that it replaces but I am not certain that Egypt will be a democracy or that the changes will be deep. Cosmetic changes might contribute to a stronger and more comfortable feeling among the general population but that would be a far cry from unleashing the potential of a truly diverse society that protects human rights and accepts dissent. I just do not think that those who have been a part of the system are going to create a radically different structure. Why should they? The Egyptian uprising should have gone all the way out to demand a complete overhaul of the whole structure....
I have often been very critical of Neoliberalism and I still am but to suggest that Neoliberalism is what led to the personal enrichment of Egyptian politicians is not fair. The corruption in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria etc.. is endemic. It is deep rooted and will not go away by changing a face here and a face there. The whole set up is corrupt and what is needed is the establishment of strong measures that will make it impossible for the public officials to benefit from the laws that they promulgate. To say that the Egyptian system is Neoliberal is to say that the Soviet system was Marxist. Both are aberrations. This is not to defend Neoliberalism but only to stress that it appears that the Egyptian politicians took advantage of privatization to bilk the Egyptian people and to accumulate personal wealth. They have become Egypt's version of Russia’s oligarchs. Hayek did not want to unleash government bureaucrats but individual “animal” spirits....

But, there are quite a few more chapters in the making from Sudan to the Uighur province in China....

http://www.t-room.us/2011/02/alex-jones-talks-to-pastor-lindsey-williams-detailing-bush-srs-new-world-order-target-iran-saudi-arabi-next-oil-to-hit-200-a-barrel/


.....

The annual Herzliyah Conferences, begun in 2000, are hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliyah. This complex houses several academic institutions including the “Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy.” Cosmetics heir, Ronald Lauder, a key IDC financial backer was handed the ambassadorship to Austria by Ronald Reagan for campaign funding services duly rendered.

Lauder, a maximalist Zionist, earned plaudits from the Jewish Diaspora by leading the charge against the Vatican’s beatification of Pope Pious XII. Lauder is well known for his longstanding relationship with Bibi Netanyahu and deep involvement with the state of Israel.


In 2007, Lauder was elected head of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) defeating candidates from South Africa and Israel itself. The WJC was founded in 1936 in Geneva, Switzerland as an international organization and today spans six continents and has branches in over 80 countries.


WJC headquarters are in New York City. There are affiliate offices spread around the world : Brussels, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Geneva, Johannesburg, Moscow, Ottawa, Paris, Sydney and Jerusalem, for example. The WJC's “research institute” is located in Jerusalem.


The World Jewish Congress has the unusual privilege of what it calls a “diplomatic seat” at the United Nations. The WJC explains on its website that this makes “it unique among world-wide organizations as it enjoys a diplomatic seat in the U.N. and within many of it institutions, commissions and sub-bodies.”


At the recently concluded annual Herzliyah Conference, held February 6-9, Lauder gave the introductory remarks for a keynote speaker, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi. These two speakers then set the stage for the major evening keynote address on the theme “The Broader Middle East Game: The US, Europe, and Regional Stability.” This keynote address was delivered by Gen. (ret.) James Jones of late head of Obama’s National Security Council.


Jones once floated the idea that NATO troops should be deployed to the West Bank. Many do not realize that there is a strong push behind the scenes to integrate Israel formally into NATO. One wonders about this concept in the dramatically changed Middle East. Will the pro-Israel crowd step up the call for such a plan?


Outside the DC Beltway is probably little noticed that NATO has been grasping for a new “strategic concept” or “mission.” Gen. Jones is there to serve.


The Jerusalem Post carried an interesting report about plans for Israel to become part of NATO on 13 January 2010: "Israeli-NATO ties have increased dramatically in recent years. Chairman of the Military Committee, Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola visited Israel in November, and the Israeli Navy has announced plans to deploy a missile ship with Active Endeavour, a NATO mission to patrol the Mediterranean Sea....

"Israel is also seeking to receive an upgraded status following the conclusion of the Strategic Concept review that will enable Israeli officials to participate in top NATO forums....Israel is a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue, which was created in 1994 to foster ties with Middle Eastern countries like Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco." [5]

By 2000 NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue had expanded to include seven nations in the Middle East and Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.”

By 2008, the Mediterranean Union was created by Nicolas Sarkozy/MOSSAD/CIA.... to include Syria as well....


A year later, in the new and evolving situation, one wonders how this game to include Israel as the 29th NATO member will go. Meanwhile we await developments in the melodrama led by the Draq Queen of the Desert in Libya.


No doubt the Herzliyah Conference will have an interesting panel in 2012 on the changed Middle East and Israeli strategy....LOL.....


Does the Papal Nuncio have some kind of special status at the UN? YES...., Islam?


Helene Van Damm followed Lauder as Ambassador to Austria after serving as the first head of WH personnel for President Reagan. I only mention this because the US stood aside as the complicity of Austria in the NAZI empire was thoroughly documented during the 80's but not of course by the US. And interesting of course that the ecumenical GERMANS allowed the Austrian Greifrieter of WWI to lead them into disaster and destruction.

An odd little country Austria and interesting that is where Lauder wanted to be AMBASSADOR. Now of course again absorbed into the large GERMAN condominium called the EU!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_for_the_Salvation_of_Libya

That CIA page on NSFL is the most important thing I've seen yet...it shows the US has been working to create assassins...and in effect have engineered the current crisis, which they now blame on Gadaffi....

Its not really Obama's coup...This was begun decades ago.... NFSL was formed in 1981 and is a Reagan project...but the president is just a figure head, behind which we have the power elite....

Here's a perfect noisy revolution....the plan goes beyond the Arab world and intends to weaken the $ and create discontent in America, to facilitate a New World Order...

http://neithercorp.us/npress/2011/02/middle-east-chaos-what-to-learn-and-what-to-expect/

"U.S. is on the verge of engineered economic collapse, driven mainly by the steady and purposeful devaluation of the dollar and our quickly expanding national debt. If you are a corporate central banking group seeking the death of the greenback as the world reserve currency, you face the very serious problem of avoiding immediate blame or retribution for your actions. What better way to escape the torches and pitchforks of the furious populace than to find a scapegoat, or a distraction even more terrifying than poverty?

Middle East turbulence provides the perfect smokescreen for the inflationary destruction of the dollar."


I really like Peter Lavelle and his show "Cross Talk". Check out these two. He invites some very toxic Zionist fanboys, and he opposes them to very articulate and intelligent anti-Imperialists (like Mark LeVine!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--2-Gkq3RRM&feature=player_embedded

The Zioimperialists just sound so evil and so stupid :-)

Also - check out Mark LeVine's biography. This guy is good!


....
Bahrain, KSA and SANG....
"... There is deepening concern about the course of developments there and about the US ability to influence them. Urgent efforts are underway to fashion an international consensus at the UN and elsewhere on the way forward. However, for all the frantic activity over Libya, US officials believe that the intensifying challenge to the Bahrain government provides the greater threat to US interests. As they explain it to us, State Department officials portray Libya as a crisis taking place within “understandable parameters.” This requires very substantial coordination measures on such matters as the evacuation of foreign nationals, refugee flows, the imposition of sanctions and possible no-fly zones. But Libya does not represent systemic risk to US strategic interests.
By contrast, a collapse of the Khalifa monarchy in Bahrain would have direct implications for Saudi Arabia
. The Saudis have told the US that they are prepared to intervene in Bahrain should that prove necessary to stabilize the government. This would be carried out by the National Guard (SANG) which is well tested in battle. An eventuality of this sort would prompt some very uncomfortable choices for the Administration – as one senior official put it to us, “between history and the oil price.” Intensive exchanges are underway with the Saudis and Bahrainis to seek a non-violent outcome to the tensions there. US officials draw some modest encouragement that their interventions are proving effective from the relatively moderate statements of the Shia cleric Hassan Mushaima on his return from exile. These dramas in the Middle East are obscuring what Pentagon officers privately describe to us as a “deteriorating security situation” in Afghanistan and the continuing stalemate with Paskistan over the detention of an American official now acknowledged to be CIA's station chief....


"


Monday, February 21, 2011

US and Iran could become strategic allies – with India's help....


http://newhk.blogspot.com/2009/03/cia-had-long-maintained-association.html

Tighter sanctions and military threats haven't swayed Iran over its nuclear program. What the West really needs is genuine rapprochement – the kind that India is especially suited to facilitate....and may be, just may be the US will come out in the open and say that they have been fostering Iranian style politico-sectarian leanings for decades....


http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0220/US-and-Iran-could-become-strategic-allies-with-India-s-help

By Neil Padukone / February , 2011

The standoff with Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons program continues. While Washington is arming its Gulf Arab allies in a process of ‘strategic containment,’ hardliners are seeking tighter sanctions and even military options to coerce Iran into compliance...


But these options remain untenable. The "Gulf Security Dialogue" simply postpones the inevitable, neglecting Iran’s unconventional strengths. Sanctions antagonize Tehran, while Russia, Turkmenistan, China, and even smugglers fill the void in Iran’s energy sector. Military strikes and sabotage may set-back but not end Iran’s nuclear program, and provoke Iran to take countermeasures like mining the Strait of Hormuz – not to mention the political backlash. Regime change by support for anti-Tehran militant groups only aggravates Iran, while Iran's democracy movements are calling for civil rights, not government overthrow. And with America trapped in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tehran could easily play spoiler.

There is a better option: a genuine rapprochement.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB24Ak03.html


As the US withdraws from Iraq, stability there and in the Levant is contingent on Iranian cooperation. In Afghanistan, more than 70 percent and 40 percent of NATO’s supplies and fuel, respectively, pass through northern Pakistan. This is the only transport link between the Arabian Sea and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops in Afghanistan, keeping the West beholden to Islamabad’s every whim and its supplies subject to attack within Pakistan.

Multiple benefits....

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB24Ak01.html


A transport link through Iran would reduce this vulnerability, while easing Islamabad’s own security burden. Coordination with Iran would help bring the Afghan warlords in Tehran’s sphere of influence into the political process, and open up a stable trade route to Central Asia.

A US-Iran understanding would also distance Iran from China, countering the Chinese “string of pearls” strategy in South and Central Asia – a greater imperative in light of China’s recently inaugurated Turkmenistan-China pipeline and talk of an Iran-Pakistan-China energy link.

Even Iran would benefit from a US détente. With three million opium users, Iran is the greatest victim of the Afghan opium trade, while the Taliban that threatens the West is similarly anathema to Iran. By partnering with US forces, Iran can direct its influence toward shared strategic aims: countering narcotics trafficking, intelligence cooperation, and stabilizing Afghanistan. The Iranians would also be assured that America would not use Iraq or the Gulf to attack them.

Iran’s geography, petro-power, and Islamist credentials inevitably empower Tehran. America would only benefit if this influence aligned with its own interests. Engaging Iran also opens up its 77-million-strong population to foreign trade and contact after decades of sanctions, strengthening civil society. A lack of engagement, however, leaves the field open for competitors like China to fill the gap.
But the biggest obstacle to a détente today is Iran’s controversial nuclear program.


The US has flanked Iran from the east in Afghanistan, the west in Iraq, the north through US troops in Azerbaijan and Central Asia, and the south via the Gulf States. For the Iranians, the best way to resist a hostile United States is an opaque nuclear program – one that is only likely to come clean when American antagonism is gone.


But American “overtures” to this end have been half-hearted at best. American support for anti-Tehran groups like Jundallah and the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq continue, while military plans and sanctions have always been the go-to option, limiting the political space for a détente. Tack on Iran’s missile tests, and refusal to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or to end belligerency in Iraq, and it’s easy to see why the debilitating stalemate continues.
How India could help

Enter India, Washington’s new strategic partner.


In the 1990s, many saw a burgeoning “New Delhi-Tehran Axis” in India and Iran’s enhanced economic and strategic ties, including shared opposition to the Taliban. But under American pressure after 2005, India repeatedly voted to condemn Iran in the IAEA.

While failing to coerce Iran, these votes harmed Indo-Iranian relations: Indian plans to expand Iran’s Chabahar Port, connect it to the Indian-built Zaranj-Delaram highway in Afghanistan, and develop Iran’s first liquefied natural gas plant have all fallen by the wayside. Washington even opposed the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) natural gas pipeline, touted as the “peace pipeline” that would unite India and Pakistan, because it would benefit Tehran. Recently, Western pressure brought about the Reserve Bank of India’s largely symbolic decision to prohibit companies from using the Asian Currency Union to pay for Iranian oil – a move that was opposed by Indian business and government ministries.

Notwithstanding these setbacks, India and Iran share cultural ties that go back millennia, and strategic interests and economics remain strong points of confluence. Both seek an alternative to the Pakistan-backed Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as a new transport line to Central Asia. In 2008, India-Iran trade reached $30 billion, considering third-country intermediaries. In 2009, Iran became the second-largest supplier of crude oil to India, while Indian firms seek to develop Iran’s gas fields, with investments of more than $11 billion over the coming years.


And despite being one of the world’s largest petroleum producers, Iran lacks a significant refinery infrastructure of its own and depends on imports for over 30 percent of its consumption. By some accounts 40 percent of Iran’s imported gasoline comes from Indian refineries – no insignificant matter. This trade and the leverage it brings are threatened by American sanctions that harm India and accomplish little in the way of pressuring Iran.

Indian investment in Iranian hydrocarbons and transport infrastructure, along with strategic alignment with both the US and India in Central Asia and elsewhere, would be a powerful incentive for Iran to make its nuclear program transparent. Washington should use New Delhi’s good offices to facilitate a rapprochement with Iran that focuses on mutually beneficial futures, not carrots and sticks...
.


Neil Padukone is a strategic affairs analyst and author of “Security in a Complex Era.” He is writing a book on the future of conflict in India....



Two-thirds of Iranians behind Ahmadinejad (MUST READ!)
Voltairenet reports:

The International Peace Institute , I.E. an American/Israeli intelligence operation wall to wall...., recently released the results of a telephone survey of Iranians..... [ Anytime you read the Words, Peace, Religious freedom, democracy, NED, USAID, CARE, CARITAS, Journalists without borders, HRW, etc..., and all the other NGOs..., you can be damn sure that they are fronts for Western Intelligence.... ]

According to the poll, Iranians are clearly split in a one third/two thirds ratio. The majority came out in favor of continuing the Islamic Revolution under President Ahmadinejad. On its part, the minority wishes to suspend financial support to Hamas and Hezbollah, hopes for closer ties with the United States, and backs opposition leader Moussavi.

The International Peace Institute is chaired by Terje Rød-Larsen, a Norwegian MOSSAD/CIA creep/politician who served as minister of administration in his country’s government before being forced to resign because of his implication in a tax and corruption scandal. At that point, he was fished out by the United States which had him appointed UN Special Envoy to Lebanon, a mandate which he used to obstruct Iranian influence....

====
==>>Check out the very interesting opinion survey:<<==

Iran : Public Opinion on Foreign, Nuclear and Domestic Issues, a survey carried out by Charney Research on behalf of the International Peace Institute, 8 December 2010 (230 Ko).

....
Clapper, a New NIE and Strategic thinking....

The politics of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) for Iran is a serious matter because it can be used to drive these United States into a preventive war against Iran. Israel, the United States’ “strategic partner in the Middle East, seeks such a war. Pro-Israel propaganda advocating preventive war focuses on the threat of alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Such propaganda targets the general public as well as Congress and the White House. Will the White House, as in the case of the Iraq War, be complicit in promoting such propaganda?


Talk abounds this week inside the Beltway over the expected roll out of the newest Iran NIE. According to The Cable at the Foreign Policy Website, “The U.S. intelligence community has completed and is circulating a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear weapons program that walks back the conclusion of the 2007 NIE, which stated that Iran had halted work on its covert nuclear weapons program.”


It is well known that the Bush Administration applied all manner of pressure against the Intelligence Community (IC) so as to have politically sensitive estimates and assessments turn out in a manner acceptable to the administration’s foreign policy line. Such political manipulation of intelligence product is referred to as “politicization” the intelligence product to suit and/or influence consumers in the Executive Branch and in Congress. In colloquial terms it is “cooking” the product and the Neocon driven Bush administration developed such cuisine into a high art form to promote the Iraq War, for example.


The 2007 NIE blunted the Neocon driven Bush Administration’s Iran policy.
The politics here are simple: scare the hell out of the public and Congress. Why? Do it in order to create fear and loathing sufficient for legislation permitting the Executive branch to launch a war of choice under the guise of a war of necessity. Or to support Israel should Israel initiate hostilities.


Congress doesn’t “do” formal declarations of war anymore, just resolutions to “authorize” the President to use force. Congress does this so as to avoid responsibility for getting the country into a war as it can conveniently blame the President who then takes “full responsibility.” Those with memories will recall how Truman went behind the back of Congress to drag the US into the Korean War. This precedent was good in the Neocon mind, ardent Truman “Cold War Zionists” that they are.


Today, pro-Israel forces committed to facilitating a war against Iran want a “walk back” of the 2007 NIE because it is a political roadblock to war. That is, opponents of such a war argued that the 2007 NIE removed a potential reason for war: imminent weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program. Proponents of preventive war want IC judgments which can be used as political propaganda to justify the war.
Overall, for the pro-Israel crowd, this is an elaborate exercise in sophistry for political purposes. The best outcome for them is an NIE which plainly indicates imminent weaponization. If this is not possible there are two options: accept the language of the NIE but twist the interpretation of it to suit or reject the language of the NIE and substitute “expert” opinion, preferably from official Israeli sources.

As the Iran NIE kabuki play unfolds in Washington, some of the political actors should be monitored. The first to come to mind are, of course, the America Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. AIPAC tends to focus on Congress while the Council tends to focus directly on the White House. Both have websites and so are easy to track.
Then there are the so-called “think tanks” which feed what passes for analysis to Capitol Hill. Consumers there are: the bevy of twenty-something staffers who handle foreign policy issues for their members as personal staff or staffers on committees. Personal staffers are usually in their early 20s with a BA in something, such staffers “do” the Hill for a few years to build up the resume for law school or lucrative work in public relations/government relations, and the like. As they have no personal expertise or experience in foreign policy or national security affairs, these bright eyed and ambitious twenty-somethings are ardent consumers of the output of the aforementioned paper mills.


The legislative process runs something as follows. The staffers get their “analysis” from their contacts at the think tanks and lobbies. They then can work up floor statements (speeches) for their member to deliver on the Senate floor or in the other body. Developing a nice collection of pro-Israel floor statements helps when the time for campaign contributions come. Staffers can also dream up various pro-Israel “Dear Colleague” letters on to which members can sign thus further establishing their pro-Israel record.


Pro-Israel legislation in the form of resolutions can be drafted and members can be recruited to sign on as sponsors thus further establishing pro-Israel record. Such resolutions are not binding on the Executive Branch so are safe for members to sign on to. Restrictive clauses can be inserted into various key pieces of legislation or free standing bills can be drafted for sanctions or whatever. Such legislation is designed with a presidential waiver included as constitutionally the President has final authority over foreign policy. Should the President exercise the waiver, the politicians simply pass the blame to the Executive saying they themselves in Congress did the right thing.


Some key pro-Israel paper mills to watch in the coming “debate” over the Iran NIE include: Center for Security Policy (CSP); Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA); Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Heritage Foundation; American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Also watch the hard-line Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) as it is active on The Hill and is closely linked to CSP. All these organizations contributed to the pro-Iraq War buzz back when (2002-2003, remember?). Not to be overlooked is the Fundamentalist Rev. John Hagee’s lobby organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI). All these have websites.
We will have to await developments inside the Beltway to further assess the Iran NIE. Those with technical expertise will comment extensively one way or the other after rollout but the politics of the process is paramount and quite often unrelated to reality. Of course, the changed situation in the Arab states fundamentally alters the regional context....

Clapper the super duper dumb ar's...

"We look forward to discussing Iran further with you in closed session, particular its nuclear posture. But suffice to say here, we see a disturbing confluence of events: An Iran that is increasingly rigid, autocratic, dependent on coercion to maintain control, and defiant towards the West, and an Iran that continues to advance its uranium-enrichment capabilities; along with what appears to be the scientific, technical and industrial capacity to produce nuclear weapons if its leaders choose to do so."


http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20110210_testimony_hpsci_clapper.pdf

Translation... Our Intelligence sucks and we have no clue....and we are still desperately seeking a strategic dialogue with IRAN.....and a Strategic understanding in Eurasia......

Saudi Arabia: "Ties to the US threaten our national security!" LOL
KSA is utterly ignorant of the US double speak, double dealings and Black Covert Ops.
"... Subsequent developments led many in the kingdom to conclude that, far from safeguarding their country or advancing its interests, ties to America threatened national security. The United States invaded Iraq and facilitated its incorporation into a new Iranian sphere of influence. The kingdom was attacked by anti-Israeli and anti-American Saudis. The joint U.S.-Israeli attempt to overthrow the elected government in Palestine drove Hamas into dependence on Iran. The Israeli Air Force's maiming of Lebanon with U.S. support propelled Hezbollah onto the commanding heights of Lebanese politics. Inept U.S. diplomacy then locked Syria into Iran's embrace. Saudi exasperation with these and other U.S. blunders, not support for the militaristic policies that produced them, accounts for King Abdullah's demand that America figure out a way to "cut off the head of the snake" its bungling has nurtured. No sensible Saudi would want the United States as an enemy, but few in the coming generation now see America as a friend, still less as an ally. LeVine correctly argues that the United States has a lot at stake with Saudi Arabia. That's only one of many reasons that it cannot afford to stick with its current policies in the Middle East." (Charles W. Freeman Jr.)


Overview of MENA, OIL and US Politicking's.....


"Libya is defying growing international condemnation of a bloody crackdown that saw troops and mercenaries firing at unarmed demonstrators as the death toll rose to more than 600...."

Do you remember the pathetic eagerness with which the Cheney/Bush/neocon/AIPAC/WINEP war criminals apparat embraced Qaddafi's Jamahiriya (rule of the masses, maybe?)? After having been held in contempt by the US government for decades as the lunatic that he is, Qaddafi (the howler, in Arabic) was welcomed home to Washington's favor because he finally understood and exploited Bush's sad desire to have an Arab leader "reform" and give up his nuclear weapons program. In fact, Libya never had a functioning nuclear weapons program. What it had was a warehouse or two full of parts and equipment with which to set up such a program, one that it never had the capacity to undertake in the real world.

Nevertheless, how sweet it was for the Bushies. The fact that Qaddafi remained the same homicidal tyrant who overthrew Idris long ago meant nothing to "policy" wonks obsessed with their desired future....

The American Government is totally bought. Lee Atwater and wedge politics so screwed democracy that DC politicians don’t give a damn what Americans think. The donors, Israeli PACs and big oil, control Middle East policy.

The correspondence here is clear that there are experts in business, government and academia that are well aware of the dilemma America faces. However, the corruption is so persuasive America cannot act in its own best interests.

The Tea Baggers are revolting against the federal government and politicians who could care less about them. But, they're just handmaidens for their wealthy handlers whose goal is to flush government down the toilet, crush unions and "tame" income taxes.....a la Reaganomics....

In the long term, I'm not sure what the US really needs in the Middle East, other that continued operation of the Suez Canal. Oil production is starting to slip, and with it will slip the power and leverage of the oil states. Oil is only an existential problem to the degree that we have refused to manage our power needs differently. If desired, this could be done within twenty years, and immediately reduce the importance of oil producers. So the US must bridge the next fifty years or so as economies inevitably transition to something besides oil as a primary energy source. Until then, the region remains a critical, short term problem.

The US has to remain cordial with oil producers to maintain the continued flow. And we have to provide some check on Israel's adventurism, which regularly threatens to destabilize that relationship. Much of our efforts with Israel seem to be propitiating it into behaving responsibly. Israel is undoubtedly aware off this, and manufactures occasions to be provocative, so that attention doesn't stray too far.

With the Arab street in convulsions from Morocco to Iran, Israel seems to be taking a second look at their position and behavior. It is sobering to be surrounded by firestorms. I think this pause will be short lived, and Israel will rather seek to capitalize on the disruptions to find ways to further destabilize and weaken arab governments, though it may set the stage for extremists to assume power later...., and we have seen that happen in 1979 in Iran.....

The Zionist lobby goes way back into US politics to the late 19th and early 20th century as explained in , "Dark Crusade" (London: IB Tauris, 2009).

Because the United States was so generous to our allies as to float World War I and World War II on our domestic oil reserves, we had to start looking around more seriously after WWII. This took us to the Middle East.

One can argue our oil industry has had to work around the power of the pro-Israel Lobby. Did our oil industry block Truman's fatally mistaken recognition of Israel in 1948? No. Did it prevent Israel and its buddies France and UK from attacking Suez in 1956? No. Did it block Israel's
1967 war of aggression? No. And so on.

If our oil industry had so much clout, then why are we not in Iran, where we should be? Why are we not in Syria, where we should be? Why were we not in Iraq earlier?

The US government, under pro-Israel political pressure, blocked our oil industry from many significant business opportunities.

The oil industry could not defeat the pro-Israel Neocon doctrine of "Dual Containment" of Iraq and Iran...

Thus, arguably, US policy actually helped foreign international oil companies, some publicly held and some state owned, to come into the picture where we should have been competing.

Tea Baggers seem split between the Ron Paul/Rand Paul libertarians, who are not necessarily pro-Israel, and the Michele Bachmann/Dick Armey etal. hardline pro-Israel types. Bachmann is a Christian Fundamentalist/Zionist. This significant split has received too little attention....but eventually BOTH sides will be controlled by the power behind the power in USA....

We can recall Stalin's ardent supporters among the Palmach thus offering opportunities for Soviet penetration.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmach


Hubris, meet Nemesis....


"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community


No doubt "Elliott the assassin...Abrams" will be out any day now with another op-ed piece arguing that the revolt in Libya proves Shrub was right all along....


The old Soviet Pravda had nothing on these guys....

Libya is an oil exporter so expect that uncertainty to cause US and other international oil companies including NOCs {National Oil Companies] to exploit the situation. The final blow of high oil prices to the USA economy? And of course few domestic USA banks have come anywhere close to marking to market on their books real estate both residential and commercial and other problems. So with $15 Trillion invested through the back door by the FED and it still printing money and the government headed to a shut down on March 5th it will be sending loud and clear the message to the rest of the world that its last "superpower" is almost totally incompetent to handle its own affairs while continuing to tell other nation-states how to handle their affairs, internal and external. Hoping they are working on an anti-hubris vaccine hard at CDC for domestic consumption. Or that's right CDC will also be shut down....


Hence the desperate Gambits all over MENA....if not a New War III....


The Neocons' Ziocons.... IRAN and MENA.....

The Neocons' . . . legacy is forever dominated by the disastrous invasion of Iraq and the removal of the only serious obstacle to Iran. Everything else, I think, will pale in comparison to that galactic blunder -- especially as Iran plays its cards well toward regional dominance.

The idea of bringing democracy was considered by these fools to be an automatic result of Iraqis' anticipated orgasmic reaction to our years of sanction, followed by invasion and an occupation marked by geniuses such as the deep thinker who disarmed and unemployed the Iraqi army.

Only when the dreaded WMDs failed to materialize did nation-building become the primary focus.

Kagan seems to be managing his post-debacle career rather well, he seems to be regarded well in intellectual circles.

Krauthammer and Kristol are knee-jerk shills for Israel. If Israel dropped a nuclear bomb on American soil, both of them would try to rationalize it as the action of a solid and reliable ally.

Feith and Wolfowitz have subsequently earned their fool's bell-hats. Elliott Abrams is a convicted criminal who misled Congress, and was an active member of the Infamous White House Murder INC, with Dick Cheney..... Wolfowitz sank himself with a sex and patronage scandal at the World Bank worthy of reality television.

I don't consider Rumsfeld a neocon thinker, he's a slimy bureaucratic operator and a war criminal....

Just for the record, I think Iran is much more suitable for dominant player in the region than the Saudi degenerocracy. Iran educates its people, and is a much more modern state than the comical descendants of a Bedouin tribe appointed by the British to rule a jerry-rigged country....

Heilbrunn who? Kagan who? Wolfowitz who? Aren't they in jail??

or shouldn't they be in jail, the lot of them -- Kagan, Wolfowitz, Krauthammer, even Heilbrunn, whose agenda is only to keep his CV in circulation when billionaires like Soros and Saban are handing out think tank funding....

Iran is the biggest winner in this new world order. It's best to be realistic and try to establish better relations with the Islamic Republic before things get worse for the US. China, India, and brazil see the facts as they are and without doubt they will move to strengthen their ties with Iran.

The fools who say the contrary, have been saying this for 32 years now.

America's getting out of the Middle East will be as good for Arabs and Persians (and Turks) as getting out of Latin America was for Latin Americans. It won't hurt Americans either....

1. The turmoil in the Middle East has been going on since around 1917 and the breakup of the Ottoman empire; specifically, when Woodrow Wilson reneged on Point 12 of his 14 Points promise of self-determination to the regions in the Middle East that had been under Ottoman control.

2. Iran wrested its sovereignty from the West in 1950s; West grabbed it back in 1953; Iran reclaimed its sovereignty in 1979 -- IMPERFECTLY, but Iran belonged to Iran, was run by Iranians. Appalled at that outcome, US supported Iraq in 8 years of war on Iran, to punish Iran for its upstart attitudes. Iran survived that, bandaged its wounds, and has been working gradually and IMPERFECTLY toward a more equitable economic model and a hybrid Islamic-republican-shared power system. Is it corrupt, inefficient, overly-religious? Yup. Iran should really, really be a more perfect form of government -- more like the perfect model of the non-corrupt, every vote counts (at least once) US, or like the "only democracy in the ME, Israel." THAT's perfection, boy oh boy....

3. Now ask yourself this question:
What moves have the Arab states made toward self-determination and control of their own political process and resources in that same time period? What displays of courage, and of willingness to fight and die for their autonomy, have Arab states demonstrated in the past 50+ years?

4. If it has taken Iran over 50 years to its present point of imperfect Islamic republican autonomy and self-government, and if the US and Israel worked at every step of the way to put obstacles in its path, who do you think is closer to the goal of achieving the fantasy land of "democracy" and freedom and liberty and justice for all by next week, Iran, which has been working on it for over 50 years, or Saudi Arabia, whose foot is glued to the starting block?

Iran is half-way around the track. While Iranians are playing fusion on their iPhones, Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain are still looking through their stack of 45 rpms for that Carpenters song that was pukeworthy 40 years ago: "We've only just begun."

The problem is that politicians in Washington are obsessed with winning and they simply can't come to terms with reality. Continued confrontation with Iran, hurts the US more than it hurts Iran. The current administration's policy effectively means shooting the US in the foot...


Obama fans flames of animosity in Tehran
In his Persian new year outreach to Iranian youth, United States President Barack Obama fanned the flames of animosity with leaders in Tehran. The response of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, and that of students who found the Nawruz speech insulting political propaganda, shows that prospects for a short-term thaw, let alone detente, in US-Iran relations remain bleak.
- Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Mar 23, '11)

Not so Fast...Checkmate is a bit off for now....

Paradigm Shift from DC and Tel-Aviv.

The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper presented the Senate Armed Services Committee this week with a "revised" version of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate which knew originally that Iran had halted work on nuclear arms in 2003....

It is now confirmed that the original NIE was timed with a major Global chess game involving Energy Choke-points, trade routes and a fantastic Gamble to utterly contain China, which is unfolding in front of our eyes in 2011...-

US official language reflects the administration's policy turnabout in the new Paradigm Shift in EURASIA and Africa.... March 7, Washington announced that the USS Monterey guided missile cruiser, whose Aegis radar can monitor long- and short-range ballistic missiles and transmit the data to interceptor missile ground stations, would be deployed in the Mediterranean.... "The US has started implementing its plan to protect Europe from a non-existent potential nuclear threat...., unless you consider 200 Thermonuclear missiles in Israel...a threat to Europe...?."


All past references to the US nuclear shield for Europe referred to Iranian ballistic missiles – never an Israeli nuclear threat...., WHY...?
Our military sources note that one of the key ground stations to which the Monterey's radar is linked is the X-band forward radar station located in the Israeli Negev near the Egyptian border, which in turn is connected to Israel Arrow anti-missile missile batteries designed especially to shoot down Iranian and other ballistic missiles....


The closer the Iranian nuclear menace comes to reality, the further it recedes from Israeli political and media rhetoric. Obama's fundamental policy shift on the subject is bad news for Israel in general and at this time in particular, because his instigating the Arab Revolts is seen by Israeli and moderate Arab rulers as further evidence of a White House decision to strengthen Iran since 1979...., which profits hugely from their losses.

Shortly before the Monterey announcement, the Washington Times reported: An Annual intelligence report to Congress has dropped language stating that Iran's nuclear weapons are a future option. A U.S. official insisted there was no "sleight-of-hand" in the change but could not explain why the recent report was altered from two previous versions....LOL Disinformation as usual from DC....

IAEA Director Yukiya Amano was also quoted as describing new information on the military aspect of Iran's nuclear program in his latest report. An internal report from Feb. 25 stated that recent information disclosed "nuclear-related activities involving military-related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile" as continuing after 2004.


The two omissions in the original 2007 NIE report are that [US intelligence continues] "to assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons through we do not know whether Tehran eventually decide to produce nuclear weapons" and: "Iran continues to develop a range of capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons if a decision is made to do so."

Clearly, Tehran does not have the same trouble putting its plans into words as do those US intelligence Disinformation report writers, like Stratfor or others...... It is bent on developing a nuclear bomb, has completed the projects for its development and reserves the right to set the date for assembling the completed components into a weapon...., just like Israel, India, Pakistan or USA....


Wednesday, March 9, the chief US envoy Glyn Davies reported to the nuclear watchdog's board in Vienna that Iran may be continuing secret work on developing nuclear weapons.... In the course of an argument with the Iranian delegate Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Davies warned of "increasingly apparently military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program, including efforts by Iran to develop a nuclear warhead."

"Iran continues to act very much like a state with nothing to hide," he told the board....LOL since Iran had all along USA and Israel on its side since 1979....even while "Milking" the Arab moderates for decades for hundreds of Billions of USD in arms sales and other extortion rackets...which now seem to be coming to an end...in the Paradigm Shift from DC and Tel-Aviv....but for how long....? before hundreds of Tribes with Flags spring up all over Eurasia and Africa with dozens of simultaneous civil wars....and more arms sales....?


Russia Plans $650bn Defense Spending Up To 2020......


http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&feature=player_embedded&v=jUM8A-AUv0o

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/02/libya-conquered-in-dark.html