GeoPlotilicalNWO

La Geopolitique de L'eau....

2012-01-26T02:36:00.000-08:00

La Geopolitique de L'eau....

Le rapport de Glavany au Parlement Français :

http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/13/rap-info/i4070.asp

The Strategic Importance of Iran for Russia and China....

2012-01-26T01:49:00.001-08:00

CONFRONTATION BETWEEN MILITARY BLOCS: The Eurasian "Triple Alliance." The Strategic Importance of Iran for Russia and China....

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Despite areas of difference and rivalries between Moscow and Tehran, ties between the two countries, based on common interests, have developed significantly.

Both Russia and Iran are both major energy exporters, they have deeply seated interests in the South Caucasus. They are both firmly opposed to NATO's missile shield, with a view to preventing the U.S. and E.U. from controlling the energy corridors around the Caspian Sea Basin.

Moscow and Tehran's bilateral ties are also part of a broader and overlapping alliance involving Armenia, Tajikistan, Belarus, Syria, and Venezuela. Yet, above all things, both republics are also two of Washington’s main geo-strategic targets.

The Eurasian Triple Alliance: The Strategic Importance of Iran for Russia and China

China, the Russian Federation, and Iran are widely considered to be allies and partners. Together the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran form a strategic barrier directed against U.S. expansionism. The three countries form a "triple alliance," which constitutes the core of a Eurasian coalition directed against U.S. encroachment into Eurasia and its quest for global hegemony.

While China confronts U.S. encroachment in East Asia and the Pacific, Iran and Russia respectively confront the U.S. led coalition in Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. All three countries are threatened in Central Asia and are wary of the U.S. and NATO military presence in Afghanistan.

Iran can be characterized as a geo-strategic pivot. The geo-political equation in Eurasia very much hinges on the structure of Iran's political alliances. Were Iran to become an ally of the United States, this would seriously hamper or even destabilize Russia and China. This also pertains to Iran's ethno-cultural, linguistic, economic, religious, and geo-political links to the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Moreover, were the structure of political alliances to shift in favour of the U.S., Iran could also become the greatest conduit for U.S. influence and expansion in the Caucasus and Central Asia. This has to do with the fact that Iran is the gateway to Russia's soft southern underbelly (or "Near Abroad") in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

In such a scenario, Russia as an energy corridor would be weakened as Washington would "unlock" Iran's potential as a primary energy corridor for the Caspian Sea Basin, implying de facto U.S. geopolitical control over Iranian pipeline routes. In this regard, part of Russia's success as an energy transit route has been due to U.S. efforts to weaken Iran by preventing energy from transiting through Iranian territory.

If Iran were to "change camps" and enter the U.S. sphere of influence, China's economy and national security would also be held hostage on two counts. Chinese energy security would be threatened directly because Iranian energy reserves would no longer be secure and would be subject to U.S. geo-political interests. Additionally, Central Asia could also re-orient its orbit should Washington open a direct and enforced conduit from the open seas via Iran.

Thus, both Russia and China want a strategic alliance with Iran as a means of screening them from the geo-political encroachment of the United States. “Fortress Eurasia” would be left exposed without Iran. This is why neither Russia nor China could ever accept a war against Iran. Should Washington transform Iran into a client then Russia and China would be under threat.

Misreading the Support of China and Russia for U.N. Security Council Sanctions

There is a major misreading of past Russian and Chinese support of U.N. sanctions against Iran. Even though Beijing and Moscow allowed U.N. Security Council sanctions to be passed against their Iranian ally, they did it for strategic reasons, namely with a view to keeping Iran out of Washington's orbit.

In reality, the United States would much rather co-opt Tehran as a satellite or junior partner than take the unnecessary risk and gamble of an all-out war with the Iranians. What Russian and Chinese support for past sanctions did was to allow for the development of a wider rift between Tehran and Washington. In this regard, realpolitik is at work. As American-Iranian tensions broaden, Iranian relations with Russia and China become closer and Iran becomes more and more entrenched in its relationship with Moscow and Beijing.

Russia and China, however, would never support crippling sanctions or any form of economic embargo that would threaten Iranian national security. This is why both China and Russia have refused to be coerced by Washington into joining its new 2012 unilateral sanctions. The Russians have also warned the European Union to stop being Washington's pawns, because they are hurting themselves by playing along with the schemes of the United States. In this regard Russia commented on the impractical and virtually unworkable E.U. plans for an oil embargo against Iran. Tehran has also made similar warnings and has dismissed the E.U. oil embargo as a psychological tactic that is bound to fail.

Left photo: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and President Dmitry A. Medvedev of Russia during a bilateral meeting in Dushabe, Tajikistan.
The bilateral Iranian-Russian meeting was held on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit on August 28, 2008.
Right photo: Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov together in Moscow discussing Russia’s step-by-step nuclear proposal.

Russo-Iranian Security Cooperation and Strategic Coordination

In August 2011, the head of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Secretary-General Saaed (Said) Jalili, and the head of the National Security Council of the Russian Federation, Secretary Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev met in Tehran to discuss the Iranian nuclear energy program as well as bilateral cooperation. Russia wanted to help Iran rebuff the new wave of accusations by Washington directed against Iran. Soon after Patrushev and his Russian team arrived in Tehran, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, flew to Moscow.

Both Jalili and Patrushev met again in September 2011, but this time in Russia. Jalili went to Moscow first and then crossed the Urals to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

The Iran-Russia Yekaterinburg meeting took place on the sidelines of an international security summit. Moreover, at this venue, it was announced that the highest bodies of national security in Moscow and Tehran would henceforth coordinate by holding regular meetings. A protocol between the two countries was was signed at Yekaterinburg.

During this important gathering, both Jalili and Patrushev held meetings with their Chinese counterpart, Meng Jianzhu. As a result of these meetings, a similar process of bilateral consultation between the national security councils of Iran and China was established. Moreover, the parties also discussed the formation of a supranational security council within the Shanghai Cooperation Council to confront threats directed against Beijing, Tehran, Moscow and their Eurasian allies.

Also in September 2011, Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian envoy to NATO, announced that he would be visiting Tehran in the near future to discuss the NATO missile shield project, which both the Moscow and Tehran oppose.

Reports claiming that Russia, Iran, and China were planning on creating a joint missile shield started to surface. Rogozin, who had warned in August 2011 that Syria and Yemen would be attacked as "stepping stones" in the broader confrontation directed against Tehran, responded by publicly refuting the reports pertaining to the establishment of a joint Sino-Russo-Iranian missile shield project.

The following month, in October 2011, Russia and Iran announced that they would be expanding ties in all fields. Soon after, in November 2011, Iran and Russia signed a strategic cooperation and partnership agreement between their highest security bodies covering economics, politics, security, and intelligence. This was a long anticipated document on which both Russia and Iran had been working on. The agreement was signed in Moscow by the Deputy Secretary-General of the Supreme Security Council of Iran, Ali Bagheri (Baqeri), and the Under-Secretary of the National Security Council of Russia, Yevgeny Lukyanov.

In November 2011, the head of the Committee for International Affairs in the Russian Duma, Konstantin Kosachev, also announced that Russia must do everything it can to prevent an attack on neighbouring Iran. At the end of November 2011 it was announced that Dmitry Rogozin would definitely visit both Tehran and Beijing in 2012, together with a team of Russian officials to hold strategic discussions on collective strategies against common threats.

Left and right photos: Secretary-General Jalili and Secretary Patrushev in Tehran, Iran holding Iranian-Russian national security talks during August 2011.

Left photo: Deputy Secretary-General Ali Bagheri at a press conference in Moscow, Russia after signing a security pact with Russian officials.
Right photo: Konstantin Kosachev, the Chairperson of the Committee for International Affairs in the Russian Duma.

Russian National Security and Iranian National Security are Attached

On January 12, 2012, Nikolai Patrushev told Interfax he feared that a major war was imminent and that Tel Aviv was pushing the U.S. to attack Iran. He dismissed the claims that Iran was secretly manufacturing nuclear weapons and said that for years the world had continuously heard that Iran would have an atomic bomb by next week ad nauseum. His comments were followed by a dire warning from Dmitry Rogozin.

On January 13, 2012, Rogozin, who had been appointed deputy prime minister, declared that any attempted military intervention against Iran would be a threat to Russia's national security. In other words, an attack on Tehran is an attack on Moscow. In 2007, Vladimir Putin essentially mentioned the same thing when he was in Tehran for a Caspian Sea summit, which resulted in George W. Bush Jr. warning that World War III could erupt over Iran. Rogozin's statement is merely a declaration of what has been the position of Russia all along: should Iran fall, Russia would be in danger.

Iran is a target of U.S. hostility not just for its vast energy reserves and natural resources, but because of major geo-strategic considerations that make it a strategic springboard against Russia and China. The roads to Moscow and Beijing also go through Tehran, just as the road to Tehran goes through Damascus, Baghdad, and Beirut. Nor does the U.S. want to merely control Iranian oil and natural gas for consumption or economic reasons. Washington wants to put a muzzle around China by controlling Chinese energy security and wants Iranian energy exports to be traded in U.S. dollars to insure the continued use of the U.S. dollar in international transactions.

Moreover, Iran has been making agreements with several trade partners, including China and India, whereby business transactions will not be conducted in euros or U.S. dollars. In January 2012, both Russia and Iran replaced the U.S. dollar with their national currencies, respectively the Russian rouble and the Iranian rial, in their bilateral trade. This was an economic and financial blow to the United States.

Left photo: Vladimir V. Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holding talks in Tehran, Iran on the sidelines of a summit of Caspian Sea nations in October 2007.
Right photo: Dmitry O. Rogozin, the departing representative of Russia at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

Syria and the National Security Concerns of Iran and Russia

Russia and China with Iran are all staunchly supporting Syria. The diplomatic and economic siege against Syria is tied to the geo-political stakes to control Eurasia. The instability in Syria is tied to the objective of combating Iran and ultimately turning it into a U.S. partner against Russia and China.

The cancelled or delayed deployment of thousands of U.S. troops to Israel for "Austere Challenge 2012" was tied to ratcheting up the pressure against Syria. On the basis of a Voice of Russia report, segments of the Russian media erroneously reported that "Austere Challenge 2012" was going to be held in the Persian Gulf, which was mistakenly picked up by news outlets in other parts of the world. This helped highlight the Iranian link at the expense of the Syrian and Lebanese links. The deployment of U.S. troops was aimed predominately at Syria as a means of isolating and combating Iran. The "cancelled" or "delayed" Israeli-U.S. missile exercises most probably envisaged preparations for missile and rocket attacks not only from Iran, but also from Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories.

Aside from its naval ports in Syria, Russia does not want to see Syria used to re-route the energy corridors in the Caspian Basin and the Mediterranean Basin. If Syria were to fall, these routes would be re-synchronized to reflect a new geo-political reality. At the expense of Iran, energy from the Persian Gulf could also be re-routed to the Mediterranean through both Lebanon and Syria.

Left photo: Syrian Defence Minister Dawoud (David) Rajha visiting the docked Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in the Syrian port of Tartus on January 8, 2012.
Right photo: Syrian allies, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, join President Bashar Al-Assad for a summit in Damascus, Syria on February 25, 2010.

Left photo: The Alvand, one of the two Iranian warships that visited the Syrian port of Lattakia during February 2011.
Right photo: Rear-Admirial Habibollah Sayyari holding a press conference on February 28, 2001 at the Iranian Embassy in Syria about the Iranian naval presence off Syria’s Mediterranean coast.

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Japan's strategic outlook....

2012-01-23T07:36:00.000-08:00

Japan's strategic outlook....
Rod Lyon
Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Japan's strategic outlook

Image: Josh Liba / flickr

19 December 2011Japan will remain an introverted strategic player during the next decade, and for Australia, the challenge is how to partner with that inward-looking Japan.

Japan has endured a difficult couple of decades, but probably confronts another. With its economy stalled, its political system still evolving towards a genuine multiparty system, and its population ageing and shrinking, it confronts a daunting array of domestic challenges. The great East Asian earthquake of March has only added to its problems. The after-effects will be felt for years, not least in the continuing nuclear problems at Fukushima. Those challenges mean Japan will probably remain an introverted strategic player during the next decade or so. Arguments made by a range of commentators about five years ago, that Japan had entered a critical ‘turning point’ in its strategic policy, now seem less compelling.

For Australia, the challenge is how to partner with that inward-looking Japan over the next ten-to-fifteen years. The pace of change in Asian strategic settings is such that much may change during that period. And there aren’t many Japan-sized players in the regional system, so we have to work to ensure that the one we already have remains committed to shared objectives to the greatest extent possible. We need to ‘work with’ Japan, perhaps bringing more ourselves to the relationship to offset Japan’s period of hesitancy. But we might also need a ‘work around’ strategy—accepting that we need to do more with others to compensate for Japan’s strategic hesitancy. Australia wants an Asia with a range of engaged great powers—and Japan is an important part of that future Asia.’

Dr Rod Lyon, Director of ASPI’s Strategy and International Program, is the author of this report.

Image: Josh Liba / flickr

Publication type	Report
Publisher Type	APO Member, Think tank
Coverage	Australia, Asia and the Pacific
Permanent URL	http://apo.org.au/node/27513

Dr Rod Lyon, Director of ASPI’s Strategy and International Program, is the author of this report.

Download PDF

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20120121bc.html

Turkey confirms links between Israel, Syria and Kurdish rebels....

2012-01-23T03:42:00.000-08:00

Turkey confirms links between Israel, Syria and Kurdish rebels....

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS

Turkish intelligence agencies have authored a report detailing alleged Israeli assistance to Kurdish rebels, whose goal is to secede from Turkey and create an independent Kurdish homeland, according to a leading Turkish newspaper. The Ankara-based Zaman said the intelligence report was commissioned after Turkish forces detected Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) conducting reconnaissance missions over Turkey. The paper, which is tacitly affiliated with Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, said the UAVs were spotted flying over Turkey’s Adana and Hatay provinces, both of which are adjacent to Turkey’s border with Syria. As intelNews reported last August, Turkey’s main intelligence directorate, the MİT, is convinced that the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad has increased its clandestine support for the largest Kurdish secessionist group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), in an attempt to court Syria’s 500,000-strong Kurdish minority. According to the Zaman news report, airborne intelligence collected by Israeli Heron UAVs is shared with PKK guerrillas, who then use it to construct training bases in Syrian border regions. This explains, claims the paper, why most PKK training bases in Syria are located “in areas that are known to be weak spots for the Turkish military”. The report also claims that Turkish intelligence has verified that senior PKK military commander Kenan Yıldızbakan has visited Israel “several times” in recent months. Yildizbakan is believed to have commanded a brazen PKK assault on a Turkish naval base in İskenderun in 2010, which killed seven and wounded four members of the Turkish armed forces. Earlier this month, we reported that an Israeli drone flying over Turkey was nearly shot down by the Turkish Air Force. IntelNews also reported earlier this month on a news story from leading French newspaper Le Figaro, which claimed that officers of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad were recruiting and training Iranian dissidents in clandestine bases located in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. The Paris-based daily cited a “security source in Baghdad”, who alleged that the Mossad was actively recruiting Iranian exiles in Kurdistan, for use in Israel’s clandestine war against the Iranian nuclear program....

East Asian energy dilemma over Iran....

2012-01-23T02:38:00.001-08:00

East Asian energy dilemma over Iran....
By Yong Kwon

A few months before the outbreak of the Suez Crisis in 1956, Japanese economist Wakimura Yoshitaro pointed to the transport of Middle Eastern oil as a potential flashpoint for global conflict. His assessment appears obvious in retrospect, but his policy recommendation to deal with this serious threat to economic and political stability still remains relevant.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Wakimura and several other prominent economists argued that reliance on oil increased the risk of Japan being dragged into an unwanted war. Therefore, to ensure Japanese neutrality, the best policy for Tokyo would be to develop an independent and reliable source of energy. [1] At the time, people looked to nuclear energy.

More than half a century and a meltdown later, when confidence in nuclear power is at an all-time low and alternative sources of energy are still unready to be applied on an industrial scale, Washington's expansion of the diplomatic and economic offensive against Iran comes as an unpleasant reminder to East Asian nations of the cost of maintaining ties with the United States.

Furthermore, US President Barack Obama's imposition of US foreign policy interests in the Middle East will undoubtedly lead Seoul and Tokyo's attention to develop deeper political ties with Beijing, something Washington has been working to prevent since its strategic refocusing to the Asia-Pacific.

The Middle East has always been a contentious issue in Washington's relationship with Seoul and Tokyo. In particular, economically coercing Tehran is difficult for the two countries because a significant share of their petroleum imports come from Iran. This supply constitutes a vital lifeline to two economies deeply invested in shipping, transport, and heavy industry. The recent urging by the US to reduce or ban oil imports from Iran was met with negotiations from both governments to find alternative means of punishing the Islamic Republic while protecting their vital supply.

Since December of last year, the Japanese government has prohibited domestic businesses from working with Iranian banks and frozen the assets of several Iranian organizations. However, Japanese banks have been allowed to continue doing business with Iran's central bank, which settles the accounts for the oil trade.

South Korea has followed suit by forbidding new investments in Iranian oil and blacklisting Iranian firms, but not taking measures to reduce the supply of the much-valued energy source. Obviously the two governments do not intend to rupture their relationship with the United States. Both states recognize the vital role that Washington plays in regional security and commerce. Nonetheless, the sanctions on Iran remain a divisive policy because it forces both countries to choose between maintaining economic stability and establishing grounds for greater cooperation in security.

Some Israeli security experts have joined US officials in forwarding the view to Seoul that it would be in South Korea's best interest to join the tough sanctions as this would invariably put pressure on North Korea as well. [2] They added that Seoul should not worry about oil imports from Iran because other Gulf nations will increase their supply to supplement South Korea's needs.

While it is true that the ties between Iran and North Korea create greater impetus for South Korea to seek means to prevent Iranians from developing nuclear capabilities, the ongoing measures introduced by the United States have only brought on larger security problems while weapons technology transfers and sharing arrangements are likely continuing undeterred between Pyongyang and Tehran. [3]

Meanwhile, Seoul is seeking alternative sources of crude oil to satisfy its needs in case it has no other choice but to abide by US foreign policy in the Middle East. Likewise, Tokyo has yet to provide an official answer on reducing the import of oil from Iran and probably will not do so until it can secure alternative suppliers.

There appears to be confusion within the fledgling Yoshihiko Noda administration on how to approach the matter. When US Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner visited Japan earlier in January, Finance Minister Jun Azumi suggested that Japan will reduce its oil procurement from Iran.

However, Noda, who assumed office in September, has reversed the statement, clarifying that his government has not concluded on whether to follow Washington or not. Meanwhile, certain members of the Diet (parliament) in the opposition Liberal Democratic Party such as Taro Kono have supported Japan having a separate foreign policy from the United States when it comes to Iran. [4]

For the two countries, fears that the escalating crisis along the Straits of Hormuz will raise oil prices to backbreaking levels, regardless of their participation in the sanctions, remains prevalent as they attempt unsuccessfully to remain uninvolved as possible.

Enter China. On his state visit to Qatar, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao clearly noted Beijing's opposition to both Washington's sanctions and Iran's threat to close the Straits of Hormuz. China has proposed discussing the matter of Iran's nuclear developments at the United Nations with the five permanent members of the Security Council. This solution would be to the best interest of South Korea and Japan as well.

China's passive and pragmatic opposition to US policy on Iran reveals how Washington's aggressive policies in one part of the world could hurt its influence in East Asia. South Korea and Japan are already inextricably more closely tied to the Chinese economy than to the American one.

Even with the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership that is under development with Japan, it is hard to foresee the United States taking over China as the principal mover of the region's economic development. Therefore, when East Asian states are forced to undertake high risk issues that are practically non-essential to them, such as Iran's nuclear program, it only highlights the slowly diminishing importance of the United States.

By all means, Washington is still a critical player in the Asia-Pacific, both economically and militarily; however, it increasingly appears out-of-touch with the real concerns of its allies and lacking a long-term game plan for the region.

Obama should revisit the issue that Wakimura Yoshitaro saw as the key problem with the Middle Eastern oil supply. The late economist recognized that the only way stable commerce could continue in the region is if Western states negotiated with, rather than dictate to, oil producing nations, appreciating their aspirations and excising fears. These are not merely the words of a bygone economist, this is diplomacy 101.

Notes
1. Laura Hein. Reasonable Men, Powerful Words. Washington D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004.
2. Kirsty Taylor. Israeli experts urge Korea to sanction Iranian oil imports. Korea Herald, January 19, 2012.
3. Joshua Pollack. Ballistic Trajectory: The Evolution of North Korea's Ballistic Missile Market. The Nonproliferation Review, July 2011, Vol. 18 No. 2.
4. Event, Reviving Japan: Can It Win the Asian Century? Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, January 4, 2012.

Soros Site Blends Kyrgyz News Item, CENTCOM Misinformation and Asia Times Misdirection In Obvious Psyop...

2012-01-21T10:39:00.001-08:00

Soros Site Blends Kyrgyz News Item, CENTCOM Misinformation and Asia Times Misdirection In Obvious Psyop...

21 01 2012

[The following disinformation piece follows a 1, 2, 3 formula--first the facts, followed by the outright lies, finished with speculation about the original facts obscured by the lies. CentralAsiaOnline is a CENTCOM disinformation site. Any news derived from it is tainted and misleading. Turkey is an Imperial proxy. By crediting the Turkish military with building the NATO Special Forces Training Center at Batken, instead of correctly labeling it a NATO facility, it gives substance to the lie that Kyrgyzstan has the choice of a third direction, between Russia and the US.]

Turkey Promises To Boost Military Aid To Kyrgyzstan....As NATO, Russia Continue On Same Path To New World Order...

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64866

by Joshua Kucera

press office of the Presidency of Turkey

President Almazbek Atambayev meets his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, in Ankara.

Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev has made his first foreign trip since becoming president, to Turkey. And while trade and aid seemed to top the agenda, the two sides also agreed to increase military cooperation, reports 24.kg:

Turkey will assist Kyrgyzstan in strengthening of Defense Ministry, Security Council and Frontier Service. It was announced by Foreign Affairs Minister Ruslan Kazakbaev during the official visit of President Almazbek Atambayev to Turkey.

According him on bilateral negotiations the issues of security, fighting against international terrorism, drug trafficking and illegal migration, strengthening of Defense Ministry, Frontier Service and law machinery,” said Ruslan Kazakbaev.

As the minister noted the issue of quota increasing for students, officers and young diplomats wishing to study in Turkey was also discussed. “Turkish part is going to support our request,” added the Minister.

And Central Asia Online reports, citing a Kyrgyzstan defense ministry statement, that Turkey will help build a military school in Osh and build up the country’s defense industry:

“One of the high-priority issues for Kyrgyzstan is construction of an Armed Forces Military Institute in Osh,” said Kyrgyz Defence Minister Taalaybek Omuraliyev. “Its creation would permit us to train highly skilled officers for the Armed Forces and other Kyrgyz military forces.”

“Another important direction that we’d like to develop is the opening of joint defence industry factories,” he said. “We could foresee the conduct of joint tactical counter-terrorism exercises in Kyrgyzstan and Turkey.”

A pseudonymed analyst writing in Asia Times suggests that the visit was an effort by Atambayev to add more vectors to his country’s foreign policy:

Turkey’s foremost priority and preoccupation for the past 40 years or so has been integration into the European Union, so Ankara’s periodic surges of interest in other regions, including Central Asia, have waxed and waned based on the progress or lack of thereof in its talks with the EU.

This time, the new-found love between Kyrgyzstan and Turkey seems to suggest that it is not Turkey that is trying to reengage its Central Asian cousin more strongly; rather, President Atambayev is attempting to diversify Kyrgyzstan’s foreign policy away from superpowers such as Russia, the United States and China and thus lessen his country’s heavy dependence on them. Cultivating the so-called second-tier countries like Turkey may look a better bet, as they emerge as strong economies with increasing technological and investment potential.

The building in Osh seems particularly noteworthy. Kyrgyzstan has tried, and seems to have failed, to interest both the U.S. and Russia in creating military infrastructure in the southern part of the country. [Both countries still have plans to build a new center at Batken.] Bishkek’s interest, in addition to the overt one of improving the training of its military, appears to be to create some international stake in southern Kyrgyzstan, so that if Uzbekistan (as Bishkek fears) invades, Kyrgyzstan will have some immediate international support. So is Turkey willing to play this role?....

Although disagreements remain between Russia and NATO over the US missile defense project which Russia has called a threat to its national security, the two sides will continue working together in 2012.

Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov praised Russia-NATO achievements in 2011, which he said provided the basis for further cooperation in 2012.

“On the whole, we have a positive impression from Russia-NATO military cooperation in 2011,” Makarov told reporters following a meeting with NATO colleagues at the Russia-NATO Council in Brussels on Thursday. “Thus, a plan of military cooperation (between Russia and NATO) for 2012 has been approved.”

Russia’s top military official picked out some of last year’s high points in Russia’s partnership with NATO.

“Vigilant Skies and Bold Monarch were the most significant joint exercises in 2011,” Makarov noted. “We also had useful contacts in military medicine, logistics, disarming of handmade bombs and personnel training.”

Russia’s highest-ranking military official also mentioned the “joint combating of pirates off the Horn of Africa,” which he said is now entering “a new phase.”

Finally, Makarov discussed the situation in Afghanistan, where Russia and NATO are “intensifying their interaction” in the fight against dire local threats including, but not limited to, terrorism and drug trafficking.

The Chief of General Staff stressed that what happens in Afghanistan, where Allied forces have been fighting a 10-year uphill war against Taliban forces, has a “direct influence on security along the Russian border and worries our allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).”

Given the urgency of the situation, Russia will continue to “render assistance to the peacekeepers in Afghanistan, primarily with the transit of cargo,” he said.

Robert Bridge, RT

TAIWAN: 'At a time of swift growth, China isn't inclined to conflict'....

2012-01-21T01:22:00.000-08:00

TAIWAN: 'At a time of swift growth, China isn't inclined to conflict'....

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-01-20/edit-page/30643649_1_taiwan-and-china-cross-strait-relations-democratic-progressive-party

Since their stormy separation in 1949, Taiwan has resisted China's stated goal of taking over the small island state. Former member of Taiwan's National Assembly, professor Tang Shaocheng spoke with Rudroneel Ghosh about China's dramatic rise, Taiwan's recent presidential elections and why the new regime's policy of engagement seems to work:

How do Taiwanese view mainland China's rise?

Taiwanese view China with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, people fear China's rise could harm the status quo between the two sides, namely no unification, no indepen-dence and no use of force. Due to a lack of mutual trust, confidence-building measures are necessary to improve the situation. On the other hand, some Taiwanese judge the rise of China in a more positive way. They cite Beijing's insistence on unification through peaceful means. The 2008 global financial tsunami is still vivid in the memory of many Taiwanese. Taiwan's swift economic reco-very must be attributed to President Ma Ying-jeou's policy of reconciliation with mainland China while the US itself was the epicentre of the crisis - trade and financial injections from China, the influx of Chinese tourists and the procurement of Taiwanese commodities by Chinese provincial governments were vital to the recovery of Taiwan's economy.

Taiwan is an example of Chinese democracy - aren't there fears Beijing could stifle this through a tight economic embrace?

Taiwan's democracy is deep-rooted enough not to be rever-sed. Beijing can only win the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese people to reach its goal of unification. Even then, the Taiwanese would have the last say. We must also realise a chaotic Taiwan with constant unrest will not be an acceptable option for Beijing.

President Ma's re-election vindicated his pro-China economic policies. But is any form of unification between Taiwan and China realistically possible in the near future?

No. There is no such plan of unification - the time is not ripe. The two sides are now preparing for dialogue on a peace accord... without the precondition of a renunciation of violence, there will be no foundation for further negotiations. However, if severe external factors were to affect cross-strait relations, anything is possible. If another financial crisis affects both sides, why can't they work together to face the challenge? Germany was reunited in 1990 - but nobody expected that, even in 1989.

If President Ma had lost his re-election bid, how would cross-strait relations be affected?

This would have meant uncertainties because the opposition Democratic Progressive Party doesn't accept the 1992 Consensus, which is 'One China with different interpretations'. This is Beijing's prerequisite for bilateral negotiations, accepted by the ruling Kuomintang.

China insists its ambi-tions are peaceful - but its actions can be aggressive. How should countries res-pond to emerging disputes?

According to the famous Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, the best strategy to win a war is to adopt non-war measures - win the hearts and minds of the opponents or make clear to them the serious consequences of confrontation. Such tactics are commonly used by Chinese authorities. But at a time of swift domestic growth, China isn't inclined to conflict with others.

Also, its rise has enabled Beijing to be much more influential in the international arena. Therefore, next to the realist approach - the use of power and interests - the liberal and social constructivist approaches through the use of trade, cooperation and culture are all relevant means to negotiate with China and settle disputes....

The Zioconned US policies can be best called: LOSE/LOSE

2012-01-19T10:22:00.001-08:00

The Zioconned US policies can be best called: LOSE/LOSE

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28767

By Michael Brenner

Professor of International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh

American foreign policy over the past 11 years has demonstrated a perverse genius for placing the United States in lose/lose situations. Navigating without a strategic gyroscope, and with maladroit diplomacy, we repeatedly have painted ourselves into a corner from which there is no escape other than by taking risky and highly costly expedient actions. That's true of Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq (where Mr. Maliki rubs our noses in our failure by inflicting enhanced humiliation techniques on us weekly, Lebanon, Bahrain/Saudi Arabia, Palestine and - most dangerous of all - Iran. Two successive administrations have presumed to set unrealizable objectives and to reach them by fruitless methods by ignoring the fundamental givens of the situation.

One, Iran will never forego the option of developing a nuclear CAPABILITY that is crucial to their objective security needs. Two, therefore, sanctions and other means short of war will not work. Three, the undeclared 'war' by other means that we are conducting confirms the security imperative and solidifies a national consensus on the nuclear issue. Four, somehow neutralizing the potentially destabilizing effects of the Iranian nuclear program requires reaching a set of understandings and putting in place arrangements that satisfy the basic security interests of all parties in the Gulf region. Five, talks on the nuclear question that ignore the above are doomed to failure. Six, to paint the Islamic Republic as the epitome of evil and to pursue a veiled strategy of regime change makes serious negotiation impossible. Seven, consequently Washington's tiptoeing to the brink of conflict puts us in the position of either backing away and thereby losing face (and votes in November) or taking military action whose effects would be disastrous.

As American post-Cold War imperial ambitions flounder against the harsh realities of international life, it would be tragic of the curtain falls on a scene of catastrophic failure of our own making....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkIIBnIuXHM&feature=youtu.be

Welcome to the Fog of Conflict Analysis....

By Paul Sullivan

Professor of Economics, National Defense University

First let us look at the closing of the straits of Hormuz. Many in leadership here and there think it is possible, if for a limited time. It would also be considered an act of war by many of the Sunni states in the Gulf region which rely on the straits for exporting their oil, gas, and refined products, but also for imports of food, equipment and many of the necessities of life. Many of the states that rely a lot on their ports on the inside of the straits are already in a delicate food security balance, for example. This could complicate things quite a bit. Also, if a conflict does erupt many of the states on the inside of the Gulf use the Gulf as a source of saline water to desalinate. They have particularly fragile water security issues to deal with if the Gulf is polluted. Qatar and the UAE may have 2 or so days of water reserves if their desalinization plants are shut.

The odd thing about this threat from Iran is that if they do shut down the Straits they will be harming themselves severely for similar reasons to how they would harm the Sunni states. They would also be harming their ally, Iraq. Almost all of the outlets for oil from Iran are on the inside of the straits. All of its major oil and gas fields are on the inside of the straits. Its major export facilities of Kharg and Lavan islands are on the inside of the straits. All of their major import ports are on the inside of the straits, aside from some smaller ports on the outside that have not been fully developed yet. Iran needs lots of imports to keep its economy going. It most particularly needs refined products, chemicals and the like. It also imports a lot of agricultural products, machine parts, transport vehicles, etc. Some have asked me whether Iran could just let Iranian trade go through. Well, have you ever faced down a carrier group in a small space, and the straits are a pretty small space?

Most Saudi, Kuwaiti, Iraqi, Emirati, Qatari and other trade goes via the Straits of Hormuz. This is more than just oil. Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of LNG. Most of this LNG goes to Asia. India is one of their biggest customers. Japan, South Korea and China are also big or growing markets for them.

China gets about 11 percent of its oil from Iran, but gets nearly double that from Saudi Arabia. It also imports a lot of oil from Iraq, Oman, and Kuwait. It may be now turning more to the UAE. India also gets about 11 percent of its oil from Iran, but 18 percent from Saudi Arabia. It also imports oil from the UAE, Kuwait, etc. Japan relies on the Gulf region for about 77 percent of its oil. South Korea relies on the Gulf for about the same percentage. The EU gets about 15 percent of its oil from Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Italy and Spain, countries in some economic stress get about 13 percent of their oil from Iran. Greece gets even more from Iran: about 30 percent. Turkey gets about 50 percent of its oil from Iran. Sri Lanka gets 100 percent of its oil from Iran. South Africa gets about 25 percent from Iran. And all of these countries, outside of Sri Lanka, which rely on Iran for oil also rely on others from the inside of the straits for either oil, gas, refined products or all three in variably important ways. The US gets about 1.5 million barrels a day from inside the straits, mostly from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This is not a large percentage of our 19-20 million barrel a day usage, but shutting it down quickly even for a short time would be an issue, and would have ripples in our markets and our supply systems.

My sense is that the Iranian threat is a bluff, but it has rattled some market analyses and some actual markets. Closing off the straits would strangle the economy of Iran. It would damage further its relations with the Sunni states. It would harm its relations with its major customers in Asia. It would be a cause of war and all of its implications, which are vast.

I cannot say whether there will be a war or not. Maybe something or someone will bring us back from the precipice. Maybe some sense will walk into the situation. But in times of great stress and increasing stress between countries the chances for mistakes to be made get higher than if there were some sort of effective dispute mechanism to reduce those tensions. There seems to be none between the US and Iran, or even between the Sunni states and Iran. EU-Iranian relations seem to be also getting more distant by the day.

It is not just the oil that could be a shock to the world systems if a war breaks out. Yes, there are about 15-17 million barrels of day going through the straits in mostly very few VLCC and ULCC tankers carrying 2 million barrels or so of oil each. There are smaller tankers and refinery tankers also, but the big ships could be a key to this crisis if it breaks out. One of these ships being diverted to Spain, for example, would mean a potentially huge shock to their economy unless other tankers and pipeline flows were moved about to take up the short fall in short order.

I could go into hundreds of oil market scenarios, but the bigger and simpler picture is this: if the straits are closed off for a considerable period, even a couple of weeks or so, oil prices will go through the roof for a while. However, the psychology of the oil markets may also have changed due to this and some nearly permanent risk premiums might be added to the prices of different types of oils.

Natural gas is increasingly becoming a part of the trade via the straits and any stoppage of LNG ships to Asia could disrupt LNG markets in Asia, but also beyond due to diversion of some shipments and price shocks.

Given that the world economy is fragile already any oil, gas, or other shocks could put many places back into deeper recessions or pushed some over the edged into new ones. The EU is especially vulnerable given its still unresolved debt issues. Japan is vulnerable due to its need for imported oil and gas from the region. China is vulnerable due to its energy imports from the region, but its also seemingly increasingly fragile economy. There is a housing bust in process and China needs to produce 12-14 million new jobs each year. If it does not then we have some real civil disturbance potential. India could also get hammered economically due to oil and gas shocks.

Any oil and gas shocks out of the Gulf could have serious repercussions worldwide, not just in the countries I mention.

Then there are the chances that the major oil facilities in the Gulf could be damaged in a conflict. Think Ab Qaiq, ABOT, and KABOT, Kharg and Lavan islands, oil and gas facilities in the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait and you start to get the picture.

The economic effects of an all-out, protracted war including the damaging of major oil and gas facilities in the Gulf would be an economic catastrophe in many ways. A less protracted, less damaging war, well, we might pro-rate the economic damages, but they could also be vast. And the psychology of the situations in oil and other markets could serious change. Think of effects on stock markets, food markets, transport, and just about everything else and you start to get it.

Are there economic, political, military, diplomatic and social nightmares on the way if many of the potential scenarios happen?

Indeed.

Oh, yes, that question about hitting the Iranian nuclear facilities. Ever heard of nuclear fallout and have that might affect areas near and far from the attacks? This could be a significant result of any attacks on the nuclear facilities. I find it odd that so many people here and in the EU are so worried about the safety and other risks of nuclear power, but seem quick to the pistol to want to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

Indeed, the Iranian regime needs desperately nuclear bombs, given all the threats against it by the Zioconned Western powers....but at what price?

The entire situation is fraught with cognitive dissonance, but what else is new?

Leadership and nuanced thinking is needed. Real strategic thinking is needed. The real and actual national security threats and opportunities of the US need to be considered very carefully and fully as this situation unfolds.

None of this is simple. Not much of it is really that clear.

Welcome to the fog of conflict analysis.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkIIBnIuXHM&feature=youtu.be

And this is just the broad brush view of it.....

Obviously, the sanctions are intended to force Iran's hand.....an attempt to manipulate them into doing something, anything, that will justify an attack, be it from Israel or the U.S./NATO, in the court of world public opinion....as if that opinion really matters any longer. Iran has played it well up until this point. I don't think they will do anything stupid or rash....but as we saw in Vietnam (Maddox).....and with Iraq (Yellow Cake), ultimately it doesn't matter how well Iran plays it, The Babe has pointed to the right field wall and that's where the ball is going to end up....in the right field bleachers.

Think ahead twenty years....the year 2032. If Alzheimer's hasn't established its grip on you yet, if you are a betting man, would you bet that the Mullahs would still be in power in Iran? I wouldn't take that bet, because the odds are so slim to none, you're sure to lose your shirt. The only way to extricate the Mullahs is by outside physical force. Iran is incapable of another internal revolution that could possibly oust the Mullahs.

So, it's going to happen, it's just a matter when and how (the tactical analysis)....and the various ramifications it will have for the rest of the world, which is a source of interesting conjecture.

FYI, I don't condone any of the above, but that's my assessment. It's irrelevant how I feel about it...because they haven't asked and they never will....

Refusing battle, saving the World and USA from endless Blow-back....

2012-01-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

Refusing battle, saving the World and USA from endless Blow-back....

[Excellent protest piece, rejecting the notion of "persistent warfare" (a.k.a. never-ending war), found in the unlikeliest of locations, the Armed Forces Journal. Considering the publication date of the article, April 2009, it is almost prescient, in its predictions of the disasters to befall the United States, NATO and the world, should Obama continue the disastrous "regime change" policies of Bush and Cheney.]

Refusing battle

Armed Forces Journal, April 2009

The alternative to persistent warfare....

BY COL. DOUGLAS MACGREGOR (RET.)

“Sir, I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task you have given me is becoming really impossible … if they (Sunni and Shiite) are not prepared to urge us to stay and to co-operate in every manner I would actually clear out. … At present we are paying eight millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.”

Winston Churchill to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Sept. 1, 1922

Despite the seriousness of the present economic crisis, the greatest danger to the future security of the U.S. is Washington’s inclination to impose political solutions with the use of American military power in many parts of the world where Washington’s solutions are unneeded and unsustainable. President Barack Obama must arrest this tendency by making pragmatic and methodical changes to the goals of American military strategy. The Bush legacy in foreign and defense policy presents Obama with a stark choice: Will we continue to pursue global hegemony with the use of military power to control and shape development inside other societies? Or will we use our military power to maintain our market-oriented English-speaking republic, a republic that upholds the rule of law, respects the cultures and traditions of people different from ourselves, and trades freely with all nations, but protects its sovereignty, its commerce, its vital strategic interests and its citizens? This essay argues for the latter approach; a strategy of conflict avoidance designed to make the U.S. more secure without making the rest of the world less so.

For Americans who’ve lived in a world with only one true military, political and economic center of gravity — the U.S. — changing how America behaves inside the international system is not an easy task. Since 1991, Americans have become so accustomed to the frequent use of American military power against very weak opponents they seem to have lost their fear of even the smallest conflict’s unintended consequences.

But the 21st century is no time for the leaders of the U.S. to make uninformed decisions regarding the use of force or to engage in desperate, end-game, roll-of-the-dice gambles. Recent events in the Caucasus involving Russia and Georgia may simply be a foretaste of what is likely to happen during the 21st century in much of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the ancient practice of encouraging one ethnic group to dominate others as a means of securing foreign imperial power is breeding new conflicts. These conflicts are likely to resemble the Balkan Wars of the early 20th century, except that fights for regional power and influence will overlap with the competition for energy, water, food, mineral resources and the wealth they create. In nations such as Iran and Turkey, states with proud histories, huge populations under the age of 30 and appetites for more prominence in world affairs, the influx of wealth from the energy sector will also support much more potent militaries and, potentially, more aggressive foreign policies, too.

In this volatile setting, direct American military involvement in conflicts where the U.S. itself is not attacked and its national prosperity is not at risk should be avoided. Otherwise, American military involvement could cause 21st century conflicts to spin out of control and confront Americans with regional alliances designed to contain American military power; alliances that but for American military intervention would not exist. It is vital the U.S. not repeat the mistakes of the British Empire in 1914: overestimate its national power by involving itself in a self-defeating regional war it does not need to fight and precipitate its own economic and military decline.

Avoiding this outcome demands new goals for American military power and a strategic framework that routinely answers the questions of purpose, method and end-state; a strategy in which American military action is short, sharp, decisive and rare. Such a strategy involves knowing when to fight and when to refuse battle.

LEE’S CHOICE

On June 24, 1863, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia — 74,000 strong — completed its crossing of the Potomac River and pushed northward into Pennsylvania toward Gettysburg. Six days later, when Robert E. Lee, the Confederate commander, arrived in front of Gettysburg, he discovered to his dismay that a much larger and better equipped Union Army — 115,000 strong — confronted him in strong defenses on the high ground above the town. As an officer of engineers, Lee knew what this development meant for his army; his troops would have to attack uphill while the Union troops poured rifle and artillery fire into them.

Fortunately for Lee, his opponent opted to immobilize itself in defensive positions. The Army of Northern Virginia was not yet decisively engaged. Lee still had options.

Lee could move his army away from Gettysburg, placing it between the Union Army and Washington, D.C., an action likely to draw the Union Army out of its strong defensive positions to attack and eliminate the danger Lee presented to Washington. Such a fight would occur on terms more favorable to Lee, increasing the likelihood of yet another Southern victory. A major Confederate victory on Northern territory would almost certainly have resulted in Lee’s occupation of Washington, D.C., and maybe even Southern independence.

Flush with their victory at Chancellorsville seven weeks earlier, Lee and his troops were spoiling for a fight, and they got the one they did not want or expect. After repeated charges and the loss of thousands of men, Lee retreated southward over the Potomac River without interference from the Union Army, but Lee lost a battle that cost the Confederacy the war.

Lee should have refused battle. Had he done so, he would have kept his army and its capabilities intact until he could achieve a position of advantage and with it more favorable conditions for the employment of his force.

LOSING AN EMPIRE

When word reached Britain on Aug. 1, 1914, of Germany’s mobilization for war, Winston Churchill recorded that of the Cabinet “at least three-quarters of its members were determined not to be drawn into a European quarrel unless Great Britain was herself attacked, which was unlikely.” The members knew the English Channel and the massive Royal Navy made a German offensive against Britain not only unlikely, but impossible.

However, Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, a man who spoke only English, seldom left England and was contemptuous of foreigners, reached a different conclusion. He believed moral obligations dictated British intervention to save its historic enemy, France, from defeat. While England’s drinking classes sang the jingoistic ballad made popular during the Boer War, “We’ve got the men, we’ve got the ships, we’ve got the money too,” Grey warned the House of Commons, “If France is beaten … and if Belgium fell under the same dominating influence, and then Holland and then Demark … the most awful responsibility is resting on the government in deciding what to do.”

The argument was specious. Germany’s war aims had nothing to do with Britain or the states mentioned. It did not matter. Grey’s emotional appeal to patriotism, and fear, worked.

When Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener, the newly appointed British minister of war, told the Cabinet its decision to go to war with Germany and Austria-Hungary meant the British Empire would have to maintain an army of millions, the war would last for at least three years and that it would be decided on the continent — not at sea — the Cabinet ministers were astonished. For reasons that seem baffling now, Britain’s political leaders, including Churchill, who was first lord of the Admiralty, believed a war with Germany would be short, and that the Royal Navy — not the British and French armies — would decide its outcome in a great sea battle with the German surface fleet. The possibility that Britain’s very small, professional army could not sustain a war with Germany and Austria for more than a few months, that Germany would decline to fight on Britain’s terms (at sea) and that the war on land would consume Britain’s national wealth, did not seem to occur to most of the Cabinet members until Kitchener made his presentation.

How could the British leaders have been so misguided in their assumptions? The British interpreted the world that existed beyond Britain’s global imperial power structure in ways that flattered their self-image of limitless money and sea-based power.

Britain should have refused battle and sought strategic conditions more favorable to the effective use of Britain’s considerable, but still limited, military and economic resources. Instead, Britain joined a regional conflict, turning it into a world war; a war Britain, along with France and Russia would lose until the manpower and industrial might of the U.S. rescued them from defeat in 1918.

Britain’s human losses were staggering; one in 16 British men aged 15 to 50, or nearly 800,000, died. Paying for Britain’s victory in World War I led to a tenfold increase in Britain’s national debt. Paying the interest alone consumed half of British government spending by the mid-1920s.

Britain fought a war that cost the British people their national power, their standard of living, and, in less than 20 years, their empire. Had anyone in London’s leadership stopped to seriously examine what outcome (end-state) it was they wanted to achieve with military power (purpose) and what military capabilities (method) were at their disposal to do so, it is doubtful they would have reached the decisions they did.

PRICE OF VICTORY

The lesson is a straightforward one: When national military strategy fails to answer the questions of purpose, method and end-state, military power becomes an engine of destruction not just for its intended enemies, but for its supporting society and economy, too. Regardless of how great or how small the military commitment, if the price of victory is potentially excessive, then the use of force should be avoided. After all, the object in conflict and crisis is the same as in wrestling: to throw the opponent by weakening his foothold and upsetting his balance without risking self-exhaustion.

This strategy served President Franklin Roosevelt well during the years leading up to and including World War II. Roosevelt concluded it made no sense to challenge the German war machine on its own terms. That was a job Roosevelt left to Stalin. Instead, Roosevelt avoided German strength and moved his forces through North Africa and Italy waiting for the combined effect of massive Soviet offensives and Anglo-American bombing campaigns to weaken the Nazi grip on Europe to the point where France could be invaded. When American and allied forces stormed ashore at Normandy, the strategic outcome in Europe was effectively decided.

But even when conflict is forced upon the U.S., as it was in World War II or Korea in 1950, there are still opportunities to halt ongoing, inconclusive military operations before they consume America’s military, economic and political reserves of strength. This was Eisenhower’s rationale for ending the Korean conflict in 1953. Unfortunately, chief executives such as Eisenhower are rarer than hens’ teeth.

Before committing to military action, political and military leaders must always measure what they might gain by what they might lose. Even when wars are won and the victorious military achieves total military domination of its opponent — the case in Iraq and Afghanistan — the population of the “defeated” country may not submit to the victor’s demands, particularly if the victor insists on garrisoning his troops in the defeated population’s territory. If the foreign military presence provokes local hostility — and it usually does — the result will be more fighting, not stability. These are all good reasons for the U.S. to end conflicts on terms the defeated party can accept and disengage U.S. forces; even when the terms may not meet all of America’s security needs. What militates against this line of reasoning is the delusion of limitless national power and the unhealthy condition of national narcissism that thrives on it.

The Johnson administration’s decision to intervene with large-scale conventional forces in Vietnam rested on this delusion. Even worse, President Lyndon Johnson subscribed to the idea that whatever military action the American government initiated, it was inherently justified on moral grounds, even if, as in the case of Vietnam, the military action turned out badly for the U.S. Tragically, Johnson’s wish-based ideology made retreat from inflexible and irrational policy pronouncements impossible when they no longer made sense.

Wish-based ideology is dangerous because it imagines a world that does not really exist; the kind of world described in 1992 by the late Defense Secretary Les Aspin, where the U.S. armed forces are employed to “punish evil-doers,” or Ambassador Madeleine Albright’s idea that armed forces not engaged in fighting should export democracy-at-gunpoint. Not only has this ideological thinking and behavior since 1991 failed to create stability around the world, it has made the U.S. and its allies less secure. Understanding why means leaving the 20th century’s wars of ideology behind.

The U.S. and Europe spent most of the 20th century coping with the forces of nationalism and social change unleashed by the French Revolution and Karl Marx’s mock scientific theory of history as the systematic unfolding of a predictable, dialectical process.

The Bolsheviks, later called communists, tried to unite the two in an attempt to perfect human society through force of arms at home and abroad. Fascists were ideological opportunists who borrowed from the right and the left seeking to fuse society’s classes inside mass movements of radical nationalism.

The failed utopian projects resulting from both European ideologies turned the 20th century world into a battlefield littered with the ruins of great civilizations. Communism and fascism exalted territorial conquest and occupation; a form of total warfare that pushes violence to its utmost limits and rejects the deliberate employment of military means to achieve anything less than the opponent’s complete annihilation — what Stalin and Hitler called “victory.”

Such war aims are not limited to changing the opponent’s policy stance to create the basis for a new status quo all sides can support. The aim of total war is to replace the defeated government and its supporting society with ones subservient to the victor’s. It is the mentality that created the Warsaw Pact. This mind-set is dangerous and incongruous with the strategic interests of the American people and the realities of the 21st century. Political and military leaders who talk and think in these terms should be rejected. The disproportionate use of military force and the unlimited political aims it supports will not protect or safeguard American interests or the interests of our allies.

In the 21st century, the “total victory” construct as it equates to the establishment of Western-style governments and free-market economies subservient to the U.S. is counterproductive. In the Middle East, as well as in most of Africa, Latin America and Asia, “damage control,” not “total victory,” is the most realistic goal for U.S. national military strategy.

NEW GOALS AND DIRECTIONS

America’s experience since 2001 teaches the strategic lesson that in the 21st century, the use of American military power, even against Arab and Afghan opponents with no navies, no armies, no air forces and no air defenses, can have costly, unintended strategic consequences. Put in the language of tennis, the use of American military power since the early 1960s has resulted in a host of “unforced errors.” Far too often, national decision-making has been shaped primarily by the military capability to act, not by a rigorous application of the purpose/method/end-state strategic framework.

Decision-making of this kind explains why Operation Iraqi Freedom never had a coherent strategic design. The capability to remove Saddam Hussein was enough to justify action in the minds of American leaders who assumed that whatever happened after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces, American military and civilian contractor strength would muddle through and prevail. It’s also why U.S. forces were kept in Iraq long past the point when it was clear that the American military and contractor presence in Iraq was a needless drain on American military and economic resources.

The superficial thinking informed by a fanciful view of American history and international relations that gave birth to the occupation of Iraq is not a prescription for American prosperity and security in the 21st century. The recently annunciated military doctrine known as “persistent warfare” is a case in point.

Persistent warfare advocates the use of military power to change other peoples’ societies through American military occupation. It’s a dangerous reformulation of Thomas Jefferson’s advocacy for the bloody excesses of the French Revolution summed up in his slogan, “Until all men are free, no man is free.” Fortunately for the American people, President George Washington rejected Jefferson’s enthusiasm for an American alliance with Revolutionary France, an alliance that would have invited the destruction of the new U.S. “Twenty years’ peace, combined with our remote situation would enable us in a just cause to bid defiance to any power on earth,” Washington argued in 1796.

Washington understood the importance of making prudent choices in national military strategy at a time when the economic and political development of the United States was extremely fragile. Today, America’s economic woes along with the larger world’s unrelenting drive for prosperity creates the need for new choices in national military strategy. The most important choice Obama must make is to reject future, unnecessary, large-scale, overt military interventions in favor of conflict avoidance; a strategy of refusing battle that advances democratic principles through shared prosperity — not unwanted military occupation.

ISLAMIST TERRORISM

This strategy does not change America’s policy stance on Islamist terrorism. The exportation of Islamist terrorism against the U.S. and its allies must remain a permanent red line in U.S. national military strategy. Governments that knowingly harbor terrorist groups must reckon with the very high probability that they will be subject to attack. However, long-term, large-scale American military occupations, even to ostensibly train indigenous forces to be mirror images of ourselves, are unwise and should be avoided. Iranian interests gained prominence in Baghdad because Tehran’s agents of influence wear an indigenous face while America’s agents wear foreign uniforms and carry guns. And Iran will remain the dominant actor in Iraq so long as it maintains even the thinnest veil of concealment behind the façade of the Maliki government and its successors.

As a declaratory goal of U.S. military strategy, conflict avoidance is not merely a restatement of deterrence or a new affirmation of collective security. It is a policy stance that stems from a decent regard for the interests of others, regardless of how strange and obtuse these interests may seem to Americans. It is an explicit recognition by Washington that no one in Asia, Africa, the Middle East or Latin America wants American troops to police and govern their country, even if American troops are more capable, more honest and provide better security than their own soldiers and police. The question for Americans is how to translate the goal of conflict avoidance into operational strategy: What will the U.S. do if it is not compelled to fight?

Conflict avoidance would appear to require action on several levels. First, conflict avoidance requires that America continue to maintain the military power to make a direct assault on U.S. and allied security interests unthinkable and then pursue peaceful relations with the peoples of the world, so the danger of war involving the world’s great military powers is reduced and contained. America already has a surplus of military power for this stated purpose. American nuclear power is overwhelming, and any state or subnational group that contemplates the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. or its allies understands that nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in general have “return addresses” on them with ominous consequences for the user. American conventional military power is no less impressive when it is employed within an integrated, joint framework that exploits capabilities across service lines.

What America lacks is an efficient and effective organization of military power for the optimum use of increasingly constrained resources. More specifically, the 1947 National Security Act reached block obsolescence years ago.

Second, conflict avoidance balances the need to make the U.S. secure against the danger of making the rest of the world less so. Instead of defining events around the world as tests of American military strength and national resolve, and rather than dissipating American military resources in remote places to pass these alleged tests, the U.S. should define its role in the world without feeling compelled to demonstrate its military power. Otherwise, the U.S. runs the risk that other states, not the U.S., will dictate America’s strategic agenda.

Though as privately pro-British as his cousin President Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt had no intention of declaring war against Germany on behalf of another state, including Britain. He would not make President Woodrow Wilson’s mistake and commit millions of Americans to an ideological crusade that promised no tangible strategic benefit to the American people. Put more bluntly, Roosevelt would not commit political suicide for Churchill.

From 1939 to 1942, Roosevelt resisted Churchill’s considerable powers of persuasion, providing only the assistance Britain needed to survive and nothing more. When Hitler turned on the Soviet Union, Hitler’s closest ally until June 1941, Roosevelt reasoned he could afford the time to build up American strength while the Nazis and communists exhausted themselves in an ideological war of mutual destruction.

Even after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt declared war only on Japan. Roosevelt had no intention of declaring war on Germany if it could be avoided. It was Hitler who — in an essentially romantic gesture of solidarity with Japan unanimously opposed by the German General Staff — declared war on the U.S.

HANDLING RUSSIA

In the Caucasus, a region where political structures are closer in character to the Mafia organizations of Al Capone than Jeffersonian democracy, it makes no sense for the U.S. and its European allies to extend security guarantees. Russia’s security interests in many of the states that border it are legitimately paramount. American interests in these regions shrink to insignificance next to Russia’s.

Whereas Russia’s proximity to Georgia and Ukraine ensures Russia’s ability to effectively and efficiently apply military power, the U.S. and its allies are no more able to guarantee Georgian or Ukrainian security than Britain could guarantee Poland’s security against Nazi and Soviet military intervention in 1939. In eastern Ukraine beyond the Dnieper River and the Crimea, where the population is unambiguously Russian in language, culture and ethnicity, it would be folly to think that a guarantee of NATO military assistance would be interpreted as anything but a threat.

Third, when the U.S. confronts crises and conflicts, American armed forces should be committed on terms that favor the U.S. where the use of military power can achieve tangible strategic gains for the nation. As Churchill argued in 1909: “It would be very foolish to lose England in safeguarding Egypt. If we win the big battle in the decisive theater, we can put everything else straight afterwards. If we lose it, there will not be any afterwards.”

American military interventions have routinely violated this line of reasoning. In Vietnam, American military assistance failed for many reasons, chiefly because the Saigon government was thoroughly corrupt and indifferent to the security of its own people. All the military might at America’s disposal, whether the North Vietnamese military enjoyed sanctuaries in neighboring states or not, was never enough to rescue the incompetent South Vietnamese government from its eventual conquest by North Vietnamese communists.

America’s decision to garrison Iraq after its initial goals of removing Saddam and eliminating WMD were achieved added little, if anything, of strategic value to American security, but the presence of so many conventional American forces did present America’s enemies in the Muslim world with an opportunity they would have otherwise missed: the chance to directly attack U.S. forces, damage American military prestige and exhaust American economic resources while strengthening their own. By the beginning of 2008, the most serious unanticipated outcome of this exposure was a monthly bill of $12 billion to maintain U.S. forces in support of a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad that was and is effectively tied to Iran.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has become a co-belligerent for the various factions and peoples — Kurds, Turks, Iranians, Saudi, Sunni or Shiite Arabs — struggling for power inside Iraq. These realities explain why the Bush administration was reluctant to remove large numbers of troops from Iraq. The current status quo is not merely fragile, it will not survive the withdrawal of U.S. military power.

WHAT ABOUT AFGHANISTAN?

In consideration of what to do next about Afghanistan’s rapidly deteriorating situation, current discussions in Washington are dominated by people who advocate increasing force levels and plunging these forces into Pakistan’s tribal areas. Yet a more sober analysis suggests the real problem with Afghanistan resides in Kabul, another corrupt and ineffective government unworthy of American military support.

The key questions missing from discussions in Washington about Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001 include: Where is the legitimate government that asked for help from the U.S. in defeating the internal armed challenge to the government’s monopoly of control over the means of violence and political power? Legitimacy is not exclusively a function of elections. Legitimacy is also defined by a government’s competence to win and hold power in ways that benefit American and allied interests.

Where are the organized indigenous forces defending the legitimate government that must conduct the operations? While U.S.-provided training, equipment and advisers can significantly improve a partner state’s capabilities, there must already be an indigenous force to equip, indigenous fighters to train and a senior leadership echelon to advise. And the costs of long-term U.S. military assistance should be realistically assessed. Had any of these questions been raised and accurately addressed within the purpose/method/end-state framework, it is doubtful American military action would have followed the course it did after Sept. 11.

Treating conflict avoidance as a declared strategic goal should give pause to those in Washington who think counterinsurgency is something American military forces should seek to conduct. For outside powers intervening in other peoples’ countries as we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan, so-called counterinsurgency has not been the success story presented to the American people. Making cash payments to buy cooperation from insurgent groups to conceal a failed policy of occupation is a temporary expedient to reduce U.S. casualties, not a permanent solution for stability.

Lord Salisbury, one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers, told his colleagues in the House of Commons “the commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.” Salisbury’s words should resonate strongly with Americans today. America’s scientific-industrial base and the military power it supports give American policies and interests global influence, but the deliberate use of American military power to bring democracy to others in the world under conditions that never favored its success has actually weakened, not strengthened, American influence and economic power.

It is crucial that choices among competing resource allocations in defense be illuminated by a much clearer perception of their likely strategic impact. Strategy and geopolitics always trump ideology, and military action is not merely a feature of geopolitics and statecraft, it’s the employment of it.

The choices the new president makes among various military missions will ultimately decide what national military strategy America’s military executes. Of the many missions he must consider, open-ended missions to install democracy at gunpoint inside failed or backward societies along with unrealistic security guarantees to states and peoples of marginal strategic interest to the U.S. are missions America’s military establishment cannot and should not be asked to perform.

Today, America’s share of the total world gross national product is roughly 32 percent, substantially less than its 49 percent share of 40 years ago. Yet the U.S., like the British Empire 100 years ago, continues to lead the world in the creation of wealth, technology and military power. And, thanks to American naval and aerospace supremacy, America retains the strategic advantage of striking when and where its government dictates, much as Britain did before World War I.

But like Britain’s resources in 1914, American resources today are not unlimited. Years of easy tactical military victories over weak and incapable nation-state opponents in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq have created the illusion of limitless American military power. This illusion assisted the Bush administration and its generals in frustrating demands from Congress for accountability; allowing politicians and generals to define failure as success and to spend money without any enduring strategic framework relating military power to attainable strategic goals.

The result is an unnecessarily large defense budget of more than $700 billion and military thinking that seeks to reinvigorate the economically disastrous policies of territorial imperialism. Unchecked, the combination of these misguided policies will increase the likelihood the U.S. follows the path of Britain’s decline in the 20th century. Though Britain was not defeated militarily in World War I, it squandered its blood and treasure on a self-defeating war with Germany in 1914 along with a host of imperial experiments in the aftermath of World War I, all of which were political, military and economic disasters for the British people. A strategy of refusing battle that routinely answers the questions of purpose, method and end-state in the conduct of military operations is the best way for the U.S. to avoid following in the footsteps of the British Empire into ruin. AFJ

COL. DOUGLAS MacGREGOR (Ret.) is a retired Army colonel. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect those of the Defense Department or the U.S. government....

Sequence of coup-d’états by narco cartels supervised by US intelligence agencies, widespread....

2012-01-19T05:28:00.000-08:00

Sequence of coup-d’états by narco cartels supervised by US intelligence agencies, will be widespread in Central& South Asia and MENA....

By ORIENTAL REVIEW

For the last few years the incumbent US administration was getting adhered to a new, more sophisticated principle in foreign policy: to act overseas by means of its allies and to promote American initiatives as multilateral through the international organizations.

Thus, the war against Libya was unleashed by France, and the US was carrying out merely ‘supportive’ functions. The Modern Silk Road project is initiated by Turkey while the United States is a “neutral but enthusiastic supporter” [1]. The Arab League is churning out petitions to overthrow legitimate, but undesired leaders. In October 2011 the UN resolution against Syria was proposed by France, UK, Germany and Portugal, and the US was just ‘seconding’ it together with Colombia, Nigeria, Gabon and Bosnia. This is indeed a smarter and subtle tactics if compared with the cowboy pounces of the previous administration: now the wastes and risks lay on the others. A comprehensive theoretical backing for such approach was made by Joseph Parent from the University of Miami and Paul MacDonald from the Wellesley College in their latest article in the Foreign Affairs [2].

The United Nations Organization, the major mechanism for conflict management, is being turned into multilateral extension of the State Department aimed to legitimize its one-side initiatives internationally. Washington is also trying to get use of separate UN bodies in American interests. The IAEA for example serves to pressure Iran. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime is an instrument to interfere into post-Soviet Central Asia. The Hague-based International Criminal Court, another UN institution created in 2002 to fight crimes against humanity, serves to prosecute the leaders of the states who have refused to enter global matrix designed by the US strategists. Ironically, the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the ICC was never ratified and was ‘unsigned’ by the US in 2002. Most recently UNESCO, another UN body located in Geneva, was financially ‘punished’ by the United States and several allies for admittance of Palestine into this organization.

Another favorite American maneuver is to facilitate ‘regional’ organizations thousands of miles away from its borders being joined by the US as a member or observer. The Washington curators used to repeat to local authorities: ‘It is your idea, your structure, we are just assisting you…’, but at the same time obtain efficient mechanisms and abundant opportunities to influence remote domains.

As a pretext to create such mechanisms the United States prefers raising the flag of ‘cooperation in the name of common interests’. Now, when the standard bugaboo of international terrorism turns politically unsuitable (since quite recently the global elites decided to use the blind Islamist underground as an agent of regression for the third world), they have returned to play off a card of ‘anti-narcotic cooperation’, this time in post-Soviet Central Asia. The paradox of argumentation applied to justify the deeper US penetration into this region still under strong Russian influence is that it should be done ‘to dispel Russian concerns over the consequences of withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan’. If the United States is so much concerned about the drug trafficking in Central Asia, why did they refuse to fight it inside Afghanistan where they had 140 thousand-strong contingent? They still maintain clandestine contacts with a number of ‘field commanders’ who are ‘securing’ US/NATO convoys and drug-trafficking routes at the same time. Nevertheless they prefer to wait until the stuff is spread throughout thousands of locations in Central Asia and then to establish operational, training and intelligence-sharing cooperation with the states subject to heroin attack. One of such mechanisms is the Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Centre for Combating Illicit Trafficking of Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and their Precursors (CARICC) launched in 2009 under the aegis of UNODC. The institution uniting several anti-narcotics agencies of post-Soviet Central Asian states, is funded by a number of NATO countries (US, UK, Italy, Canada, Turkey, France, Czech Republic), Finland and Luxemburg, all investing $15,4 million into the project. These states plus Afghanistan and Pakistan have acquired the status of observers and have access to all data bases of the Centre. According to the documents revealed by Wikileaks, CARICC mandate might be ‘broadened to encompass all transnational crime rather than just counter-narcotics’.

Interestingly, after the failure of US attempts to channel several CARICC training programs through NATO-Russia Council or OSCE (Washington tried not to publicize the fact that US CENTCOM was among the key sponsors of these programs), Assistant Secretary William Brownfield, the head of the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has announced a new Central Asian Counternarcotics Initiative, (CACI) in June 2011. This initiative would apparently lead to the creation of elite special units similar to notorious CIA-backed death squads that committed a number of resonant extrajudicial killings in Latin America and other countries during the Cold war. Mr. Brownfield’s background and his Central Asian agenda were perfectly analyzed by Nil Nikandrov quite recently [3].

The Canadian political analyst Peter Dale Scott has concluded in his famous book ‘American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan’ that the increase of drug trafficking occurs because of, and not despite of, American efforts. He is seconded by another well-known researcher of the CIA involvement into drug trade, Alfred McCoy, who stated that where and when the United States conduct ‘a war against narcotics’, the production of stuff usually increases [4].

Those in Central Asia who are ready to play American game should be aware of their destiny. It is equal to one of several Central American countries in 1980s: the role of cannon-fodder on service of American interests, years of bloody civil wars, and backwardness for decades. Do their leaders understand the rules of the game they are being involved? Do they want the same future as it is the present in Afghanistan, where the nation is torn by both internal extremism and foreign occupation? The point of non-turn is still not crossed. The sequence of coup-d’états carried out by narco cartels supervised by the US intelligence agencies, widespread massacres and foreign occupation are a likely, but not imperative future for Central Asia.

Notes:

1. Andrew Kuchins, Thomas Sanderson, David Gordon: The Northern Distribution Network and the Modern Silk Road – Planning for Afghanistan’s Future // Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). December 2009. P.3. http://csis.org/files/publication/091217_Kuchins_NorthernDistNet_Web.pdf

2. Joseph M. Parent, Paul K. MacDonald: The Wisdom of Retrenchment – America Must Cut Back to Move Forward // Foreign Affairs. November/December 2011.

3. Nil Nikandrov: US Drug War Against Russia Waged From the Asian Foothold, Strategic Culture Foundation, December 10, 2011.

4. Alfred W. McCoy The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Lawrence Hill Books, Second revised edition. 2003. P. 449.

In A Replay of Falklands War, Zioconned Britain Would Lose....

2012-01-19T05:20:00.001-08:00

In A Replay of Falklands War, Zioconned Britain Would Lose badly....

David Cameron accused Argentina of “colonialism” towards the Falklands and warned Britain was ready to defend them, stoking tensions over the islands 30 years after they sparked a war.

Speaking to the House of Commons on Wednesday, Cameron condemned Argentina’s increasingly strong rhetoric over the British-held South Atlantic archipelago, which Buenos Aires claims as its own.

He revealed that Britain’s National Security Council had met on Tuesday to review its military plans for the islands, saying he was “determined we should make sure that our defences and everything else is in order”.

“The key point is we support the Falkland Islanders’ right to self-determination,” Cameron told lawmakers, referring to the 3,000 residents of the remote territory.

“What the Argentinians have been saying recently, I would argue, is actually far more like colonialism because these people want to remain British and the Argentinians want them to do something else.”

His comments sparked a furious response in Argentina, with Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo telling reporters they were “totally offensive, especially coming from Great Britain”.

Foreign Minister Hector Timerman added that “obviously at a time when there are only remnants of colonialism, Great Britain, in an imperial decline, decides to rewrite history”, in remarks to the official Telam news agency.

The heated exchange was the latest in a long dispute over the Falklands, internally self-governing islands located 400 nautical miles from Argentina.

They have been held by Britain since 1833 but are still claimed by Argentina, where they are known as the Malvinas, despite its defeat in the 74-day war fought between the two countries in 1982.

Tensions began rising in 2010, when London authorised oil prospecting around the islands, and have spiralled in recent weeks as Argentina’s neighbours joined the dispute.

In December, South American trading bloc Mercosur agreed to close its ports to ships flying the Falklands flag.

And during British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s first official visit to Brazil on Wednesday, his counterpart, Antonio Patriota, made clear that all Latin American nations backed Argentina’s claim.

The imminent deployment to the Falklands of Prince William, the second in line to the British throne who works as a search and rescue pilot with the Royal Air Force (RAF), is unlikely to calm the waters.

Although the RAF insists his six-week visit is a routine mission, Argentina has said it is a “provocative act”.

The National Security Council meeting was sparked by the 30th anniversary of Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands in April, a government spokeswoman said, and concluded that “we have the right strategy in place” to defend the islands.

But concerns have been raised that Britain’s military would struggle to defend the islands from another Argentine attack following deep cuts in its defence budget.

Admiral Sandy Woodward, the commander of the naval task force that took back the islands in 1982, warned last year that the lack of an aircraft carrier and weakening US support for British sovereignty left them close to indefensible....

The Zioconned US-GCC fatal attractions.....

2012-01-19T02:45:00.000-08:00

The Zioconned US-GCC fatal attractions.....
By Pepe Escobar

There's no way to understand the larger-than-life United States-Iran psychodrama, the Western push for regime change in both Syria and Iran, and the trials and tribulations of the Arab Spring(s) - now mired in perpetual winter - without a close look at the fatal attraction between Washington and the GCC. [1]

GCC stands for Gulf Cooperation Council, the club of six wealthy Persian Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates - UAE), founded in 1981 and which in no time configured as the prime strategic US backyard for the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, for the long-drawn battle in the New Great Game in Eurasia, and also as the headquarters for "containing" Iran.

The US Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain and Central Command's forward headquarters is based in Qatar; Centcom polices no less than 27 countries from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia - what the Pentagon until recently defined as "the arc of instability". In sum: the GCC is like a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf magnified to Star Trek proportions.

I prefer to refer to the GCC as the Gulf Counter-revolution Club - due to its sterling performance in suppressing democracy in the Arab world, even before Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia over a year ago.

Cueing to Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, the Rosebud inside the GCC is that the House of Saud sells its oil only in US dollars - thus the pre-eminence of the petrodollar - and in exchange benefits from massive, unconditional US military and political support. Moreover the Saudis prevent the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) - after all they're the world's largest oil producer - to price and sell oil in a basket of currencies. These rivers of petrodollars then flow into US equities and Treasury bonds.

For decades virtually the whole planet has been held hostage to this fatal attraction. Until now.

Gimme all your toys
The GCC, essentially, is the core of the empire in the Arab world. Yes, it's essentially about oil; the GCC will be responsible for over 25% of global oil production within the next few decades. Their tiny ruling classes - from monarchies to business associates - function as a crucial annex to the mighty projection of US power all across the Middle East and beyond.

That explains, among other things, why in October last year Washington closed a juicy US$67 billion deal - the largest bilateral deal in US history - to supply the House of Saud with a prime collection of brand new F-15s, Black Hawks, Apaches, bunker-buster bombs, Patriot-2 missiles and warships.

It explains why Washington will shower the UAE with thousands of bunker-buster bombs, and Oman with Stinger missiles. Not to mention another juicy mega-deal - worth $53 billion - with Bahrain, which has not gone through yet because human-rights associations - to their credit - have fiercely denounced it.

And there's the redeployment - or, in Pentagon speak, "repositioning" - of 15,000 US troops from Iraq to Kuwait.

The rationale for all this weaponized orgy is provided by the usual suspect logic; the necessity of building a "coalition of the willing" to "counter Iran". Why Iran? Half-jokingly, because Iran is not part of the GCC - that is, a pliable US satrapy, just like in those jolly good times under the shah.

Adam Hanieh, professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and author of Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States has been one of very few global analysts trying to decode the centrality of the GCC in the imperial strategy. In a crucial interview, Hanieh outlines all one needs to know. And it's not pretty. [2]

As Asia Times Online has extensively documented, the Arab Spring was virtually dead on arrival in the GCC. In Oman, Sultan Qaboos basically distributed loads of cash. In Saudi Arabia, there was fierce pre-emption and sustained hardcore repression in the Shi'ite majority Eastern province, close to Bahrain, where the oil is.

And in Bahrain itself, there was not only hardcore repression - with documented detention and torture of hundreds of pro-democracy protesters - but an outright invasion by Saudi and UAE troops.

The invasion may have given the GCC the sweet taste of an actual physical expansion. Morocco and Jordan - although not exactly in the Gulf as basic geography rules - were "invited" to be part of the wealthy club; after all they are duly reactionary Sunni monarchies, not "decadent" secular Arab republics like Libya and Syria.

A fair question is why the Arab Spring has not touched Jordan - since the same socioeconomic volcano that convulsed Tunisia and Egypt is also active. The key part of the answer is that the GCC - even more than Washington, European capitals and Israel - is terrified that the Hashemite throne might fall.

For immense GCC wealth it's a piece of cake to control Jordan - a small country, where most of the population is actually Palestinian, with a tiny organized opposition (no wonder; Jordanian intelligence imprisoned or killed any dissidence). For the GCC that's pocket money compared to the billions of dollars earmarked for Egypt and Tunisia so they don't dare becoming "too" democratic.

There was no way for the GCC other than to become Counter-revolution Central after the initial democracy rush in North Africa. As Hanieh emphatically stresses, the ruling autocrats in the Gulf couldn't care less about the impoverished masses in MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa).

The culmination of this process has been the birth of a new geopolitical monster - NATOGCC. That embodies the key role of Qatar and the UAE in the NATO invasion - and destruction - of Libya. Libya was an all-out GCC special - from actual cash and weapons dispensed to the "rebels" to actual operatives, intelligence and last but not least, political legitimacy, via that fake Arab League vote legitimizing a no-fly zone vote at the United Nations (only nine out of 22 Arab League members voted yes, and six of them were GCC; the other three were bought, and Syria and Algeria were against it).

And now a tragic joke reigns supreme; the GCC trying to intervene and actually financing hardcore Sunni fundamentalists in Syria under the cover of helping pro-democracy protesters. When the meek UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon urges President Bashar al-Assad to stop the violence against Syrian protesters and says the time of dynasties and one-man rule in the Arab world is coming to an end, obviously he believes the GCC is a colony in one of Saturn's rings.

After the NATOGCC win in Libya, no wonder they are on a roll. The GCC strategy of regime change in Syria is the preferred way to weaken Iran and the so-called Shi'ite crescent - a fiction jointly concocted during the George W Bush administration by the Playstation king of Jordan and the House of Saud.

And that leads to an inevitable question; what are two of the top BRICS - Russia and China - doing about all this?

Enter the dragon
The immensely powerful secretary of the National Security Council and former head of the FSB (the successor to the KGB), Nikolai Patrushev - a frequent visitor to Iran - has already warned of a "real danger" of a US strike on Iran; the US, he says, is "trying to turn Tehran from an enemy into a supportive partner, and to achieve this, to change the current regime by whatever means".

Yet for Russia, regime change in Iran is a no-no. Russia's deputy prime minister and former envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has already stated, unequivocally, "Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security."

So on one side we have Washington, NATO, Israel and the GCC. Not exactly an "international community", as the spin goes. And on the other side, we have Iran, Syria, a fed-up-with-Washington Pakistan, Russia, China, and scores of countries linked to the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

It's China's position in relation to the GCC that is a source of endless fascination. China's Premier Wen Jiabao has just visited the three key GCC members - Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar.

Imagine Wen Jiabao telling Crown Prince Nayef (King Abdullah's half-brother) in Riyadh that Beijing wants "strong and reputable" Chinese companies to invest fortunes in ports, railways and infrastructure development in Saudi Arabia - part of their increased cooperation "in the face of changeable and complicated regional and international trends". Imagine Nayef salivating over his mighty moustache, stressing the House of Saud is indeed willing to "expand cooperation" in energy and infrastructure.

What adds spice to the mix is that Beijing also happens to hold a strategic relationship with Iran - and enjoys a healthy trading relationship with Syria. So as far as the Middle East and Central Asia are concerned, Beijing is betting - unlike the Pentagon - on a true "arc of stability".

As Xinhua has put it in its unrivalled all-inclusive style, what matters for the Beijing leadership is for China and Southwest and Central Asia to take "full advantage of their respective strengths and jointly strive for common development". How come no one in Washington can ever come up with something as simple as this?

It's true that whoever dominates the GCC - with weapons and political support - projects power globally. The GCC has been absolutely key for US hegemony within what Immanuel Wallerstein defines as the world system.

Yet let's take a look at the numbers. Since last year Saudi Arabia is exporting more oil to China than to the US. This is part of an inexorable process of GCC energy and commodity exports moving to Asia.

By next year foreign assets held by the GCC could reach $3.8 trillion with oil at $70 a barrel. With all that non-stop "tension" in the Persian Gulf, there's no reason to believe oil will be below $100 in the foreseeable future. In this case GCC foreign assets could reach a staggering $5.7 trillion - that's 160% more than in pre-crisis 2008, and over $1 trillion more than China's foreign assets.

At the same time, China will be increasingly doing more business with the GCC. The GCC is increasingly importing more from Asia - although the top source of imports is still the European Union. Meanwhile, US-GCC trade is dropping. By 2025, China will be importing three times more oil from the GCC than the US. No wonder the House of Saud - to put it mildly - is terribly excited about Beijing.

So for the moment we have the pre-eminence of NATOGCC military, and USGCC geopolitically. But sooner rather than later Beijing may approach the House of Saud and quietly whisper, "Why don't you sell me your oil in yuan?" Just like China buying Iranian oil and gas with yuan. Petroyuan, anyone? Now that's an entirely new Star Trek.

Notes
1. See The myth of an isolated Iran Asia Times Online, January 19.

2. See here.

Mossad plays the Zioconned U.S.A. and Thailand like an old fiddle in phony "terror" threat alert in Thailand....

2012-01-18T08:25:00.001-08:00

Mossad plays the Zioconned U.S.A. and Thailand like an old fiddle in phony "terror" threat alert in Thailand....

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

January , 2012 -- Mossad fakes out U.S. intelligence on "Hezbollah" threat in Thailand...

WMR's sources in Bangkok, the Thai capital, report that the recent U.S. and Israeli alert that a Lebanese man, said to have links with Hezbollah, was planning a terrorist attack in Thailand, is the result of Israel and its diamond business attempting to shit out Lebanese Shi'ite competitors who are in Thailand and are competing with the Israelis for access to Southeast Asian gems. Israeli diamond merchants also compete with Lebanese Shi'ites for access to diamonds and other precious gems in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Thai police arrested Atris Hussein, a Swedish national of Lebanese descent who was traveling on a Swedish passport. Police later discovered urea and ammonium nitrate in a building known to Hussein in the town of Samut Sakhon, near Bangkok. Hussein said the materials were intended for use in a third country, possibly Cambodia or Burma, where such agricultural-grade explosives are used to extract diamonds and other rare gems. Thai police said they were looking for an accomplice of Hussein. In tandem, the United States and Israel warned that "foreign terrorists" were planning attacks in Thailand "in the near future." WMR Thai sources say the threat is completely and utterly bogus....

Our sources in Bangkok say that the United States and the Thai government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra were misled by Israel in an attempt to put Thailand and surrounding Southeast Asian nations, known to have diamond and other rare gem deposits, off limits to Lebanese Shi'ite competitors. The "intelligence" provided about Hussein and Hezbollah to Thailand and the United States came from Mossad.... In Thailand, Bangkok's Chabad House of Lubavitch Jews was at the heart of spinning the Hezbollah "threat" in Thailand. Chabad Houses around the world serve as virtual safe houses for Israeli intelligence operatives. The Chabad Houses are also involved in the smuggling of weapons, drugs, diamonds and other precious gems, indentured servitude prostitutes, and human organs....

The Israeli-manufactured Hezbollah "threat" in Thailand comes at the same time that Britain's ambassador to Thailand, Asif Ahmad, who reportedly has ties to MI-6 run Islamist radical groups in Pakistan and elsewhere, has suggested an "R2P" program for southern Thailand, where a Muslim ethnic Malay insurgency has been ongoing for decades. Asif is believed to maintain strong links to the government of Qatar, which has been at the forefront of Arab states that are behind R2P interventions in Libya and Syria. It is believed in Thailand that Britain, Israel, and the United States would like to establish a Kosovo-style provisionally-independent Muslim-governed state in southern Thailand's Patani region, with the Patani United Liberation Organization (PULO), the largest of the separatist groups, becoming the governing party. PULO would enjoy the same support from the West as afforded to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo.

PULO and other Patani separatists wear black uniforms and are well-financed. It is believed that much of the financing of the Patani separatists now comes from Qatar in anticipation of an "Arab Spring" R2P operation in southern Thailand. Prime Minister Yingluck is attempting to implement a program of national reconciliation with the southern Muslims and the victims of the 2010 Bangkok massacre by the previous military-backed government but the interference of the Israelis, British, Americans, Qataris, and Saudis threaten her program.

In the past, PULO received much of its funding from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The rebel group was founded in 1968 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia with the blessing and support of the Saudi government. In 1991, the various Patani rebel groups, including those more radical and violent than PULO, united to form the United Front for the Independence of Pattani" or "Bersatu." Younger members of the group have received Wahhabi Salafist religious training in madrassas in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the UAE.

Although the Thai government has conducted secret peace negotiations with all the coalition members of Bersatu in Bahrain, Stockholm, and other cities, no substantive progress has resulted. There is one radical Islamist group -- Runda Kumpalan Kecil (RKK), or “Small Patrol Group,” -- which continues to conduct attacks against Thai government targets in the south. RKK and other militant Patani groups allegedly receive terrorist support from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Britain. The Patani groups carefully avoid striking targets such as bars, night clubs, and American iconic businesses like McDonald's and Starbucks, where Western and Arab Middle Eastern tourists gather, especially in Phuket.

By suggesting that Hezbollah was behind an attempted terrorist attack in Thailand, the Qataris and Saudis are trying to eliminate Shi'ite influence in Thailand in order to maintain the Salafist control of Thai Muslim groups in the south. Israel benefits by eliminating Lebanese Shi'ite influence in the diamond and other rare gem trade in the country, and hide the barbaric assassinations of the Infamous White House Murder INC, in the Levant and Worldwide.....

The myth of an "isolated' Iran....

2012-01-18T07:14:00.000-08:00

The myth of an "isolated' Iran....
By Pepe Escobar

Introduction by Tom Engelhardt
These days, with a crisis atmosphere growing in the Persian Gulf, a little history lesson about the United States and Iran might be just what the doctor ordered. Here, then, are a few high- (or low-) lights from their relationship over the last half-century-plus:

Summer 1953: The Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence hatch a plot for a coup that overthrows a democratically elected government in Iran intent on nationalizing that country's oil industry. In its place, they put an autocrat, the young Shah of Iran, and his soon-to-be feared secret police.

He runs the country as his repressive fiefdom for a quarter-century, becoming Washington's "bulwark" in the Persian Gulf - until overthrown in 1979 by a home-grown revolutionary movement, which ushers in the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the mullahs. While Khomeini & Co were hardly Washington's men, thanks to that 1953 coup they were, in a sense, its own political offspring.

In other words, the fatal decision to overthrow a popular democratic government shaped the Iranian world Washington now loathes, and even then oil was at the bottom of things.

1967: Under the US "Atoms for Peace" program, started in the 1950s by president Dwight D Eisenhower, the shah is allowed to buy a five-megawatt, light-water type research reactor for Tehran (which - call it irony - is still playing a role in the dispute over the Iranian nuclear program).

Defense Department officials did worry at the time that the shah might use the "peaceful atom" as a basis for a future weapons program or that nuclear materials might fall into the wrong hands. "An aggressive successor to the shah," went a 1974 Pentagon memo, "might consider nuclear weapons the final item needed to establish Iran's complete military dominance of the region." But that didn't stop them from aiding and abetting the creation of an Iranian nuclear program.

The shah, like his Islamic successors, argued that such a program was Iran's national "right" and dreamed of a country that would get significant portions of its electricity from a string of nuclear plants. As a 1970s ad by a group of American power companies put the matter: "The Shah of Iran is sitting on top of one of the largest reservoirs of oil in the world. Yet he's building two nuclear plants and planning two more to provide electricity for his country. He knows the oil is running out - and time with it." In other words, the US nuclear program was the genesis for the Iranian one that Washington now so despises.

September 1980: Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein launches a war of aggression against Khomeini's Iran. In the early 1980s, he becomes Washington's man, our "bulwark" in the Persian Gulf, and we offer him our hand - and also "detailed information" on Iranian deployments and tactical planning that help him use his chemical weapons more effectively against the Iranian military.

Oh, and just to make sure things turn out really, really well, the Ronald Reagan administration also decides to sell missiles and other arms to Khomeini's Iran on the sly, part of what became known as the "Iran-Contra Affair" and which almost brings down the president and his men. Success!

March 2003: Saddam Hussein is, by now, no longer our man in Baghdad but a new "Hitler" who, top Washington officials claim, undoubtedly has a nuclear weapons program that could someday leave mushroom clouds rising over US cities. So the George W Bush administration launches a war of aggression against Iraq, which like Iran just happens to - in the words of deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz - "float on a sea of oil".

(Bush officials hope, in the wake of a "cakewalk" of a war to revive that country's oil industry, to privatize it, and use it to destroy the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, driving down the price of oil on world markets.) Nine years later, a Shi'ite government is in power in Baghdad closely allied with Tehran, which has gained regional strength and influence thanks to the disastrous US occupation.

So call it an unblemished record of a kind not easy to find. In more than 50 years, America's leaders have never made a move in Iran (or near it) that didn't lead to unexpected and unpleasant blowback. Now, another administration in Washington, after years of what can only be called a covert war against Iran, is preparing yet another set of clever maneuvers - this time sanctions against Iran's central bank meant to cripple the country's oil industry and crack open the economy followed by no one knows what.

And honestly, I mean, really, given past history, what could possibly go wrong? Regime change in Iran? It's bound to be a slam dunk and if you don't believe it, check out Pepe Escobar below, that fabulous peripatetic reporter for Asia Times Online and TomDispatch regular.

Let's start with red lines. Here it is, Washington's ultimate red line, straight from the lion's mouth. Only last week Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said of the Iranians, "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us."

How strange, the way those red lines continue to retreat. Once upon a time, the red line for Washington was "enrichment" of uranium. Now, it's evidently an actual nuclear weapon that can be brandished. Keep in mind that, since 2005, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stressed that his country is not seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran from the US Intelligence Community has similarly stressed that Iran is not, in fact, developing a nuclear weapon (as opposed to the breakout capacity to build one someday).

What if, however, there is no "red line", but something completely different? Call it the petrodollar line.

Banking on sanctions?
Let's start here: In December 2011, impervious to dire consequences for the global economy, the US Congress - under all the usual pressures from the Israel lobby (not that it needs them) - foisted a mandatory sanctions package on the Barack Obama administration (100 to 0 in the Senate and with only 12 "no" votes in the House). Starting in June, the US will have to sanction any third-country banks and companies dealing with Iran's central bank, which is meant to cripple that country's oil sales. (Congress did allow for some "exemptions.")

The ultimate target? Regime change - what else? - in Tehran. The proverbial anonymous US official admitted as much in the Washington Post, and that paper printed the comment. ("The goal of the US and other sanctions against Iran is regime collapse, a senior US intelligence official said, offering the clearest indication yet that the Obama administration is at least as intent on unseating Iran's government as it is on engaging with it.") But oops! The newspaper then had to revise the passage to eliminate that embarrassingly on-target quote. Undoubtedly, this "red line" came too close to the truth for comfort.

Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen believed that only a monster shock-and-awe-style event, totally humiliating the leadership in Tehran, would lead to genuine regime change - and he was hardly alone. Advocates of actions ranging from air strikes to invasion (whether by the US, Israel, or some combination of the two) have been legion in neo-con Washington.

Yet anyone remotely familiar with Iran knows that such an attack would rally the population behind Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. In those circumstances, the deep aversion of many Iranians to the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat would matter little.

Besides, even the Iranian opposition supports a peaceful nuclear program. It's a matter of national pride.

Iranian intellectuals, far more familiar with Persian smoke and mirrors than ideologues in Washington, totally debunk any war scenarios. They stress that the Tehran regime, adept in the arts of Persian shadow play, has no intention of provoking an attack that could lead to its obliteration.

On their part, whether correctly or not, Tehran strategists assume that Washington will prove unable to launch yet one more war in the Greater Middle East, especially one that could lead to staggering collateral damage for the world economy.

In the meantime, Washington's expectations that a harsh sanctions regime might make the Iranians give ground, if not go down, may prove to be a chimera. Washington spin has been focused on the supposedly disastrous mega-devaluation of the Iranian currency, the rial, in the face of the new sanctions.

Unfortunately for the fans of Iranian economic collapse, Professor Djavad Salehi-Isfahani has laid out in elaborate detail the long-term nature of this process, which Iranian economists have more than welcomed. After all, it will boost Iran's non-oil exports and help local industry in competition with cheap Chinese imports. In sum: a devalued rial stands a reasonable chance of actually reducing unemployment in Iran.

More connected than Google
Though few in the US have noticed, Iran is not exactly "isolated", though Washington might wish it. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has become a frequent flyer to Tehran. And he's a Johnny-come-lately compared to Russia's national security chief Nikolai Patrushev, who only recently warned the Israelis not to push the US to attack Iran.

Add in as well US ally and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. At a loya jirga (grand council) in late 2011, in front of 2,000 tribal leaders, he stressed that Kabul was planning to get even closer to Tehran.

On that crucial Eurasian chessboard, Pipelineistan, the Iran-Pakistan (IP) natural gas pipeline - much to Washington's distress - is now a go. Pakistan badly needs energy and its leadership has clearly decided that it's unwilling to wait forever and a day for Washington's eternal pet project - the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline - to traverse Talibanistan.

Even Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu recently visited Tehran, though his country's relationship with Iran has grown ever edgier. After all, energy overrules threats in the region. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member Turkey is already involved in covert ops in Syria, allied with hardcore fundamentalist Sunnis in Iraq, and - in a remarkable volte-face in the wake of the Arab Spring(s) - has traded in an Ankara-Tehran-Damascus axis for an Ankara-Riyadh-Doha one.

It is even planning on hosting components of Washington's long-planned missile defense system, targeted at Iran.

All this from a country with a Davutoglu-coined foreign policy of "zero problems with our neighbors". Still, the needs of Pipelineistan do set the heart racing. Turkey is desperate for access to Iran's energy resources, and if Iranian natural gas ever reaches Western Europe - something the Europeans are desperately eager for - Turkey will be the privileged transit country. Turkey's leaders have already signaled their rejection of further US sanctions against Iranian oil.

And speaking of connections, last week there was that spectacular diplomatic coup de th้โtre, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's Latin American tour. US right-wingers may harp on a Tehran-Caracas axis of evil - supposedly promoting "terror" across Latin America as a springboard for future attacks on the northern superpower - but back in real life, another kind of truth lurks.

All these years later, Washington is still unable to digest the idea that it has lost control over, or even influence in, those two regional powers over which it once exercised unmitigated imperial hegemony.

Add to this the wall of mistrust that has only solidified since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Mix in a new, mostly sovereign Latin America pushing for integration not only via left-wing governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador but through regional powers Brazil and Argentina. Stir and you get photo ops like Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez saluting Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

Washington continues to push a vision of a world from which Iran has been radically disconnected. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland is typical in saying recently, "Iran can remain in international isolation." As it happens, though, she needs to get her facts straight.

"Isolated" Iran has $4 billion in joint projects with Venezuela including, crucially, a bank (as with Ecuador, it has dozens of planned projects from building power plants to, once again, banking). That has led the Israel-first crowd in Washington to vociferously demand that sanctions be slapped on Venezuela. Only problem: how would the US pay for its crucial Venezuelan oil imports then?

Much was made in the US press of the fact that Ahmadinejad did not visit Brazil on this jaunt through Latin America, but diplomatically Tehran and Brasilia remain in sync. When it comes to the nuclear dossier in particular, Brazil's history leaves its leaders sympathetic.

After all, that country developed - and then dropped - a nuclear weapons program. In May 2010, Brazil and Turkey brokered a uranium-swap agreement for Iran that might have cleared the decks on the US-Iranian nuclear imbroglio. It was, however, immediately sabotaged by Washington. A key member of the BRICS, the club of top emerging economies, [1] Brasilia is completely opposed to the US sanctions/embargo strategy.

So Iran may be "isolated" from the United States and Western Europe, but from the BRICS to NAM (the 120 member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement), it has the majority of the global South on its side. And then there are those staunch Washington allies, Japan and South Korea, now pleading for exemptions from the coming boycott/embargo of Iran's central bank.

No wonder, because these unilateral US sanctions are also aimed at Asia. After all, China, India, Japan, and South Korea together buy no less than 62% of Iran's oil exports.

With trademark Asian politesse, Japan's Finance Minister Jun Azumi let Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner know just what a problem Washington is creating for Tokyo, which relies on Iran for 10% of its oil needs. It is pledging to at least modestly "reduce" that share "as soon as possible" in order to get a Washington exemption from those sanctions, but don't hold your breath. South Korea has already announced that it will buy 10% of its oil needs from Iran in 2012.

Silk Road redux
Most important of all, "isolated" Iran happens to be a supreme matter of national security for China, which has already rejected the latest Washington sanctions without a blink. Westerners seem to forget that the Middle Kingdom and Persia have been doing business for almost two millennia. (Does "Silk Road" ring a bell?)

The Chinese have already clinched a juicy deal for the development of Iran's largest oil field, Yadavaran. There's also the matter of the delivery of Caspian Sea oil from Iran through a pipeline stretching from Kazakhstan to Western China. In fact, Iran already supplies no less than 15% of China's oil and natural gas. It is now more crucial to China, energy-wise, than the House of Saud is to the US, which imports 11% of its oil from Saudi Arabia.

In fact, China may be the true winner from Washington's new sanctions, because it is likely to get its oil and gas at a lower price as the Iranians grow ever more dependent on the China market. At this moment, in fact, the two countries are in the middle of a complex negotiation on the pricing of Iranian oil, and the Chinese have actually been ratcheting up the pressure by slightly cutting back on energy purchases.

But all this should be concluded by March, at least two months before the latest round of US sanctions go into effect, according to experts in Beijing. In the end, the Chinese will certainly buy much more Iranian gas than oil, but Iran will still remain its third biggest oil supplier, right after Saudi Arabia and Angola.

As for other effects of the new sanctions on China, don't count on them. Chinese businesses in Iran are building cars, fiber optics networks, and expanding the Tehran subway. Two-way trade is at $30 billion now and expected to hit $50 billion in 2015. Chinese businesses will find a way around the banking problems the new sanctions impose.

Russia is another key supporter of "isolated" Iran. It has opposed stronger sanctions either via the United Nations or through the Washington-approved package that targets Iran's central bank. In fact, it favors a rollback of the existing UN sanctions and has also been at work on an alternative plan that could, at least theoretically, lead to a face-saving nuclear deal for everyone.

On the nuclear front, Tehran has expressed a willingness to compromise with Washington along the lines of the plan Brazil and Turkey suggested and Washington deep-sixed in 2010. Since it is now so much clearer that, for Washington - certainly for congress - the nuclear issue is secondary to regime change, any new negotiations are bound to prove excruciatingly painful.

This is especially true now that the leaders of the European Union have managed to remove themselves from a future negotiating table by shooting themselves in their Ferragamo-clad feet. In typical fashion, they have meekly followed Washington's lead in implementing an Iranian oil embargo. As a senior EU official told National Iranian American Council President Trita Parsi, and as EU diplomats have assured me in no uncertain terms, they fear this might prove to be the last step short of outright war.

Meanwhile, a team of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors has just visited Iran. The IAEA is supervising all things nuclear in Iran, including its new uranium-enrichment plant at Fordow, near the holy city of Qom, with full production starting in June. The IAEA is positive: no bomb-making is involved. Nonetheless, Washington (and the Israelis) continue to act as though it's only a matter of time - and not much of it at that.

Follow the money
That Iranian isolation theme only gets weaker when one learns that the country is dumping the dollar in its trade with Russia for rials and rubles - a similar move to ones already made in its trade with China and Japan. As for India, an economic powerhouse in the neighborhood, its leaders also refuse to stop buying Iranian oil, a trade that, in the long run, is similarly unlikely to be conducted in dollars.

India is already using the yuan with China, as Russia and China have been trading in rubles and yuan for more than a year, as Japan and China are promoting direct trading in yen and yuan. As for Iran and China, all new trade and joint investments will be settled in yuan and rial.

Translation, if any was needed: in the near future, with the Europeans out of the mix, virtually none of Iran's oil will be traded in dollars.

Moreover, three BRICS members (Russia, India and China) allied with Iran are major holders (and producers) of gold. Their complex trade ties won't be affected by the whims of a US Congress. In fact, when the developing world looks at the profound crisis in the Atlanticist West, what they see is massive US debt, the Fed printing money as if there's no tomorrow, lots of "quantitative easing", and of course the Eurozone shaking to its very foundations.

Follow the money. Leave aside, for the moment, the new sanctions on Iran's central bank that will go into effect months from now, ignore Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz (especially unlikely given that it's the main way Iran gets its own oil to market), and perhaps one key reason the crisis in the Persian Gulf is mounting involves this move to torpedo the petrodollar as the all-purpose currency of exchange.

It's been spearheaded by Iran and it's bound to translate into an anxious Washington, facing down not only a regional power, but its major strategic competitors China and Russia. No wonder all those carriers are heading for the Persian Gulf right now, though it's the strangest of showdowns a case of military power being deployed against economic power.

In this context, it's worth remembering that in September 2000 Saddam Hussein abandoned the petrodollar as the currency of payment for Iraq's oil, and moved to the euro. In March 2003, Iraq was invaded and the inevitable regime change occurred. Libya's Muammar Gaddafi proposed a gold dinar both as Africa's common currency and as the currency of payment for his country's energy resources. Another intervention and another regime change followed.

Washington/NATO/Tel Aviv, however, offers a different narrative. Iran's "threats" are at the heart of the present crisis, even if these are, in fact, that country's reaction to non-stop US/Israeli covert war and now, of course, economic war as well. It's those "threats," so the story goes, that are leading to rising oil prices and so fueling the current recession, rather than Wall Street's casino capitalism or massive US and European debts. The cream of the 1% has nothing against high oil prices, not as long as Iran's around to be the fall guy for popular anger.

As energy expert Michael Klare pointed out recently, we are now in a new geo-energy era certain to be extremely turbulent in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. But consider 2012 the start-up year as well for a possibly massive defection from the dollar as the global currency of choice. As perception is indeed reality, imagine the real world - mostly the global South - doing the necessary math and, little by little, beginning to do business in their own currencies and investing ever less of any surplus in US Treasury bonds.

The US can always count on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates - which I prefer to call the Gulf Counter-revolution Club (just look at their performances during the Arab Spring). For all practical geopolitical purposes, the Gulf monarchies are a US satrapy.

Their decades-old promise to use only the petrodollar translates into them being an appendage of Pentagon power projection across the Middle East. Centcom, after all, is based in Qatar; the US Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain. In fact, in the immensely energy-wealthy lands that we could label Greater Pipelineistan - and that the Pentagon used to call "the arc of instability" - extending through Iran all the way to Central Asia, the GCC remains key to a dwindling sense of US hegemony.

If this were an economic rewrite of Edgar Allen Poe's story, "The Pit and the Pendulum", Iran would be but one cog in an infernal machine slowly shredding the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Still, it's the cog that Washington is now focused on. They have regime change on the brain. All that's needed is a spark to start the fire (in - one hastens to add - all sorts of directions that are bound to catch Washington off guard).

Remember Operation Northwoods, that 1962 plan drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to stage terror operations in the US and blame them on Fidel Castro's Cuba. (President John F Kennedy shot the idea down.) Or recall the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, used by president Lyndon Johnson as a justification for widening the Vietnam War. The US accused North Vietnamese torpedo boats of unprovoked attacks on US ships. Later, it became clear that one of the attacks had never even happened and the president had lied about it.

It's not at all far-fetched to imagine hardcore full-spectrum dominance practitioners inside the Pentagon riding a false-flag incident in the Persian Gulf to an attack on Iran (or simply using it to pressure Tehran into a fatal miscalculation). Consider as well the new US military strategy just unveiled by President Barack Obama in which the focus of Washington's attention is to move from two failed ground wars in the Greater Middle East to the Pacific (and so to China).

Iran happens to be right in the middle, in Southwest Asia, with all that oil heading toward an energy-hungry modern Middle Kingdom over waters guarded by the US Navy.

So yes, this larger-than-life psychodrama we call "Iran" may turn out to be as much about China and the US dollar as it is about the politics of the Persian Gulf or Iran's non-existent bomb. The question is: What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Beijing to be born?

Note
1. The BRICS countries are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Asian Finlandization?

2012-01-18T01:46:00.001-08:00

Asian Finlandization?

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE,

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Finlandization is back in vogue in the geopolitical handbook.

In Cold War jargon, Finlandization meant the danger of some NATO allies, cowered by mounting Soviet military power, shifting to the art of fence-sitting. Plucky Finland should never have been a pejorative.

In 1939, Moscow demanded land concessions from Finland "in defense of the motherland." The Finns refused, the Soviets invaded and Finland surrendered in March 1940 after heavy losses. For eight years after World War II, 3.5 million Finns were condemned to produce some $300 million (in 1938 dollars) in reparations -- e.g., 525 locomotives, 340,000 railroad cars, 619 vessels -- while neglecting their own needs.

An ungainly posture but some -- mostly on the left -- felt far more secure demonstrating against their own governments as the Soviet Union began deploying the intermediate-range SS-20 and short-range nuclear missiles, at the rate of two a week.

A first-strike weapon of unmatched power, the United States and its NATO allies concluded it was designed to start and win a nuclear war. Its three independently targeted nuclear warheads would take only 15 minutes from launch to impact in London, Paris and NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Finlandization was biting.

Beginning in 1977, the Soviet Union began deploying several hundred SS-20s along its western and southwestern borders. Moscow's geopolitical shorthand for NATO's European members was clear: "Distance yourself from NATO and you'll be secure."

Post-Cold War, Moscow used the Finlandization process to dissuade former Warsaw Pact members from joining NATO. It failed.

The magic formula -- pursue a foreign policy of neutrality that takes Moscow's strategic interests into account while preserving Western democratic systems -- is working its way through the South China Seas and the bilateral relations that Taiwan maintains with Beijing and Washington.

Taiwan's pro-Beijing, Harvard-educated president Ma Ying-jeou, who favors more integration with China and is seen by many as a realist, was recently re-elected. He concedes that the United States, following failure in Iraq, an uncertain future in Afghanistan, possible confrontation with Iran and faced with major defense cutbacks, is no longer the automatic deterrent it once was.

Ma has negotiated 16 agreements with China to expand air, sea and economic links. Daily flights across the 100-mile wide Taiwan Strait and cargo and passenger ferries are routine.

Ma's opponent, Tsai Ing-wen, is committed to independence, which is China's red line. Neither China nor the United States seek confrontation over Taiwan.

Some 2 million young Taiwanese have moved to the mainland and found life more exciting in Shanghai than in Taipei. Hong Kong, now an integral part of China, has kept its independence. So has Macao, a Las Vegas on the South China Sea. And some younger Taiwanese have been asking, "If one China three systems works, why not four systems?"

Is Taiwan under Ma also under the influence of Finlandization? Many fear so and many hope so.

Ma would have to be geopolitically myopic not to see the constant growth of China's military power and the fact that almost 6 million Chinese workers are deployed throughout what was once called the Third World, building and mining for raw materials and its future export markets. Some 6,000 are building a Macao-type gambling complex 10 minutes from Nassau airport in the Bahamas.

Is Finlandization also spreading to the South China Sea? A report by the Center for a New American Security describes "American interests (as) increasingly at risk (there) due to the economic and military rise of China and concerns about its willingness to uphold existing legal norms."

The South China Sea, says the report by Patrick M. Cronin and Robert D. Kaplan, "functions as the throat of the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans -- a mass of connective economic tissue where global sea routes coalesce … the demographic hub of the 21st-century global economy."

Defending U.S. interests and promoting the status quo, say the authors, "need not -- and should not -- lead to conflicts with China." But it will require strengthening America's naval presence by building back up to a 346-ship fleet instead of retreating to the 250-ship mark under new budget cuts.

The 11-carrier task forces are also facing cutbacks, first to 10 and then nine. One former defense chief said privately he thought eight carriers would be the final number picked a year or two hence.

But this would face monumental opposition from many Republicans who are convinced China is another Soviet Union in the making, stealing our secrets, planning to put a man back on the moon -- and that this expansionist power must be contained.

The South China Sea will be a geopolitical test case for the Finlandization process. Countries that border this sea -- Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines -- "face 'Finlandization' by China if U.S. naval and air power diminishes," the report says.

Faced with recently published books in the United States, policy makers in these countries cannot help but be alarmed.

Michael O'Hanlon, the Brookings Institution's prolific U.S. defense strategic expert, writes in his latest book titled, "The Wounded Giant -- America's Armed Forces in an Age of Austerity," that "the military budget may be cut by up to a trillion dollars over a decade, far more than the $400 billion in 12-year savings that President Obama had proposed in his April 13, 2011, speech that signaled the White House's full engagement on the deficit issue … above and beyond savings that will result, and indeed are already resulting, from troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"America the Vulnerable," is by Joel Brenner, a veteran of the inner sanctum of U.S. espionage, who takes the reader "inside the new threat matrix of digital espionage, crime and warfare."

This former inspector general of the National Security Agency and then head of counterintelligence for the director of National Intelligence, describes at close range the battleground on which our adversaries are eating our lunch -- cyberspace.

Brenner writes we are at the mercy of a new generation of spies who operate from China, Russia and the Middle East, who have already stolen our latest naval technology, robbed our banks and invaded the Pentagon's secret communications system.

Results of our "special friends" activities are yet to surface in mainstream America. When they do, Republicans will have their campaign manual.

Zioconned US imperial militarism is rotten to its very core....

2012-01-17T03:43:00.000-08:00

Zioconned US imperial militarism is rotten to its very core....

The posting online last week of a video showing US Marines in Helmand province urinating on the corpses of unknown Afghans elicited rapid and widespread scorn from the US government. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described the video as "utterly deplorable", Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed her "total dismay", while chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey, stated that the actions in the video were "not only illegal but are contrary to the values of a professional military and serve to erode the reputation of our joint force".

The reaction from the US media establishment largely echoed official sentiments. As the Los Angeles Times editorialized, the released video was "disheartening" and a "step backwards" for the US in Afghanistan. [1]

Yet, with two of the marines depicted in the video now reportedly identified, startled Americans have been assured that justice will be done. The bad apples will be removed, and discipline and honor shall be restored to the armed forces. The whole incident, then, will soon begin to fade from American popular consciousness (if it has not already), as it comes to be flushed down the memory hole. Back to war, it is.

The truth, however, is that the video is hardly illustrative of a few bad apples. Rather, the incident is illustrative of a system of US imperial militarism that is rotten to its very core. For as despicable as the acts in the video most certainly are, they are by no means aberrations.

As was brought to light just last year, US soldiers in Afghanistan have actually hunted Afghan civilians as sport. As Rolling Stone reported in grizzly detail, the US "kill team" not only murdered civilians, but also kept their severed fingers, teeth, and skull fragments as trophies. [2]

On a much more systemic level, the US to this day routinely fires Hellfire missiles from its growing fleet of Predator drones, reigning terror and sowing death from above upon an unknown number of Afghan and Pakistani civilians.

And let us not forget the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq. Although, there are an unknown number of similar atrocities that have been committed in the web of US black op sites and secret prisons encircling the globe.

Such barbarism by American armed forces, it should be noted, has not been limited to Afghans. In the past year alone, two Chinese-American US soldiers were driven to take their own lives while on service in Afghanistan, after having endured race-based hazing from their fellow Army soldiers. [3]

And yet focusing on such incidents - as many and as heinous as they are - threatens to obscure the larger and more fundamental crimes occurring in the last decade of the US "war on terror". As former US Marine Ross Caputi pointed out, the crimes depicted in the latest video clip pale in comparison to far more consequential US atrocities. As Caputi, who took part in the siege of Fallujah Iraq in 2004, wrote in The Guardian:

I witnessed marines stealing from the pockets of dead resistance fighters and looting houses. I've heard firsthand accounts of marines mutilating dead bodies, of a marine who murdered a civilian, and of a marine who slit a puppy's throat ... My behavior and the behavior of others in my unit was despicable, as was the behavior of these marines urinating on corpses. [4]

We can certainly extrapolate out even further from the siege of Fallujah, to the wars as a whole in both Afghanistan and Iraq. For both of which, we must remember, were launched by cynically turning the criminal acts of 11 September 2011 into an act of war. This declaration of war was then seamlessly parlayed into feeding the insatiable US military-industrial complex, while realizing long held geopolitical strategic aims.

Urinating on corpses is thus nothing but a byproduct of this calculated decision to turn to war. After all, it is in war that one must come to dehumanize one’s enemies. As Sebastian Junger noted in the Washington Post:

As a society, we may be disgusted by seeing US Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters (it is actually unknown whether those in the video were indeed Taliban fighters or civilians), but we remain oddly unfazed by the fact that, presumably, those same Marines just put high-caliber rounds through the fighters’ chests. American troops are not blind to this irony. They are very clear about the fact that society trains them to kill, orders them to kill and then balks at anything that suggests they have dehumanized the enemy they have killed. [5]

Indeed, in conflict - despite the claims of civility and professionalism coming from the US military brass - sadism not only rears its ugly head, but actually thrives. As Chris Hedges writes in his book, War is the Force Which Gives Us Meaning: In war “those who abandoned their humanity, betrayed their neighbors and friends, turned their back on their family, stole, cheated, killed, and stomped on the weak and infirm were often those who made it out alive."

Let us not, then, be fooled by the farcical show of outrage by US officials over the desecration of dead Afghans. For their faux moral disgust stems only from the bad PR such a display will likely garner. Their real unease, leave no doubt, is whether such scenes will hinder the war effort, that is, hinder their continued plunder and slaughter of the Afghan people. And it is this that ought to be deemed utterly deplorable.

Notes
1. See here.
2. See here.
3. See here and here.
4. See here.
5. See here.

Ben Schreiner

U.S. ZOG Government Funded the Iranian Terrorist Group Which “Found” The Documents Upon Which the Warmongers Are Relying....

2012-01-16T03:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/4527

The U.S. ZOG Government Funded the Iranian Terrorist Group Which “Found” The Documents Upon Which the Warmongers Are Relying....

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/01/14/iran-usisraeli-false-flag-attack-may-be-underway/

Expose the wicked intentions the Zionist warmongers and the Soetoro administration have in mind of igniting a war in the Persian Gulf. The phrase these misanthropes hate most is called FALSE FLAG....

http://newscentralasia.net/2012/01/16/american-military-pit-bulls-and-their-handlers/

Israeli submarines deployed in the Sea of Oman will sink an American warship that happens to be navigating close to the Strait of Hormuz – an attack to subsequently be blamed on Iran. Most likely one of these Zionist submarines (Type 800 Dolphin class) is already operating in the Sea of Oman:
INS Dolphin
INS Livyathan
INS Tekumah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOCH1ECkyio

Another plausible way by which Barry & Associates (including the Zionist warmongers) could justify a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran is by staging another FALSE FLAG ATTACK on continental United States: a controlled nuclear explosion (dirty bomb) targeting a major urban concentration that may kill dozens of thousands of civilians. This operation will be carried out by the CIA in partnership with Israel’s Mossad and British MI6 to subsequently be blamed on elements of Iran’s IRGC.

SPREAD THE WORD: FALSE FLAG and cowardly assassinations by the most Infamous White House Murder INC, which is likely to pull another false flag assassination trigering a new war....

Educate the masses about what FALSE FLAG operations and the infamous White House Murder/Assassinations INC, are all about....in the Levant since January 24th 2002 and beyond.....

The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. See this and this. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.)

The IAEA report being trumpted as a casus belli contains no new information, but is based on a re-hashing of old, debunked claims stemming from “laptop documents”.

State Department cables released by Wikileaks reveal that the new IAEA head was heavily backed by the U.S., based upon his promises of fealty to the U.S. Indeed, as we’ve seen in the nuclear energy arena, the IAEA is not a neutral, fact-based organization, but a wholly-captured, political agency.

But where did the documents come from originally?

As Gareth Porter noted in 2008:

The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” – 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop – as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme.

But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

Interestingly, the Bush Administration – and especially Dick Cheney – helped to fund the MEK (see confirming articles here and here).

And the New York Times, Washington Post and others are reporting that Rudy Giuliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former national security adviser Fran Townsend and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey are supporting the MEK as well.

So the terrorist group which “found” the documents is funded by neoconservatives who want to overthrow Iran. What a coincidence!

And as Gareth Porter notes in the above-linked article, the Mossad may have created the documents in the first place:

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel’s Mossad.

One thing is clear: the U.S. and its allies have a long history of using forged documents as an excuse for war.....

What IAEA reports about Iran’s nuclear energy/medicine, how US War Criminal 1% lie for war....

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in their inspection role for compliance of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has their November 2011 report in similar misleading language as their February 2010 report.

IAEA appears to be under the same political pressure to make a case for war on Iran that we witnessed before US armed attack of Iraq. US corporate media and US political “leadership” will not remind Americans that the US eliminated the UN agency director who would have resolved concerns of alleged Iraq weapons:

“…the conservative first option should have been the UN Security Council voting for the UN WMD agency, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to directly request Saddam to submit to OPCW’s authority. The Director-general of OPCW, Jose Bustani, was in talks with Saddam to do so. Instead of supporting this reasonable alternative to war, the US promised to withhold its funding of the UN (22% of the UN’s budget) until Bustani was fired. The US called Bustani’s talks with Saddam an “ill-considered initiative.” The US request was honored; the US then paid its 2002 UN dues in April 2002; less than one year before the US invasion of Iraq. This was the first time in UN history where the Director of an international program was fired.[13] By the way, the US does not cooperate with the OPCW to ensure US compliance with International Laws of chemical and biological WMD.”

Consider an etymology of the word, war: to confuse, to perplex.

Comparing the last two IAEA report conclusions in the historical context of propaganda leading to war on Iraq:

2010:

“46. While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran, Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the Agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”

2011:

“52. While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and LOFs declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement, as Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation, including by not implementing its Additional Protocol, the Agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”

Let’s unpack this:

IAEA confirms zero evidence of Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. This conforms to the agreement of all 16 US intelligence agencies in their December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), and Seymour Hersh’s report on the classified but leaked 2011 NIE.
IAEA continues obfuscating language Iran’s Additional Protocol, a voluntary set of additional safeguards Iran temporarily administratively approved, but kept open to withdraw by not ratifying the treaty by their legislature. Iran withdrew after two years of US non-compliance of NPT (history here). IAEA’s language states they can’t prove there isn’t nuclear material they don’t know about. This is similar to propaganda to damage your family: “While the Agency continues to verify the non-terrorism of your family, your family isn’t providing the necessary cooperation for the Agency to provide credible assurance about the absence of your family’s terrorist activities.”

Additional propaganda for war on Iran comes in this part of IAEA’s 2010 and 2011 reports:

2010:

“The information available to the Agency in connection with these outstanding issues is extensive and has been collected from a variety of sources over time. It is also broadly consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organizations involved. Altogether, this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

2011:

“After assessing carefully and critically the extensive information available to it, the Agency finds the information to be, overall, credible. The information indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. The information also indicates that prior to the end of 2003, these activities took place under a structured programme, and that some activities may still be ongoing.”

This propaganda of “gathering concern” is similar to what preceded war with Iraq; the admission of zero evidence of unlawful activity framed in a cheap rhetorical trick of possible “secret crimes.” IAEA also lies in omission that previous “sources” concerning Iran nuclear weapon development are now confirmed as planted evidence (here, here and here).

US corporate media propagandizes for war: US corporate media is concentrated in six corporations, with previous CIA disclosure of “influencing” content. The biggest context of lies of omission are the damning disclosures by our own government that all “reasons” for war with Iraq are now known to be lies as they were told, and in direct violation of war law.

Examples of obvious lies of commission and omission:

New York Times 1/5/2012 front page article lying that IAEA reported “Iran’s nuclear program has a military objective.”
Current political “leadership” and Republican presidential candidates fomenting fear and war threat over Iran’s “nuclear program” and lies about Iran’s president insisting lawful behavior by Israel with Palestine.
CNN’s 2010 screaming headline: Watchdog: Iran may be working on nuclear warhead leads the glaring lie of omission that all nuclear material is accounted for lawful use. The “reporting” includes the White House lie that Iran’s disclosed Qom nuclear facility can’t be used for peaceful nuclear use, despite independent analysis that its specifications are precisely for that purpose, and IAEA would know immediately if enrichment went beyond the facility’s limits. They lie again by reporting the facility as “secret” despite the fact it was reported by Iran to IAEA ahead of their NPT requirement to do so. They continue on their roll of lies by not reporting Iran’s several offers to accept medical isotopes as imports provided they had a guaranteed timeline.
CNN’s 2010 video report has this banner at the bottom: “Iranian nuclear warhead?” with the glaring lie of commission that a 20% enrichment is a “magic number” that shows enrichment for a nuclear weapon despite it being exactly what’s needed for lawful nuclear medicine. IAEA has constant video and chemical monitoring for enrichment to never exceed 20%; weapons-grade requires 85%+ with different physical equipment requirements.
Among many of Israel’s headlines, this is typical: IAEA report: Iran may be developing atom bomb

So understand: this whole “issue” could be averted if the US merely agreed for a simultaneous swap of fuel. But the US wants the problem unsolved, and US corporate media won’t report this solution anymore than they reported that the US got rid of the UN Director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons who was working with Saddam to resolve any concern over alleged weapons.

Except for Pulitzer-winner Seymour Hersh, you have to go outside corporate media to find exposure of this propaganda, such as Global Research, Activist Post, Want to Know, Prison Planet, What Really Happened.

The following additional resources document further US “leadership” and corporate media lies of commission and omission:

US overthrew Iran’s democracy 1953-1979, helped Iraq invade 1980-1988, now lies for more war (and an analogy if the US were the victim of empire)

What Iran’s president said about Israel, and how US War Criminal 1% lie for war

US constantly violates war law: arrest Obama before ‘false flag’ war on Iran

Analogy: US wars on Iraq, Iran as US criminal gangster “business”

9/11 killed 1, injured 2 if US was a city of 100,000. US wars: CRIMINAL response

Occupy This: US History exposes the 1%’s crimes then and now (6-part series)

Documentation to prove the “emperor has no clothes” obvious facts: US constantly violates war law; arrest Obama before ‘false flag’ war on Iran

US government “leadership” violates all Americans by constantly violating war law won by our families through two world wars. The US was the primary author of current war law, bound by treaty and Constitutional Law under Article 6 as the US’ supreme law. War law states a nation can use their military on other nations only if that nation’s government attacks.

Afghanistan and Iraq’s government did not attack the US on 9/11. Under law and to serve the purpose of the law to protect the world from the “scourge of war,” the UN Security Council quickly aligned for international cooperation for factual discovery and arrests of suspects. Afghanistan agreed.

The US violated our international obligations and US Constitutional Law by choosing to bomb, invade, and occupy Afghanistan.

US “leadership” committed a nation’s worst crime: using military to kill human beings against clear law, and against legal peaceful alternative already explicitly agreed upon. US “leadership” committed unlawful Wars of Aggression. They are War Criminals.

US “leadership” violated a UN-managed “cease fire” in Iraq while the UN was finishing weapons inspections. Rather than have this peaceful legal and agreed-upon alternative (to a questionable issue in the first place), US “leadership” chose to unlawfully order to bomb, invade, and occupy Iraq.

Again, the above facts are uncontested and easily verifiable; the only reason they are not clear is that with all historic criminal regimes, US “leadership” includes propagandizing corporate media to lie before the crimes, lie during the crimes, and lie after the crimes.

US “leadership” have military-murdered over a million human beings and five thousand US soldiers. They plundered Americans of ~$5 trillion in long-term costs in no-bid contracts to their own corporations; a staggering and difficult to grasp $50,000 per average US family.

US “leadership,” now desperate from the “99%” recognition and stating the “emperor has no clothes” facts as you are reading here, assassinates US citizens at their dictate and passed NDAA to order US military to seize Americans from their homes and “disappear” them.

US “leadership” lies to create a new war target: Iran. Just as we know all “reasons” to attack Iraq were known lies as they were told, anyone can verify that “reasons” to attack Iran are obvious lies: Iran’s president only asks for lawful acts with Palestinians from Israel (not “wiping Israel off the map”), and all Iran’s nuclear energy and medical isotopes are verified as only and always used for their legal purposes (not a “nuclear program” that might have “secret” planning for weapons). Moreover, it’s conservative uncontested history that the US overthrew Iran’s democracy from 1953-1979, and assisted criminal war on Iran from 1980-1988.

The predictable US “leadership” move is a false flag attack by them upon Americans that is then blamed on Iran. That is, US “leadership” will attack and kill Americans, use their own media to lie and blame Iran, and then continue the lies in a “defensive” war.

US military, law enforcement, all Americans, and all global citizens have opportunity to stand, speak, and act for truth, justice and peace before Obama and “leadership” mass-murder Iranians.

The most powerful and effective act is to arrest US criminal “leadership” for their obvious War Crimes.

The US has actively violated treaties for foreign wars from over 160 years; again in conservative uncontested history.

The above links document the facts. Here are analogies that might help communicate because the stories sooth cognitive dissonance, place the facts in an abstract form that become obvious, and use a different part of our brains to more strongly see, stand, and state what is really “emperor has no clothes” obvious:

If the US was attacked by a criminal empire: analogy to confront US-Iran history

Analogy: US wars on Iraq, Iran as US criminal gangster “business”

9/11 killed 1, injured 2 if US was a city of 100,000. US wars: CRIMINAL response

"Al-Qaeda" is "Old Coke" -- time for some new CIA/MOSSAD/MI6 products....

2012-01-15T12:10:00.001-08:00

"Al-Qaeda" is "Old Coke" -- time for some new CIA/MOSSAD/MI6 products....

Forget Muslim Arab "Terrorists" of Al-CIAda : America’s Enemy Is Being Rebranded....

Wayne MADSEN (USA)

President Obama’s recent decision to re-focus U.S. military power away from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Asia-Pacific region and, to a lesser extent, Africa, means that China and certain rebel groups in Africa have replaced the old contrived bogeyman of Osama bin Laden’s “Al Qaeda” at the top of Uncle Sam’s “Most Wanted List.” Of course, the change in the Pentagon’s strategy has nothing to do with reality but is yet another attempt by the imperialists who dominate both duopolistic U.S. political parties – the Democrats and Republicans – to advance American hegemony around the world. The major U.S. strategic goal is to pre-empt the rise of new superpowers, especially China.

Obama and his generals and admirals are emulating the fictitious leaders of Oceania in George Orwell’s famed classic “1984” about a dystopian future world, By switching enemies mid-stream from “Al Qaeda” in south Asia and the Middle East to China in East Asia, Obama, like Oceania’s “Big Brother” propaganda structure, is saying “We have always been at war with Eastasia.” In this case, just as in “1984,” Eastasia largely comprised China. But “1984” is a novel and was never intended by Orwell to serve as a Pentagon planning document. Or, perhaps Orwell had a crystal ball and foresaw just how dystopian the world would actually become under a charismatic “Big Brother” American president.

Although Obama continues to rattle sabers at Iran and he may, in order to neutralize the pro-Israeli war hawks in the Republican Party, covertly or overtly support an Anglo-Israeli-French military operation directed at Iran during the presidential campaign, it is China that is now the major focus of a changing American military posture.

Obama has reacted to China’s commercial moves into Afghanistan by agreeing to talk to the Afghan Taliban, even permitting them to open a diplomatic office in Qatar, the home to America’s large Al-Udeid airbase and a country that is a short boat ride away from the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain.

Obama’s decision to establish five bases in Australia and station as many as 2500 U.S. Marines in northern Australia is part of the new military policy aimed at China. The new Pentagon policy is also aimed at fighting military cyber-attacks and China has been accused by a number of U.S. military and intelligence agencies of being behind multiple cyber-attacks on U.S. government and corporate computer systems and networks. It is noteworthy that while the U.S. ramps up its military assets against China, two of its East Asian allies – Japan and South Korea – have stated that they do not intend to abide by western oil sanctions imposed against Iran. The diplomatic paradox the United States finds itself in as it transitions from a Middle East-centric to an Asia-Pacific-centric military strategy is striking.

The appearance of George Soros non-governmental organization (NGO)-backed “themed revolutions” in Indonesia and Malaysia, two nations that are rich in natural gas and oil resources but which have maintained relatively friendly relations with China, indicates that the U.S. is looking at expanding its list of allies in the Asia-Pacific zone. The nationalist tendencies of Indonesian President Susilo Bambamg Yudhoyono and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak have been a stumbling block for U.S. geo-political designs in the region. The appearance of the “Sandal Revolution” in Indonesia targeting endemic corruption in the courts and political system, coupled with the acquittal on sodomy charges of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim opens the way for a further coalescing of opposition forces in both nations. The opposition Bersih movement in Malaysia, funded with dollars from the “democracy engineers” of the neocon-riddled U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, has chosen yellow for its revolution. In Myanmar, or Burma, the NED and Soros operatives are active for another round of the Saffron Revolution.

One of the major problems for the United States has been the refusal of Malaysia and Indonesia to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, always a center piece for the Israel-centric foreign policy operatives in both Democratic and Republican administrations.

In Africa, the U.S. is also engaged in a major shift in its military strategy to prop up corrupt regimes like that of Nigeria, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and dictatorships like those of Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Djibouti, and Equatorial Guinea. The recent decision by Nigeria’s western bank servant, President Goodluck Jonathan, to cancel fuel subsidies under pressure form the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a country rich in oil has resulted in a popular revolt. Nigeria had already seen a rise in violence by a group seen as a follow-on Islamist replacement for “Al Qaeda,” the Boko Haram, a group founded in 2002 that was opposed to western education. “Boko” is Hausa for “western education” and Haram is Arabic for “sin.” In 2009, the group, which has no real centralized structure and may be yet another contrivances dreamed up by western intelligence agencies intent on breaking up Nigeria as they are doing in Sudan and DRC, embarked on militant Islamist terrorist violence mostly aimed at Christians and the Nigerian government. In fact, the hybrid name “Boko Haram” may have been conceived by some British MI-6 devotee of the British rock band Procol Harum.

Obama’s decision to shift most of America’s military focus to East Asia with a smaller but no less determined effort in Africa means that the U.S. Navy and Air Force will see budget increases for their Asia-Pacific and Africa theaters of operation, while the U.S. Army will see a decrease in funding as the United States relies more on unmanned drone, manned fighter aircraft and logistics aircraft, and U.S. Marine and Special Operations expeditionary force naval vessels to carry out military insertions from the South China Sea to the Gulf of Guinea.

The playbook being used in Southeast Asia and Africa is the same. George Soros, who runs a multi-billion hedge fund front for the trillionaire Rothschild banking cartel, moves into a targeted country with “democracy” street action provocateurs; bought-and-paid for local journalists, bloggers, and tweeters; and election engineers. Soon, a symbol or color – rose, tulip. lotus, cedar, olive tree, saffron, jasmine, orange, Facebook, Twitter, orange, green, yellow, purple, or white – is chosen and the themed revolution is given a name, a name that is uniformly used and hyped by the corporate media around the world from Al Jazeera and Fox News to the Washington Post and Le Monde. In Indonesia, it is the used sandal, which is being deposited at police stations and government offices, that has been adopted as the theme for the western-directed revolution. In Malaysia, it is the color yellow. In Nigeria, there has not yet been an agreement on whether to call it the cassava or yam revolution. Yams are too closely identified with the rebellious Christian Igbo of the south, a people who have been fighting the despoliation of their lands by oil companies like Shell.

In any event, under the new Obama military strategy, U.S. service personnel government-issued coffins will continue to arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The only difference will be that there will be more Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Special Forces bodies than those from the ranks of the Army. In Obama’s America, just consider it a “stimulus package” for the sailors, airmen, Marines, the infamous White House Murder INC, and the special forces....

Turkey's MIT intelligence arm aims to become one of the largest intelligence services in the world, synthesizing the CIA-MOSSAD-FBI-NSA-AMAN models...

2012-01-13T11:22:00.000-08:00

Turkey's MIT intelligence arm aims to become one of the largest intelligence services in the world, synthesizing the CIA-MOSSAD-FBI-NSA-AMAN models....

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/mit-issues-2nd-denial-of-intelligence-blunder.aspx?pageID=238&nID=10848&NewsCatID=338

Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) is setting up an Electronic Intelligence Village on a 3,000 square meter plot of land, which will allow for the tracking of all forms of intelligence signals.

MİT Undersecretary Hakan Fidan explains that within the next two to three years, they aim to become one of the largest intelligence services in the world and that they are synthesizing the CIA-FBI model.
Yesterday, the "Meeting with the Press" portion of a series of ceremonies held to commemorate to 85th anniversary of the National Intelligence Organization, or MİTs founding, was held at the undersecretariat headquarters.
At the event, which brought together the executive editors and Ankara representatives from newspapers and television stations, MİT Undersecretary Hakan Fidan, announced their objective to become one of the top ten intelligence services, to undergo a restructuring in terms of both internal and foreign intelligence and that they are synthesizing the United States' CIA-FBI model. Fidan stood up for the organization, which has faced intentions of being drawn into the Uludere incident, by sharing their goals for "Perfection and Competitive Pursuit."
OBJECTIVE TO BECOME TOP TEN: "We have always been told "You are very good in your region, Turkey is a shining star." However, we do not consider this to be enough. With the exception of a few countries in this region, this is not an area where there are first class players. We want to become players in the global realm. There are ten intelligence services in this realm, within the next two to three years; we will become one of them."
FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM: "We are preparing a joint intelligence program. Under the headline "Security Intelligence", we have reestablished our units dealing with terrorism doth domestically and abroad. We have created units that will primarily deal with armed terror as well as an analysis unit that will also be dealing with terrorism."

INTELLIGENCE VILLAGE: "The General Staff Electronic Systems Command has been handed over to the MİT. A 3,000 square meter plot of land was purchased next to the Electronic Systems Command (GES) facility.
We are building an Electronic Intelligence Village there that will be befitting of the 21st century. 21. This is a historical step in terms of military-civilian collaboration. Turkey has now been saved from the wasted resources and effort as well as from duplication and has obtained the opportunity to visualize our national capacity. All signal intelligence directed towards our region will be tracked and evaluated from here."
UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE VISUALS ARE NOT OURS: "The visual intelligence obtained from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is obtained by the General Staff and not MİT."

A REMINDER OF AUTHORIZATION: "In Turkey, telephone tapping is conducted through a court ruling. In the west, bureaucrats and ministers are able to do it by their own hands. There is a special authority court for CIA requests. The authorization granted to intelligence services in democratic nations are more than ours. However, I am not trying to deliver any sort of message to anyone on this issue. According to the development of conditions, there may be new evaluations on political authority."
1,000 TV CHANNELS ARE MONITORING: "Intelligence is also developing through open resource systems.
The number of foreign correspondents working for international news agencies is more than the number of foreign agents working for even the largest of intelligence organizations. Today, there is an explosion of information being realized. What is important is for this information to be analyzed. We have a system in which broadcasts from almost a thousand television stations are collected in space from where it arrives to the organization and is distributed to the various related departments."
MEETING WITH THE PKK: Fidan answered a number of questions posed to him. When reminded of a meeting with terrorist organization leaders, Fidan stated, "There were situations where we stated that if the following was known, then society would be able to comprehend it easier. It is as if I have nothing to say in this position. However, there is a copied, pasted and edited text."
SECURITY CLEARANCE: Fidan refrained from answering questions regarding relations with MOSSAD as well as having to do with the death of MİT member Kaşif Kozinoğlu in Silivri. In response to a question regarding security clearances, Fidan stated, "It is no longer in fashion in personnel hires, we do not go into security or threat identification."
'AN UNTIMELY MOVE, IS NOT A MOVE'
During the meeting, the intelligence world was depicted through the metaphor of a chess board. "When the pieces in chess are set up side by side, no one knows who is going to win. An untimely move is not a move."
Journalists expressed a lot of interest in the MİT archives, the containers carrying intelligence notes displayed in the showcase, the listening and tracking devices obtained by foreign missions, cameras and crypto equipment.
The most interesting document was the, "Journal of Individuals Tracked".
The journalists were gifted a candy dish.
INTELLIGENCE WAS NOT FROM US
An informative note distributed following Fidan's announcements stated that the National Intelligence Organization did not share any form of information in regards to a potential group, any places, dates, numbers or routes in relation to the Uludere incident.
The note, which drew attention to one journalist's continued allegations directed at MİT, noted the following: "The aforementioned journalist's December 30th, 2011 article with the headline, "Incorrect Intelligence from MİT", which states, 'A heron recorded footage of civilians in the region and relayed it to Ankara. An official in Ankara who saw the footage was suspicious of the situation. He considers the possibility that they are civilians and contacts MİT twice. MİT informs that, 'the group is definitely PKK' and relays to the headquarters that the intelligence received is 'robust.' Having been told the information is 'accurate', the planes began bombing under orders by the Air Force command … The reason for the three hour span between the time the 'accurate statement' was made and the 'visuals obtained' is due to the official who had suspicions and contacted MİT twice and waited for the information to be confirmed." This sort of explanation is a complete lie and figment of the imagination and has absolutely no connection to reality."

FİDAN: MY LIFE HAS CHANGED
Hakan Fidan talked about the ways in which his life has changed since becoming the Undersecretary for Zioconned MİT....
"There is no such thing as a social life. Relaxing with friends or going to the movies, the theater or restaurants is no longer possible. The boxes are separate, the manner of flying is separate, and it is an isolated life. I work 16 to 17 hours. There is no such thing as a Saturday or Sunday. The telephone is always at an arm's length. We also have a code system at home. I stay on a campus anyways. They are present when they take me and present when they bring me back. It is this sort of life. I have progressed significantly in terms of reading books. Sometimes the thought, "Have we missed anything?" pops up in my dreams. Skipping over any point could be significant in terms of the entire nation's security."

Stand for truth, resist the allure of demagogues, prejudice, old hatreds, and the fear of otherness....

2012-01-13T06:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOCH1ECkyio

Stand for truth, resist the allure of demagogues, prejudice, old hatreds, and the fear of otherness....http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/4527

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing."

Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Second Bank of the United States

"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the bread-stuffs of the country.

When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin!

Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out."

From the original minutes of the Philadelphia bankers sent to meet with President Jackson February 1834, from Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels

On our dinner cards tonight is a medallion portrait of a man who gave a memorable toast, "The Federal Union, it must be preserved."

This meeting tonight, in the City of Washington, is one of many hundreds being held throughout our forty-eight States and territorial possessions and even on board ships at sea, in honor of the memory of a great General, a great President, Andrew Jackson. To all of you I extend my most sincere and heartfelt greetings.

I am happy to stand here tonight and declare to you that the real issue before the United States is the right of the average man and woman to lead a finer, a better and a happier life. And that was the same issue, more than a hundred years ago, that confronted Andrew Jackson.

I speak tonight to this Democratic meeting, to these Democratic meetings throughout the Nation, in the same language as if I were addressing a Republican gathering, a Progressive gathering, an Independent gathering, a Farmer-Labor gathering, a gathering of business men or a gathering of workers or farmers. There is nothing that I say here tonight that does not apply to every citizen in the country no matter what his or her political affiliations may be.

It is true that we Americans have found party organizations to be useful, and indeed necessary, in the crystallization of opinion and in the demarcation of issues. It is true that I have received many honors at the hands of one of our great parties. It is nevertheless true that in the grave questions that confront the United States at this hour, I, as President of the United States, must and will consider our common problems first, foremost and preeminently from the American point of view.

To most of us, Andrew Jackson appropriately has become the symbol of certain great ideals. I like best to think of him as a man whom the average American deeply and fundamentally understood. To the masses of his countrymen, his purposes and his character were an open book. They loved him well because they understood him well—his passion for justice, his championship of the cause of the exploited and the downtrodden, his ardent: and flaming patriotism.

Jackson sought social justice; Jackson fought for human rights in his many battles to protect the people against autocratic or oligarchic aggression.

If at times his passionate devotion to this cause of the average citizen lent an amazing zeal to his thoughts, to his speech and to his actions, the people loved him for it the more. They realized the intensity of the attacks made by his enemies, by those who, thrust from power and position, pursued him with relentless hatred. The beneficiaries of the abuses to which he put an end pursued him with all the violence that political passions can generate. But the people of his day were not deceived. They loved him for the enemies he had made.

Backed not only by his party but by thousands who had belonged to other parties or belonged to no party at all, Andrew Jackson was compelled to fight every inch of the way for the ideals and the policies of the Democratic Republic which was his ideal. An overwhelming proportion of the material power of the Nation was arrayed against him. The great media for the dissemination of information and the molding of public opinion fought him. Haughty and sterile intellectualism opposed him. Musty reaction disapproved him. Hollow and outworn traditionalism shook a trembling finger at him. It seemed sometimes that all were against him—all but the people of the United States.

Because history so often repeats itself, let me analyze further. Andrew Jackson stands out in the century and a half of our independent history not merely because he was two-fisted, not merely because he fought for the people's rights, but because, through his career, he did as much as any man in our history to increase, on the part of the voters, knowledge of public problems and an interest in their solution. Following the fundamentals of Jefferson, he adhered to the broad philosophy that decisions made by the average of the voters would be more greatly enduring for, and helpful to, the Nation than decisions made by small segments of the electorate representing small or special classes endowed with great advantages of social or economic power.

He, like Jefferson, faced with the grave difficulty of disseminating facts to the electorate, to the voters as a whole, was compelled to combat epithets, generalities, misrepresentation and the suppression of facts by the process of asking his supporters, and indeed all citizens, to constitute themselves informal committees for the purpose of obtaining the facts and of spreading them abroad among their friends, their associates and their fellow workers.

I am aware that some wise-cracking columnist will probably say that good old Jackson no doubt realized that every red-blooded American citizen considered himself a committee of one anyway. Nevertheless, Jackson got his ideas and his ideals across not through any luxurious propaganda, but because the man on the street and the man on the farm believed in his ideas, believed in his ideals and his honesty, went out and dug up the facts and spread them abroad throughout the land.

History repeats—and I am becoming dimly conscious of the fact that this year we are to have a national election. Sometimes at the close of a day I say to myself that the last national election must have been held a dozen years ago—so much water has run under the bridge, so many great events in our history have occurred since then. And yet but thirty-four months, less than three years, have gone by since March, 1933.

History repeats—in those crowded months, as in the days of Jackson, two great achievements stand forth—the rebirth of the interest and understanding of a great citizenry in the problems of the Nation, and an established Government which by positive action has proved its devotion to the recovery and well-being of that citizenry.

Whatever may be the platform, whoever may be the nominee of the Democratic Party—and I am told by the Chairman that a Convention is to be held to decide these momentous questions—the basic issue, my friends, will be inevitably the retention of popular Government—an issue fraught once more with the difficult problem of disseminating facts and yet more facts, in the face of an opposition bent on hiding and distorting facts.

And that, my friends, is why organization, not party organization alone—important as that is—but organization among all those, regardless of party, who believe in retaining progress and ideals, is so essential.

That is why, in addition to organization, I make this specific recommendation—that each and every one of you who are interested in obtaining the facts and in spreading those facts abroad, each and every one of you interested in getting at the truth that lies somewhere behind the smoke screen of charges and counter-charges of a national campaign, constitute yourself a committee of one. To do this you need no parchment certificate, to do this you need no title. To do this you need only your own conviction, your own intelligence and your own belief in the highest duty of the American citizen.

To act as such a committee of one you will need only your own appointment, an appointment which carries with it some effort, some obligation on your part to carry out the task you have assigned to yourself. You will have to run down statements made to you by others which you may believe to be false. You will need to analyze the motives of those who make assertions to you. You will need to make an inventory in your own community, in order that you may check and recheck for yourself and thereby be in a position to answer those who have been misled or those who would mislead.

After my Annual Message to the Congress last Friday evening, I received many appreciative letters and telegrams from all over the country, and I think it will interest you to know that within a few hours I received more of these than at any time since the critical days of the spring of 1933. I have carefully read those letters and telegrams and I found two facts that I think are worthy of repeating to you tonight. The first is that out of the many, many hundreds, a very large number were sent to me by families who evidently heard my Message while grouped together in the family home. "My wife and I want you to know how much we appreciate," and so forth—or "The Jones family, gathered tonight with our friends, sends you this message of confidence." In other words, as greatly as and perhaps even more greatly than on any other occasion since I have been in the White House, I have the definite feeling that what I have said about the great problems that face us as a Nation has received a responsive, an appreciative and an understanding answer in the homes of America. This means a lot tome.

The other interesting fact about these letters and telegrams is the very great number of them that come from business men, from storekeepers, from bankers and from manufacturers. The gist of their messages to me is that they are grateful, that they appreciate my statement that it is but a minority of business and finance that would "gang up" against the people's liberties. I reiterate that assertion tonight. By far the greater part of the business men, industrialists, and other employers of the Nation seek no special advantage; they seek only an equal opportunity to share in the common benefits, the common responsibilities and the common obligations of their Government.

I am naturally grateful for this support and for the understanding on their part that the Government of the United States seeks to give them a square deal and a better deal—seeks to protect them, yes, to save them from being plowed under by the small minority of business men and financiers, against whom you and I will continue to wage war.

We can be thankful that men and women in all walks of life realize more and more that Government is still a living force in their lives. They understand that the value of their Government depends on the interest which they display in it and the knowledge they have of its policies.

A Government can be no better than the public opinion which sustains it.

I know that you will not be surprised by lack of comment on my part tonight on the recent decision of the Supreme Court. I cannot and will not render offhand judgment without studying, with the utmost care, two of the most momentous opinions, the majority opinion and the minority opinion, that have ever been rendered, in any case before the Supreme Court of the United States. The ultimate results of the language of these opinions will profoundly affect the lives of Americans for many years to come. It is enough to say that the attainment of justice and the continuance of prosperity for American agriculture remain an immediate and constant objective of my Administration.

Just as Jackson roused the people to their fundamental duties as citizens, so must the leadership of this era do its utmost to encourage and sustain widespread interest in public affairs. There was something of eternal youth in the spirit of Andrew Jackson. The destiny of youth became the destiny of America.

Tasks immediately before us are as arduous as the conquest of the frontiers a century ago. The Nation is still young, still growing, still conscious of its high destiny. Enthusiasm and the intelligence of the youth of the land are necessary to the fulfillment of that destiny.

As I understand the temper of the people, particularly the temper of youth, no party of reaction, no candidates of reaction can fulfill the hope and the faith of that everlasting spirit. It is the sacred duty of us who are vested with the responsibility of leadership to justify the expectations of the young men and women of the United States.

We are at peace with the world; but the fight goes on. Our frontiers of today are economic, not geographic. Our enemies of today are the forces of privilege and greed within our own borders.

May a double portion of Old Hickory's heroic spirit be upon us tonight. May we be inspired by the power and the glory and the justice of his rugged and fearless life.

The people of America know the heart and know the purpose of their Government.

They, and we, will not retreat.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jackson Day Dinner Address, Washington, D.C.
January 8, 1936

Remember these leaders, these giants, from days gone by, and their unselfish defense of liberty and the people, as we look upon the empty suits, self-serving spokes-models, and heartless mannequins, vetted and strutted out by the corporate interests, who pretend to the leadership of their great nation in its time of greatest need.

And let us not blame them, for the fault is ours in not having the courage to stand for the truth, even in the most incidental ways, to pass the honest message on, to resist the allure of demagogues, prejudice and old hatreds, the fear of otherness, the seductive mouthpieces and clever arguments of powerful and the monied interests, and support the voices of fundamental reform and equal protection for all people under the law.

What is remarkable is not how many sell themselves and their honor, but how eagerly, how cheaply. But the profit does not matter if one considers their soul to be worth nothing.

And if lawlessness increases, the hearts of many will grow cold. And then comes the downfall, and hell comes with it from the despicable and wicked strategies of the Zioconned Western World and their barbaric shenanigans.....

“History is littered with wars which everyone knew would never happen.”

Why is Iran seen as a threat to the USA? Wouldn't facilitating peace in the Middle East be a better way of making USA safe than ratcheting up conflict and taking sides with Israel all the time?

US Joint Forces Command's Joint Operating Environment 2010
http://www.peakoil.net/files/JOE2010.pdf

refer to page 29....

[RED BOX]

UNITED STATES JOINT FORCES COMMAND
US JOINT OPERATING ENVIRONMENT REPORT 2010

Joint Forces Command is a useless organization that was given the job of writing crap like this by Rumsfeld. because he liked an admiral who was then commander there. the main purpose of the command seem to be to hand out consulting contracts to unemployed retired general officers and beltway bandit consulting companies. Having consulted there several times I know all about it. This paper has no effect on the government at all. I doubt if very many people have ever read it. think of it as science fiction written for a big fee. Now, if this were a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that would be a different matter but it is not....

Here's the link to the German study

Google number of oil futures versus actual oil on American soil, when that collapses hope there is something in the pipeline...lol

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52334

http://www.peakoil.net/headline-news/us-military-warns-oil-output-may-dip-causing-massive-shortages-by-2015

German report information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9uF_qaGS5I&feature=related

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6912

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1655110/pg1

I know peak oil is a huge concern , and there's no doubt we'll eventually run out, but don't stake too much on this. And remember the whole concept was created by Royal Dutch Shell in the 1950s as a marketing scheme to shift both public and private funds towards their then recently acquired uranium interests so they could profit off of the nuclear industry....

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/8/23/183954/741

Compulsive Fabricators of lies...

Romney - His utterances appear to be a mish-mash of well rehearsed and vetted responses that political consultants (the best that money can buy) have provided him. It doesn't really seem that Romney believes a lot of his own "pabulum." His bleating about "America the Beautiful" rings hollow in the face of the bald fact that neither he nor any of his rich-boy sons ever chose to spend some of their oh so valuable time in the US military. Better things to do? The military is something for the lower classes to do? His responses to questions over his leadership of a largely destructive Wall Street M&A company that specialized in wrecking distressed companies to profit from sale of pieces of the wrecks are always to claim that he knows how to "run" the US because he was so good at the wrecking. Among other things this ignores the very different nature of business and government. At the most elemental level business exists to make money by selling things and minimizing costs while government exists to spend money it collects in taxes or creates and provide services otherwise unavailable. Perhaps the most enjoyable of his bleatings was the moment in which he referred Diane Sawyer to Ron Paul on a point of information concerning the US Constitution....

Gingrich - Ron Paul has called him a "chickenhawk." In other words, that would be someone who thinks other people should fight. The basis for this is Gingrich's failure to serve during the draft and the VN War. He appears to love wars in which he, personally, will not fight. When confronted by this "awkwardness" he goes on about his father's 26 years of service in the US Army as though it were his own. He also goes on to cite his "experience" as a child in seeing his father go to war as though that is somehow ennobling. This is rubbish and someone should "call" him on it. Been there, done that, and it is not an informative experience.

Perry - Sad. The fool actually said that he would send US forces back into Iraq by force so that the Iranians would "stop taking over the country." Even Sawyer managed to stop contemplating her own beauty long enough to express surprise. "Well, these Iraqi individuals" as he referred to the government that we "mid-wifed" into being "should be talked to..." Perhaps a constitutional amendment barring presidents from Texas might be contemplated. Paul could be excepted by name.

Santorum. Last night's SNL sketch on him should be savored. Santorum, aside from the Google joke, still seems to justify my earlier comment that he must have been some Sister Mary Margaret's favorite little boy student. So far as I know he is not an Opus Dei type but he surely looks like one, sounds like one, and walks like one. He really seems to be running for Holy Roman Emperor. His world view seems medieval. His obsession with what he calls "radical Islam" is transparently a call to arms against the Islamic World. He clearly believes that "radical Islam" is a threat to.... What? The USA? Or is it really Israel? His attitude ignores the simple truth that Islam is not one thing. It is many, many things as is Christianity. As I recall, there are a lot of widely differing Jewish sects as well. The number of Muslims who are real threats to the USA is minuscule. Those people are being well "dealt with" by SOF, clandestine intelligence and alliances with foreign police. The COIN wars have been nothing but welfare for generals and self-serving theorists. If Santorum is president look for an official renewal of the crusades.

Paul- He is running to change peoples' minds about the role of government. He knows very well that he is unelectable. The "we are all 'Austrians'" outburst is indicative of that intent.

Huntsman- Out after NH.

Except for Paul, a sorry lot.

On the other hand we have the incumbent, a disguised Rockefeller CIA by-product Republican who opted for black identity because he didn't think he could be "white." Colin Powell made the same decision years ago under the influence of his wife. Obama is a man who wrings his hands and then signs laws like the Defense Authorization bill that authorizes the armed forces to arrest and hold American citizens on American soil and to hold them indefinitely without benefit of habeas corpus. In apology for this outrage he says that he will not arrest Americans in his time in power. Après lui, quoi, le deluge? Did he put a "frowny face" after his signature?

Zioconned Obomba drags failed Middle East baggage to Asia....

2012-01-13T05:01:00.001-08:00

http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/Opinion/Outlook/219660/we-all-pay-for-middle-east-posturing.html

Zioconned Obomba drags failed Middle East baggage to Asia....
By Peter Lee

The signature event in United States-Chinese relations last week was not the anti-climactic release of the US Defense Strategic Review, which re-emphasized the Barack Obama administration's widely touted ambitions to perform a strategic pirouette from the Middle East to East Asia. It was the murder of another Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran.

The assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan by forces unknown serves as a message that the Obama administration will find it difficult to reinvent itself as the savior of Asian peace and prosperity; instead, the United States will find itself reprising its dreary and detested role in the Middle East soap opera as defender of the pro-Israel/anti-Iranian status quo.

In some respects, the 2012 campaign against Iran is a rerun of the drama of 2010 (which itself was a re-run of the George W Bush sanctions push of 2008, which in turn was a reprise of the sanctions push begun in 2006), with the US badgering China to jump on the anti-Iran bandwagon, and Washington brandishing the stick of sanctions against the Chinese banking system while simultaneously dangling the carrot of sweet, sweet Saudi crude before Beijing.

But there's a big difference as well.

In 2010, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama could hold out the hope that hope that coercing Iran on its alleged nuclear ambitions would be balanced by an integration of Israel into the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime and a nice, geo-friendly win-win outcome for the Middle East (including Iran) and the world.

In 2012, pressure by the Israeli government and its US allies, enablers, and opportunistic supporters; Saudi Arabia's post-Arab Spring anxiety and aggressiveness; and the demands of the upcoming presidential campaign have combined to compel Obama to abandon his dreams of Middle East denuclearization, peace, and rapprochement with Iran.

Instead, Obama joins the dismal, unbroken series of recent US presidents whose only option is to demand Iran's head on a plate as part of a zero-sum win for Israel's Likud and the House of Saud ... and unambiguous loss for the People's Republic of China (PRC). Certainly, Obama has done his best to escape his Middle East conundrum, if not solve it.

Recent statements of the White House, State Department, and, with the announcement of the Defense Strategic Review, the Pentagon have been filled with the Obama administration's palpable yearning to refocus the United States as the indispensable counterweight to rising China, the welcomed champion of militarily weak East Asian free market democracies (plus handy ally communist Vietnam, of course), and deserving piggy at the trough of runaway Asian economic growth.

Indeed, there is a decent fit between the Asian ambitions of the United States and the needs of China's smaller and put-upon interlocutors in Asia.

The idea of a nuanced dance between the American eagle and Chinese dragon, not driven by ideology or security anxieties, but a realist tango of interest orchestrated by the intellectual brilliance of Beltway international relations wonks has understandably engaged the fancy ... of Beltway international relations wonks.

United States foreign policy insider Steve Clemons reported the official line at his blog The Washington Note, together with the welcome news that Vice President Joe Biden, an affable and indefatigable schmoozer, will serve as the human face of America in dealing with the Chinese leadership - a role I suspect that the cool, tense, and intensely cerebral Obama has little inclination or ability to fill, especially since his mission in Asia is now to administer self-righteous public scoldings to China for its perceived transgressions:

China Vice President Xi Jingping, widely estimated to be the successor later this year to Hu Jintao as China's next generation President, will visit Washington, DC in February - and the message, communicated by new China handler-in-chief Joe Biden, will be constructive but hard-headed, interest-driven mutual US-China engagement in which the US will communicate that it's legs in the region aren't weakening with China's rise - but rather getting stronger and providing an ongoing platform for the peace and stability that have benefited much of the region including, as one senior White House national security official told me, CHINA. [1]

Since CHINA has been upgraded to all-caps status, we can assume that the US is very serious about the policy. Will harsh reality support this carefully thought-out plan?

In support of the effort, in January Obama paid a visit to the Pentagon to roll out the Defense Strategic Guidance intended to put the military aspects of the vaunted "strategic pivot" to Asia in place…and sound a combined warning klaxon/dinner bell to American defense contractors.

The Washington Post made the inadvertently unnerving point that Obama's election year strategy was to give the uniformed services what they wanted, so that partisan-minded Republican critics would be confronted by a solid phalanx of top brass:

By enlisting the military's help in defining its strategic priorities, Obama has sought to ensure that he has the military's support when his defense budget goes before congress, including the committees led by some of his toughest Republican critics. Military leaders, in turn, now have reason to believe that Obama will not agree to more cuts. [2]

As to what the military and the civilian leadership want, well, it's China. Quoting from the report:

US economic and security interests are inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia, creating a mix of evolving challenges and opportunities. Accordingly, while the US military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region. [italics in original] [3]

However, the document also states that the United States military, reflecting the Obama administration's infatuation with the 21st century War Lite model of regional proxies supported by US airpower and low-cost drones, will be a leaner machine, capable of fighting one and a half full-dress wars, instead of the traditional two-fer.

Even when US forces are committed to a large-scale operation in one region, they will be capable of denying the objectives of - or imposing unacceptable costs on - an opportunistic aggressor in a second region.[italics in original]

Analysts are welcome to draw the inference that Asia-Pacific is the main theater, and the US military is going to equip itself for an ocean war over there.

That's certainly the conclusion that the "Center for a New American Security" (CNAS) - a left-leaning think tank founded by current State Department China honcho Kurt Campbell - drew.

CNAS jumped in to flesh out the US policy with commendable (or suspicious) alacrity, issuing a 115-page report on the Asia-Pacific theater titled "Cooperation From Strength" backed by an interactive website designed to publicize and sell the menace.....

The recommendation of the report: Anchors Aweigh!

The United States should strengthen its naval presence over the long term by building toward a 346-ship fleet rather than retreating to the 250-ship mark that the United States faces due to budget cuts and the decommissioning of aging warships in the next decade. Diplomatic and economic engagement with China and others will work better when backed by a credible military posture.

The conclusion: We come in peace!

The United States will need to get its China policy right. This will require active diplomatic and economic engagement backed by a strong US military and a growing economy. A realistic policy begins by shoring up American power and then actively supports rules-based cooperation; it avoids military conflict but not diplomatic confrontation. [4]

The call for an expanded navy is a canny but perhaps inevitable move.

With cutbacks looming for the US defense budget, somebody has to come out a winner or the Pentagon will be united in resistance to the White House. Might as well be the navy this time after the Army/Marine funding feast over the last 10 years. Also, dangling the prospect of a sizable defense build up linked to Asia-Pacific policy builds momentum for the policy itself.
For China, these recent statements of US intent are not surprises.

The US had already telegraphed the "strategic pivot" in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's article on "America's Pacific Century" in Foreign Policy magazine in October, and President Obama's "walks and quacks like economic and military containment of China" Return to Asia tour after the APEC meeting in November. [5]

In January, the People's Republic of China government has been remaining cautiously distant, hoping the US effort will fizzle due to budgetary and geopolitical realities without requiring Beijing to step up and antagonize Washington and its Asian neighbors directly with overt opposition.

Hannah Beech reported on the mild Chinese response to the announcement of the Defense Strategic Guidance in Time:

When US President Barack Obama announced earlier this month that the US military would be re-orienting itself toward the Asia-Pacific - a move that many perceive as an attempt to counter China's rising power - China's state-run news agency, Xinhua, responded quickly. But instead of the usual blustery anti-Americanism, the piece was titled "Constructive US role in Asia-Pacific welcome." Parts of the story were certainly less sunny than the headline, warning that America's "possible militarism will cause a lot of ill will and meet with strong opposition in the world's most dynamic region." Still, the headline's positive spin - and the absence of pages more of aggrieved Chinese commentary in the following days - was telling. Here's more from the Xinhua piece: "The US role, if fulfilled with a positive attitude and free from a Cold War-style zero-sum mentality, will not only be conducive to regional stability and prosperity, but be good for China, which needs a peaceful environment to continue its economic development." [6]

But every time Obama tries to position the US as the guarantor of peace and prosperity in Asia, something or somebody yanks his chain back to the Middle East, war, and the prospect of global economic ruin.

The murder of Ahmadi Roshan came on the one-year anniversary of the murder of two other Iranian nuclear scientists by similar methods (motorcyclist + bomb + car). It also came at a time of heightened tensions (anyway, tensions higher than the usual heightened tensions), inviting the inference that somebody, probably somebody in the region, wants to goad the Iranian government into a response that could start the military action ball rolling.

It is a safe bet that Obama, disengaging from two futile, polarizing, and massively expensive land wars, does not want war with Iran. It is also plausible that Saudi Arabia does not relish the opportunity to prove that it really does have the excess capacity to replace Iranian energy shipments to China, Japan, and South Korea.

And it is certain that Obama does not want the corpse of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan to serve as the poster child for US foreign policy, or that he wishes to ingratiate himself to America's East Asian friends and allies by bearing the gift of $200/barrel oil (while Beijing exploits its relationship with Iran to buy energy at a discount).

And he certainly doesn't want Asian importers (or for that matter Swiss bankers offended by the aggressive US push on disclosure) to start thinking about sanctions-busting alternatives to US financial coercion - like a shadow bank network for Iran transactions, as Asia Times Online's Pepe Escobar has suggested, or the ultimate horror: a drift away from the dollar to some International Monetary Fund special drawing rights, euro, barter, or yuan settlement system that removes the US dollar from the absolute center of the world financial equation. [7]

But Iran won't go away: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and their US supporters in both parties won't let it.

Because these powerful stakeholders want to make sure that plans to widen the US diplomatic and military footprint in East Asia don't come at the expense of their perceived existential interests in the Middle East.

So Obama has to drag his Middle Eastern baggage to Asia and make the case that Asia-Pacific should help America work through its Iran obsession.

Instead of exporting American solutions to Asia, the US seems to be exporting American problems.

It does not appear that the Obama administration has figured out how to make lemonade from this sackful of citrus.

One can imagine that the Obama message to Asia is "Believe the policy, not the politics", ie, the United States knows where its interests and future lie, and is not going to drive the world off a cliff because election year politics demand appeasement of the anti-Iran cranks.

However, Asia has zero votes in US politics. On the other hand, the people who are caught up in the rhetoric of war with Iran do have the votes, interest, and money to make their influence felt in US politics.

And the growth of that influence is undeniable, not only in the Republican Party.

Within the Democratic Party, the chant that "something must be done about Iran" is a mantra that draws strength from political strategy as well as private conviction of the burgeoning and influential neo-liberal wing that essentially went into hiding after the interventionist debacle of the Iraq War but has now re-emerged.

Several commentators have also noted the "If you build it they will come" argument ie if one talks enough about war with Iran, the regime is sufficiently demonized and delegitimized, war with Iran looks less like an undesirable option and more like a justified imperative.

It is also true that Obama has also nibbled cautiously yet happily at the apple of (undeclared, unilateral) warfare in the Libyan conflict; and a crowd-pleasing limited conflict with Iran that manages to discommode China at the same time might be just what the electoral campaign doctor ordered for a frustrated and constrained American chief executive.

But, as Agence France-Presse reported, "China Says War Over Iran Will Bring Disaster" and quoted a PRC diplomat, Wang Xiaodong, as saying:

Everyone knows that 40 percent of the oil shipped daily to every part of the world goes through the Strait of Hormuz, so once war starts in this region not only will the relevant nations be affected and attacked, it would also ... bring disaster to a world economy deep in crisis. [8]

That's a message that Obama would do well to heed ... even if he dislikes the messenger.

Notes
1. Obama's Team Could Learn from Rumsfeld on Defense Department Shifts, The Washington Note, Jan 9, 2012.
2. In creating new defense strategy, Obama attempts to outflank Congress, Washington Post, Jan 8, 2012.
3. Substituting USGlobal Leadership, US Department of Defense, January 2012.
4. Cooperation from Strength, Center for a New American Security, January, 2012.
5. America: The new sick man of Asia?, Asia Times Online, Nov 19, 2011.
6. The US Military Eyes the Asia-Pacific. China's Response? So Far, A Shrug, The Global Spin, Jan 9, 2012.
7. The US-Iran economic war, Asia Times Online, Jan 7, 2012.
8. China says war over Iran will bring disaster, Yahoo News, Jan 10, 2012.

Negotiations and great games in Afghanistan, Iran, Eurasia and MENA by the Zioconned and Bankrupted USA/EU....

2012-01-13T04:19:00.001-08:00

Negotiations and great games in Afghanistan, Iran, Eurasia and MENA by the Zioconned and Bankrupted USA/EU....
By Brian M Downing

The US response to the despicable and barbaric inside Job of 9/11 plunged it into a bewildering geopolitical maze that it is only now appreciating....

Hopes for a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan are beginning once more, but the problematic Byzantine geopolitics are not readily apparent. It is not the bipolar confrontation between Britain and Russia that it was in the 19th century. Nor is it simply the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) against the Taliban.

The war in Afghanistan involves Pakistan against India, China against India, the Pashtun Afghans against the northern peoples, Saudi Arabia against Iran, and Russia against China. So arcane and intricate are these conflicts that the US is allied with enemies and at odds with allies.

Pakistan against India
Afghanistan has long been a theater in the long conflict between Pakistan and India. The two states have been rivals since their inception and thus far India has been the political, economic, and military winner - a disturbing imbalance which decisively shapes the outlooks of the Pakistani army and parts of the population.

Following Pakistan's defeat in the 1971 war in which it lost East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) it embarked on infusing religion with nationalism, and the aspirations and animosities of the army became part of education in the country's madrassas (seminaries). In the absence of a significant national school system, this meant that army ideology became pervasive.

Afghanistan took on immense strategic value. The foreboding mountainous regions along the Af-Pak line offered a solid redoubt from which the army could continue the fight should India's demonstrably superior conventional forces conquer the Punjab, Sindh, and other low-lying areas. Behind the mountains dwell the Pashtun tribes of Afghanistan - fellow Muslims and close cousins of the Pashtun in Northwest Pakistan.

The army spread its nationalist-Islam across the Af-Pak line via indigenous mullahs and students who came from Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan. It was hoped to solidify the potential Afghan redoubt and to counter Indian influence with non-Pashtun people in northern Afghanistan, but it soon became part of a more global contest.

United States and Pakistani intelligence urged Afghans to revolt against the Kabul government then aligned with the Soviet Union. The ensuing Soviet war and Pakistan's role in funding mujahideen groups are well known. Nonetheless, it bears noting that Pakistan allocated US and Saudi funds with an eye to bolstering its position against India and that reliable Pashtun forces were better funded than those closer to India.

In the chaotic aftermath of the 1989 Soviet departure, Pakistan threw its support behind the Taliban - a group that to some extent evolved from the Hizb-i-Islami (Khalis) mujahideen force. The Taliban served Pakistan well by subduing warlordism and banditry, which had hindered commerce between Pakistan and the Central Asian republics that came into being with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Taliban drove the India-backed forces into a remote corner of northern Afghanistan and the east was used for base camps of the various proxy groups Pakistan deploys against India, including Jaish-i-Mohammed, the Haqqani Network, and Lashkar-i-Taiba.

At present, these groups wage war on India by attacking its diplomats and aid programs in Afghanistan, by fighting an insurgency in India-administered Kashmir, and by striking inside India itself as with Lashkar-i-Taiba's 2008 attack on Mumbai.

India counters Pakistan by building support among the non-Pashtun peoples of the north. It supported them during the Soviet war and stayed with them during the civil war and the Taliban rule. Indian teams are building roads and other economic assets and are almost certainly keeping contact with the northern commanders it has backed over the past 30 years.

Pakistan is in a strong position to influence a negotiated settlement. It gives insurgent groups and key leaders safe haven; it has proven able to assassinate politicians involved in negotiations; and it controls a good deal of US and ISAF logistics, especially the lethal materiel thought banned by Russia from its routes.

Pakistan will likely insist that Afghan resources flow out to world markets through Pakistani ports and that Central Asian resources (especially gas from Turkmenistan) use the same routes. Pakistan will also insist that Indian influence be minimal and that any connections to Baloch separatist movements be terminated.

China against India
The decades-long conflict between the two largest Asian powers began with border disputes that flared into skirmishes and in 1962, into a brief war. Each side sees the other as supporting insurgencies and separatist movements inside its territory.

Across South Asia, India and China compete through building capital ships and acquiring port facilities. China has naval bases in Myanmar and Sri Lanka and may be seeking another in the Seychelles, between India and China's key trade partners in Africa. India is holding naval maneuvers with Vietnam, another country that has had border incidents with China; and in conjunction with the US, India is seeking to detach Myanmar from China's fold.

In Central Asia, India and China contend for local influence by developing economic opportunities and at least pondering military bases. China was a minor supporter of the mujahideen during the Soviet war but has skillfully remained above the fighting there today. It has nonetheless become the big winner in carving out mining and hydrocarbon enclaves in Afghanistan, with the world's largest copper mine already in operation and a potentially lucrative oil deal signed in late 2011.

India was a more prominent supporter of the mujahideen, especially the northerners who were given short shrift by the Pakistani army, which allocated US and Saudi funds to its Pashtun favorites. In this respect, India and China cooperated in opposing the Soviet Union.

After the USSR and US packed and left in the early 1990s, India continued to support the northern resistance to the Taliban. This has won India a measure of respect with northerners but it lags behind China in persuading President Hamid Karzai to grant business operations.

India's goals are geopolitical though and extend outside Afghanistan. It has gotten an airbase in Tajikistan only a few kilometers north of Afghanistan - and quite close to China's oil tracts in Afghanistan's Kunduz province. Its influence in Central Asia will be limited by Moscow's continued influence there and its reluctance to make its southern periphery a theater in the Sino-Indian contest.

China shares a small, odd border with Afghanistan, but it is of little economic use. Northern routes to China pass through volatile parts of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan that are experiencing Islamist unrest and emerging insurgencies.

Pakistan, then, is vital to China's geopolitical and economic ambitions in Afghanistan. Copper and iron ore are trucked south to Pakistani ports; a railroad is being built connecting the oil tracts in Kunduz with the Khyber Pass and then to Pakistani ports.

China, however, is becoming wary of over-reliance on Pakistan. Its South Asian partner is wracked by political instability, sectarian conflict, horrific crime, and separatist movements. Baloch separatists have been known to target Chinese personnel. Pakistan's ties to various terrorist groups are becoming problematic, both internally as the groups occasionally turn against Pakistan itself and externally as they may be leading Pakistan into becoming a pariah state.

Pashtun against non-Pashtun
Conflict is simmering between the Pashtun and non-Pashtun peoples of Afghanistan. Though it to some extent overlaps with the ongoing insurgency and entails foreign intrigues, the conflict rests on ethnic mistrust that goes back decades.

It's well known that Afghanistan contains a number of different ethnic groups. A local witticism says that when the world was made, all the peoples who didn't fit anywhere else were placed in what became Afghanistan. State and society worked reasonably well as long as the former stayed weak and the latter stayed independent - "mutual indifference" as Olivier Roy described it.

The arrangement came apart in the late1970s when Kabul embarked on a modernization effort that called for a stronger state with a greater presence in the localities. Decades of insurgency, civil war, and warlordism ensued and recreating a new political arrangement has been elusive.

The non-Pashtun peoples of northern Afghanistan - Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmen and others - have become wary of, if not hostile to, the Pashtuns of the south. Northerners contend that the Pashtun overstate their population to claim a majority and the right to govern. (In fact, they are probably about 42%.) Non-Pashtuns point to a long list of Pashtun emirs, kings, and presidents who have blundered, come under the influence of foreign powers, and otherwise misgoverned the country - some egregiously so.

Karzai, a Popalzai Pashtun, is, in the northerner perspective, only the most recent Pashtun on the list. Karzai's artlessness in selecting provincial and district officials and his openness to cash payments have undermined efforts to rebuild the state and greatly contributed to the disquiet that insurgent groups have built upon.

Northerners also see Karzai as too willing and too naive to negotiate with the Taliban - another Pashtun government whose return to power northerners dread. Karzai's political failures have put the country at risk of falling back into the hands of the Taliban and their army overlords in Pakistan....

Northern elders and politicians are searching for a way to reduce Pashtun political control and escape another round of Taliban rule. Publicly they call for a federal form of government that will give them regional autonomy. In private they discuss breaking away altogether with the help of the army, the rank and file of which are northerners who resent the haughty and inept Pashtun officer corps.

Tensions between Afghans are plain enough to regional powers. Pakistani intelligence is thought complicit in assassinating northern politicians who present obstacles to Taliban and Pakistani control in Afghanistan. India, fearful of Pakistani influence in Central Asia, is supportive of northern autonomy but is not in a position to bring it about. Events, however, may be leading something close to it.

The US wishes to keep Afghanistan intact, but the strength of the insurgency in the south and the political and logistical need to reduce its troop levels require withdrawal from many parts of the Pashtun south. The US effort, then, may have to concentrate in a handful of enclaves in the south and in the northern provinces - a move that will be most welcome in the north.

Saudi Arabia against Iran....
The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is the most dangerous one in the world today as ongoing events in the Persian Gulf attest. They vie in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and throughout the Gulf. Afghanistan is another theater of this contest.

Tensions between the two powers can of course be traced back to the Sunni-Shi'ite chasm but all was held in check when both played roles in the US's "twin pillars" strategy for Gulf security. With the fall of the shah (1979) and Ayatollah Ruhollah's Khomeini's call for uprisings throughout the Islamic world, however, antagonisms grew, even though Khomeini's calls were generally ignored.

The ouster of Saddam Hussein (2003) greatly destabilized the region. Saudi Arabia saw Saddam's military state as a strategic obstacle to Iranian-Shi'ite expansion. Riyadh counseled Washington not to oust him, as it would lead to a majority Shi'ite government that would ally with Iran and endanger the region. Events have shown Riyadh to be the wiser judge.

Iran has longstanding interests inside Afghanistan. The Hazara people are Farsi-speaking Shi'ites who constitute about 9% of the population and who suffered greatly under the Taliban which deemed them heretics. The Tajiks are about 25% of the population and though chiefly Sunni, have linguistic and cultural ties to Iran.

Hazaras and Tajiks along with other northern peoples enjoyed Iranian support during the Soviet war and the long internal fighting that ensued. Hazara clerics look to fellow Shi'ite authorities in Iran on religious matters, though not necessarily to the ayatollahs who rule the country. Indeed, the authority of Hazara clerics has prevented the warlordism that has plagued the rest of Afghanistan, which has helped to make Central Afghanistan relatively tranquil.

Saudi Arabia has sought to counter Iranian influence in Afghanistan. In 1990, in the chaotic aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal, the Saudis, in conjunction with Pakistani intelligence and a Pashtun mujahideen commander, attempted to oust the Iranian-backed northern government. It was thwarted, paradoxically enough, in part by US diplomatic pressure. Memory of the coup is not far from mind among concerned parties.

Iran sees the Taliban as another Saudi-Pakistani force - an aberrant, intolerant Sunni sect. Taliban zealotry stems from the Deobandi madrassas of Pakistan which enjoy lavish subsidies from the Saudi state and Wahhabi clerics. These schools put forth militants eager to join with anti-Shi'ite groups inside Pakistan such as Sipah-i-Sahaba, which the Pakistani army created to suppress Shi'ism following the Iranian revolution. During the Taliban's rule, they massacred tens of thousand of Hazaras, seized the Iranian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, and killed several diplomats.

Outside Pakistan, the Deobandi faithful serve in Saudi forces that repress Shi'ite movements calling for civil rights in the Gulf region. They also form key components of the Saudi army where they serve with Sunni veterans of the Iraqi army. They are soldiers in the Saudi campaign to surround and contain Iran - successors to Saddam Hussein's army that invaded and devastated Iran.

The Taliban nonetheless draw limited support from Iran as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) provides weaponry to Afghan insurgents and trains them on its Zahedan base just inside Iran. It does so in the hope of deflecting them from the anti-Iranian and anti-Shi'ite path that the Saudis promote, but perhaps more importantly as a warning to the US. Should the US or one of its allies attack Iran, the Afghan insurgents will enjoy far more assistance from the IRGC.

The effort against Iranian influence in Afghanistan may have developed a new dimension with the suicide bombings last December on the Shi'ite Hazaras as they observed Ashura. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), a Pakistani militant group with a long history of attacking Shi'ites and anyone else deemed impure, has taken credit for it. The LeJ broke away from Sipah-e-Sahaba and has taken part in murders and assassination attempts on politicians and continued its intimidation of Shi'ites and Christians, primarily inside Pakistan.

The suicide team's training, weaponry, and long passage from sanctuaries in eastern Afghanistan to targets in the south and north imply considerable assistance. LeJ's robust anti-Shi'ite credentials may have caught the eye of Saudi intelligence. Striking at the Hazaras is an indirect attack on Iran and it may augur a direct attack from Iran's east.

China against Russia....
Aside from the insurgency, ethnic mistrust, and intrigues of neighboring countries, Afghanistan is a place of contention between China and Russia Though there is Russian triangulation at work, the US is closer to Russia in this nettlesome situation.

A Russian geological survey found great mineralogical promise in Afghanistan, as did a recent US study. Metal ores and increasingly strategic rare earths abound, and preliminary studies suggest appreciable oil and gas reserves.

Further, Afghanistan is part of, and a gateway to, Central Asia. A vast region left largely undeveloped while under Soviet rule, it is now open to development. Corporations and states are scrambling for advantage.

China has a leg up in Afghanistan. It operates the largest copper mine in the world and is building sizable iron mines too. It recently obtained oil licenses in Kunduz province in the north-central part of the country and is well along in linking Kunduz by rail to the Khyber Pass. Curiously, Chinese operations proceed without incident, even in regions with insurgent activity, leading some to suspect that China has, through its Pakistan ally, arranged a modus vivendi with the Taliban.

To the north, in Central Asia, China is acquiring oil licenses in Kazakhstan's Tenghiz field - in at least one case after a peculiar termination of US rights. China has built a pipeline connecting these fields to northwest China - the center of domestic oil production. The pipeline rivals a Russian line to the Far East, which poses an economic and diplomatic threat too as Russian relations with Japan and South Korea are shaped by Russian oil.

China is expanding, economically and diplomatically at this point, into areas that Russia considers areas of profound national interest. Further, China's growing economic and military power and the ominous ambitiousness revealed in recent navalist ventures are causing concern in Russia, whose trans-Ural territories are vast, resource rich, and indefensible. Parts of Siberia, after all, were seized from China in centuries past - events not considered historical trivia in either capital.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Russia helped the US secure bases in former Soviet republics to support the Northern Alliance in ousting the Taliban and rebuild Afghanistan. Since then, as US relations with Pakistan deteriorate and supply lines from Karachi become more unreliable, Russia has been invaluable in US/ISAF logistics.

Russia has a decided ambivalence about the US presence in Afghanistan. It has profound misgivings about the proximity of troops of a recent mortal enemy and present-day adversary on many issues, but it has even graver misgivings about Islamist militancy along the Af-Pak frontier and in Central Asia.

Among the Pakistani army's client groups are a number of Chechens whose organizations strike inside Russia, even in Moscow. Remnants of the Islamist Movement of Uzbekistan and a kindred group from Tajikistan operate with al Qaeda and seek to return to their countries one day. The Fergana Valley, which stretches from Kyrgyzstan through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, seethes with social and religious unrest and is of considerable concern in and out of the region.

Russia has a growing Muslim population and a stagnant Christian one. Its younger, educated people are emigrating in worrisome numbers. It looks warily at Islamic and Islamist tides near its former republics and the oil-bearing Caucasus region. Russia would prefer to see the US wear down the Taliban or consolidate in northern Afghanistan to continue the effort. If Russia did not want the US there, it could stop the supply trains and maroon an American army on the Afghan plains.

Russia also wishes to encourage the continuance of the US-backed containment around China's periphery, from South Korea to Vietnam and India. China is now the focus of US foreign policy and Russia wishes it to remain so, without its own participation in the arrangement.

Russia also encourages non-Chinese investment in Central Asia, which in the absence of sufficient Russian capital and expertise, is preferable to the region's becoming a Chinese sphere of influence or more - as is Afghanistan, or at least large parts of it. Basic commodities such as iron and copper and the increasingly valuable rare earths must not be so concentrated in Chinese hands as to allow Beijing to control prices and exert pressure on foreign states.

The US response to the despicable and barbaric inside Job of 9/11 plunged it into a bewildering geopolitical maze that it is only now appreciating. The US now finds itself sharing key strategic interests with an enemy, Iran, as both support the northern Afghans and oppose the Taliban. Saudi Arabia, US ally against Iran elsewhere, supports Pakistan and indirectly its Taliban proxy. Strange bedfellows....

The prospects for US and Taliban negotiators weighing and balancing the interests of various powers are not promising. Nor is the prospect of Pakistan acting as impartial mediator, attractive and inevitable as that will seem to the Pakistani army.

More promising, however, is the widespread hostility to the Taliban and its supporters in the Pakistani army. All the concerned powers see the Pakistani army as the institutional sponsor of an array of militant groups, including the Taliban, that enjoy safe have along the Af-Pak line and threaten Russia, Iran, China, India, and many Afghans as well.

In this respect, the prospects for a settlement are more likely if arrived at in conjunction with the various concerned powers, unattractive and unforeseen as that maybe to the Pakistani army.

What US can't accept in Belarus, it supports in Uzbekistan...., typical Zioconned US double speak....

2012-01-13T01:48:00.000-08:00

What US can't accept in Belarus, it supports in Uzbekistan...., typical Zioconned US double speak and double cross by the most infamous White House Murder INC,....

By Muzaffar Suleymanov/CPJ Europe and Central Asia Research Associate

Last week, President Obama signed into law a bill that expands sanctions against Belarus, whose authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko continues to imprison his opponents and critics. Lukashenko unleashed the latest crackdown hours after the flawed December 2010 presidential vote, which declared him winner of a fourth term. Repression in Belarus is ongoing. Last week, authorities further tightened their grip on the media by restricting access to blacklisted websites. On Monday, a district court in Minsk jailed an independent reporter for filming a one-man protest vigil in front of the KGB headquarters.

The Belarus Democracy and Human Rights Act of 2011, which Obama signed into law a week ago after its passage through Congress, updates legislation from 2004 and 2006. Its aim is to compel Lukashenko, also known as the last European dictator, to release his jailed opponents and stop repressing the media. Among others provisions, the law expands a ban on issuing U.S. visas to Belarusian officials involved into the crackdown. It requires the U.S. administration to monitor Internet censorship in Belarus, and inform the Congress of any arms sales to the regime.

But whereas the European dictator and his officials are not welcome in the U.S., his Uzbek counterpart, President Islam Karimov, has received stunningly cordial treatment from the Obama administration. A former Communist party leader, Karimov has ruled nonstop, with the help of referendums and rigged elections, since 1989. He personally oversaw the May 2005 massacre in the city of Andijan, and his regime virtually annihilated the independent press after it spread the word about those brutalities.

With five reporters imprisoned because of their work, Uzbekistan is the leading jailer of journalists in Eurasia. Until November, the president's own nephew, journalist Dzhamshid Karimov, was among those locked up. He had languished at a psychiatric facility since September 2006, when authorities abducted him from the street and forcibly hospitalized him without any medical diagnosis or court order.

There are scores of examples to position the Uzbek leader as far more brutal and dictatorial than Lukashenko's regime. The human rights abuses include forced child labor; arbitrary detentions and torture of detainees; harassment of lawyers and imprisonment of rights defenders; absolute state control over the media and Internet; and eviction of the last international monitor--Human Rights Watch--from its offices in Tashkent. All of these and other issues are listed in the U.S. State Department's own 2010 Human Rights report for Uzbekistan, which brands the country as "an authoritarian state."

Yet, in September, Karimov received a warm phone call from Obama, and heard appraisal on his "progress" in human rights from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her October visit to Tashkent. Also last year, the U.S. Congress removed what was left of the 2004 arms embargo imposed against Uzbekistan in connection with its grave human rights record. The Pentagon is planning to hand over used military equipment to the Uzbek regime, the independent news website EurasiaNet reported in December. Karimov's regime is also getting a raise from the Pentagon for providing "logistical, military, and other support" to U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, EurasiaNet said Tuesday.

It's no secret that Uzbekistan's proximity to Afghanistan, and the heavy use of its territory as a land supply route for American troops there, are the main reason behind Obama's policy toward Karimov. Since Osama bin Laden's killing by U.S. special forces and the bombing of Pakistani soldiers by American drones in 2011, Pakistan has virtually shut the ground routes formerly used by the Pentagon, leaving Uzbek territory as its only option for supplying the troops in Afghanistan.

But no geopolitical or military interest should justify any kind of support--be it a phone call or a courtesy handshake--of such a repressive regime. Policymakers and executors in Washington must realize that by dealing with Karimov and equipping his army, they are participating in the repression. They're helping him to stifle the media and perpetuate abuses. Karimov already showed the world in 2005 what his army and special forces will do with weapons and training received from the West.

The U.S. "has ongoing, serious concerns about the state of human rights in Uzbekistan and raises those concerns with the government of Uzbekistan every chance we get," Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs, told The Daily Beast last month. He said that "human rights in Uzbekistan are going to improve because Uzbekistan determines it is in its own interest to improve them," The Daily Beast reported.

The administration must understand: even if they scold Karimov on his government's rights record during private talks, no criticism leaves the negotiations room in a country where all independent media has been silenced. Rather, the state-controlled media tells the Uzbeks that the U.S. is his friend and an ally.

As one of the initiators of the legislation on Belarus, U.S. Congressman Chris Smith, said, "With these sanctions we stand with the Belarusian people and against their oppressors," as Charter 97 reported. Who will stand with the Uzbek people and against its oppressor?

The White House assassinations INC, courtesy of Langley and Herzliya....

2012-01-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

The White House assassinations INC, courtesy of Langley and Herzliya....an Iranian scientist is murdered in Tehran again....

The funny thing is that Zioconned US utterly corrupt officials go out of their way to deny any knowledge or involvement in barbaric murders in the Levant, since January 24th 2002...., even though they are neck deep in all the savage assassinations in Lebanon, Iran and the Greater Middle East for decades....

".... The Doomsday Clock – the famous gauge of the world's risk of nuclear annihilation, run by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) – moved a minute closer to midnight on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, another nuclear physicist was assassinated in Iran. Both events reveal a global nuclear situation that seems to be worsening fast....

He is the fifth such victim in Iran, according to William Tobey of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Two nuclear scientists were killed in similar bombings in 2010, an electronics student was shot dead last year, and another physicist is thought to have been killed in 2007. Another 2010 bombing target, Fereydoon Abbasi, survived and was made head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. No one has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks.

Losing hope

In January 2010 things seemed more hopeful. US president Barack Obama's renewed commitment to nuclear disarmament led the BAS to set its clock back to 6 minutes to midnight, from the 5 it had moved to previously, as the US seemed to retreat from arms control. The clock started at 7 minutes to midnight in 1947, in the wake of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

This week security experts moved it to 5 minutes to midnight again, citing failure by the US and others to follow through on arms control promises – and also Iran's nuclear power programme. Iran's two uranium enrichment plants are busily making uranium that could be used to fuel a reactor that makes medical isotopes, but could also be used to quickly produce weapons-grade uranium, in which the uranium-235 (235U) isotope is present at 90 per cent.

This week the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that Iran has begun enriching uranium to 20 per cent 235U at its underground plant at Fordow. That level of enrichment is closer than it seems to the 90 per cent needed for a typical nuclear bomb.

Break out

Olli Heinonen of Harvard University calculates that it would take Iran six months to make a bomb starting from the fuel-grade 3.5-per-cent 235U made under UN inspection at the Natanz plant, but only a month starting from 20-per-cent 235U. Such a stockpile means Iran could "break out" and build a bomb "very quickly should it decide to do so", he says.

This possibility is especially problematic for Israel, which has hinted that it will attempt the military destruction of Iran's nuclear infrastructure at any sign that it is making nuclear weapons. The underground plant at Fordow, however, is virtually bomb-proof.

And so to the dead Iranian scientists. Attempts to derail a country's nuclear programme by killing its scientists "are products of desperation", says Tobey – citing a US effort to kill legendary physicist Werner Heisenberg during the second world war, abandoned at the last minute only when the would-be assassin decided Heisenberg was not involved in a Nazi nuclear effort after all...."

Iran has pay back in mind....
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

PALO ALTO, California - Despite a strong pitch by Iran, the United Nations has failed to condemn the latest assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, thus sending a bad signal about the UN's determination to fight global terrorism and to condemn all acts of terrorism even-handedly.

Instead of a swift and decisive response to the letter by Iran's ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the 15 members of the UN Security Council and the president of the UN General Assembly, requesting the UN's condemnation of the terror of scientist Mostafa Rahimi Roshan and his driver in Tehran this week, the only reaction so far has been by Ban's spokesperson promising "to study" the request.

This silence in the face of a clear act of terrorism, attributed to United States and Israel intelligence services by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his message of condolence on Thursday, speaks volumes about the UN, the fact that it is under the sway of the US and other Western powers that pay-lip service to human rights when it comes to victims of terrorism in Iran.

Roshan, 32, was killed when two men on a motorbike attached a magnetic bomb to his vehicle in Tehran. His driver/bodyguard later died. Roshan was a deputy director at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility, according to the website of the university he graduated from a decade ago, Sharif University.

The UN's Human Rights Council, as well as an array of rights activists who are always up in arms in condemning rights abuses in Iran, have been quiet with respect to the assassination.

This does not bode well for an international organization committed to the maintenance of global peace and security, especially since such violence begets more violence, in light of popular fury in Iran and the growing calls for Iran to retaliate - some have even called for targeting US and Israeli scientists who regularly attend international conferences.

According to a source in Iran, Tehran is on the verge of making clear that "all bets are off and one more incident like this and then their [US and Israeli] scientists will be fair game".

Roshan's murder coincided with the second anniversary of the assassination of another scientist, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a Tehran University professor, who was killed in a similar manner by a bomb attached to his vehicle.

"This cowardly terror is a sign of global bullying powers' desperation in the face of determined Iranian people," Khamenei stated.

Other Iranian officials, including first Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi and various members of the parliament (Majlis), have connected this assassination to the parliamentary elections scheduled for next month, accusing "foreign powers" of seeking to destabilize Iran.

The US and Britain have denied any involvement in the assassination, although a front page story in the New York Times detailed the specifics of a stepped-up campaign of terrorism, cyber-attacks, etc in Iran aimed at halting Iran's controversial nuclear program. Some US editorials, including one in the Los Angeles Times, have categorically denounced the terror attack and have likened it to al-Qaeda terrorism. [1].

But, whatever the intention of the perpetrators, the act has backfired in sections of the global community by turning the tables on Iran's wealth of adversaries and depicting Iran as a victim, rather than an instigator of terrorism.

This was most vividly visible in President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's Latin America five-day tour, which ended on Thursday with a meeting with Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, this after a private chat with the ailing Fidel Castro in Havana in Cuba on Wednesday and attending a ceremony for Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega on Tuesday, the whole trip serving as a snub to the US and its coercive diplomacy toward Iran.

In addition to harvesting timely Latin solidarity, Iran also received a big break from Europe, which has decided to delay a decision on an oil embargo on Iran for another six months, clearly unhappy news for Washington and Tel Aviv, whose envoys are busy lobbying various nations to go along with the US-imposed sanctions on trade with Iran.

Russia, too, has announced that it opposes oil sanctions, calling for new multilateral talks with Iran on the nuclear issue, a move supported by Iran's key neighbor Turkey, which is pressing hard for new "Iran Six" talks to be held in Turkey in the near future. These suspended talks on Iran's nuclear program - which some suspect to be designed to develop nuclear weapons - include the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, Britain, France China, Russia - plus Germany.

A clear affront to the US and the pro-Israel lobbyists, the Turkish government has sent a clear signal that it will continue its voluminous trade that includes a growing energy partnership, despite US sanctions. Similarly, Pakistan has announced that it will continue normal trade with Iran and that it is intent on finishing the badly-need Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline.

A big question mark, however, hovers over China, whose leaders refused to consent to the US lobbying for curtailing energy trade with Iran, pitched by visiting Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Most likely China will sustain its energy links with Iran while simultaneously seeking to further diversify its sources of foreign oil imports.

On the con side, as far as Iran is concerned, is the news that Geithner had a more successful trip to Tokyo, which has agreed to cut down its energy ties with Iran, yet falling short of an all-out embargo. Much depends on Tokyo's follow-up action, the amount of reduced oil from Iran, before one can conclude if (the weakened) Japan has actually become another compliant follower of the US's coercive policy toward Iran, just as South Korea has announced its compliance with the US wish ahead of Geithner's Asia trip.

This is not to mention the rumor mill that India has ordered its oil industry to prepare for reduced dependence on Iranian oil. Overall, with Russia and China resisting the US-led sanctions regime and Europe delaying action, as far as Tehran is concerned the bottle is still half-full rather than half-empty.

In conclusion, to return to the subject of the UN's inaction with respect to anti-Iran terrorism, this will be harmful to Ban's image and will likely strengthen Iran's hands in its alliance politics focused on the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), in light of a letter by Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali Asghar Soltanieh, to NAM nations requesting their steadfast condemnation of such blatant acts of terror against nuclear scientists.

This means that Iran's position at the IAEA has been somewhat strengthened by an act of terrorism that follows the sinister aim of depleting Iran of its scientific nuclear know-how.

Notes
1. On Iran, how far is too far? Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2012.

The war is with China, the battleground Africa, MENA and the Choke points....

2012-01-12T04:20:00.001-08:00

The war is with China, the battleground Africa, MENA and the Choke points....
By Dieter Neumann

When United States President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta appeared together at the press conference at the Pentagon recently to reiterate America’s commitment to the Asia-Pacific region, the subject of Africa did not come up. Sometimes what is avoided can be a clue to what is most important on the agenda.

The obvious intent of the stated focus on the Asia-Pacific region is to remind the rising China that America is still the big dog. Recent arms sales to Taiwan and the agreement with Australia to station American troops there are but two symbolic gestures to that effect. But the real focus of the "focus on Asia-Pacific" is not the Asia-Pacific region at all. It is Africa.

The creation of Africom in 2006 by the US military was a signal that America would not simply lie back and allow the Chinese to become the hegemon for the continent. That signal by itself was not enough, however. By 2009 Chinese trade with Africa surpassed America’s for the first time.

Chinese economic involvement took many forms. Obviously resource development is a priority for the Chinese, as Africa is acknowledged to be the world’s greatest storehouse of precious and rare metals and has vast unexploited oil reserves. While Chinese companies, all proxies for the government of China, compete with western companies for those resources, they also enter into agreements to provide critical infrastructure in the transportation, education and medical fields, all of which provide an advantage when it comes to winning hearts and minds.

The Libya uprising provided America and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies the first opportunity to turn back Chinese influence in Africa. Chinese companies had an estimated US$20 billion in projects underway and had courted Muammar Gaddafi for many years.

As the NATO-enabled rebel tide overwhelmed the Gaddafi forces, 36,000 Chinese engineers, tradesmen, and technicians fled the country. Chinese infrastructure projects and its involvement in Libya’s oil sector lay in disarray.

The years ahead will be rife with African proxy wars between the US and China. The escalating violence in South Sudan is but the latest manifestation of this. Obama and Panetta correctly claimed the Asia Pacific as their next focus after having, in their terms, stabilized the middle east.

But while the focus may be on the Asia-Pacific region, it is in Africa that the bullets will fly and the bombs will drop....