This page includes materials on US relations with the world, with a special focus on Northeast Asia and, inevitably, the Middle East. And so Britain is brought into it. And sometimes I stray further afield, when something catches my eye. Prior to 2005 it was called 'US and the world'

• The Social Basis of America's Imperial Politics: Rethinking Imperialist Theory
  By Prof James Petras Global Research, December 22, 2010 The ‘fluidity’ of US power relations with Latin America is a product of the continuities and changes in Latin America. Past hegemony continues to weigh heavy, but the future augurs a continued decline. The current balance of power will however be determined by shifts in world markets, in which the US is destined to play a lesser role. Hence the greater probability of more divergences in policy, barring major breakdowns within Latin America. Almost all theories of contemporary imperialism lack any but the crudest sociological analyses of the classes and political character of the governing groups which direct the imperial state and its polices. The same is true about the theorizing of the imperial state which is largely devoid of institutional analyses. Most theorists resort to a form of economic reductionism in which ‘investments’, ‘trade’, ‘markets’ are presented as ahistorical disembodied entities comparable across space and time. The changing nature of the leading classes are accounted for by general categories such as “finance”, “manufacturing”, “banking”, “service” without any specific analysis of the variable nature and sources of financial wealth (illegal drug trade, money laundering, real estate speculation, etc.). [Imperialism]
• Kosovo: Europe's Mafia State. Hub of the EU-NATO Drug Trail
  Kosovo's Prime Minister Accused of Running Human Organ, Drug Trafficking Cartel
  By Tom Burghardt
  Global Research, December 22, 2010 Antifascist Calling... In another grim milestone for the United States and NATO, the Council of Europe (COE) released an explosive report last week, "Inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo." The report charged that former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) boss and current Prime Minister, Hashim Thaçi, "is the head of a 'mafia-like' Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe," The Guardian disclosed. According to a draft resolution unanimously approved December 16 in Paris, the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights found compelling evidence of forced disappearances, organ trafficking, corruption and collusion between criminal gangs and "political circles" in Kosovo who just happen to be close regional allies of the United States. [War crimes] [Double standards] [Drugs]
• Iran's ice cream challenge to America
  By Liz Sly Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 19, 2010; 6:45 PM BAGHDAD - In the heart of Baghdad's Green Zone, just yards from the mighty fortress of the biggest U.S. embassy in the world, a small but symbolic challenge to America's rapidly waning influence in Iraq is taking shape in the form of an Iranian ice cream parlor. [Decline]
• End of world prediction: No need for plans after Oct. 21
  By Josh Shaffer | Raleigh News & Observer RALEIGH, N.C. — From her Subaru, a car painted as white as the fourth horse of Revelation, Allison Warden proclaims that Jesus Christ shall return May 21. As in 151 days from now. By her reckoning, the Lord's return will fall on a springtime Saturday. And if the world weren't ending, you might find people celebrating other notable highlights of the day: Mr. T's birthday, Montenegro's independence or the Red Sox-White Sox game. But to Warden and hundreds of like-minded Christians, Judgment Day can be calculated precisely by tracing biblical genealogy, or by following history forward 7,000 years from the day Noah shut the door to his ark. So if May 22 rolls around and you're still here, wailing and gnashing your teeth, don't say nobody warned you. "It's a very jarring thing to be told you have five months on Earth," admits Warden, 29. "That may interrupt any earthly plan." [Religion] [Bizarre]
• Who's Who at Wikileaks?
  By Julie Lévesque Global Research, December 20, 2010 “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” --Franklin D. Roosevelt After the publication of a series of confirmations rather than revelations, there are some crucial unanswered questions regarding the nature and organizational structure of Wikileaks. Shrouded in secrecy, the now famous whistleblowing site and its director Julian Assange are demanding "transparency" from governments and corporations around the world while failing to provide some basic information pertaining to Wikileaks as an organization. Who is Julian Assange? In the introduction to the book Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier (1997), by Julian Assange and Suelette Dreyfus, Assange begins with the following quotes: "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." -- Oscar Wilde "What is essential is invisible to the eye." -- Antoine De Saint-Exupery From the start, Assange states that he undertook the research for the book; however, he fails to mention that he was actually one of the hackers analyzed in the book, going by the name of Mendax, a Latin word for “lying, false...”. Although we cannot confirm that the above quotes referred to him, they nonetheless suggest that Assange, at the time, was hiding his true identity. We know very little about the cryptographer Julian Assange. [Cyberwar] [WikiLeaks]
• A rage unquenched: AfPak, Iraq, and the west
  Paul Rogers, 16 December 2010 A pattern of attacks in the United States and Europe by individual jihadists is deeply connected to both the effects and the perceptions of a decade's war across the greater middle east. About the authorPaul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001, and writes an international-security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010)The attempted attack on shoppers in central Stockholm on 11 December 2010 by the Iraq-born Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly has yet to be fully investigated, but it may have involved this individual undertaking an operation on his own initiative. If this proves to be the case (evidence is still being examined), the Swedish incident may take its place among a recent pattern:
  But actions by dislocated individuals (often of diasporic origins) do appear to be becoming more common. The roots of their radicalisation are complex and variable; the process may include a transformation of religious identity, a measure of indoctrination, a perception of marginalisation (or some mix of these). The clear context of this process, however, is often a bitter opposition to western policies and actions (especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan) as well as to America’s consistent support for Israel. [NSA] [Diaspora]
• US missile intercept test fails
  The Associated Press Wednesday, December 15, 2010; 6:27 PM VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- An interceptor missile launched from California on Wednesday failed to hit a target fired from a Pacific atoll 4,000 miles away during a test of an anti-ballistic missile defense system, the Air Force announced. The missile, called a ground-based interceptor, lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base at 12:03 a.m. and released a device called an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, or EKV, that was to plow into a target missile fired from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The interceptor's sensors worked and the EKV was deployed, but it missed, according to a statement from Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. The cause of the failure will be investigated before another test is scheduled, Lehner said. It was the fourth launch of a fully operational interceptor from Vandenberg, 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The $100 million launch originally was planned for Tuesday, but it was delayed by poor weather. The missile agency noted that the Sea-Based X-Band Radar, a critical component of the system, performed as planned. The radar, which cost more than $800 million, is mounted on an oceangoing-platform that can sail to any point where the military needs to track missiles. The 280-foot-tall radar can identify baseball-size objects thousands of miles away. It was built by Raytheon Co. for the Boeing Co., the prime contractor on the project. Ground-based interceptors are in place at Fort Greeley, Alaska, in addition to Vandenberg. In recent years the military has held a series of tests of technologies to defend against long-range ballistic missiles that might be fired from countries such as North Korea. [Missile defense] [Threat] [MISCOM]
• Who is Behind Wikileaks?
  By Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, December 13, 2010 "World bankers, by pulling a few simple levers that control the flow of money, can make or break entire economies. By controlling press releases of economic strategies that shape national trends, the power elite are able to not only tighten their stranglehold on this nation's economic structure, but can extend that control world wide. Those possessing such power would logically want to remain in the background, invisible to the average citizen." (Aldus Huxley) Wikleaks is upheld as a breakthrough in the battle against media disinformation and the lies of the US government. Unquestionably, the released documents constitute an important and valuable data bank. The documents have been used by critical researchers since the outset of the Wikileaks project. Wikileaks earlier revelations have focussed on US war crimes in Afghanistan (July 2010) as well as issues pertaining to civil liberties and the "militarization of the Homeland" (see Tom Burghardt, Militarizing the "Homeland" in Response to the Economic and Political Crisis, Global Research, October 11, 2008) In October 2010, WikiLeaks was reported to have released some 400,000 classified Iraq war documents, covering events from 2004 to 2009 (Tom Burghardt, The WikiLeaks Release: U.S. Complicity and Cover-Up of Iraq Torture Exposed, Global Research, October 24, 2010). These revelations contained in the Wikileaks Iraq War Logs provide "further evidence of the Pentagon's role in the systematic torture of Iraqi citizens by the U.S.-installed post-Saddam regime." (Ibid) Progressive organizations have praised the Wikileaks endeavor. Our own website Global Research has provided extensive coverage of the Wikileaks project. The leaks are heralded as an immeasurable victory against corporate media censorship. But there more than meets the eye. be utilized as a means to wage a campaign to control the internet. [Media] [Thinktanks] [WikiLeaks] [Client]
• Domesticated Deities
  About Messiahs Come to Redeem Our Country, Not Govern It (and Don’t Forget Marilyn and Elvis and Jackie O and Diana and Oprah and Brangelina and David Hasselhoff)
  By Lewis Lapham [A longer version of this essay appears in "Celebrity," the Winter 2011 issue of Lapham's Quarterly and is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine.] Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought. -- William Shakespeare Label celebrity a consumer society’s most precious consumer product, and eventually it becomes the hero with a thousand faces, the packaging of the society’s art and politics, the framework of its commerce, and the stuff of its religion. Such a society is the one that America has been attempting to make for itself since John F. Kennedy was king in Camelot, and the collective effort -- nearly 50 years of dancing with the stars under the disco balls in Hollywood, Washington, and Wall Street -- deserves an appreciation of the historical antecedents
• The March to War: Was September 11 2001 the Start of World War III?
  by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research, December 11, 2010 The tragic attacks of September 11, 2001 have resulted in almost ten years of perpetual war. September 11, 2001 was the first drum beats, or the opening salvos, of a much wider conflict. The deployment of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan has secured a bridgehead into the Eurasian Heartland, which is geographically positioned on or near the borders of Iran, China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Was Afghanistan the starting battle of a global war? The invasion of Afghanistan can be compared to the landing of the Western Allies, specifically the Americans, in North Africa as a bridgehead into Italy and Europe. At the same time NATO has been pushing from Europe towards the Eurasian Heartland, like the landing of the invading forces of the Western Allies in France. Was September 11th, 2001 the start of the Third World War? Historically speaking, it should be noted that distinctions between times of war and peace are not always clear-cut and conflicts do not always correspond to the dates set and standardized by historians. War was not even declared in the cases of many past conflicts, such as in the early 1700s when Augustus II of Saxony-Poland invaded Livonia or when Frederick IV of Denmark invaded Holstein-Gottorp. Also, in the cases of many conflicts, attempts were always made to cloak or hide the nature of the conflict as being a war or an act of aggression. The Romans and other imperial powers regularly engaged in this type of conduct. Examples in history are the abstract chronological dates customarily used by historians to note important points in the Second World War and the start of the Cold War. In Western Europe and North America, the starting date for World War II is considered to be September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. For the former Czechoslovakia, March 16, 1939 (the date Germany invaded Czechoslovakia) was the starting date for the Second World War. In Russia and the former U.S.S.R. the start date of the Second World War is 1941, the date the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Even the end date for World War II in Europe is different, because Germany officially surrendered to the Western Allies (namely the U.S., Britain, and France) on May 8, 1945 and to the Soviet Union on May 9, 1945.
• America: the panoptic shiver
  Paul Rogers, 10 December 2010 The hacked United States diplomatic missives reveal both the vast ambition and the new vulnerabilites of the world’s superpower. About the authorPaul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001, and writes an international-security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010)Among the most compelling nuggets of information contained in the batch of United States diplomatic documents released by WikiLeaks and published in leading international newspapers is the list of installations in more than fifty countries which the state department in Washington deems to be a US security concern. Some of the locations seem obvious (major oil-and-gas processing-plants and pipeline terminuses, for example); but others are far harder to fit any evident national-security frame (such as an Australian pharmaceutical plant specialising in anti-snake-venom treatments, and cobalt-mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo).
  The more surprising elements of the list as much as the expected ones thus illustrate the continued reach of the United States’s strategic and security ambitions. But they also reveal something more: its new vulnerabilities. The increased inter-state competition across much of the global south from China and other rising states is one, familiar, source of these; another and perhaps less visible source is the challenge posed by insurgent groups to these prime targets. Indeed, central Africa may be a good place to begin to track this superpower dilemma. [NSA] [WikiLeaks] [Surveillance] [US global strategy]
• As Acela turns 10, Amtrak envisions high-speed rail expansion
  By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, December 10, 2010; 9:00 PM Promptly at 1 p.m., a sleek Acela Express train glided out of Union Station on a recent weekday packed with white-collar workers tapping away on laptops connected to the train's wireless Internet service.
  "Two-hundred-and-twenty miles per hour is not a big deal in the world," said Engel, who was attending a high-speed rail conference in China. He noted that China just tested a train that reaches speeds of more than 300 miles per hour. The United States, with its car-centric culture and extensive interstates, has long lagged behind Japan, China and Europe in high-speed rail. [Decline] [Railways]
• Jailed Afghan Drug Lord Was Informer on U.S. Payroll
  David Guttenfelder/Associated Press A poppy field in Afghanistan. By JAMES RISEN Published: December 11, 2010 WASHINGTON — When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons. Confiscated opium is destroyed. Opium and heroin production soared after the fall of the Taliban. But what the government did not say was that Mr. Juma Khan was also a longtime American informer, who provided information about the Taliban, Afghan corruption and other drug traffickers. Central Intelligence Agency officers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents relied on him as a valued source for years, even as he was building one of Afghanistan’s biggest drug operations after the United States-led invasion of the country, according to current and former American officials. Along the way, he was also paid a large amount of cash by the United States. [Drugs]
• Pro-govt crowd shouts down protesters in Cuba
  The Associated Press Thursday, December 9, 2010; 8:11 PM HAVANA -- A Cuban opposition group marched through the capital to call attention to jailed dissidents Thursday, amid a shower of jeers, insults and pro-government slogans from counterprotesters. About five dozen members of the Ladies in White and their supporters held one of their customary protests on the eve of International Human Rights Day, leaving from the home of leader Laura Pollan and marching to a public park. A crowd formed to follow and harangue the women, calling them "worms" and "traitors." "Viva la revolucion!" they shouted, and "This street belongs to Fidel!" The pro-government crowd grew to about 100 as the march continued. One motorist stopped his car and got out to join them. [Public opinion] [Media]
• Hackers strike at MasterCard to support WikiLeaks
  . By RAPHAEL G. SATTER and JILL LAWLESS The Associated Press Wednesday, December 8, 2010; 9:30 PM LONDON -- Hackers rushed to the defense of WikiLeaks on Wednesday, launching attacks on MasterCard, Visa, Swedish prosecutors, a Swiss bank, Sarah Palin and others who have acted against the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange. Internet "hacktivists" operating under the label "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for causing severe technological problems at the website for MasterCard, which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks a day ago. MasterCard acknowledged "a service disruption" involving its Secure Code system for verifying online payments, but spokesman James Issokson said consumers could still use their credit cards for secure transactions. Later Wednesday, Visa's website was inaccessible. The online attacks are part of a wave of support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the Internet. Twitter was choked with messages of solidarity for the group, while the site's Facebook page hit 1 million fans. [Cyberwar] [Global insurgency] [WikiLeaks]
• Wikileaks and the Worldwide Information War: Power, Propaganda, and the Global Political Awakening
  By Andrew Gavin Marshall
  URL of this article: Global Research, December 6, 2010 Introduction The recent release of the 250,000 Wikileaks documents has provoked unparalleled global interest, both positive, negative, and everywhere in between. One thing that can be said with certainty: Wikileaks is changing things. There are those who accept what the Wikileaks releases say at face value, largely due to the misrepresentation of the documents by the corporate-controlled news. There are those who see the documents as authentic and simply in need of proper interpretation and analysis. Then there are those, many of whom are in the alternative media, who approach the leaks with caution and suspicion. There are those who simply cast the leaks aside as a ‘psy-op’ designed to target specific nations that fit into U.S. foreign policy objectives. Finally, then, there are those who deplore the leaks as ‘treason’ or threatening ‘security’. Of all the claims and notions, the last is, without a doubt, the most ridiculous. This essay aims to examine the nature of the Wikileaks releases and how they should be approached and understood. If Wikileaks is changing things, let’s hope people will make sure that it changes things in the right direction. [Media] [WikiLeaks] [Propaganda]
• Raise A Glass to Wikileaks
  Craig Murray November 29, 2010 The Guardian CIF has radically shortened and buried in a panel a piece I wrote for them - at their request - on Wikileaks. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/29/us-embassy-cables-middle-east Here is the original: The well paid securitocracy have been out in force in the media, attacking wikileaks and repeating their well worn mantras. These leaks will claim innocent lives, and will damage national security. They will encourage Islamic terrorism. Government secrecy is essential to keep us all safe. In fact, this action by Wikileaks is so cataclysmic, I shall be astonished if we are not all killed in our beds tonight. Except that we heard exactly the same things months ago when Wikileaks released the Iraq war documents and then the Afghan war documents, and nobody has been able to point to a concrete example of any of these bloodurdling consequences. [WikiLeaks]
• The black art of news management
  3 June 2010 In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the "master illusions" which have formed the basis of black propaganda and provided "false flags" for political chicanery and for wars and atrocities, such as Iraq and the Israeli assault on the Gaza peace flotilla. How do wars begin? With a “master illusion”, according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA’s pioneers in “black propaganda”, known today as “news management”. In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an “incident” that became the “conclusive proof of North Vietnam’s aggression”. This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964.
  A similar master illusion currently preoccupies Asian governments. On 20 May, South Korea announced that it had “overwhelming evidence” that one of its warships, the Cheonan, had been sunk by a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine in March with the loss of 46 sailors. The United States maintains 28,000 troops in South Korea, where popular sentiment has long backed a détente with Pyongyang. On 26 May, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Seoul and demanded that the “international community must respond” to “North Korea’s outrage”. She flew on to Japan, where the new “threat” from North Korea conveniently eclipsed the briefly independent foreign policy of Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama, elected last year with popular opposition to America’s permanent military occupation of Japan. The “overwhelming evidence” is a torpedo propeller that “had been corroding at least for several months,” reported the Korea Times. In April, the director of South Korea’s national intelligence, Won See-hoon, told a parliamentary committee that there was no evidence linking the sinking of the Cheonan to North Korea. The defence minister agreed. The head of South Korea’s military marine operations said, “No North Korean warships have been detected [in] the waters where the accident took place.” The reference to “accident” suggests the warship struck a reef and broke in two. To the American media, North Korea’s guilt is beyond doubt, just as North Vietnam’s guilt was beyond doubt, just as Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, just as Israel can terrorise with impunity. However, unlike Vietnam and Iraq, North Korea has nuclear weapons, which helps explain why it has not been attacked, not yet: a salutary lesson to other countries, such as Iran, currently in the crosshairs. [Disinformation] [Cheonan] [Coverup]
• Wikileaks is Bullsh*t
  Note: This post as e-mailed contains no Wikileaks excerpts. In order to spare readers who work at universities, companies, and other organizations the potential heartache of having undeclassified Wikileaks material in their e-mail archives, I will remove direct quotes from Wikileaks cables from e-mails I send out from now on. Material on the China Matters website will be full text. I’ve come to the conclusion that Wikileaks, more specifically the national security handwringing and pantswetting that has accompanied “Cablegate”, is bullsh*t. As I followed the Wikileaks archive as it was chivvied across the Internet, I gained the distinct impression that its daily post of cables was not fresh produce in its original packaging. All that stuff had already been pawed over, repackaged and spun by Wikileaks international media partners—the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, and through the Guardian, the New York Times. [WikiLeaks] [Media]
• U.S. Strains to Stop Arms Flow
  By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ANDREW W. LEHREN Published: December 6, 2010 WASHINGTON — Just a week after President Bashar al-Assad of Syria assured a top State Department official that his government was not sending sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah, the Obama administration lodged a confidential protest accusing Syria of doing precisely what it had denied doing. “In our meetings last week it was stated that Syria is not transferring any ‘new’ missiles to Lebanese Hizballah,” noted a cable sent by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in February, using an alternative spelling for the militant group. “We are aware, however, of current Syrian efforts to supply Hizballah with ballistic missiles. I must stress that this activity is of deep concern to my government, and we strongly caution you against such a serious escalation.”
  But while American officials can claim some successes — Russia appears to have deferred delivery of the S-300 air defense system to Iran — the diplomats’ dispatches underscore how often their efforts have been frustrated in trying to choke off trade by Syria and others, including Iran and North Korea. The United States is the world’s largest arms supplier, and with Russia, dominates trade in the developing world. Its role as a purveyor of weapons to certain allies — including Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states — has drawn criticism that it has fueled an arms race. But it has also taken on a leading role as traffic cop in trying to halt deliveries of advanced weapons and other arms to militants and adversaries [Arms sales] [Double standards]
• The Beginning of the End of the American Empire
  Excerpt from "The Global Economic Crisis" By Tanya Cariina Hsu Global Research, December 4, 2010 The following text is a preview from Global Research Publishers' recent America is dying. It is self-destructing and bringing the rest of the world down with it.Often referred to as a sub-prime mortgage collapse, this obfuscates the real reason. By associating tangible useless failed mortgages, at least something ‘real’ can be blamed for the carnage. The banking industry renamed insurance betting guarantees as "credit default swaps" and risky gambling wagers were called "derivatives". Financial managers and banking executives were selling the ultimate con to the entire world, akin to the snake-oil salesmen from the 18th century but this time in suits and ties. And by October 2008, it was a quadrillion-dollar (that’s 1 000 trillion dollar) industry that few could understand.[1] Propped up by false hope, America is now falling like a house of cards. The Beginning of the End It all began in the early part of the 20th century. In 1907, J.P. Morgan, a private New York banker, published a rumor that a competing unnamed large bank was about to fail. It was a false charge but customers nonetheless raced to their banks to withdraw their money, in case it was their bank. As they pulled out their funds, the banks lost their cash deposits and were forced to call in their loans. People therefore had to pay back their mortgages to fill the banks with income, going bankrupt in the process. The 1907 panic resulted in a crash that prompted the creation of the Federal Reserve, a private banking cartel with the veneer of an independent government organization. Effectively, it was a coup by elite bankers in order to control the industry. [Decline] [Crisis [Finance]
• WikiLeaks off-limits to federal workers without clearance, memo says
  By Ed O'Keefe Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 5, 2010; 9:10 PM Obama administration officials reminded rank-and-file federal workers and contractors late Friday to steer clear of WikiLeaks, the controversial document-sharing Web site. "Classified information, whether or not already posted on public Web sites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. government authority," officials warned. The Office of Management and Budget sent the message in a memo addressed to agency general counsel, asking them to remind workers of existing restrictions on access to classified documents. [human rights] [WikiLeaks]
• Iranian official's speech highlights obstinence, isolation
  By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 4, 2010; 12:44 PM MANAMA, BAHRAIN - Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Saturday that Iran hoped for "constructive talks" with world powers on Monday and Tuesday but left little doubt that the gaps between the two sides remain almost insurmountable. Speaking to a security forum here one day after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton assured the same gathering of a "good faith" effort in the negotiations, Mottaki was by turns caustic and defiant, both on stage and at a news conference. He insisted Iran had no interest in possessing a nuclear weapon, that sanctions had had "no impact" and that the real problem in the region was a "Zionist regime" that had "hundreds of nuclear warheads in occupied Palestine." [Sanctions]  
• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in hiding, avoiding Interpol warrant
  Gallery By Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, December 1, 2010; 7:57 PM PARIS - For Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and guiding spirit, it must have been sweet. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was trying to smooth over the embarrassment, while the White House huffed that a criminal investigation was underway. The French government was decrying "the height of irresponsibility," and Pakistan was reckoning with a rebuke from its traditional patron, Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the pasty-faced (sic) Assange, a self-appointed (sic) knight-errant who has been doing battle with official secrecy since 2006, was in the shadows somewhere - few knew where - undoubtedly savoring (sic) the ruckus caused by WikiLeaks' exposure of confidential State Department cables. [Human rights] [Media]
• First Round of Voting Ousts Islamists From Egypt’s Parliament
  By ROBERT F. WORTH and MONA EL-NAGGAR Published: November 30, 2010 CAIRO — As the results of Egypt’s parliamentary elections trickled in Tuesday, no one was surprised that the governing party of President Hosni Mubarak won a huge victory. Nor were they surprised that the candidates of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s only sizable opposition, took a beating. What did surprise some was the Brotherhood’s share of seats in the new Parliament: zero. The Brotherhood, an Islamist movement with 88 seats in the current body and a vast following among Egypt’s 83 million people, was reduced to political nonexistence, at least for the first round of voting. The handful of other opposition parties won only a sprinkling of seats. “At least get creative in how you rig the elections,” said Hisham Kassem, a newspaper publisher and human rights advocate. “I was expecting a few more seats for the opposition.” He added: “Nothing can stun me now.” [Democracy] [Media] [Global insurgency]
• Local currency settlement between China, Russia lowers risks, central bank official
  18:34, November 29, 2010 Local currency settlement between China and Russia will help banks and enterprises in both nations reduce costs and exchange rate risks, Ma Delun, deputy governor with the People's Bank of China, said Monday. China started to allow the yuan to trade against the Russian ruble on its foreign exchange market from Nov. 22 and the yuan will trade on the Russian market in the near term. The ruble is the seventh currency traded on China's Foreign Exchange Trade System after the introduction of the U.S. and Hong Kong dollars, the euro, yen, British pound and Malaysian ringgit. Financial cooperation between China and Russia had been fruitful and mutually beneficial, said Ma. Local currency settlement had expanded from cross-border trade to tourism since China and Russia signed a treaty concerning trade settlements in their border regions in 2002, Ma said. Bilateral trade this year is expected to exceed 50 billion U.S. dollars. Source: Xinhua [Reserve]

• The road to endless war
  Paul Rogers, 25 November 2010 The politicians and diplomats lead the summits and rule the airwaves. But a close look at the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict reveals that the United States military take the decisions. A clear narrative over Afghanistan emerged from the Nato summit held in Lisbon on 19-20 November 2010. At heart, the end is in sight for a difficult nine-year war: progress was being made on the ground, a timetable was in place for a gradual handover to the Afghan national army, and foreign-troop withdrawals would start in 2011 and be completed by 2015. A senior Kabul-based Nato official, Mark Sedwill, even ventured the observation that children growing up in the city were likely to be safer there than their equivalents in London, Glasgow and New York; a view rebutted by the head of Save the Children, Justin Forsyth: “Afghanistan is the worst place on earth to be born a child - one in four children living there will die before they reach the age of 5”. The official’s comparison, unwary as it may sound, is in the spirit of Nato’s larger public stance. This is that International Security Assistance Forces (Isaf) under Nato command, led overall by General David H Petraeus, are turning the tide against the Taliban - not least as the post-”surge” United States troop contingents engage the militants directly in the field. A very different view is offered by a Pentagon report delivered to Congress on 23 November, which states that violence in Afghanistan has reached an all-time high. “(The) insurgency has proven resilient with sustained logistics capacity and command and control”, it says. Both these messages cannot be right. But there is a way to reconcile them. US forces, especially the marine corps, are pursuing a notably more aggressive counterinsurgency stance - including in relation to Pakistan - and this is an important factor in increasing the overall rate of violence. At the same time, the senior US military commanders in charge of the war are explicitly intent on victory, or something that can resemble it. The same evidence is being read in very different ways. [US military] [Pentagon] [Global insurgency] [Pacification]
• Russia and NATO: Cooperation or Confrontation?
  By Eric Walberg Global Research, November 25, 2010 Medvedev’s presence in Lisbon was more a show of Russia’s importance than of subservience to the Euro-Atlantic alliance The results of the NATO summit were as predictable as a Soviet Communist Party congress, with the word “peace” replaced by “war”. NATO’s embrace of the US agenda of missile defence, nuclear arms, and its new role as global policeman surprised no one. No word about the United Nations or peacekeeping. In deference to Russia, the only mention of eastern expansion was continued “partnerships” with former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia. Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and Japan were also offered special status. The new Strategic Doctrine, replacing the more modest Euro-centric 1999 model, really just reaffirmed US control of the foreign policy of what Zbigniew Brzezinski called its “vassal states”. There were a few ripples. France’s new defense minister, Alain Juppe, openly said the Afghan conflict was a “trap” for NATO and called for an exit strategy, unlike Head of the British Armed Forces Sir David Richards, who opined, “NATO now needs to plan for a 30 or 40 year role.” The Euro-spat continues over the continued presence of nuclear weapons in Europe, between France, which prides itself on its force de frappe, and Germany, which was denied any such private nuclear toys during the Cold War. But they agreed to disagree and the summit was all smiles and photo ops, at least centre-stage. On the sidelines, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev told a warm United States President Obama Barack that he was ready to cooperate on missile defence but only in “a full-fledged strategic partnership between Russia and NATO”, and Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai told a frosty Obama that he should scale back military operations and night raids that inflict heavy civilian casualties. Through NATO’s integration into the Pentagon’s world command structure, it can be said that now, officially, the US rules the world. [Imperialism] [US global strategy]
• US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomacy crisis
  • More than 250,000 dispatches reveal US foreign strategies • Diplomats ordered to spy on allies as well as enemies • Hillary Clinton leads frantic 'damage limitation' Share5085 Comments (328) David Leigh guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 November 2010 17.50 GMT Article history The release of more than 250,000 US embassy cables reveals previously secret information on American intelligence gathering, and political and military strategy. Photograph: Rex Features The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as February this year. At the start of a series of daily extracts from the US embassy cables - many of which are designated "secret" – the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN's leadership. These two revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world. But the secret dispatches which were obtained by WikiLeaks, the whistlebowers' website, also reveal Washington's evaluation of many other highly sensitive international issues.
  These include a major shift in relations between China and North Korea, Pakistan's growing instability and details of clandestine US efforts to combat al-Qaida in Yemen.
  Among scores of other disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables detail: • Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme •?Alleged links between the Russian government and organised crime. •?Devastating criticism of the UK's military operations in Afghanistan. •?Claims of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the British royal family.
• Karzai aide blames British for bringing Taliban impostor to talks
  An Afghan boy guides a donkey carrying his mother and brother in the Karokh district of Herat province. The country faces political uncertainty as officials probe allegations of fraud in this fall's elections. (Afp/getty Images) Network NewsX Profile By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, November 26, 2010; 12:44 AM KABUL - President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff on Thursday said that British authorities were responsible for bringing a Taliban impostor into the presidential palace and that foreigners should stay out of delicate negotiations with the Afghan insurgent group. In an interview, Mohammad Umer Daudzai said that the British brought a man purporting to be Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a senior Taliban leader, to meet Karzai in July or August but that an Afghan at the meeting knew "this is not the man." Afghan intelligence later determined that the visitor was actually a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta, he said [Bizarre] [Intelligence]
• Time to nationalise the railways again?
  By Ed West Politics Last updated: November 24th, 2010 The good old days (Photo: Getty) Being a typical uptight southern, middle-class, English small-c conservative, I’m naturally disgusted when I see people striking and rioting, especially students and/or French people who feel outraged that they should put in a couple of year’s hard work in-between their three-decade long state-funded education and their three-decade state-funded retirement. Then I see news like this and wonder – why can’t we be more like the French?
  The privatisation of the railways was a mistake, or largely a mistake. There may be areas where it has worked, and where private companies should still operate, but it has largely been a failure – and perhaps the time has come to discuss renationalisation. [Privatisation] [Railways]
• A paralysed, diminished America
  By Clive Crook Published: November 21 2010 19:36 | Last updated: November 21 2010 19:36 This weekend’s Nato summit in Lisbon concluded a flurry of top-level international meetings that, from President Barack Obama’s point of view, were frustrating, unproductive, or plain embarrassing. However, his advisers wish you to know that US standing in the world is not the least bit diminished. Really, they say, there is a great deal of misunderstanding about this. They insist that the global recession, which started as a result of US economic mismanagement, has not lessened American prestige and power. The falling out in the Group of 20 leading nations over macroeconomic co-operation is hardly worth mentioning. Allies’ reluctance to stay engaged in Afghanistan was only to be expected. Republican efforts on Capitol Hill to block the Start nuclear arms accord with Russia are a temporary setback. As for the Democrats’ drubbing in the midterm elections, which ties the administration’s hands on many issues of international concern, one can make too much of that. Diminished power? Where do people get such ideas? If ever there were a case of protesting too much, this is it. America’s ability to get its way is in recession. The question is not whether this is true, but how deep and long-lasting the reversal will be. Will US influence bounce back, or has something shifted for good? . [Decline]
• Obama's foreign policy needs an update
  By Jackson Diehl Monday, November 22, 2010 For help understanding the foreign policy headlines of the past week, let's return, briefly, to the spring of 1983, when Barack Obama was a student at Columbia University. What were the burning international issues of that time?
  Still, this administration is notable for its lack of grand strategy - or strategists. Its top foreign-policy makers are a former senator, a Washington lawyer and a former Senate staffer. There is no Henry Kissinger, no Zbigniew Brzezinski, no Condoleezza Rice; no foreign policy scholar. [Strategic incoherence]
• Alliance at risk over Afghanistan
  By Eric S Margolis/New York Nato, the world’s most powerful military alliance, may be losing the only war the 61-year old pact ever fought. All its soldiers, heavy bombers, tanks, helicopter gunships, armies of mercenaries, and electronic gear are being beaten by a bunch of lightly-armed Afghan farmers and mountain tribesmen. In the just concluded two-day summit in Lisbon, Nato’s 28 members faced deepening differences over the Afghanistan war as public opinion in the United States, Canada and Europe continued to turn against the conflict. President Barack Obama again painfully showed he is not fully in charge of US foreign policy. [Strategic incoherence] [Capture] [Client] [US global strategy]
• The Mysterious Laptop Documents: "Evidence" of Iran Nuclear Weapons Program May Be Fraudulent
  By Gareth Porter Global Research, November 18, 2010 Since 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - with the support of the United States, Israel and European allies UK, France and Germany - has been demanding that Iran explain a set of purported internal documents portraying a covert Iranian military program of research and development of nuclear weapons. The "laptop documents," supposedly obtained from a stolen Iranian computer by an unknown source and given to US intelligence in 2004, include a series of drawings of a missile re-entry vehicle that appears to be an effort to accommodate a nuclear weapon, as well as reports on high explosives testing for what appeared to be a detonator for a nuclear weapon. In one report after another, the IAEA has suggested that Iran has failed to cooperate with its inquiry into that alleged research, and that the agency, therefore, cannot verify that it has not diverted nuclear material to military purposes. That issue remains central to US policy toward Iran. The Obama administration says there can be no diplomatic negotiations with Iran unless Iran satisfies the IAEA fully in regard to the allegations derived from the documents that it had covert nuclear weapons program. That position is based on the premise that the intelligence documents that Iran has been asked to explain are genuine. The evidence now available, however, indicates that they are fabrications. The drawings of the Iranian missile warhead that were said by the IAEA to show an intent to accommodate a nuclear weapon actually depict a missile design that Iran is now known to have already abandoned in favor of an improved model by the time the technical drawings were allegedly made. And one of the major components of the purported Iranian military research program allegedly included a project labeled with a number that turns out to have been assigned by Iran's civilian nuclear authority years before the covert program is said to have been initiated. The former head of the agency's safeguards department, Olli Heinonen, who shaped its approach to the issue of the intelligence documents from 2005 and 2010, has offered no real explanation for these anomalies in recent interviews with Truthout. These telltale indicators of fraud bring into question the central pillar of the case against Iran and raise more fundamental questions about the handling of the Iranian nuclear issue by the IAEA, the United States and its key European allies.
  Once the intelligence documents that have been used to indict Iran as plotting to build nuclear weapons are discounted as fabrications likely perpetrated by a self-interested party, there is no solid basis for the US policy of trying to coerce Iran into ending all uranium enrichment. And there is no reason for insisting that Iran must explain the allegations in those documents to the IAEA as a condition for any future US-Iran negotiations. News coverage of the purported intelligence documents over the past few years has created yet another false narrative that distorts public discourse on the subject. Almost entirely ignored is the possibility that the real aim of Iran's nuclear program is to maintain a bargaining chip with the United States, and to have a breakout capability to serve as a deterrent to a US or Israeli attack on Iran. The evidence that documents at the center of the case for a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program are fraudulent suggests the need for a strategic reset on Iran policy. It raises both the possibility and the need for serious exploration of a diplomatic solution for the full range of issues dividing the two countries, which is the only sensible strategy for ensuring that Iran stays a non-nuclear state. [Disinformation]
• Global Warfare: After NATO Summit, U.S. To Intensify Military Drive Into Asia
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, November 18, 2010 Stop NATO Barack Obama, the latest rotating imperator of the first global empire, will arrive in Lisbon on November 19 to receive the plaudits of 27 North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies and secure their continued fealty on issues ranging from the war in Afghanistan to a continental interceptor missile system, the continued deployment of American tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, participation in the Pentagon’s cyber warfare plans and expanded military missions in the planet’s south and east. Perfunctory discussions of minor details notwithstanding, strictly pro forma to maintain the myth of NATO being a “military alliance of democratic states in Europe and North America,” the banners and pennants of 26 European nations, Canada and dozens of other countries contributing troops for the Afghan mission will be lowered in the presence of the leader of the world imperium. No fewer than 38 European nations have supplied NATO troops for the Afghanistan-Pakistan war as well as providing training grounds and transport centers to support the war effort. As envisioned for at least a century, through peaceful means or otherwise, Europe has been united, not so much by the European Union as under the NATO flag and on the killing fields of Afghanistan. It is now relegated to the role of pre-deployment training area and forward operating base for military campaigns downrange: The Middle East, Africa and Asia. [Imperialism] [Joint US military]
• Is American power in decline?
  By Kiyul Chung | 11:13 BeiJing Time,Thursday, November 18, 2010Comments(0) A respected American economist argued on the question of American power which is “in decline” as in the following: "In the United States, the scent of decline is in the air. Imperial overreach, political polarization, and a costly financial crisis are weighing on the economy. Some pundits now worry that America is about to succumb to the ‘British disease.’ Doomed to slow growth, the US of today, like the exhausted Britain that emerged from World War II, will be forced to curtail its international commitments. This will create space for rising powers like China, but it will also expose the world to a period of heightened geopolitical uncertainty.” (Professor of Economics and Political Science, University of California at Berkeley, Barry Eichengreen: Chinadaily.com.cn, 2010-11-10) [Decline]
• One family's plunge from the middle class into poverty
  By Wil Haygood Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 19, 2010; 12:31 AM IN FORT MYERS, FLA. Chrissanda Walker's bourbon-glazed chicken is just out of the oven. The bread pudding is finished. The collard greens worry her, though; she doesn't want to overcook them. Walker looks at the clock. It's 10 a.m. She's been on her feet since 6. Walker used to make $100,000 a year as a nursing home executive until she lost her job a year and a half ago. Unable to find a new one, she shed her business suits and high heels and put on an apron and soft-soled shoes. This year, she and her daughter are living on $11,000: her unemployment benefits plus whatever she can earn selling home-cooked dinners for $10 apiece. Her American Dream has taken a punch to the gut. "I never thought I'd be in a situation like this," she says, smoke from the cooking swirling about her. "My friends say to me: 'Listen to the Lord, Chris.' I say, 'No, I have to have a paycheck.' " The Census Bureau recently reported that the poverty rate in the United States rose to 14.3 percent last year, the highest level in more than 50 years. Texas and Florida saw the most people fall below the line. In Florida alone, 323,000 people became newly poor last year, bringing the state's poverty total to 2.7 million. The numbers tell another tale as well: Nationwide, in black households such as Walker's, income plunged an average of 4.4 percent in 2009, almost three times the drop among whites. The number of blacks living below the official poverty line - $21,756 for a family of four - increased by 7 percent in just one year. "The whole idea in an improving economy is that everyone will benefit," says Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. "When the train speeds up, everything does improve, but blacks are still in the caboose. When it slows down - in a bad economy - blacks fall out of the caboose." [Decline]
• Viktor Bout stars as "the Merchant of Death"
  Topic: Viktor Bout case The French political scientist Regis Debray once remarked on the similarities between U.S. foreign policy and a Hollywood movie. Those who doubt Debray's argument should watch a few news segments on U.S. television about the extradition of Russian businessman Viktor Bout from Thailand to the United States. With breathless excitement, the American media reported that Bout was transported from his prison cell to the airport, accompanied by two motorcades, one of which was a decoy intended to throw off potential abductors. The New York Times reported that Russia offered Thailand oil below market price in exchange for their refusal to turn over Bout to the United States, but Washington allegedly outbid Russia with weapons and other military equipment. [Extraterritoriality][Arms sales] [Double standards]
• Ahmed Ghailani, Gitmo detainee, acquitted of all but 1 charge in N.Y.
  By Peter Finn Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, November 18, 2010; 12:12 AM The first former Guantanamo Bay detainee to be tried in federal criminal court was found guilty on a single conspiracy charge Wednesday but cleared on 284 other counts. The outcome, a surprise, seriously undermines - and could doom - the Obama administration's plans to put other Guantanamo detainees on trial in U.S. civilian courts. [Evidence] [Human rights] [Global insurgency]
• Russian Arrives in U.S. to Face Arms Charges
  By SETH MYDANS Published: November 16, 2010 BANGKOK — Thailand extradited Viktor Bout, a Russian accused of arms trafficking, to the United States on Tuesday, abandoning the diplomatic balancing act it had conducted for more than two years between Washington and Moscow. Viktor Bout, an accused arms trafficker, was escorted by Thai police in Bangkok on Tuesday. Two motorcades — one apparently a decoy — made the trip to Don Muang Airport, where about 50 police officers, including snipers, kept watch, according to local news media. Shortly afterward, an airport official confirmed that Mr. Bout had left on a chartered 20-seat American aircraft. Also aboard were two pilots and six officials from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. Mr. Bout arrived at Westchester County Airport outside New York City on Tuesday evening, according to a Justice Department statement. He was being taken to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, and will be held there pending his arraignment in United States District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday. Mr. Bout, 43, is a former Soviet Air Force officer who became known as the “Merchant of Death” for what American officials say is an arms trafficking network that encompassed Africa, Afghanistan and South America. He is also reputed to know the current shape of Russian intelligence, and Washington has been in a tug of war with Moscow since his arrest in March 2008 over whether he would go on trial in the United States. Mr. Bout was arrested at a Bangkok hotel after he agreed, the authorities said, to sell millions of dollars in weapons to undercover American agents posing as rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. [Extraterritoriality] [Double standards] [Arms sales] [Imperialism] [Intelligence]
• Land of plenty? U.S. hunger rate remains stubbornly high
  By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — U.S. agriculture officials said Monday that the nation's 15 federal nutrition programs helped keep hunger in check in 2009 even as the number of unemployed Americans soared. After a record one-year increase from 2007 to 2008, the number of U.S. households facing food shortages increased only slightly last year to roughly 17.4 million, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture [Decline] [Human rights]
• Burma's new chance
  Saturday, November 13, 2010; 6:35 PM IT TELLS YOU a lot about Burma that of two ostensibly historic events last week - its first national election in 20 years and the release from house arrest of Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi - the one that captured the world's attention, and has the potential to put the nation on a more positive path, was not the election. In turn, it tells you just about everything you need to know about the election that the observer mission was led by North Korean diplomats. Burma (also known as Myanmar), a Southeast Asian nation of 50 million people, is rivaled in Asia only by North Korea for the repressiveness of its regime and the contrast between the wretched poverty of its population and the isolated splendor of its rulers' lives. [Media] [Black]
• Fake Anti-war Activism. The "Humanitarian Road" Towards an all out Nuclear War?
  By Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, November 4, 2010 Some of America's wars are condemned outright, while others are heralded as "humanitarian interventions". A significant segment of the US antiwar movement condemns the war but endorses the campaign against international terrorism, which constitutes the backbone of US military doctrine. The "Just War" theory has served to camouflage the nature of US foreign policy, while providing a human face to the invaders. In both its classical and contemporary versions, the Just War theory upholds war as a "humanitarian operation". It calls for military intervention on ethical and moral grounds against "insurgents", "terrorists", "failed" or "rogue states". [humanitarian interventionism] [Pretext]
• Iran Tightens Security as Subsidy Cuts Loom
  By FARNAZ FASSIHI BEIRUT—Iranian authorities are taking extraordinary security measures ahead of cuts to energy and food subsidies this month, in an effort to prevent unrest by a public upset about rising expenses and inflation. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cautioned the public on Wednesday against politicizing the economic reforms and threatened to severely punish businesses that raise prices of consumer goods in reaction to subsidy cuts. He said in a speech that government agents would "catch and fine anyone who abused the situation and make them regret it forever." The government, in a five-year phaseout plan, seeks to eliminate up to $100 billion a year in food and energy subsidies that keep costs down for consumers. About 65 million Iranians, out of a population of 75 million, will receive cash payments of about $40 a month to ease the economic pain of lost subsidies. Cash payments in some provinces have already begun ahead of the subsidy cuts. The plan, taking effect as Iran feels the bite from tough new international sanctions against its nuclear program, appears to be stoking concern in the government that it will fuel another political uprising. Opposition protests shook the country after disputed elections in June, 2009, leading to an intensified crackdown on dissent. [Sanctions] [Destabilisation]
• Obama in Asia: Meeting American Decline Face to Face
  By Juan Cole
  Blocked from major new domestic initiatives by a Republican victory in the midterm elections, President Barack Obama promptly lit out for Asia, a far more promising arena. That continent, after all, is rising, and Obama is eager to grasp the golden ring of Asian success. Beyond being a goodwill ambassador for ten days, Obama is seeking sales of American-made durable and consumer goods, weapons deals, an expansion of trade, green energy cooperation, and the maintenance of a geopolitical balance in the region favorable to the United States. Just as the decline of the American economy hobbled him at home, however, the weakness of the United States on the world stage in the aftermath of Bush-era excesses has made real breakthroughs abroad unlikely.
  As Obama arrives in Seoul, for instance, Iran will be on the agenda. This fall, South Korea, a close American ally, managed to play a game of one step forward, two steps back with regard to Washington-supported sanctions against that energy-rich country. The government did close the Seoul branch of Iran’s Bank Milli, sanctioning it and other Iranian firms. Then, the South Koreans turned around and, according to the Financial Times, appointed two banks to handle payments involving trade between the two countries via the (unsanctioned) Tehran Central Bank. In doing so, the government insulated other South Korean banks from possible American sanctions, while finding a way for Iran to continue to purchase South Korean autos and other goods. Before the latest round of U.N. Security Council sanctions South Korea was doing $10 billion a year in trade with Iran, involving some 2,142 Korean companies. Iran’s half of this trade -- it provides nearly 10% of South Korea’s petroleum imports -- has been largely unaffected. South Korea’s exports to Iran, on the other hand, have fallen precipitously under the pressure of the sanctions regime. Sanctions that hold Iran harmless but punish a key American ally by hurting its trade and creating a balance of payments problem are obviously foolish. The Iranian press claims that South Korean firms are now planning to invest money in Iranian industrial towns. Given that Obama has expended political capital persuading South Korea to join a U.S.-organized free trade zone and change its tariffs to avoid harming the American auto industry, it is unlikely that he could now seek to punish South Korea for its quiet defiance on the issue of Iran [Sanctions] [Decline] [Client]
• Engelhardt, War to the Horizon
  Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 5:28pm, November 14, 2010. The Stimulus Package in Kabul (I Was Delusional -- I Thought One Monster “Embassy” Was the End of It) By Tom Engelhardt You must have had a moment when you thought to yourself: It really isn’t going to end, is it? Not ever. Rationally, you know perfectly well that whatever your “it” might be will indeed end, because everything does, but your gut tells you something different. I had that moment recently when it came to the American way of war. In the past couple of weeks, it could have been triggered by an endless string of ill-attended news reports like theChristian Science Monitor piece headlined “U.S. involvement in Yemen edging toward ‘clandestine war.’” Or by the millions of dollars in U.S. payments reportedly missing in Afghanistan, thanks to under-the-table or unrecorded handouts in unknown amounts to Afghan civilian government employees (as well as Afghan security forces, private-security contractors, and even the Taliban). Or how about the news that the F-35 “Joint Strike Fighter,” the cost-overrun poster weapon of the century, already long overdue, will cost yet more money and be produced even less quickly?
• Afghan government falls short in Kandahar
  By Joshua Partlow and Karen DeYoung Tuesday, November 2, 2010; 7:53 PM KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - Despite months of American prodding, the Afghan government has failed to fill dozens of key positions in Kandahar, leaving an ineffectual local administration that U.S. officials fear will cripple the battlefield progress the military says it is making in the Taliban stronghold. Just a month before President Obama will review the state of the Afghan war, top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus and other military officers are making their case that the influx of American troops has pushed the Taliban out of key parts of Kandahar. But the Afghan government that U.S. officials hoped could step in to provide basic services remains a skeleton staff of unskilled bureaucrats that is incapable of functioning on its own, according to U.S. officials. For the past year, the United States and its NATO allies have tried to build a Kandahar administration that can address residents' grievances and sway them from the Taliban. The U.S. has also embarked on a massive spending spree in order to prop up Kandahar authorities and provide basic services. But with power monopolized by the central government in Kabul, the provincial and municipal offices in southern Afghanistan's largest city are hamstrung and undermanned. "The security picture is improving so fast and so dramatically that it puts the shortfall in civilian capacity in alarming relief," said one U.S. official in Kandahar. "The potential single failure point is the Afghan government." [Pacification] [Incompetence] [Client]
• Finding the 'Cure' for the 'Cyber Epidemic'
  by Tom Burghardt
  Global Research, October 31, 2010 Antifascist Calling... As the "War on Terror" morphs into a multiyear, multitrillion dollar blood-soaked adventure to secure advantage over imperialism's geopolitical rivals (and steal other people's resources in the process), hitting the corporate "sweet spot," now as during the golden days of the Cold War, is as American as a preemptive war and the "pack of lies" that launch them. Always inventive when it comes to ginning-up a profitable panic, U.S. defense and security grifters have rolled-out a product line guaranteed to scare the bejesus out of everyone: a "cyber epidemic"! This one has it all: hordes of crazed "communist" Chinese hackers poised to bring down the power grid; swarthy armies of al-Qaeda fanatics who "hate us for our freedom;" "trusted insiders" who do us harm by leaking "sensitive information," i.e. bringing evidence of war crimes and corporate malfeasance to light by spilling the beans to secrecy-shredding web sites like WikiLeaks, Public Intelligence and Cryptome. [Cyberwar] [Surveillance] [MISCOM] [China confrontation]
• Operation Paper: The United States and Drugs in Thailand and Burma
  Peter Dale Scott
  This Chapter 3 from my newly published American War Machine describes America’s Operation Paper, a November 1950 program to arm and supply the Kuomintang remnant troops of General Li Mi in Burma. Operation Paper itself was relatively short-lived, but it had two long-term consequences that have not been adequately discussed. The first is that the CIA was launched into its fifty-year history of indirectly facilitating and overseeing forces engaged in vastly expanding the production of opiates, in successive areas not previously major in the international traffic. This is a history that stretches, almost continuously, from Thailand and Burma through Laos until the 1970s, and then to present-day Afghanistan. The second is that the resulting drug proceeds helped supplement the CIA’s efforts to develop its own Asian proxy armies, initially defensive but increasingly offensive. This led in 1959 to the initiation of armed conflict in the previously neutral and Buddhist nation of Laos, an unwinnable hot war that soon spread to Vietnam.
  The writing of American War Machine has given me a clearer picture of America’s overall responsibility for the huge increases in global drug trafficking since World War II. This is exemplified by the more than doubling of Afghan opium drug production since the U.S. invaded that country in 2001. But the U.S. responsibility for the present dominant role of Afghanistan in the global heroin traffic has merely replicated what had happened earlier in Burma, Thailand, and Laos between the late 1940s and the 1970s. [Imperialism] [Drugs]
• Afghanistan: Why we fight
  Posted By Paul Miller Friday, October 29, 2010 - 11:00 AM Share President Barack Obama and his advisors formulated their Afghan policy almost exclusively to achieve one goal: deny safe haven to al Qaeda, according to Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars. Counterterrorism is an important goal, but the administration seems to believe it is the only goal. This is a seriously myopic vision of U.S. national security interests. We have a much broader range of interests at stake in Afghanistan and South Asia. The administration's failure to understand them goes a long way to explain why it settled on a half-hearted strategy in Afghanistan. So why are we fighting? [Strategic incoherence] [AfPak]
• Chomsky says Bush and Obama beholden to corporate interests
  Michael Hughes October 29th, 2010 6:32 am ET. MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, introduced as the eighth most-cited human being in history after Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, the Bible, Plato, and Ford during an interview earlier this week with The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur [see video clip on the left], said the U.S. was defeated in Iraq of achieving its chief war aim which was securing preferential access to Iraq’s oil reserves. And Mr. Chomsky speculated that President Barack Obama is trying to salvage some form of victory in Afghanistan lest he’s slaughtered by the right-wing propaganda system. During the discussion Chomsky also chastised Obama for enriching the very same people who created the financial meltdown. [Crisis]
• George Bush thought 9/11 plane had been shot down on his orders
  Memoirs reveal former US president gave order to shoot down any hijacked planes before United Airlines flight 93 crashed Share199 James Meikle guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 October 2010 12.15 BST Article history George Bush initially thought United Airlines flight 93 had been shot down in Pennsylvania. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters George Bush initially believed the only plane not to reach its intended target during the 11 September attacks had been shot down on his orders, according to leaks from the former president's memoir of his two terms in office.
• The “Islam” drumbeat: an Orwellian story
  Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, 28 October 2010
  A reductive and tendentious portrayal of Islam and its followers is spreading across Europe and America. It is all too reminiscent of the chilling world imagined by George Orwell, says Arshin Adib-Moghaddam A few metres from my office at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the heart of London’s Bloomsbury area is the Senate House of the University of London, a remarkable neo-classical colossus of a building which functioned as the headquarters of Britain’s ministry of information, where George Orwell worked occasionally during the second world war. [Islam] [Media] [Paradigm]

• US and Turkey clash looms over Nato
  By Daniel Dombey in Washington, Delphine Strauss in Ankara and James Blitz in London Published: October 28 2010 20:47 | Last updated: October 28 2010 20:47 The US and Turkey are trying to stave off a clash at next month’s Nato summit after a year in which Ankara’s traditional ties to the west were strained. At issue is Turkey’s reluctance to endorse Nato-wide missile defence plans, as well as its objections to language in the alliance’s new guiding “strategic concept
  But Washington has to meet other Turkish objections – including calls for the system to protect all Turkey’s territory and resistance to sharing intelligence with Israel. While there are other options for the radar base – including Bulgaria or Romania – because of the alliance’s system of consensus, the US needs Turkey’s approval for missile defence protection of European territories to become a formal part of Nato’s mission. Officials say Turkey also objects to language about the European Union and reforms to Nato’s command structure, and insists that Nato strategy does not describe Iran and Syria as threats. “We do not perceive any threat from any neighbour countries and we do not think our neighbours form a threat to Nato,” said Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkish foreign minister. [US global strategy] [Client] [Decline]
• Israel Lobby's Last Minute GOP Push
  MJ Rosenberg Senior Foreign Policy Fellow, Media Matters Action Network The usual suspects have been warning President Barack Obama almost since Inauguration Day that there would be a literal price to pay if he assumed the role of "honest broker" in the Middle East. Following Obama's 2009 Cairo speech and then his short-lived stand against Israeli settlements, Obama was warned by Democrats close to the lobby (including some inside the White House) that publicly disagreeing with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would offend donors. That would harm the Democrats in 2010 and doom his re-election chances in 2012. These ominous predictions have only increased along with Republican chances of taking one or both houses of Congress this year. It is well-known in Israel that Netanyahu and his fellow right-wingers want to see the Democrats lose next Tuesday and then be rid of Obama in two years. They assume that any Republican elected President in 2012 will not only let Israel do whatever it wants, he or she will have Israel's back when it comes to making concessions of any kind. And Netanyahu's American cutouts are carrying the message. [Israel] [Domestic]
• US spy spending revealed for first time, tops $80 billion
  By Pam Benson, CNN National Security Producer $53.1 billion was spent on non-military intelligence, the administration says The military spent about $27 billion on its spy activities Sen. Dianne Feinstein says there is waste and duplication in the budget Washington (CNN) -- The United States spent $80 billion on spy activities in 2010, the first time the government has officially announced the total tab for intelligence spending. The amount included $53.1 billion on non-military intelligence programs, a 6 percent boost from the previous year, according to a statement released Thursday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The military spent an additional $27 billion on its intelligence apparatus, said Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan. [Intelligence]
• Will the U.S. Lose Europe to Russia?
  By JOHN VINOCUR PARIS — The United States used to call wayward members of NATO back to the reservation with a whistle or a shout. It decided what was deviation from doctrine, and that decision was pretty much law. When the Obama administration stamped its foot this time, no one snapped to attention. Rather, Germany and France, meeting with Russia in Deauville, northern France, last week, signaled that they planned to make such three-cornered get-togethers on international foreign policy and security matters routine, and even extend them to inviting other “partners” — pointing, according to diplomats from two countries, to Turkey becoming a future participant. [Decline]
• On the Daily Show, Obama is the last laugh
  By Dana Milbank Wednesday, October 27, 2010; 11:49 PM On Comedy Central, the joke was on President Obama Wednesday night. The president had come, on the eve of what will almost certainly be the loss of his governing majority, to plead his case before Jon Stewart, gatekeeper of the disillusioned left. But instead of displaying the sizzle that won him an army of youthful supporters two years ago, Obama had a Brownie moment. The Daily Show host was giving Obama a tough time about hiring the conventional and Clintonian Larry Summers as his top economic advisor. "In fairness," the president replied defensively, "Larry Summers did a heckuva job." "You don't want to use that phrase, dude," Stewart recommended with a laugh. Dude. The indignity of a comedy show host calling the commander in chief "dude" pretty well captured the moment for Obama. He was making this first-ever appearance by a president on the Daily Show as part of a long-shot effort to rekindle the spirit of '08. In the Daily Show, Obama had a friendly host and an even friendlier crowd. [Obama]
• Covert ops sabotage US-Iran ties
  By Rob Grace For years, the United States and Israel have engaged in a covert effort to destabilize Iran's government and sabotage its nuclear program. But these operations frequently escape mention in public discussions. By ignoring the covert effort, the current debate about the relative wisdom of diplomacy, sanctions, and preventive military action addresses an incomplete picture. To understand the challenges and potential of US-Iranian relations, the covert program must be factored into the equation. Although sabotage may prove successful in slowing Iranian nuclear progress in the short term, it actually stands as a barrier to a long-term resolution. [Destabilisation] [US global strategy] [Naiveté]
• The Iraq War in Context
  Paul Rogers, October 2010 Although it is commonly believed that the cause of the problems faced by the Coalition forces in Iraq was a lack of post-war planning, in reality there was a very clear vision of what would happen once the Saddam Hussein regime had been terminated. The occupation was to be run from the Pentagon, rather than the State Department, a Coalition Provisional Authority would be established that was directly responsible to the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and all the old Iraqi government ministries would initially be headed by coalition personnel. By June 2003, three months after the invasion, Paul Bremmer had been appointed Head of the CPA and there was then a clear expectation of how Iraq would develop. This would be on full free market lines, the aim being to have a pro-western administration established in Baghdad that would oversee the privatisation of nationalised industries and the opening up of Iraq to foreign investment with a flat-rate tax system and a minimum of financial regulation. Iraq would thus develop into a model free market economy that might be followed, in due course, across the region. The Department of Defense also looked to establish four large permanent military bases, ensuring long-term Iraqi security while constraining any of Iran’s regional ambitions. Given the extent of the Persian Gulf oil reserves – over 60% of world totals – this would be particularly valuable in relation to long-term US security interests. All of these ambitions were predicated on an easy overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime and on the presumption that such radical change would be widely welcomed by the Iraqis. [In denial] [Pacification]
• Ongoing Iran War Preparations? Arabian Sea: Center Of West's 21st Century War
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, October 25, 2010 Stop NATO The monumental expansion of arms sales and the buildup of naval and air power in the Arabian Sea region are unprecedented. They are also alarming to the highest degree. A quarter of the world's nuclear aircraft carriers will soon be in the Arabian Sea.
  Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150) is a multinational naval group established in 2001 with logistics facilities in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti and operates from the Strait of Hormuz to the Gulf of Aden and past the Bab Al Mandeb to the Red Sea and south to the Indian Ocean nation of Seychelles. Last year the Pentagon secured a military facility in Seychelles, its second in an African nation, where it has deployed Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), PC-3 Orion anti-submarine and surveillance aircraft, and 112 Navy personnel. Other nations currently contributing ships and personnel to CTF-150 are Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Pakistan, South Korea and Thailand. Recent participants also include Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Spain and Turkey. Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151) was launched in January of 2009, operates in the Gulf of Aden and the Somali Basin and covers an area of 1.1 million square miles. Twenty nations are scheduled to participate in the U.S.-led task force and Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea and Turkey have already enlisted. Its commanders to date have been from the U.S., Britain, South Korea and Turkey. [US military] [US global strategy]
• The Rising Tide of Ethno-Nationalism: Multiculturalism Fails in Europe
  by Patrick J. Buchanan Global Research, October 23, 2010 Real News Newsletter Is Europe's adventure in international living about to end? At Potsdam, Germany, this weekend, Chancellor Angela Merkel told the young conservatives of her Christian Democratic Union that Germany's attempt to create a multicultural society where people "live side by side and enjoy each other" has "failed, utterly failed." Backing up her rueful admission are surveys showing 30 percent of Germans believe the country is overrun by foreigners. An equal number believe the foreigners come to feed off German welfare. Merkel had in mind the Turks who came as gastarbeiters, guest workers, in the 1960s. Some 2.5 million now live in Germany. Arabs and East Europeans have come more recently. One survey puts the Muslim population at 5 million. "Multikulti is dead," says Horst Seehofer of Merkel's sister party, the Christian Social Union of Bavaria. He wants no more immigration from "alien cultures". Turks and other Muslims are not learning the language, he contends, not assimilating, not becoming Germans. Awareness of deep differences with Turkish neighbors became acute for Germans when, grieving in solidarity with America after 9/11, they learned that Turkish sectors of Berlin were celebrating Islam's victory with barrages of bottle rockets.
• Glass ceiling in management drivel is broken
  By Lucy Kellaway Published: October 24 2010 19:47 | Last updated: October 24 2010 19:47 Who talks more management nonsense, men or women? I thought I knew the answer to this most intriguing of questions: the man beats the woman every time. This is partly because men are fonder of the sporting metaphor, and like to step up to the plate whilst raising the bar on their bench strength in the level playing field. But it’s also because the point of jargon is either to make you sound big or as a substitute for thought, and women are less keen on sounding big, and less inclined to speak before they have worked out what, if anything, they have to say. However, several things have happened to me recently to make me doubt the superiority of men at talking guff.
• Karzai Confirms His Office Gets Cash From Iran
  By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: October 25, 2010 Sign In to E-Mail Print . Filed at 6:04 a.m. ET KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai says that once or twice a year Iran gives his office $700,000 to $975,000 for official presidential expenses. He says the U.S. has known about the Iranian assistance for years and that Washington also gives the palace "bags of money." Karzai's comments Monday come in response to a The New York Times report a day earlier that Iran was giving cash to the Afghan president's chief of staff, Umar Daudzai, to buy his loyalty and promote Iranian interests in Afghanistan (sic). The newspaper quoted unnamed sources saying the money had been used to pay Afghan lawmakers, tribal elders - even Taliban commanders. Karzai says several nations give his office money because it lacks revenue. [Client] [Double standards]
• Iraq war logs: secret files show how US ignored torture
  * Nick Davies, Jonathan Steele and David Leigh * guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 October 2010 21.26 BST * Article history Iraq, Rawa. Operation Steel Curtain Insurgent suspects are led away by US forces. Some of those held in Iraqi custody suffered appalling abuse, the war logs reveal. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war. [War crimes]
• David Kelly files prove little for campaigners whose fight continues
  After release of secret papers on death of scientist, many say there are still questions to answer, and insist on a new inquest David Kelly's grave is hard to find. The churchyard in Longworth, a prosperous straggle of an Oxfordshire village near where he lived, is big and densely occupied. His headstone stands at its furthest edge of an outlying section and since he was buried in 2003, the look of his grave has changed completely. The plaque which first marked it has been replaced by a stone slab. This in turn has aged rapidly: its inscription is legible only if you lean close. "David Christopher Kelly," it reads. "Blessed are those of a gentle spirit." All seems calm. But there is a jarring detail for any close follower of the Kelly saga. The headstone says he died on 17 July 2003. The original plaque said he died the day after. Despite the sudden release today of previously secret postmortem and toxicology reports into his death, which provide further evidence in support of the Hutton inquiry's 2004 finding that the weapons inspector killed himself, many of the basic facts about how and why Kelly died remain, at best, unclear. At worst, they are bitterly contested.
• The Iraq Archive: The Strands of a War
  Published: October 22, 2010 A huge trove of secret field reports from the battlegrounds of Iraq sheds new light on the war, including such fraught subjects as civilian deaths, detainee abuse and the involvement of Iran. The secret archive is the second such cache obtained by the independent organization WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations. Like the first release, some 92,000 reports covering six years of the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq documents provide no earthshaking revelations, but they offer insight, texture and context from the people actually fighting the war. A close analysis of the 391,832 documents helps illuminate several important aspects of this war: [War crimes]
• Malarial mosquitoes helped defeat British in battle that ended Revolutionary War
  By J.R. McNeill Monday, October 18, 2010; 3:57 PM Major combat operations in the American Revolution ended 229 years ago on Oct. 19, at Yorktown. For that we can thank the fortitude of American forces under George Washington, the siegecraft of French troops of Gen. Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, the count of Rochambeau - and the relentless bloodthirstiness of female Anopheles quadrimaculatus mosquitoes. Those tiny amazons conducted covert biological warfare against the British army. Female mosquitoes seek mammalian blood to provide the proteins they need to make eggs. No blood meal, no reproduction. It makes them bold and determined to bite.
  Why didn't the French and Americans fall ill, too? Some did, but far fewer and too late to matter. With malaria it takes about a month between infectious bite and the onset of symptoms. The British had been absorbing the parasite since June, but the Franco-Americans arrived in the Tidewater only in September. So malaria had two extra months to work its mischief in British ranks. Moreover, most of the Americans had grown up with malaria. Those who had not suffered heavily in the week before the surrender. Malaria felled French soldiers, too, most of whom were just as vulnerable as the redcoats, but mainly after Oct. 19. Once committed to Yorktown, Cornwallis faced a biological warfare campaign he could not counter. Mosquitoes helped the Americans snatch victory from the jaws of stalemate and win the Revolutionary War, without which there would be no United States of America. Remember that when they bite you next Fourth of July.
• From Korea to Vietnam: The Origins and Mindset of Postwar U.S. Interventionism
  Mel Gurtov
  The wars in Korea and Vietnam were of a piece, directly related by virtue of U.S. global strategy and China’s security concerns. This paper, focusing mainly on the U.S. side in these wars, argues that three characteristics of American policy had enduring meaning for the rest of the Cold War and even beyond: the official mindsets that led to U.S. involvement, the centrality of the China threat in American decision making, and the common legacy of intervention against nationalism and in support of authoritarian regimes. It is part of a continuing Asia-Pacific Journal series on the Korean War on the sixtieth anniversary of its outbreak. The Korean War was the seminal event of the Cold War in Asia. By invoking containment of communism to deal with the outbreak of war on the peninsula, the United States carried the Truman Doctrine into Asia. Japan became the key U.S. military ally in Asia, Chinese intervention in Korea sealed U.S.-China enmity for the next thirty years, and Korea stayed divided without a peace treaty. At one and the same time, war in Korea drew Asia into the orbit of vital U.S. interests and strengthened the U.S. commitment to Europe’s primacy.1 The war rigidified ideological positions and ensured that the East-West geopolitical struggle would go on for many years. As importantly, the ensuing big-power confrontation in Vietnam, in which the United States and China tangled by proxy, represented a straight line from Korea. These two conflicts directly or indirectly enveloped nearly all of Asia, forcing governments to choose sides in the Cold War competition. [Imperialism] [Cold War] [US global strategy] [Paradigm] [NSC68]
• A Canadian line of Campbell's soups has activists stewing over Islamic connection
  By Paul Farhi Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, October 18, 2010 Andy Warhol found artistic inspiration in a can of Campbell's tomato soup. These days, some activists are finding sinister Muslim connections in the same can. Campbell Soup Co., the Camden, N.J., food giant, has been fighting a grass-roots boycott of its products after its Canadian subsidiary rolled out a line of soups certified as halal, meaning they're prepared according to Islamic dietary laws. Campbell Co. of Canada introduced the soups in a few Canadian markets in January, although American bloggers didn't catch up to the news until earlier this month. That's when the tempest in a tomato-soup can started. Blogger Pamela Geller began calling for a boycott earlier this month via her widely read site, Atlas Shrugs. Other bloggers soon joined in. [Halal] [Islam]
• Rogue security companies threaten US gains in Afghanistan war
  The Pentagon is dependent upon contractors in the Afghanistan war. But many of the security companies are undermining – or even working against –the US war effort. By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer posted October 21, 2010 at 2:03 pm EDT Washington — Since its Revolutionary days, the American military has been no stranger to the use of paid help – from carpenters to ditch diggers – to wage war. By 1965 in Vietnam, the practice of relying on private defense companies became widespread enough within the Pentagon that Business Week dubbed it a "war by contract." In Afghanistan, the use of private contractors has reached record levels. A 2010 Congressional Research Service report found that they now make up 60 percent of the Defense Department's workforce. With fewer US soldiers than contractors throughout the war-torn country, the Pentagon is more dependent on private defense contractors than ever in its history. [Privatisation]
• Analysis: Midterm election weighs on Obama's foreign policy
  Mon, Oct 18 2010 By Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Facing a tough two years at home if the Republicans win big in next month's congressional elections, U.S. President Barack Obama might be tempted to look abroad to make his mark. But with the public fixated on high unemployment and a sputtering economy, and the 2012 presidential race approaching, Obama is more likely to keep his focus where the votes are -- on his domestic priorities. [Domestic] [Strategic incoherence] [Obama]
• Iraqi leaders not following US advice on gov't
  By LARA JAKES and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA The Associated Press Thursday, October 21, 2010; 4:53 PM BAGHDAD -- American influence has so dwindled in Iraq over the last several months that Iraqi lawmakers and political leaders say they no longer follow Washington's advice for forming a government. Instead, Iraqis are turning to neighboring nations, and especially Iran, for guidance - casting doubt on the future of the American role in this strategic country after a grinding war that killed more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers. "The Iraqi politicians are not responding to the U.S. like before. We don't pay great attention to them," Shiite lawmaker Sami al-Askari, a close ally of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Thursday. "The weak American role has given the region's countries a greater sense of influence on Iraqi affairs." [Client] [Strategic incoherence]
• U.S.-led Afghan reconstruction projects to end because of security dispute
  By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, October 21, 2010; 4:45 PM KABUL - U.S.-funded development firms are beginning to shut down massive reconstruction projects because the Afghan government has refused to rescind a ban on their use of private security guards, according to U.S. officials and aid workers here. The decision to start shuttering the projects, collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars, could have far-reaching effects on the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban, disrupting a central component of the strategy to counter the insurgency at a critical moment in the war [Client]
• Coalition Routs Taliban in Southern Afghanistan
  By CARLOTTA GALL Published: October 20, 2010 ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATO commanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said. Kandahar to submit claims for compensation from coalition forces. A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled in the province that was their base. [Pacification] [Naiveté]
• Turkey boards China's new 'Orient Express'
  By Peter J Brown The significance of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Ankara in early October was monumental, especially after the bitter words spoken in mid-2009 by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan following China's brutal reaction to Uyghur rioting in Xinjiang. Erdogan spoke openly of Chinese atrocities as he emerged as one of the most vocal and downright irate national leaders in the Islamic world in terms of his response to the Chinese government's actions last year. How times have changed. [China rising] [Railways] [Realignment]
• The War On Terror
  By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, October 16, 2010 Does anyone remember the “cakewalk war” that would last six weeks, cost $50-$60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues? Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion? Lindsey was fired for over-estimating the cost of a war that, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, has cost 15 times more than Lindsey estimated. And the US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq. Does anyone remember that just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the US government declared victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan? Does anyone remember that the reason Dubya gave for invading Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, weapons that the US government knew did not exist? Are Americans aware that the same neoconservarives who made these fantastic mistakes, or told these fabulous lies, are still in control of the government in Washington? The “war on terror” is now in its tenth year. What is it really all about? The bottom line answer is that the “war on terror” is about creating real terrorists. [Imperialism] [MISCOM]
• Germany and the Failure of Multiculturalism
  October 19, 2010 | 0855 GMT By George Friedman German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared at an Oct. 16 meeting of young members of her party, the Christian Democratic Union, that multiculturalism, or Multikulti, as the Germans put it, “has failed totally.” Horst Seehofer, minister-president of Bavaria and the chairman of a sister party to the Christian Democrats, said at the same meeting that the two parties were “committed to a dominant German culture and opposed to a multicultural one.” Merkel also said that the flood of immigrants is holding back the German economy, although Germany does need more highly trained specialists, as opposed to the laborers who have sought economic advantages in Germany. The statements were striking in their bluntness and their willingness to speak of a dominant German culture, a concept that for obvious reasons Germans have been sensitive about asserting since World War II. The statement should be taken with utmost seriousness and considered for its social and geopolitical implications. It should also be considered in the broader context of Europe’s response to immigration, not to Germany’s response alone. [Migration]
• In Afghan town, insurgents vanish after battles
  By TODD PITMAN, AP posted: 12 HOURS 53 MINUTES AGOcomments: 0 PRINT|E-MAILMOREText SizeAAAMARJAH, Afghanistan -The Marines have found bloody clothes and spent bullet casings and bombs meant to kill them. They've heard bullets flying overhead and seen muzzle flashes in tree lines. In this southern Afghan town that coalition forces seized from Taliban fighters eight months ago — and are still clearing — you don't have to go far to find the insurgency. But finding insurgents is another story altogether. "The only time we see them is when we're in contact" in a gunfight, said Cpl. Chuck Martin, 24, of Middletown, R.I. And even catching a glimpse of them during gunbattles can be rare. When U.S.-led coalition forces poured into Marjah in February, they ended years of Taliban control here. But the Taliban never left — they simply went underground, blending in among civilians, taking advantage of the region's terrain of agricultural fields and irrigation trenches to stage daily ambushes of American patrols. Today, U.S. troops are knee-deep in a classic guerrilla war, in what sometimes seems to be an endless turf battle against an often-invisible enemy that fights one minute, pretends to farm the next. "I've seen the Taliban a couple of times, but it's only for brief seconds," said Lance Cpl. Benjamin Long, 21, of Trussville, Ala., who knew they were close on one recent patrol when machine gun rounds suddenly began kicking up dust near his feet. "It's like fighting ghosts. They're in and they're out. They're quick. They've been doing this a long time ... (and) they're good at it." When U.S. forces go out on patrol, children and farmers come out of their homes and watch them closely. Some are just curious. Others use cell phones to tell insurgents what the Americans are doing. [Pacification]
• Sunnis in Iraq Allied With U.S. Quitting to Rejoin Rebels
  By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and DURAID ADNAN Published: October 16, 2010 BAQUBA, Iraq — Members of United States-allied Awakening Councils have quit or been dismissed from their positions in significant numbers in recent months, prey to an intensive recruitment campaign by the Sunni insurgency, according to government officials, current and former members of the Awakening and insurgents. Although there are no firm figures, security and political officials say hundreds of the well-disciplined fighters — many of whom have gained extensive knowledge about the American military — appear to have rejoined Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Beyond that, officials say that even many of the Awakening fighters still on the Iraqi government payroll, possibly thousands of them, covertly aid the insurgency. [Client]
• Why Business Doesn't Trust the Tea Party
  The Tea Party's small-government slogans may be appealing, but its policies could throw the U.S. economy into chaos By Lisa Lerer and John McCormick October 18, 2010 Nikki Haley is almost everything the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce could want in a candidate for governor: A former small business owner (she helped run her family's luxury-clothing company in Lexington, S.C.), Haley has served on the boards of two local chambers and campaigns on the traditional business gospel of lower taxes and smaller government. As Haley was steaming toward an easy win in the Republican primary runoff last June, the South Carolina Chamber's board—56 business leaders representing sectors ranging from banking to health care to construction—met at Clemson University to decide whether to endorse her or her general election opponent, Vincent Sheheen, a Democratic state senator. It took only 20 minutes around a U-shaped conference table for the board to make its decision: Almost 80 percent of members voted for the Democrat—even though they knew Haley was a virtual lock to become the next governor of their heavily Republican state. The issue, as the board saw it, was Haley's extreme and inflexible approach, an ideology of confrontation that can be summed up in two words: Tea Party. Haley had allied herself with this grassroots network of self-described mad-as-hell revolutionaries, which has overrun the GOP—sending at least 14 Senate candidates, including challengers and incumbents allied with the movement, into the Nov. 2 elections—while accusing other Republicans of abandoning conservative tenets. Haley became one of Sarah Palin's "Mama Grizzlies"; the former Alaska governor and Tea Party celebrity endorsed her in May. For business leaders who prize pragmatism and stability, it was all too much
• The Tyranny of Metaphor
  Three historical myths have been leading American presidents into folly for nearly a century. Is Obama wise enough to avoid the same fate?
  BY ROBERT DALLEK | NOVEMBER 2010 In 1952, British historian Denis William Brogan published a brilliantly perceptive article on "The Illusion of American Omnipotence." In the midst of the Korean War, Brogan was not only commenting on Americans' frustration with their inability to prevail decisively against supposedly inferior Chinese and North Korean forces, but also cautioning against other misadventures in which the United States falsely assumed its superpower status assured a military victory in any conflict it chose to fight. Brogan could just as easily have titled his essay "The Omnipotence of American Illusion" in an echo of Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of true believers. "Convictions," the great German philosopher wrote, "are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
  Three enduring illusions -- a misguided faith in universalism, or America's power to transform the world from a community of hostile, lawless nations into enlightened states devoted to peaceful cooperation; a need to shun appeasement of all adversaries or to condemn suggestions of conciliatory talks with them as misguided weakness; and a belief in the surefire effectiveness of military strength in containing opponents, whatever their ability to threaten the United States -- have made it nearly impossible for Americans to think afresh about more productive ways to address their foreign problems. [Imperialism] [Bilateral]
• NATO's Lack of a Strategic Concept
  October 12, 2010 | 0856 GMT By Marko Papic Twenty-eight heads of state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will meet in Lisbon on Nov. 20 to approve a new “Strategic Concept,” the alliance’s mission statement for the next decade. This will be NATO’s third Strategic Concept since the Cold War ended. The last two came in 1991 — as the Soviet Union was collapsing — and 1999 — as NATO intervened in Yugoslavia, undertaking its first serious military engagement. During the Cold War, the presence of 50 Soviet and Warsaw Pact armored divisions and nearly 2 million troops west of the Urals spoke far louder than mission statements. While Strategic Concepts were put out in 1949, 1952, 1957 and 1968, they merely served to reinforce NATO’s mission, namely, to keep the Soviets at bay. Today, the debate surrounding NATO’s Strategic Concept itself highlights the alliance’s existential crisis.
  During the Cold War, that resolve, while never unquestioned — the Europeans were always skeptical of U.S. willingness to risk New York and Washington in a standoff with Russia over European turf — was strong and repeatedly demonstrated. The United States launched proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam largely to demonstrate unequivocally to European governments — and the Kremlin — that the United States was willing to bleed in far corners of the planet for its allies. [Strategic incoherence]
• The debate: Is the Era of American Dominance Over?
  April, 2009 The Problem with George: US Hegemony in Disarray By Peter Van Ness
  Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad on Dec. 14, may have planned his affront long in advance or simply acted out of pent up rage. “This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog,” he cried out, aiming one shoe, then the other at the global hegemon. But his daring strike, and the popular outburst of support that it has prompted, marks a historic transformation of America’s diminished global power. [Decline]
• The Nightmare: The Iraq Invasion's Atrocities, Unearthing the Unthinkable
  By Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research, October 9, 2010 "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." François-Marie Arouet -"Voltaire" (1694-1778.) I have a deeply held belief that the duty of a commentator is, to the best of one's ability, to record, to shine light in often dark places, to act as a voice for those whose own voice, fears, plights might not be heard or known. To write about the emotions one sometimes feels when doing it, is an anathema and anyway a redundancy. The purpose is to attempt to draw attention to wrongs, not to whinge about the effects they can have - and any way, a private life should be just that. If politicians wish to strip themselves of their dignity and allude to everything from their sex life, to using private grief to gain sympathy votes, those with a shred of self-respect do not wish to emulate them. Here, I am breaking my taboo, for a reason. Over the last several weeks I have again researched in depth, invasion's atrocities in Iraq, unearthing the unthinkable, switching off emotion and reading of terror, torture, monstrous wickednesses, word after sickening word. [War crimes]
• Asia’s global responsibilities: Delivering through global and regional arrangements
  October 10th, 2010 Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU In East Asia, as elsewhere in the world, the risks that we continue to face in recovery from the global financial crisis, not only economically but also politically, are a consequence of past failure in the architecture of international governance, including regional architecture, that frustrated a coherent East Asian and international response to the big problems of the day in their global context.
• What Pacific President?
  October 10th, 2010 Author: Thom Woodroofe, Left Right Think-Tank A year ago Barack Obama declared himself the first ‘Pacific President’ but so far his engagement with the region leaves a lot to be desired. President Obama hosted the second US-ASEAN Summit in New York recently. Many are hopeful the insubstantial two-hour lunch meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations will signal a turning point in the Obama Administration’s approach to Asia. So far the President has visited Europe six times and Asia only once. His European adventures have included sprucing a hometown Olympic bid and accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with one hand while saluting off more troops into harm’s way with the other.
  The reality is that, despite the rhetoric, the Obama Administration continues to be guided by an ‘Atlantic-centric’ approach to foreign policy forged in the aftermath of the Second World War. [Strategic incoherence] [Obama]
• India-Ohio outsourcing ban
  October 7th, 2010 Author: Rupa Chanda, IIMB Recently, there has been considerable furore in India regarding Ohio’s ban on outsourcing of IT and back-office work under government funded projects to locations such as India. This ban came following a discovery that the Texas-based firm Parago Inc., which was contracted by the Ohio Department of Development to administer a US $11 million federally funded energy-efficient appliance rebate program, had offshored the call handling and application processing work to El Salvador. [Offshoring]
• Media Disinformation: Washington´s "Regime Change Hit List": Iran versus Honduras
  Part 1 By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson Global Research, October 7, 2010 MRzine - 2010-10-05 It would be hard to find a better test of the integrity of the establishment U.S. media than in their comparative treatment of Iran and Honduras over the past couple of years (2009-2010). [Media] [Imperialism] [Disinformation]
• The AfPak endgame
  Paul Rogers, 7 October 2010
  Behind the escalation of United States cross-border raids into Pakistan and of Taliban attacks on coalition tanker-convoys lie the cold political reality of an unwinnable war. About the authorPaul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001, and writes an international-security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010)The problems for the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, both military and political, continue to mount. The expansion of military operations into Pakistan is also having a blowback effect which, proclaimed tactical successes notwithstanding, presents increasing perils to the coalition
  An important aspect of the raids is the killing of German and British citizens - people who have been targeted as suspected paramilitaries. In effect, Nato is eliminating its own citizens in the absence of any legal process whatsoever. This may seem a reasonable action from a strict counter-terrorism standpoint, but there may turn out to be substantial legal implications and there will undoubtedly be a radicalising impact within the Pakistani diasporas in both countries. [Af/Pak] [Diaspora] [Global insurgency] [Strategic incoherence]
• Ohio’s outsourcing ban – an ominous canary
  September 28th, 2010 Author: Jacob Kirkegaard, PIIE, Washington Ohio recently implemented a ban on the outsourcing of state government IT and back-office projects to offshore locations. This is a worrying election season reminder of the precarious political support free trade and global engagement currently enjoys in an America plagued by low growth and high unemployment. [Offshoring]
• A history of failure
  By Hossein Askari This is the first article in a three-part report. In considering the effectiveness or otherwise of sanctions against Iran, it is valuable to look first at how sanctions of one or more counties against another are "supposed" to do their job and their imposition against Iran over the past 30 years. Then before questioning whether the United States and the United Nations should continue with sanctions, we consider why these have so far failed to change Tehran's nuclear enrichment policies. What's behind sanctions? Economic sanctions are imposed on a country in the hope of changing what are seen as its objectionable policies. Arguably, the most famous and successful case of sanctions since World War II were imposed on South Africa in the hope that it would rescind apartheid and allow a democratic South Africa to emerge. [Sanctions]
• The Next Decade
  Let me begin with a confession: I've written another book. This must surely violate some federal law, given that I published my last book less than two years ago. The new book is called The Next Decade. Titles notwithstanding, this book is very different from its predecessor, The Next 100 Years. The last book was about a century, a time frame in which all things are impersonal. A decade is the opposite, because it is filled with individual decisions and uncertainty. It not only requires a very different type of forecasting, it requires the opposite sensibility. In a century, leadership counts for little. In a decade, it counts for a great deal.
  The book is framed by two concepts. The first is the idea that the United States is an unintended empire of vast power, deeply interlocked with the affairs of most of the world. It is not a question of whether Americans want this empire; it is impossible to let go. The question is what to do with it. Like a child you did not expect and may not have welcomed, it is still your responsibility. The second concept is what I call the Machiavellian Presidency. I consider three presidents exemplary: Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan. Each possessed a deep moral core. Each fully understood the uses of power, lying and violating the Constitution and human rights to achieve the respective moral necessities of the abolition of slavery, the destruction of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and the destruction of the Soviet Union. When we recall that Roosevelt allied with Stalin to defeat Hitler, we capture the Machiavellian President. The United States has stumbled into empire (sic). It now faces the crisis of Rome that the empire will annihilate the republic. I argue that of all the institutions of our Constitution, it is the president who can preserve the republic while managing the empire. I also argue that the greatest threat to the republic is living in denial about what the United States has become. The issue, then, is how to manage the unintended and unwanted in the next decade. [Imperialism] [Paradigm] [Inversion] [Agency]
• Can the Obama administration avoid a split with Pakistan?
  Tuesday, October 5, 2010; A14 RELATIONS BETWEEN the United States and Pakistan, never stable, are once again close to crisis. The immediate cause is the closing by Pakistan of a transport route to Afghanistan for non-lethal U.S. and NATO supplies -- an action taken in response to a border incident last week in which NATO aircraft exchanged fire with Pakistani soldiers, reportedly killing three. The shutdown of the supply route has caused a backup of thousands of trucks carrying fuel and other supplies, which in turn has enabled a series of attacks by Pakistan-based Taliban forces. The latest, on Monday morning, destroyed 20 trucks and killed three people outside of Islamabad.
  But its resistance to a more muscular U.S. campaign in North Waziristan, where the Haqqani faction is based, is unacceptable
  The events of recent days have demonstrated Islamabad's leverage over Washington. But the Obama administration has powerful cards, too -- including the more than $1 billion annually in military and economic aid it is giving Pakistan and the benefits of the Afghanistan supply trade for the Pakistani economy. The State Department's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, rightly said last week that "success in Afghanistan is not achievable unless Pakistan is part of the solution." The administration must avoid a rupture in relations; it should make amends for mistakes like the border incident. But it must insist on a robust military campaign in North Waziristan -- if not by Pakistani forces, then by the United States. [Client] [Inversion]
• In Struggle With The American Mind
  By William Blum Global Research, October 2, 2010 killinghope.org Since The Great Flood hit Pakistan in July ... many millions have been displaced, evacuated, stranded or lost their homes; numerous roads, schools and health clinics destroyed hundreds of villages washed away millions of livestock have perished; for the rural poor something akin to a Western stock market crash that wipes out years of savings countless farms decimated, including critical crops like corn; officials say the damage is in the hundreds of millions of dollars and it does not appear that Pakistan will recover within the next few years infectious diseases are rising sharply airplanes of the United States of America have flown over Pakistan and dropped bombs on dozens of occasions 1 I direct these remarks to readers who have to deal with Americans who turn into a stone wall upon hearing the United States accused of acting immorally; America, they are convinced, means well; our motives are noble. And if we do do something that looks bad, and the badness can't easily be covered up or explained away ... well, great powers have always done things like that, we're no worse than the other great powers of history, and a lot better than most. God bless America.
  The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington's policies fades away. To express this striving for dominance numerically, one can consider that since the end of World War Two the United States has: Endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries. Waged war/military action, either directly or in conjunction with a proxy army, in some 30 countries. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders. Dropped bombs on the people of some 30 countries. Suppressed dozens of populist/nationalist movements in every corner of the world. 10 The United States institutional war machine has long been, and remains, on automatic pilot A link to any of the first five lists can be obtained by writing to William Blum at bblum6@aol.com. The sixth list has not yet been uploaded to the Internet. [Imperialism] [Public opinion] [In denial]
• Al Gore fails to mention President Barack Obama during Democratic rally in Florida
  Al Gore failed to mention President Barack Obama at a campaign rally in Florida as Democrats extended their new tactic for next month's elections - ignoring the man who so inspired them in 2008. By Toby Harnden, Tampa Published: 6:25PM BST 01 Oct 2010 Representative Kendrick Meek, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in the November 2nd mid-terms, also neglected to let Mr Obama's name pass his lips during an appearance with the former vice-president in a union hall. Instead, the black congressman lauded "President Gore" - a reference to the 2000 election, when hanging chads in Florida and the US Supreme Court cost the Democrat the White House. [Obama]
• US secretly shifts armed drones to fight terrorists in Pakistan
  The Pentagon and CIA are stepping up America's secret war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan by secretly diverting aerial drones and missiles from Afghanistan. By Toby Harnden in Washington Published: 5:23PM BST 03 Oct 2010 Predator and Reaper drones have been lent by the US military to the CIA as part of a shift in strategy that underlines the Obama administration's view that Pakistan is unable or unwilling to target Islamist sanctuaries on its own soil. Tensions between the US and Pakistan have flared after a key route used to supply American troops in Afghanistan was shut after three Pakistani soldiers were killed in an attack by a Nato helicopter gunship. On Friday, insurgents attacked fuel tankers in Pakistan in another indication of the increasing vulnerability of Western supply routes. The additional drones enabled the CIA to increase the number of strikes in Pakistan in September, averaging five strikes a week that month, up from an average of two to three per week. This increase in drone activity was partly aimed at disrupting a suspected terrorist plot to strike in Western Europe. Americans officials believe Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders are behind plots potentially aimed at Britain, France and Germany. American surveillance drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained passed to Islamabad. But Pakistan has formally banned US military operations on its soil, citing the country's sovereignty. But the CIA has secretly conducted missile strikes launched from drones with Pakistani complicity. This has allowed Pakistan to condemn the strikes, which are strongly opposed by its predominantly anti-American population. [Client] [AfPak]
• America: Once engaged, now ready to lead
  By Robert Kagan Friday, October 1, 2010 Almost two years into the Obama presidency, there is a discernible shift in the administration's foreign policy. If Phase One was about repairing America's image around the world by showing a friendlier face to everyone, especially adversaries, Phase Two will be about wielding renewed American influence, even if it means challenging some and disappointing others. If Phase One was about "resetting" relations with great powers, especially Russia and China, Phase Two will be about discovering the limits of reset and taking a harder line when we disagree. If Phase One placed more emphasis on great-power cooperation and the nebulous concept of a "G-20 world," Phase Two will be built around core U.S. alliances with democratic nations. If Phase One was focused on being Not Bush, Phase Two will be about shedding that self-imposed straitjacket and pursuing traditional American interests and principles even if George W. Bush pursued them, too. This is speculation, of course. But evidence of a shift abounds. -- Allies are back. Compare Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent speech to the Council on Foreign Relations to the one she gave there last summer. Her 2009 speech sounded like an international relations professor's fantasy: She talked about using "smart power" to solve "collective action problems" in a "multi-partner world." While emphasizing relations with Russia, China, Brazil and other "emerging powers," she brushed past the old democratic allies in one lifeless paragraph. This year, the IR lingo is gone; Russia and China were singled out as much for being "authoritarian states" as for their cooperation. And Clinton devoted 10 paragraphs to extolling better relations with "our closest allies, the nations that share our most fundamental values and interests" in Europe, North America and Asia. It's not just rhetoric. In East Asia, the administration has shifted from the hazy idea of providing "strategic reassurance" to China to the concrete policy of reassuring allies and partners that the United States will defend them against growing Chinese military pressure. [China confrontation] [US global strategy]
• Jon Stewart, TV scourge of America's right, turns his satire against Barack Obama
  Daily Show host spearheads liberal discontent with the president's failure to deliver radical change Paul Harris in New York The Observer, Sunday 3 October 2010 Article history Jon Stewart, the famously smart host of the satirical Daily Show and habitual scourge of rightwing Americans, has embraced a remarkable new role as one of the fiercest critics of President Barack Obama and someone who is spearheading a wave of liberal discontent with the Democratic party. The turnaround is a remarkable one for a man whose show soared to national and international fame during the George W Bush era, on the back of incessant ridicule of Republican policies and personalities. But over the past year Stewart, who was a notable supporter of Obama in the presidential election campaign of 2008, has taken an increasingly strident tone on a wide range of White House policies, from the war in Afghanistan to gay rights and the economy. [Obama]
• Iraqis still reliant on power generators as U.S. prepares to leave
  By Janine Zacharia Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, October 2, 2010; 7:46 PM IN BAGHDAD As the U.S. military prepares to leave Iraq, Iraqis are still asking: What about the electricity? In 2003, they heard President George W. Bush's promise: "We will help them to restore basic services, such as electricity." Seven years later, the state's inability to provide reliable power to homes remains one of the most striking signs of the dysfunction that persists here and a nagging source of frustration for ordinary Iraqis. [Decline] [Incompetence]
• GAO Accuses Bush, Obama and Congress of Careless Arms Sales to Persian Gulf
  Friday, October 01, 2010 Goerge Bush holding hands with Saudi King Abdullah The White House and Congress should do a better job of considering the foreign policy implications of making billion-dollar arms sales to the Middle East, says the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report reviewed sales from 2005-2009 to the Persian Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar, all of which are allies of the United States, but none of which meets the standards of a modern democracy. The U.S. made arms transfers to the region using two programs: Foreign Military Sales, which are overseen by the Department of Defense, and commercial sales, which are reviewed by the Department of State. For all such sales to be approved, Defense and State are supposed to prove that the sales advance U.S. foreign policy and national security goals. However, the GAO determined that in most cases no such determination was made, and it questioned whether the deals really were in the national interest of the United States. In its report the watchdog agency remarked: “U.S. priorities are not consistently considered before such sales are authorized.” The assessment comes at a time when the Obama administration is proposing to sell $4.2 billion in weapons to Iraq, including 18 F-16 fighter jets, Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, laser-guided bombs and reconnaissance equipment. The administration also wants to deliver an even larger package of aircraft and defense equipment to Saudi Arabia, worth more than $60 billion. -Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky Audit Finds Flaws in US Arms Sales to Gulf (by Daniel Dombey, Financial Times) U.S. Agencies Need to Improve Licensing Data and to Document Reviews of Arms Transfers for U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security Goals (Government Accountability Office) (pdf) Obama Prepares Largest Arms Sale Ever…to Saudi Arabia (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov) Obama Administration Prepares to Sell $30 Billion in Weapons to Saudi Royal Family (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov) [Arms sales] [Client] [strategic incoherence]
• More Than 80% of Iranians Apply for Government Aid When Food Subsidy Ends
  By Ladane Nasseri - Oct 3, 2010 1:23 AM GMT+1300 Iran’s government will start paying cash to individuals next week to help them cope with rising prices as it phases out subsidies for food and energy, Economy and Finance Minister Shamseddin Hosseini said. About 60 million Iranians, or more than 80 percent of the population, have signed up for the program, which starts Oct. 7, Hosseini said in Tehran today, according to the state-run Fars news service. He didn’t say how many people will qualify for compensation or how much they will receive, according to Fars. “The accounts of Iranian families will be credited gradually,” Hosseini was cited as saying. “They will see how much they are eligible for when they check their accounts.” Hosseini didn’t say when caps on food and energy products will be lifted or by how much. The Persian Gulf country, hit by a fourth round of United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program, has plans to phase out subsidies over five years. The plan, which has been delayed, was due to start by the end of September. Iran says it aims to achieve $20 billion in savings in the first year of the subsidy cuts. It plans to spend 80 percent of that money on cash grants to the poorest Iranians and targeted subsidies for energy-intensive industries. Until recently a four-member Iranian household received an average of $4,000 a year in subsidies for oil and natural gas, compared with a typical annual income of about $3,600 a year, according to a report by the International Monetary Fund published last month by the Washington-based organization. [Sanctions]
• The Hezbollah Project
  September 30, 2010 By JOE KLEIN A PRIVILEGE TO DIE Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel By Thanassis Cambanis Illustrated. 317 pp. Free Press. $27 There is a striking episode early on in “A Privilege to Die,” Thanassis Cambanis’s well-reported account of the rise of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. The 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel has just begun, a war Hezbollah provoked by crossing the border and kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. Israel has responded with a massive bombing campaign; thousands of Lebanese Shiites are fleeing their villages in the south, traveling north to the relative safety of Beirut. Hezbollah, remarkably, has replaced bombed out roads and bridges to ease the evacuation. It has organized reception ­areas for the refugees. [NSA]
• As Western Civilization Lies Dying
  By John Kozy Global Research, September 29, 2010 The Western commercial system exists to extract more from consumers than it supplies in products and services. Its goal is profit and has never been to improve the human condition but to exploit it. When governments institutionalize this system, they place their nations on suicidal paths, because as Jefferson recognized, "Merchants have no country." It is not terrorism that threatens the security of the Western World, it is the Western World's commercial system. A man suffering from severe chest pains collapses. His wife calls 911. An ambulance arrives, the EMTs treat the patient, place him in the ambulance's bed, and start off to the hospital. Along the way, the engine stalls. The ambulance's staff begins arguing about how to get the motor restarted. One says more gasoline is needed, another says there's water in the tank, a third says the fuel filter is clogged. While they argue, the patient lies dying. This situation is analogous to what's happening in America and parts of Europe. While economists and politicians argue, their nations are in the throes of death. These people are looking for the devil in the details, but he is not there. It's the system itself that’s diabolical. The Western commercial system is extractive. It exists to extract more from consumers than it supplies in products and services. Its goal is profit, and profit literally means to make more (pro-ficere). Its goal has never been to improve the human condition but to exploit it. It works like this: Consider two water tanks, initially each partially full, one above the other. One gallon of water is dumped from the upper tank into the lower one for each two gallons extracted from the lower tank and pumped into the upper tank. Over time, the lower tank ends up empty and the upper tank ends up full. The circulation of water between the tanks ends. Essentially, this scenario describes all commercial systems based on profit. It is why the top 20 percent of Americans has 93 percent of the nation's financial wealth and the bottom 80 percent has a mere seven percent. It is why the bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than one percent of the nation’s wealth. It is why the nation's poverty rate is now14.3 percent, about 43.6 million people or one in seven. It is also why the Wall Street Journal has reported that 70 percent of people in North America live paycheck to paycheck. It is also why, despite numerous pledges over decades, no progress has been made in reducing world-wide poverty. The system is a thief. [Capitalism]
• Russian Party Gains in Latvia Amid Economic Bust
  RIGA, Latvia — When Latvians wrested their country from the Soviet Union two decades ago, their first thought, it seemed, was escape. Unable to physically uproot the country from its tiny plot next to Russia, they sought to integrate as deeply as possible with the West, eventually joining the European Union and NATO while spurning their former colonial masters and marginalizing the Russians who remained here. Now, as Latvians prepare to go to the polls on Saturday, a party rooted in the large Russian-speaking population here is expected to be the largest vote getter, as people begin to re-evaluate their place in the world again in the wake of their country’s frightful economic crash. After years of stratospheric economic growth and soaring expectations, the financial crisis has turned Latvia’s West-or-bust strategy into mostly bust. In two years, Latvia’s gross domestic product contracted by 25 percent and the unemployment rate soared to double digits. Bloody riots were followed by government collapse and growing despair. The crisis, which hit harder here than anywhere else in Europe, shattered Latvians’ illusions of the West as a bastion of easy wealth and eternal prosperity. That, coupled with growing disillusionment with the governing authorities and a desire to try just about anything to escape the current morass, seems to be reshaping the political dynamic here. “We’ve had a self-interested, navel-gazing political system that has taken one stupid decision after another,” said Karlis Streips, a journalist, who hosts political talk shows on radio and television here. “The decision is whether we want four more years of that or whether we want to try something else.” That something else could just be Harmony Center, a party calling for improved relations with Russia and whose base comes mostly from Latvia’s large Russian-speaking minority. If recent polling is correct, the party could win the most seats in Latvia’s 100-seat Parliament on Saturday. Though it is unlikely that Harmony Center will win enough votes to form a majority, members hope that with a solid showing it can attract the support of other parties to form a governing coalition, making it the first mostly Russian party to enter the government since Latvia’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. [Decline]
• U.S. struggles to counter Taliban propaganda
  By Ernesto Londoño Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 1, 2010; 10:39 PM KABUL - The Taliban in recent months has developed increasingly sophisticated and nimble propaganda tactics that have alarmed U.S. officials struggling to curb the militant group's growing influence across Afghanistan. U.S. officials and Afghan analysts say the Taliban has become adept at portraying the West as being on the brink of defeat, at exploiting rifts between Washington and Kabul and at disparaging the administration of President Hamid Karzai as a "puppet" state with little reach outside the capital. The group is also attempting to assure Afghans that it has a strategy for governing the country again, presenting a platform of stamping out corruption and even protecting women's rights. As the radical Islamist movement steps up conventional grass-roots propaganda efforts and polishes its online presence - going so as far as to provide Facebook and Twitter icons online that allow readers to disseminate press releases - the U.S.-led coalition finds itself on the defensive in the media war. [Cyberwar] [Softwar]
• 1 of 9 Black Children in U.S. Has a Parent in Prison
  Friday, October 01, 2010 America’s growing prison population over the last several decades has resulted in more and more children growing up without a parent, most often a father being the one behind bars. A report from the Pew Charitable Trusts reveals that more than half of all prisoners in the U.S., or 1.2 million inmates, are parents of children under the age of 18. Fathers make up the vast majority of this total, 1.1 million, while the rest are mothers (120,000). About 40% of all incarcerated fathers are black, and one out of nine black children (11.4%) in the country has a parent in prison or jail. Among the other findings in the Pew report: • More young (20 to 34-year-old) African American men without a high school diploma or GED are currently behind bars (37%) than employed (26%). • 2.7 million children have a parent behind bars—1 in every 28 children (3.6%) has a parent incarcerated, up from 1 in 125 just 25 years ago. Two-thirds of these children’s parents were incarcerated for non-violent offenses. • Previous research has shown that children with fathers who have been incarcerated are significantly more likely than other children to be expelled or suspended from school (23% compared with 4%). The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and has a larger total inmate population than the 35 largest European countries combined. -David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effects on Economic Mobility (Pew Charitable Trusts) (pdf) Limiting Incarceration of Non-Violent Offenders Could Save Billions (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov) U.S. Prison Population Larger Than That of 12 States (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov) Record Number of Prisoners Serving Life Sentences (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov) [Prisoners]
• Why Did the Saudi Royal Family Agree to Buy $60 Billion of U.S. Weapons It Doesn’t Need?
  Monday, September 20, 2010 Barack Obama with Saudi King Abdullah Saudi Arabia hasn’t fought a war since the 1930s, and already spends about 13% of its GDP on defense—so why would it agree to buy even more weapons as part of the richest arms sales ever by the U.S. government? One possible explanation, according to the blog Demagogues and Dictators, has to do with the longstanding, but unwritten agreement between Washington and Riyadh involving the exchange of oil for security. Saudi Arabia agrees to always sell oil to the U.S., and the U.S. consistently aids the kingdom in defending itself against any threat, foreign or domestic. A caveat of this understanding is the willingness of the Saudi leaders to increase their American arms purchases when an administration needs to protect defense industry jobs during tough economic times, such as now. The $60 billion-plus deal negotiated with the U.S. will benefit several major defense contractors, namely Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and Sikorsky, a subsidiary of United Technologies. Another explanation for the historic arms deal stems from the “tough times” endured these days by the Al-Saud family. Allowances aren’t what they used to be for the tens of thousands of family members, causing many to get in the business of facilitating foreign business deals with the Saudi government. Commissions can be as much as 5% on billion-dollar arrangements, giving those in the House of Saud plenty of motivation to lobby their brethren to close lucrative purchases with American companies. -Noel Brinkerhoff Following the Money in U.S.-Saudi Arms Deals (by Jeremy White, Demagogues and Dictators) Saudi Arms Deal Advances (by Adam Entous, Wall Street Journal) Obama Prepares Largest Arms Sale Ever…to Saudi Arabia (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov) [Arms sales]
• Army's future looks a lot like the present
  By Shaun Waterman The Washington Times 8:38 p.m., Monday, September 20, 2010 Generals are often accused of planning to fight the last war, but the Army is making a virtue of it in the service's latest projections about future needs and capabilities. "The most effective way to build capabilities for the future, we concluded, was to make a grounded projection based on what we're doing today," said Lt. Col. Mark Elfendahl of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, referring to the kind of counterinsurgency and humanitarian-relief operations in which the service is currently involved. [US military] [US global strategy] [Pacification] [China confrontation]
• An American dream made in Brazil
  By Pepe Escobar SAO PAULO - Brazil is a country the world loves to love. Brazil is a (joyful) riddle wrapped in a (chaotic) enigma, with the added complexity that the riddle and the enigma are ritualistically juggling with football, dancing a samba, ogling a sensual mulata, watching a telenovela and sipping a lethal caipirinha - all at the same time. The distinctive cultural trace of Brazil is anthropophagy - from culture to technology, the legacy of a former, lazy European monarchy in a tropical country where the aborigines, after banqueting over the odd whitey, were merrily exterminated while Europeans and black slaves copulated freely, with no Catholic guilt involved (there's no sin below the Equator). If this sounds like the plot of a carnival parade, that's because it is. French general and statesman Charles de Gaulle once quipped that Brazil "is not a serious country". Multi-ethnic, multicultural Brazilians, addicted to tolerance but most of the time drenched in complacency, preferred to believe - and joked about - the eternal promise of "the country of the future" (as Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig coined it over 70 years ago). Now Brazil is on a roll - and profiting from global goodwill has become a crucial element of its re-turbocharged soft power. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that Brazilian swing. The country is the "B" in Goldman Sachs-coined BRIC - the new, emerging global powers; less inscrutable and misunderstood than China, less authoritarian than Russia, less shambolic than India (and with no religious problems). And let's face it; much more fun. A new, two-fold national narrative has taken over; Brazil will become "the fifth power" - that is, the fifth-largest global economy (bye-bye Britain and France). And the New American Dream is made in Brazil. [Image]
• Terror plot reports surrounding Briton killed by US drone played down
  Report followed media accounts earlier this week about a plot, still in its early stages, to mount attacks in Britain, France, and Germany (2) Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 September 2010 20.08 BST Article history A US drone flies over Afghanistan. The US and Pakistan have co-operated over drone attacks. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP A Briton was killed in a missile strike by a US unmanned aerial drone, it was reported today, though western intelligence officials played down suggestions that he and his brother were plotting "commando-style" attacks in the UK. [Client]
• U.S. tense over Pakistan
  By Karen DeYoung and Karin Brulliard Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, September 30, 2010; 9:10 PM Political upheaval in Pakistan and a sudden rupture in relations with the United States have heightened the Obama administration's concern about the stability of a crucial partner in its Afghanistan war strategy. [AfPak] [Client]
• Tip of the Spear: the 13 Missions for US Marines in Okinawa
  by Tetsuo Kotani Tetsuo Kotani (tetsuo.kotani@gmail.com) is a special research fellow at the Okazaki Institute in Tokyo. He is also a member of the Project 2049 Institute International Advisory Council, a senior research fellow at the Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS), and a Pacific Forum CSIS Nonresident SPF Fellow. Confusion over the Futenma Relocation Facility (FRF) damaged the US-Japan alliance and raised concerns among regional countries about the direction of the alliance.
  As a collapse of North Korea -- rather than a North Korean invasion of South Korea -- has become a more likely scenario, the 31st MEU can search and seize the North Korean nuclear arsenal, and prevent proliferation of those weapons (Mission 11). [US Japan alliance] [Takeover]
• Project 2049 Institute
  The Project 2049 Institute is an American think tank focused on public policy in the Asia-Pacific region. The Institute was founded in January 2008.[1] Its stated goal is to "guide decision makers toward a more secure Asia by the century's mid-point" by "filling a gap in the public policy realm through forward-looking, region-specific research on alternative security and policy solutions...[with an] interdisciplinary approach draws on rigorous analysis of socioeconomic, governmental, military, environmental, technological, and political trends, and input from key players in the region, with an eye toward educating the public and informing policy debate."[1] The Institute's work is done through "studies for sponsors with an interest in long-range strategic forecasting."[1] [Thinktank] [China confrontation]
• China’s Rise, the United States, and Asia’s Angst
  by Robert Sutter Robert Sutter [sutterr@georgetown.edu] is Visiting Professor of Asian Studies at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington DC. He recently completed consultations with officials and non-government opinion leaders in 15 Asian-Pacific cities. Americans interacting with officials and other experts in the Asia-Pacific region in recent weeks would be reassured that official and other expert opinion among US allies and associates seems to disagree with prevailing media commentary in these countries depicting the United States in decline and China emerging to challenge the US leadership in the region. [China rising] [China confrontation] [Decline]
• Army's future looks a lot like the present
  By Shaun Waterman - The Washington Times 8:38 p.m., Monday, September 20, 2010 Generals are often accused of planning to fight the last war, but the Army is making a virtue of it in the service's latest projections about future needs and capabilities. "The most effective way to build capabilities for the future, we concluded, was to make a grounded projection based on what we're doing today," said Lt. Col. Mark Elfendahl of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, referring to the kind of counterinsurgency and humanitarian-relief operations in which the service is currently involved. [US military] [US global strategy] [Pacification] [China confrontation]
• U.N. panel endorses report accusing Israel of executions aboard aid flotilla
  By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, September 30, 2010; A10 UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. Human Rights Council voted Wednesday to endorse the report of a U.N. fact-finding mission that accused Israeli commandos of summarily executing six passengers on a Turkish aid flotilla in May, among them a 19-year-old Turkish American dual citizen who was shot five times, including once in the face. Upon its release last week, the 56-page report was dismissed by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office as "biased" and "distorted." Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, characterized the report in a radio interview as "a big lie." The United States, the only country to vote against Wednesday's action, criticized the panel's findings as unbalanced [War crimes] [Double standards] [Israel]
• Toward an Ideal Security State for Northeast Asia 2025
  Edited by L. Gordon Flake The Mansfield Foundation’s newest book is the product of a research partnership designed to identify the “ideal” state of peace and security in Northeast Asia in 2025 and to further explore issues related to that ideal. The Mansfield Foundation partnered with the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) on this project, which brought experts from Asia and the Pacific together for two workshops to identify an ideal security situation for Northeast Asia in the year 2025 as well as current and likely future trends diverging from that ideal. Scholars from throughout the region were then asked to address seven key issues related to the ideal security state for Northeast Asia in 2025 and to make policy recommendations to close the gap between current trends and the identified ideal. The book is a compilation of their papers, which address topics ranging from the impact of the global financial crisis to the implications of China’s continuing rise.
  Individual Papers : Preface L. Gordon Flake, Executive Director, The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Regional Economic Integration and the Development of Regional Economic Infrastructure in Northeast Asia Wendy Dobson, Professor, University of Toronto Chang Jae Lee, Director, Center for Regional Economic Studies, Korea Institute for International Economic Policy Nationalism, Historical Legacies and Territorial Disputes as Obstacles to Cooperation in Northeast Asia Cheol Hee Park, Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University Alexis Dudden, Associate Professor, University of Connecticut Exogenous Shocks Such as Terrorism and Pandemics as a Threat to Regional Crisis Management Noboru Yamaguchi, Lieutenant General JGSDF (Ret.), Professor, National Defense Academy of Japan Daojiong Zha, Professor, Beijing University Implications of Climate Change and Energy Security for Regional Integration in Northeast Asia Akio Morishima, Chair of Board of Directors, Japan Climate Policy Center Mikkal E. Herberg, Senior Research Fellow for International Energy, Pacific Council on International Policy Implications of Strategies to Deal with North Korea for Regional Cooperation and Integration Hitoshi Tanaka, Senior Fellow, Japan Center for International Exchange Sung-han Kim, Professor, Korea University The Trajectory and Implications of China's Continuing Rise for Northeast Asian Regional Integration Hugh White, Professor and Head of the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre, The Australian National University Yinhong Shi, Director of the Center for American Studies, Renmin University The Future of the U.S. Role in the Region and Northeast Asian Regional Integration Ralph A. Cossa, President, Pacific Forum CSIS Wenzhao Tao, Research Fellow, Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences [US global strategy] [US NK policy] [China rising] [MISCOM]
• TV ad blasting McDonald's rejected by Florida stations
  By Bridget Carey | Miami Herald MIAMI — South Florida television stations have refused to air a provocative anti-McDonald's commercial, according to the doctors' group that created it. The ad depicts an overweight man lying in a morgue holding a half-eaten hamburger, with a woman crying over his body. The McDonald's golden arch logo appears over his pale feet with the words ``i was lovin' it.'' It was created by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a nonprofit doctors' group that promotes vegetarian diets and is based in Washington, D.C.
• Pakistan Halts NATO Supplies to Afghanistan After Attack
  By ISMAIL KHAN and JANE PERLEZ Published: September 30, 2010 PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan closed a vital transit link for NATO supplies for the war in Afghanistan on Thursday in apparent retaliation for an attack by coalition helicopters on a Pakistani security post hours earlier. Trucks and oil tankers were stopped at the border post of Torkham just north of Peshawar and it was unclear when the post would reopen, a Pakistani security official said. A closure of the crossing through which NATO and American troops receive most of their non-lethal equipment is rare, and signaled a downturn in the military relationship between Pakistan and the United States just three months before the Obama administration takes stock of progress in Afghanistan. A NATO helicopter attacked a border post at Mandati Kandaw, a town close to the capital of Parachinar in the Kurram area of Pakistan’s tribal region, at 5 a.m. on Thursday, the official said. Three paramilitary soldiers of the Frontier Corps were killed, and three others injured, he said. Another border post at Kharlachi in the Kurram region was struck a few hours later, the official added. [Client]
• Postal Service close to going broke
  By Ed O'Keefe Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 29, 2010; 10:16 PM Americans can still send and receive mail, but the U.S. Postal Service may not have much left in the bank after this week, as it's set to announce billions of dollars in losses as early as Thursday. This Story Postal Service close to going broke What if the Postal Service runs out of money? It's also waiting for postal regulators to announce Thursday whether they approve of a proposed 5.6 percent postage-rate increase, to start in January. The proposed increase faces stiff resistance from business groups and lawmakers, who say that the USPS should instead make deeper spending cuts to meet its financial obligations. GOP opposition kept Congress from permitting the Postal Service to postpone paying $5.5 billion required by law to pre-fund retiree health benefits. A temporary spending measure to fund most federal programs through early December didn't mention the Postal Service; it passed the Senate on Wednesday and is expected to clear the House on Thursday. [Decline]

• FBI Raids Activists' Homes in Sinister COINTELPRO Replay
  By Tom Burghardt Global Research, September 27, 2010 Antifascist Calling... - 2010-09-26 In a replay of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's infamous COINTELPRO operations targeting the left during the 1960s and '70s, America's political police launched raids on the homes of antiwar and solidarity activists. Heavily-armed SWAT teams smashed down doors and agents armed with search warrants carried out simultaneous raids in Minneapolis and Chicago early morning on September 24. Rummaging through personal belongings, agents carted off boxes of files, documents, books, letters, photographs, computers and cell phones from Minneapolis antiwar activists Mick Kelly, Jessica Sundin, Meredith Aby, two others, as well as the office of that city's Anti-War Committee. Meanwhile, as federal snoops seized personal property in Minneapolis, FBI agents raided the Chicago homes of activists Stephanie Weiner and Joseph Iosbaker. According to the Chicago Tribune, "neighbors saw FBI agents carrying boxes from the apartment of community activist Hatem Abudayyeh, executive director of the Arab American Action Network." [Human rights]
• The former guerrilla set to be the world's most powerful woman
  Brazil looks likely to elect an extraordinary leader next weekend
  By Hugh O'Shaughnessy Sunday, 26 September 2010 The world's most powerful woman will start coming into her own next weekend. Stocky and forceful at 63, this former leader of the resistance to a Western-backed military dictatorship (which tortured her) is preparing to take her place as President of Brazil. As head of state, president Dilma Rousseff would outrank Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, and Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State: her enormous country of 200 million people is revelling in its new oil wealth. Brazil's growth rate, rivalling China's, is one that Europe and Washington can only envy. Her widely predicted victory in next Sunday's presidential poll will be greeted with delight by millions. It marks the final demolition of the "national security state", an arrangement that conservative governments in the US and Europe once regarded as their best artifice for limiting democracy and reform. It maintained a rotten status quo that kept a vast majority in poverty in Latin America while favouring their rich friends. [Realignment]
• The Sin of Independence Why Doesn't the US Talk to Iran?
  By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH and KARLA HANSEN The unrelenting diplomatic and geopolitical standoff between Iran and the United States is often blamed on the Iranian government for its “confrontational” foreign policies, or its “unwillingness” to enter into a dialogue with the United States. Little known, however, is the fact that during the past decade or so, Iran has offered a number of times to negotiate with the United States without ever getting a positive response from the U.S. [US Global strategy] [Parallels] [Iran] [MISCOM] [Israel]
• Neocons Blocked 2003 Nuclear Talks With Iran
  by Gareth Porter The George W. Bush administration failed to enter into negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program in May 2003 because neoconservative zealots who advocated destabilization and regime change were able to block any serious diplomatic engagement with Tehran, according to former administration officials. The same neoconservative veto power also prevented the administration from adopting any official policy statement on Iran, those same officials say. [US Global strategy] [Parallels] [Iran] [NEOCON] [Israel]
• Origins of the Recent Wars of Choice—and Their Impact on U.S. Global Markets
  By Ismael Hossein-zadeh, Professor of Economics, Drake University (This paper was originally presented to the Annual Symposium of the Center for Global Trade and Development, Chapman University, CA, April 6-8, 2006. It will soon be published in ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law.) Introduction While they may have been immoral, external military operations of past empires often proved profitable and, therefore, justifiable on economic grounds. Military actions abroad usually brought economic benefits not only to the imperial ruling classes, but also (through "trickle-down" effects) to their citizens. This was the case with both pre-capitalist empires of distant past and the capitalist imperial powers of Europe. The United States, too, has often used military power as a means for economic and territorial gains. These included not only the expansion of its territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but also the considerable non-territorial economic gains abroad, especially in the immediate aftermath of Word War II.[1] This pattern of economic gains flowing from imperial military operations, however, seems to have somewhat changed in recent years, especially in the post-Cold War era. Moralities aside, U.S. military expeditions and operations of late are not justifiable even on imperialistic economic grounds. Indeed, escalating U.S. military expansions and aggressions have become ever more wasteful and cost-inefficient in the post-Cold War period.
  So, if it is not economic (or classic) imperialism, how are, then, the escalating military aggressions of the United States in recent years to be characterized? What are the driving forces behind these military expansions, expeditions, and operations? Official explanations such as weapons of mass destruction, threats to the national security or interests of the United States, or spreading democracy worldwide, can now easily be dispensed with as flimsy, harebrained pretexts for war and militarism. Critics have offered a number of explanations. One of the most popular explanations attributes the rise of unilateral U.S. military adventures to the ascendance to power of the cabal of the so-called neoconservative militarists. A second widely-shared view, especially outside of the United States, attributes the recent rise of U.S. militarism, especially the invasion of Iraq, to the geopolitical imperatives of Israel. The third, and perhaps most widely-held, view of the surge in U.S. military expansions in the Middle East and central Asia is that the recently heightened military activities in those regions are prompted by U.S. designs to gain access to more and cheaper sources of gas and oil. Without denying the contributory roles of these factors, this study points to a more crucial force behind the drive to war and militarism: the powerful beneficiaries of military industries and war dividends, or, as the late President Eisenhower put it, the military-industrial complex and related influential interests that are vested in the business of war and military expansion. [MISCOM] [Imperialism]
• Atomic energy official David Danieli: A nuclear weapons-free Middle East?
  Israeli diplomacy has managed to thwart an IAEA resolution by Arab-Muslim nations that would place heavy controls on its nuclear program.
  By Yossi Melman At the International Atomic Energy Agency's General Conference about a year ago, an Arab-sponsored resolution passed with a slim majority that called on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The resolution also called for Israel "to place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards," including the reactor in Dimona - where, according to the resolution's authors, Israel is producing fissionable material for nuclear weapons. Last Friday, however, Israeli diplomacy managed to thwart the passage of a similar resolution, defeating the Arab-Muslim bloc of nations headed by Egypt. David Danieli worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 32 years; his final posting was as Israel's ambassador to India. About three years ago, he joined Israel's Atomic Energy Commission as deputy director general and head of the policy division. You recently returned from the IAEA General Conference. What has changed since last year? "This was definitely a very important achievement for Israel. This is also an unprecedented decision, in light of the fact that there is an automatic majority against Israel in international organizations. Israel is not blessed with a lot of decisions in the international arena that defeat the bloc of Arab-Muslim states. "The split in the IAEA, as in other organizations, is pretty clear. The bloc of Western countries - the entire European Union, including both western and eastern Europe, as well as the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and others - supported us. The Islamic-Arab bloc and some of the nonaligned nations supported the Egyptian resolution. [NPT] [Double standards] [Israel] [UNUS]
• Media Disinformation: The Facts About Ahmadinejad's UN Speech
  By Jack A. Smith URL of this article: Global Research, September 26, 2010 The Iranian leader did not accuse the U.S. of conspiring to murder thousands of its own people to create a pretext for launching wars as conveyed by the US media. A large portion of the American people, on the basis of media reports, probably think that during his UN speech Sept. 23 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that the U.S. government secretly arranged for the 9/11 attacks. He did not say that, however. In its Sept. 24 article about the speech The New York Times headline read: "Iran Leader Says U.S. Planned 9/11 Attacks." The first paragraph declared: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran made a series of incendiary remarks in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, notably the claim that the United States orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks to rescue its declining economy, to reassert its weakening grip on the Middle East and to save Israel." On the basis of his remarks the U.S. led 33 nations in theatrical walk out from the General Assembly while he was talking. And the next day, in an interview with the BBC's Persian service, President Barack Obama said Ahmadinejad's 9/11 remarks were "offensive. It was hateful. And particularly for him to make the statement here in Manhattan, just a little north of Ground Zero, where families lost their loved ones, people of all faiths, all ethnicities who see this as the seminal tragedy of this generation, for him to make a statement like that was inexcusable.” On Sept. 25, the Times published a correction: "A headline on Friday with an article about an incendiary speech in the United Nations General Assembly by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran summarized his remarks about the Sept. 11 terror attacks incorrectly. In his speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad asserted various theories about the origin of the attacks, including the possibility that they had been planned by the United States. He did not say that the United States had planned the attacks." [Media] [Disinformation] [9/11] [US global strategy]
• Is Petraeus 'out of control?'
  Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The American Prospect, where he writes his own blog. Responding to Bryan Curtis' review of Bob Woodward's recent book on the Afghanistan strategy deliberations within the White House, Andrew Sullivan has some harsh words for Gen. David Petraeus: The canonization of Petraeus has got to stop. He follows in the footsteps of Colin Powell who mastered the art of Beltway schmoozing and press management. But at least Powell won a war where Petraeus has so far lost two (can anyone now believe, as Iraq descends into political chaos and increasing violence, that the surge was simply a face-saver to get most, but not all, of the US troops out, after failing to achieve the original war goals?). And the Palin meme - that somehow members of the military have some kind of special status in a civilian republic and their political views demand more respect than those of others - is just as repugnant. If Woodward's book raises serious questions about the president's strategy in Afghanistan, it's also indicative of a problematic trend toward the militarization of American foreign policy. Woodward's book shows a president boxed in by his military advisers -- including his secretary of defense, Robert Gates -- who were unwilling to devote much time to giving the president military options beyond a long-term surge of 40,000 troops that would draw down in 2016. The president eventually developed his own compromise between the counterterrorism strategy urged by Vice President Joe Biden and the full-blown counterinsurgency his military advisers were pushing for -- more than 30,000 troops with a drawdown date in 2011. What we've seen in practice, though, is that the players in the White House who were pushing for a more long-term escalation have been among those most ardent about insisting that the 2011 date is "conditions-based" which is read by those opposed to the escalation as telegraphing a longer-term commitment. Sullivan writes that this indicates that Petraeus is "out of control," but I think this problem is much bigger than Petraeus. Petraeus's job was to give the president the best advice possible -- the larger issue is the fact that advice from generals is seen as somehow sacrosanct, when it's actually the president's job as commander-in-chief to make the larger strategic decisions. [Pentagon] [US global strategy]
• China, Russia Agree to Strengthen Strategic Partnership
  The leaders of China and Russia have signed a statement to deepen their strategic partnership and cooperation. President Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev inspected an honor guard at a welcoming ceremony Monday at Beijing's Great Hall of the People.
• Insurgent Group in Iraq, Declared Tamed, Roars
  By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS Published: September 27, 2010 BAQUBA, Iraq — This spring, United States military commanders said that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was a group in disarray, all but finished as a formidable enemy after American and Iraqi troops had killed or captured more than three-quarters of its leaders. But even as officials in the United States and Iraq made public pronouncements that reveled in Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s demise, the Sunni insurgent group vowed “dark days colored in blood.” This summer, as if to make good on its pledge, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia embarked on a wave of terror that managed to shake even an Iraqi public inured to violence: during the past two months, Iraq has witnessed some of its highest casualty tolls in more than two years, according to the government. How Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has managed this unlikely turnaround — from a near spent force to a reinvigorated threat to Iraq’s democracy in a little more than two months — is a puzzle to both the Americans and Iraqis who study the insurgent group, some of whom now wonder whether the organization in Iraq can ever be entirely defeated.
  After seven years at war, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia remains an enigma and has only about 200 “hard core” fighters, according to the United States military. Last month, Gen. Ray Odierno, then the commander of American forces in Iraq, expressed surprise at the group’s ability to coordinate attacks on a single day in 13 cities that killed more than 50 people and wounded 250. [Pacification] [Intelligence]
• On Basic Religion Test, Many Doth Not Pass
  By LAURIE GOODSTEIN Published: September 28, 2010 Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion. .Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life. On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith. Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. [Religion]
• One and a Half Cheers for American Decline
  The Future’s Not Ours -- and That’s Good News By Tom Engelhardt
  Compare two assessments of the American future: In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in which 61% of Americans interviewed considered “things in the nation” to be “on the wrong track,” 66% did “not feel confident that life for our children’s generation will be better than it has been for us.” (Seven percent were “not sure,” and only 27% “felt confident.”) But here was the polling question you’re least likely to see discussed in your local newspaper or by Washington-based pundits: “Do you think America is in a state of decline, or do you feel that this is not the case?” Sixty-five percent of respondents chose as their answer: “in a state of decline.” Meanwhile, Afghan war commander General David Petraeus was interviewed last week by Martha Raddatz of ABC News. Asked whether the American war in Afghanistan, almost a decade old, was finally on the right counterinsurgency track and could go on for another nine or ten years, Petraeus agreed that we were just at the beginning of the process, that the “clock” was only now ticking, and that we needed “realistic expectations” about what could happen and how fast. “Progress” in Afghanistan, he commented, was often so slow that it could feel like “watching grass grow or paint dry.” Now, I’m not a betting man, but I’d head for Vegas tomorrow and put my money down against the general and on Americans generally when it comes to assessing the future. [Decline] [Public opinion]
• Arming the insurgencies of the future
  by Paul Woodward on September 16, 2010 Guns are very durable — ownership tends to be transient. The New York Times examines a weapons cache which provides a snapshot of the arsenal that the Taliban in Marja — the part of Helmand Province that has seen the most sustained fighting of 2010 — have been using against US marines. In this collection, a third of the weapons are bolt-actions rifles from World War II or earlier. The photograph above shows a 1915 Lee Enfield rifle — a gun that was manufactured in the millions to defend the British Empire. Did the manufacturers have the slightest idea that they were making weapons that would outlast an empire? [Arms sales]
• America Is Suffering a Power Outage …and the Rest of the World Knows It
  By Dilip Hiro
  “Make poverty history!” A catchy slogan, and an admirable aim, it was adopted by world leaders at the United Nations summit in New York on the eve of the New Millennium. A decade later, it is America which has made history -- even if in the opposite direction. The latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that, in 2009, one in seven Americans was living below the poverty line, the highest figure in half a century. Last month’s 95,000-plus home foreclosures broke all records. These were only two of the recent glaring signs of the sagging might of the globe’s “sole superpower,” now heavily indebted to Beijing. Other recent indicators include its failure to corral China into revaluing its currency, the yuan, against the dollar, and to compel Russia, China, India, or even Pakistan to follow its lead in suppressing the oil and natural gas trade with Iran. With Washington failing to impose its monetary or energy policies on the rest of the world, we have entered a new era in history. [Decline] [Client]
• Wallowing in Decline
  Americans have gone from gloating over their global influence to bemoaning the loss of it. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now. BY JAMES TRAUB | SEPTEMBER 24, 2010 In Super Sad True Love Story, the novelist Gary Shteyngart imagines a not-very-remote future in which the United States, having giddily spent itself into bankruptcy, falls into the hands of Chinese bankers, who call in their T-bills, precipitating armed warfare and state collapse. The comic apocalypse conjured by Shteyngart, a wry connoisseur of baroque states of decline, induces in the reader a peculiar sense of queasiness: Is that not, in fact, what lies ahead? In a recent column titled "Too Many Hamburgers?" the New York Times' Thomas Friedman offered a particularly stomach-wrenching version of the Spenglerian nightmare, in which America is personified by an overweight and overconfident boy who loses a footrace to a fiercely competitive Chinese kid. Declinism has begun to settle into our bones. Nothing is foretold, of course. But you wouldn't want to bet the house, or even a sofa set, that the United States will overcome the rampant triviality of its culture, the self-righteousness of its national psyche, or the ideological paralysis of its politics in order to deal with the lack of critical investment, the decline of human capital, the looming tidal wave of entitlement spending, and the like. Another generation of this squandering of national assets, and Americans may find themselves clamoring for Shteyngart's "yuan-pegged dollars." The United States remains unmatched in economic and military might. It leads because no other country -- and certainly not China -- aspires to the job, much less has the capacity for it [Decline]
• America Threatens Russia: U.S. Consolidates New Military Outposts In Eastern Europe
  Bases, troops and missiles along the entire length of Eastern Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean By Rick Rozoff Global Research, September 24, 2010 Stop NATO With NATO as intermediary, facilitator and Trojan horse, the Pentagon has established itself - with bases, troops and missiles - along the entire length of Eastern Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean. Two weeks after the United States started its third rotation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Baltic air patrol on September 1, with the deployment of F-15C Eagle fighter jets operating out of the Siauliai International Airport in Lithuania, neighboring Estonia finished a three-year project to upgrade its Amari Air Base in order to accommodate more NATO warplanes. The opening ceremony for the enlarged base, which with expanded runways is able to host "16 NATO fighters, 20 transport planes [and] up to 2,000 people per day" [1], was held on September 15. The Estonian base, like its Lithuanian counterpart, is a Soviet-era one modernized and extended for use by NATO, which financed 35 percent of the expansion. Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo said of the augmented air base that "You could say that it wasn't just the Estonian Air Force that got a base, but our allies now also have a home, or if you prefer, a nest in Estonia where they can land and rest." [2] The head of the Estonian Air Force, Brigadier General Valeri Saar, said that NATO aircraft involved in the air policing mission in place for over six years could be stationed at the Amari Air Base in the future. President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, an American expatriate and former Radio Free Europe employee, made even stronger claims by stating the completion of the base will facilitate the deployment of fellow NATO members' troops and military equipment to his nation for prospective direct intervention: “It is obvious that a small country like Estonia would need the help of its allies in the event of a serious military crisis. Likewise, it is obvious that no matter how willing someone is to provide this help, they cannot do so without the proper infrastructure. Let’s be honest: until today our ability to accept the airborne help of our allies has been extremely limited.” [3] A "serious military crisis" only makes sense in relation to Russia. The air policing operation that was launched in March 2004 when Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia were absorbed into the Alliance - the first former Soviet republics to enter the bloc - with the subsequent rotation of U.S., British, German, French, Turkish, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian and Czech warplanes has never identified against whom and what NATO was allegedly protecting the three Baltic states' airspace. As the stock villains - Iran and North Korea - cannot be invoked as threats to the region, Estonia's and Lithuania's joint neighbor Russia is the inescapable candidate. [US global strategy] [Bases]
• From Helmand to Merseyside: Unmanned drones and the militarisation of UK policing
  Steve Graham, 27 September 2010 The Merseyside deployment is merely one of the first, tentative step within a much wider push by arms contractors and security and technology corporations. Supported by Governments, these are working extremely hard to ensure that the deployment of aerial drones for policing purposes quickly saturates UK airspace and becomes completely normal and taken for granted. We thus face a pivotal moment in the evolution of civilian surveillance by electronic means, both in the UK and other western democracies. This moment raises four particular concerns.
  The global market for drones is by far the most dynamic sector in the global airline industry. The current annual market of $2.7 billion is predicted to reach $8.3 billion by 2020 and $55 billion is likely to be spent on drones in the next decade. A specific concern of the EU is that European defense and security corporations are failing to stake claims within booming global drone markets whilst US and Israeli companies clean up. [Surveillance] [Imperialism] [MISCOM] [Arms sales]
• Kyrgyzstan's Rosa at the heart of the matter
  By M K Bhadrakumar For those who held a perennial grievance that the United States paid scant attention to the Central Asian region, Friday presents an extraordinary sight. President Barack Obama has scheduled a meeting with Kyrgyz leader Rosa Otunbayeva in New York. Not a "walk-in" or a "pull-aside" or a chance encounter, but a "stand-alone" event, structured well in advance, with the customary media briefing by the concerned assistant secretary of state, et al. Make no mistake about the meaning of Obama's personal intervention in US diplomacy with an unelected leader of a small, remote country of 5 million people in the middle of nowhere. Obama will be signaling how central Kyrgyzstan has become for US foreign policy. [US global strategy]
• It's Obama vs infinite war
  By Pepe Escobar One may be tempted to evaluate American foreign policy as concocted by some deviant disciple of cinema exploitation genius Russ Meyer - of Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill! fame - minus the profusion of breasts, of course. And so as that self-appointed court stenographer Bob Woodward reveals in his latest court opus Obama's Wars - conveniently leaked to the Washington Post and the New York Times - the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is shelling out the moolah for its own, 3,000-assassin-plus Murder Inc to roam in AfPak. These paramilitary - brigade-size - outfits, "elite and well trained", have been branded Counter-terrorist Pursuit Teams (CPT). Much is being made in US corporate media that this shady CPT posse is able to "cross-over" to the tribal areas in Pakistani territory and, like in that famous Heineken ad campaign, reach the parts US intelligence are not able to reach. Aware Latin Americans - with a shrug - will see this as Bad Joke redux: the "Salvador option" is back. As much as these Afghan assassins have been flown to the US for training, the infamous School of the Americas in the 1970s and 1980s trained death squads of natives to kill their compatriots from Chile to El Salvador. The CIA not exactly excels on thinking outside the box. [US global strategy] [Strategic incoherence] [Obama] [Petraeus] [AfPak]
• U.S. Is Working to Ease Wiretaps on the Internet
  By CHARLIE SAVAGE Published: September 27, 2010 WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone. Readers' Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment » Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages. [Surveillance]
• Military thwarted president seeking choice in Afghanistan
  By Bob Woodward Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 27, 2010; 12:34 AM The first of three articles adapted from "Obama's Wars" by Bob Woodward. For two exhausting months, he had been asking military advisers to give him a range of options for the war in Afghanistan. Instead, he felt that they were steering him toward one outcome and thwarting his search for an exit plan. He would later tell his White House aides that military leaders were "really cooking this thing in the direction they wanted." He was looking for choices that would limit U.S. involvement and provide a way out. His top three military advisers were unrelenting advocates for 40,000 more troops and an expanded mission that seemed to have no clear end. When his national security team gathered in the White House Situation Room on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2009, for its eighth strategy review session, the president erupted. [Obama] [AfPak] [Pentagon]
• Paul Krugman, disaffected liberal
  For more than a year, the bearded man consuming a shrimp salad at an Upper West Side cafe has been a prophet of doom, warning that the economy could slide into a "third depression" unless our leaders come to their senses and follow his advice. "I felt like a really lonely voice," says Paul Krugman, an unknotted blue tie draped around his neck. "It's been really frustrating." But he keeps hammering away, demanding action in one New York Times column after another, hoping "to establish a counter-narrative against what everyone else is saying." The 57-year-old commentator feels vindicated after predicting that the economy would skid into the gutter unless the president pushed through a far bigger stimulus package. And not just in financial forecasting terms: A hero on the left during his years of Bush-bashing, Krugman alienated some of his fans with his early criticism of Barack Obama. "It was maddening," says his wife, Robin Wells, being chastised by "your friends, people you'd been locked in arms with for years." Now much of the left has come around to the Krugman assessment that Obama is a timid leader too willing to play nice with the Republicans. [Crisis]
• British monarch asked for heating handout from fund for poor: report
  Source: Global Times [01:16 September 26 2010] Comments Queen Elizabeth II has asked the British government for money from a fund for poor people to help pay heating bills on her palaces, a newspaper reported Friday. The request was rebuffed because officials feared the news would be a public relations disaster for the monarch, according to the Independent newspaper, which learned of the request through Freedom of Information legislation. Royal aides complained to ministers in 2004 that the queen's gas and electricity bills had increased by 50 percent and were now "untenable," costing more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) a year. Aides said the 15-million-pound ($24 million) state grant the queen received for the upkeep of the palaces was inadequate, and they asked if the royal family was eligible for special funds to replace four combined heat and power units at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. The money would have come from a government program to fund heating programs that benefit people on low incomes. Buckingham Palace refused to comment on the report.
• Images of War, Finally Unpacked
  By HOLLAND COTTER Published: September 23, 2010 Somehow, in the summer of 1970, I ended up in an anarchist campground deep in the mountains of Southern France. Most of the campers were young French and Italian live wires, tense, raucous, full of theater. But there was also a contingent of older people, Spanish Civil War veterans, still fugitives after 30 years, living out of the backs of vans. They were the ones I wanted to talk to. I wanted to ask one thing: What was it like to be there back then, at a prophetic moment in modern history, in a war that continues, for some, to be burnished with an ethical glow? But they were reticent, and our jumble of Spanish, French and English probably wouldn’t have taken us far, anyway. After all these years I’ve found some answers to my question in an exhibition called “The Mexican Suitcase” at the International Center of Photography. The show documents wartime life in Spain between 1936 and 1939 from an insider-outsider vantage: through the eyes of three photographers — Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour, known as Chim — who were not Spanish but who were intensely committed to what they saw as a do-or-die anti-fascist struggle.
• The Collapse of Western Morality
  By Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, September 23, 2010 Yes, I know, as many readers will be quick to inform me, the West never had any morality. Nevertheless things have gotten worse. In hopes that I will be permitted to make a point, permit me to acknowledge that the US dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, fire-bombed Tokyo, that Great Britain and the US fire-bombed Dresden and a number of other German cities, expending more destructive force, according to some historians, against the civilian German population than against the German armies, that President Grant and his Civil War war criminals, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, committed genocide against the Plains Indians, that the US today enables Israel’s genocidal policies against the Palestinians, policies that one Israeli official has compared to 19th century US genocidal policies against the American Indians, that the US in the new 21st century invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on contrived pretenses, murdering countless numbers of civilians, and that British prime minister Tony Blair lent the British army to his American masters, as did other NATO countries, all of whom find themselves committing war crimes under the Nuremberg standard in lands in which they have no national interests, but for which they receive an American pay check. I don’t mean these few examples to be exhaustive. I know the list goes on and on. Still, despite the long list of horrors, moral degradation is reaching new lows.
• Coalition Military Fatalities By Year
  Website giving US and allied causalities in Afghanistan
• Afghanistan’s decade of war, and the endgame
  Paul Rogers, 24 September 2010 The war in Afghanistan is at a critical point as it enters its tenth year – and the view that it is unwinnable can be glimpsed in unexpected places. About the author Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001, and writes an international-security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010)The war in Afghanistan enters its tenth year in early October 2010. It is already clear that 2010 is proving to be a turning-point point in its course. The clearest indication of this is the intensifying difficulties faced by the United States-led coalition as the Taliban campaign spreads and the increasing criticism among Afghans of the foreign presence. But there are many signs of this change too among those western professionals whose role it is to explain and analyse the war for their various domestic audiences. In the worlds of think-tank research, journalism and scholarship, a number of influential current publications argue that the United States war in Afghanistan is failing.
  But aside from the avalanche of media reports to this effect, and from the report and the books mentioned above, another and less noted current source on the progress of the war is worth noting. This is the nature of the western coalition’s military propaganda about Afghanistan in recent months. The last call Most wars fought by major powers in the age of mass-communications technology have been underpinned by a persistent narrative of inevitable victory that is independent of the actual circumstances on the ground. The pervasiveness of this dominating message to the “home” audience is visible in the propaganda efforts of the Americans during their war in Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Argentineans and British during the Falklands/Malvinas war (1982), the United States-led coalition forces in Kuwait (1991), and of the combatants in many “smaller” wars (such as the Russians in the two wars in Chechnya in the 1990s). In all these case, the military-political “information professionals” and their outlets in the media sought to maintain this core narrative by putting the most benign “spin” possible on the unfolding conflict. What has become striking in the case of Afghanistan – and this is further evidence that 2010 is proving to be a turning-point year – is how far the bubble of assurance has dissolved.
  Here, the official view of the war (albeit still one of code, atmosphere, and between-the-lines signals) and the semi-official or unofficial ones represented and reported by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Bob Woodward and scholars such as Antonio Giustozzi begin to converge on a single conclusion: that the Afghan war is now effectively lost. [US global strategy] [MISCOM] [AfPak]
• Obama invokes 'state secrets' claim to dismiss suit against targeting of U.S. citizen al-Aulaqi
  By Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 25, 2010; 1:49 AM The Obama administration urged a federal judge early Saturday to dismiss a lawsuit over its targeting of a U.S. citizen for killing overseas, saying that the case would reveal state secrets. [Assassination] [Legality]
• Pakistan neuroscientist given 86 years for shooting at US agents
  Aafia Siddiqui case prompts outrage and protests across Pakistan, with her supporters branding it a crime against humanity
  Chris McGreal in New York and Declan Walsh in Karachi guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 September 2010 19.57 BST Article history A courtroom sketch of Aafia Siddiqui with Judge Richard Berman in New York Photograph: Shirley Shepard/AFP/Getty Images Aafia Siddiqui, a US-trained Pakistani neuroscientist who was named as one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists, was today sentenced to 86 years in prison by a New York court, in a case that has prompted outrage in Pakistan. Siddiqui, 38, was convicted of attempted murder this year after shooting at US soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan in 2008 as she tried to escape from custody. Siddiqui claimed she had been abducted by US agents and held incommunicado in Afghanistan for five years. The case has drawn appeals from the Pakistani government for her release, and divided legal opinion. Protesters took to the streets across Pakistan after the sentence, lighting fires and chanting anti-American slogans [Extraterritoriality] [Human rights]
• British Cuts to Military Concern U.S. Officials
  By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JOHN F. BURNS Published: September 23, 2010 WASHINGTON — Plans by the British government to make significant cuts in defense spending have spurred concerns among American military experts about Britain’s ability to carry out its role as the United States’ most dependable ally. A wrenching government spending review has pitted Britain’s army against its navy, spawned a series of leaks to the British media and raised the question of whether the military that emerges from the budget cuts — expected to be 10 percent to 20 percent of current outlays — will be a strategically agile force that can join the United States on major combat operations. [Tribute]
• Claim of Pro-Islam Bias in Textbooks
  By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. Published: September 22, 2010 HOUSTON — Some conservative members of the Texas Board of Education assert that the history books used in this state have a pro-Islamic bias (sic), and they are upset about it. Never shy about wading into the culture wars, they are planning to vote Friday for a resolution that would send a blunt message to textbook publishers: Do not present a pro-Islamic, anti-Christian version of history if you want to sell books in one of the nation’s largest markets. [Islam] [Bizarre]
• Official: CIA-trained force targeting militants in Pakistan
  By the CNN Wire Staff STORY HIGHLIGHTS The paramilitary force is made up of 3,000 Afghans Counter terrorism Pursuit Teams revealed Bob Woodward's new book Pakistan denies the presence of foreign forces RELATED TOPICS Pakistan Central Intelligence Agency The Taliban Washington (CNN) -- The CIA created and controls a paramilitary force of 3,000 Afghans that conducts clandestine missions targeting al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Pakistan, a U.S. official told CNN on Wednesday. The official described the force as "well-trained" and "effective." "You're talking about one of the finest Afghan fighting forces, which has made major contributions to security and stability," the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic. The Counter terrorism Pursuit Teams were first revealed in a new book by Bob Woodward, associate editor at the Washington Post. "Obama's Wars," which lays out deep divisions in the Obama administration over Afghanistan strategy, will be released Monday. [Assassination] [AfPak] [US global strategy]
• "Manufacturing Dissent": the Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites
  The People's Movement has been Hijacked
  By Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, September 20, 2010 The term "manufacturing consent" was initially coined by Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky. "Manufacturing consent" describes a propaganda model used by the corporate media to sway public opinion and "inculcate individuals with values and beliefs...": The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda. (Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky) "Manufacturing consent" implies manipulating and shaping public opinion. It establishes conformity and acceptance to authority and social hierarchy. It seeks compliance to an established social order. "Manufacturing consent" describes the submission of public opinion to the mainstream media narrative, to its lies and fabrications.
  "Manufacturing dissent" In this article, we focus on a related concept, namely the process of "manufacturing dissent" (rather than "consent"), which plays a decisive role in serving the interests of the ruling class. Under contemporary capitalism, the illusion of democracy must prevail. It is in the interest of the corporate elites to accept dissent and protest as a feature of the system inasmuch as they do not threaten the established social order. The purpose is not to repress dissent, but, on the contrary, to shape and mould the protest movement, to set the outer limits of dissent. To maintain their legitimacy, the economic elites favor limited and controlled forms of opposition, with a view to preventing the development of radical forms of protest, which might shake the very foundations and institutions of global capitalism. In other words, "manufacturing dissent" acts as a "safety valve", which protects and sustains the New World Order. To be effective, however, the process of "manufacturing dissent" must be carefully regulated and monitored by those who are the object of the protest movement. "Funding Dissent" How is the process of manufacturing dissent achieved? Essentially by "funding dissent", namely by channelling financial resources from those who are the object of the protest movement to those who are involved in organizing the protest movement. Co-optation is not limited to buying the favors of politicians. The economic elites --which control major foundations-- also oversee the funding of numerous NGOs and civil society organizations, which historically have been involved in the protest movement against the established economic and social order. The programs of many NGOs and people's movements rely heavily on both public as well as private funding agencies including the Ford, Rockefeller, McCarthy foundations, among others. [Cooption] [Thinktank] [Globalisation] [Democracy]
• US administration 'divided' over Afghanistan, says book
  22 September 2010 Last updated at 04:26 GMT By Mark Mardell BBC News, Washington Obama hopes to start a withdrawal from Afghanistan next year President Barack Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan believes the current strategy cannot work, according to a new book. The claim, published in the New York Times, is from a book by veteran reporter Bob Woodward. Reports say the book paints a picture of in-fighting in the administration.
• Woodward Book Portrays Obama Aides’ Battles
  By PETER BAKER Published: September 21, 2010 The book, “Obama’s Wars,” by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work. [AfPak] [Dissension]
• US cedes top spot to Brazil-China-India as investment destination: poll news
  21 September 2010 The United States now lags emerging markets in Brazil, China and India as a preferred place for investment, a Bloomberg quarterly Global Poll reports. It had ranked first only three months ago in the last such quarterly poll. In the 16-17 September poll of 1,408 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers, respondents made evident their negative perception of the US economy rating it fourth for potential returns over the next year, behind Brazil and China, tied for first, and India in the third place. The world's largest economy, however, still ranked highest of all major developed countries. [Decline]
• Gulf states in $123bn US arms spree
  By Roula Khalaf in London and James Drummond in Abu Dhabi Published: September 20 2010 23:00 | Last updated: September 20 2010 23:00 The Arab states of the Gulf have embarked on one of the largest re-armament exercises in peacetime history, ordering US weapons worth some $123bn as they seek to counter Iran’s military power. A package of US arms worth more than $67bn for Saudi Arabia accounts for the largest single component of this military build-up, providing a huge boost to the American defence industry. The first phase of this agreement – soon to go before the US Congress for approval – is estimated at about $30bn. Anthony Cordesman, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the US was aiming to achieve a “new post-Iraq war security structure that can secure the flow of energy exports to the global economy”. The arms sales would “reinforce the level of regional deterrence and help reduce the size of forces the US must deploy in the region”. The purchase of new weaponry comes at a time when many countries in the Middle East, home to two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves, are alarmed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions. They also fear that any Israeli or US military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities could provoke retaliation against them, or disrupt the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
  The total value of all US arms deals with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman and Kuwait is estimated at $122.88bn over the next four years. Grant Rogan, Blenheim’s chief executive, said that Middle Eastern and south-east Asian countries had traditionally bought arms on a one-off basis. But now they were replacing western Europeans as some of the biggest regular arms purchasers. “They are the big buyers,” he said. .Copyright The Financial [Arms sales] [Tribute]
• Sadat's daughter to sue over claims he poisoned Nasser
  President Nasser died three days after drinking coffee made by his successor, hints former aide on al-Jazeera television (19)Tweet this (38)Jack Shenker in Cairo guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 September 2010 16.50 BST Article history Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. He took over from Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, but was assassinated 11 years later. Photograph: Anwar Sadat Museum/EPA The daughter of the former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat is going to court to defend her late father against allegations that he murdered Gamal Abdel Nasser, founding father of the modern Egyptian republic. Sadat, most famous for his controversial peace deal with Israel at Camp David, took over the presidency after Nasser's unexpected death in 1970 from a heart attack that some doctors attributed to poisoning. Last week, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, a veteran Egyptian journalist and former Sadat aide, used his show on al-Jazeera television to give an account of Nasser's final days, which included several hints that the second president's death might not have been natural.
• Lindsey Graham says U.S. must prepare to attack Iran
  By James Rosen | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Monday that the United States must be prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon — and added that the last-resort step should be taken with the goal of overthrowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Graham, a military lawyer and a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, became the first senator to support direct U.S. military intervention in Iran, saying it should not involve ground troops but be launched by U.S. warplanes and ships.
• Special report - Tracking Iran's nuclear money trail to Turkey
  1:12pm BST By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- Turkey and other U.S. allies have been allowing Iranian banks with suspected links to Tehran's nuclear program to do business within their borders, frustrating Western countries trying to put a financial squeeze on the Islamic Republic, Reuters has learned. An examination of classified reports and interviews with Western diplomats, government and intelligence officials underscore that Turkey and others have resisted international pressure to make it harder for Iran to finance its uranium enrichment program. "Turkey's blossoming financial-economic relationship with Iran provides Iran with a gateway to the entire European financial system," according to an intelligence report on Turkey and Iran provided to Reuters by a diplomat. "The fact that Turkey is allowing itself to be used as a conduit for Iranian activity via Turkish banks and the Turkish lira is making it possible for Iranian funds in Turkish guise to make their way into Europe." [Sanctions] [Tribute] [Client]
• An Afghan bone for Obama to chew on
  By M K Bhadrakumar When Robert Blackwill, who was former United States secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's deputy as national security adviser and George W Bush's presidential envoy to Iraq, took the podium at the International Institute of Strategic Studies think-tank in London on Monday to present his "Plan B" on Afghanistan, readers of the Wall Street Journal would have wondered what was afoot. Blackwill is wired deep into the bowels of the US establishment, especially the Pentagon headed by Robert Gates. And the IISS prides itself as having been "hugely influential in setting the intellectual structures for managing the Cold War". Thus, the setting on Monday was perfect. [US global strategy] [AfPak]
• Blackwater's Black Ops
  Jeremy Scahill | September 15, 2010 Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation. Blackwater's work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater's owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation. Officials from Total Intelligence, TRC and Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this article. [Privatisation]
• The Strategic Counteroffensive
  By Fidel Castro Ruz
  URL of this article: Global Research, September 16, 2010 Cuba Debate - 2010-09-10 We Are Living Through an Exceptional Moment in Human History. The deadlines established by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to yield to the demands imposed by the United States regarding nuclear research and uranium enrichment for medical purposes and to generate electricity will be expiring in these days. This is the only nuclear use that has been documented in Iran. The fear that Iran is looking forward to producing nuclear weapons is only based on an assumption. With regard to this delicate issue, the United States and its western allies, among them two of the five nuclear powers with veto power -France and the United Kingdom- supported by the richest and most developed capitalist powers of the world, have promoted an increasing number of sanctions against Iran, a rich, oil-producing Muslim country. Today, the measures adopted include the inspection of Iran’s merchant vessels and severe economic sanctions aimed at suffocating its economy. I have been following very closely the grave dangers that may result from that situation, because if a war breaks out in that region, it could very quickly go nuclear, and this will have lethal consequences for the rest of the planet.
• Members of U.S. platoon in Afghanistan accused of killing civilians for sport
  By Craig Whitlock Saturday, September 18, 2010; 9:39 PM AT JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, WASH. The U.S. soldiers hatched a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it. For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, floated the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The "kill team" activated the plan. One soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a fragmentary grenade on the ground. Then others opened fire. According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.
• As Iraq winds down, U.S. Army confronts a broken force
  By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — When Lt. Col. Dave Wilson took command of a battalion of the 4th Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, the unit had just returned to Texas from 14 months traveling some of Iraq's most dangerous roads as part of a logistics mission. What he found, he said, was a unit far more damaged than the single death it had suffered in its two deployments to Iraq. Nearly 70 soldiers in his 1,163-member battalion had tested positive for drugs: methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. Others were abusing prescription drugs. Troops were passing around a tape of a female lieutenant having sex with five soldiers from the unit. Seven soldiers in the brigade died from drug overdoses and traffic accidents when they returned to Fort Bliss, near El Paso, after their first deployment. "The inmates were running the prison," Wilson said. What Wilson had to deal with, however, was hardly an isolated instance. With the U.S. drawdown in Iraq, the Army is finally confronting an epidemic of drug abuse and criminal behavior that many commanders acknowledge has been made worse because they'd largely ignored it during nearly a decade of wars on two fronts. The Army concedes that it faces a mammoth problem.
  According to the report, nearly 20 percent of the soldiers who've enlisted in the Army since 2004 — perhaps as many as 10,000 — would "not have been eligible for entry into the Army before." [Decline] [US military]
• U.S. Poverty Rate Highest in 15 Years
  The Census Bureau says the U.S. poverty rate is at its highest level in 15 years, and the overall number of poor Americans was the highest in the five decades that statistics have been available. The bureau said Thursday the percentage of people living in poverty in the United States rose from 13.2 percent in 2008 to 14.3 percent in 2009. It says 43.6 million people were living in poverty last year, an increase of nearly four million from 2008.
• Iraq was 'failure of strategic thinking', chief of defence staff tells MPs
  Sir Jock Stirrup tells select committee that politicians did not understand the consequences of invading Iraq Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, Friday 17 September 2010 Article history British soldiers in Iraq were "dying for no strategic benefit" because Tony Blair's government did not appreciate what it was taking on when it planned the invasion, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the chief of defence staff, has told MPs. There was a "failure of strategic thinking" in southern Iraq, he told the Commons public administration committee. Stirrup, who retires next month, was asked if the politicians appreciated what they were taking on when British forces went into southern Iraq. He replied: "No." "We had people sitting in locations in Basra city unable to execute an aggressive military function but being shelled, resupply convoys on a daily basis being attacked, people dying for no strategic benefit, and no prospect of strategic benefit down this track," Stirrup said. He added: "The proposition was that freeing Iraq from Saddam Hussein and establishing proper democratic government would be a beacon for other countries throughout the region … It didn't work. It was wrong. But that was the strategy." [Strategic incoherence] [Spin] [In denial]
• Air Force to base advanced drones on Guam
  FILE - In this Nov. 3, 2006, file photo provided by the US Air Force shows an RQ-4 Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) landing at Beale Air Force Base, Calif. The Air Force is basing three of its most advanced unmanned aerial vehicles, the Global Hawk to Guam. (AP Photo/US Air Force, John Schwab, File) (John Schwab - AP) Network NewsX Profile By AUDREY McAVOY The Associated Press Friday, September 17, 2010; 12:50 AM HONOLULU -- The U.S. military has selected Guam - a U.S. territory in the Pacific strategically located to host forces capable of monitoring North Korea - as the next base for its most advanced unmanned plane. Pacific Air Forces Cmdr. Gen. Gary North said Thursday that the Global Hawk drone will help the Air Force gather intelligence and conduct surveillance and reconnaissance.
  The plane can fly at altitudes of 60,000 feet - high above most countries' defenses. [US military] [Surveillance] [China confrontation]
• Will Our Generals Ever Shut Up? The Military’s Media Megaphone and the U.S. Global Military Presence
  By Tom Engelhardt The fall issue of Foreign Policy magazine features Fred Kaplan’s “The Transformer,” an article-cum-interview with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. It received a flurry of attention because Gates indicated he might leave his post “sometime in 2011.” The most significant two lines in the piece, however, were so ordinary that the usual pundits thought them not worth pondering. Part of a Kaplan summary of Gates’s views, they read: “He favors substantial increases in the military budget... He opposes any slacking off in America's global military presence.” Now, if Kaplan had done a similar interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, such lines might have been throwaways, since a secretary of state is today little more than a fancy facilitator, ever less central to what that magazine, with its outmoded name, might still call “foreign policy.” Remind me: When was the last time you heard anyone use that phrase -- part of a superannuated world in which “diplomats” and “diplomacy” were considered important -- in a meaningful way? These days “foreign policy” and “global policy” are increasingly a single fused, militarized entity, at least across what used to be called “the Greater Middle East,” where what’s at stake is neither war nor peace, but that "military presence." [Pentagon] [Militarisation] [MISCOM] [Thinktank]
• Retired generals wary of Gates plan to downsize Pentagon from top
  Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a retired Army officer, is familiar with the perks and pitfalls of power, having commanded tens of ... By Ginger Thompson and Thom Shanker The New York Times WASHINGTON — Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a retired Army officer, is familiar with the perks and pitfalls of power, having commanded tens of thousands of troops at Fort Benning, Ga., managed budgets exceeding $2 billion in Iraq and overseen layers upon layers of staff members who helped manage his professional duties and his personal life.
  According to the Pentagon, there are 963 generals and admirals leading the armed forces, about 100 more than on Sept. 11, 2001. Meanwhile, the overall number of active-duty personnel has declined to some 1.5 million from 2.2 million in 1985, even though the Army and Marine Corps have grown since the Sept. 11 attacks, to carry out the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. [US military]
• The American Way of War Quiz
  This Was the War Month That Was (Believe It or Not) By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse Yes, it would be funny if it weren’t so grim. After all, when it comes to squandering money and resources in strange and distant places (or even here at home), you can count on the practitioners of American-style war to be wildly over the top. Oh, those madcap Pentagon bureaucrats and the zany horde of generals and admirals who go with them! Give them credit: no one on Earth knows how to throw a war like they do -- and they never go home. In fact, when it comes to linking “profligate” to "war," with all the lies, manipulations, and cost overruns that give it that proverbial pizzazz, Americans should stand tall. We are absolutely #1! Hence, the very first TomDispatch American Way of War Quiz. Admittedly, it covers only the last four weeks of war news you wouldn’t believe if it weren’t in the papers, but we could have done this for any month since October 2001. [US military]
• Defending a New Domain The Pentagon's Cyberstrategy
  By William J. Lynn III September/October 2010 Summary: Right now, more than 100 foreign intelligence organizations are trying to hack into the digital networks that undergird U.S. military operations. The Pentagon recognizes the catastrophic threat posed by cyberwarfare, and is partnering with allied governments and private companies to prepare itself. WILLIAM J. LYNN III is U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense. Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.In 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense suffered a significant compromise of its classified military computer networks. It began when an infected flash drive was inserted into a U.S. military laptop at a base in the Middle East. The flash drive's malicious computer code, placed there by a foreign intelligence agency, uploaded itself onto a network run by the U.S. Central Command. That code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control. It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary. [Cyberwar] [Inversion]
• PM should beware cost of taking risk with military
  By Philip Stephens Published: September 15 2010 18:50 | Last updated: September 15 2010 21:03 When as careful a politician as James Arbuthnot warns that the government may be playing with the nation’s security, David Cameron should sit up. Thus far the Treasury has been in the driving seat of the strategic defence review. Responsibility for the security of the realm belongs to the prime minister. The critique offered on Wednesday by the House of Commons defence committee, chaired by Mr Arbuthnot, is not new. The downsizing of the armed forces to meet straitened financial circumstance is being rushed. The last such last exercise took more than a year. This one has been allowed barely four months. The National Security Council, charged with making the decisions, is an institution yet to show its mettle; and the Treasury’s demands for cuts of up to 20 per cent in the defence budget is unconnected to any strategic vision of where Britain should sit in the world [Imperialism] [Militarisation]
• U.S.-led forces meet little resistance in Kandahar operation
  By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — U.S.-led forces began a key operation Wednesday in the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan, meeting surprisingly little initial resistance (sic) in the district in the south of the country that gave birth to the Taliban. [Pacification]
• Democracy - Everywhere? Nowhere?
  By Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 289, Sept. 15, 2010 Democracy is a very popular word these days. There is virtually no country in the world today whose government does not claim to be the government of a democracy. But at the same time, there is virtually no country in the world today about which others - both inside the country and in other countries - do not denounce the government as being undemocratic. There seems to be very little agreement about what we mean when we say a country is democratic. The problem is clear in the very etymology of the word. Democracy comes from two Greek roots - demos, or people, and kratia, or rule, the authority to decide. But what do we mean by rule? And what do we mean by the people?
  Finally, we must not neglect the ways in which the rhetoric about democracy is used as a geopolitical instrument. Denouncing other countries as undemocratic is regularly used as a justification for intrusion into politically weaker countries. The results of such intrusions are not necessarily that more democratic governments come to power, just different ones with perhaps different foreign policies. [Democracy] [Pretext] [Camouflage]
• Trans-Atlantic Gap Study Finds Growing EU Skepticism of Afghanistan War
  09/15/2010 REUTERS A majority of Americans think that NATO can still stabilize Afghanistan -- just one in 10 Germans agree. Back when President George W. Bush was in the White House, it seemed as though Americans and Europeans couldn't agree on much of anything. A new survey shows that, when it comes to the world's hotspots, not much has changed under Barack Obama. In his celebrated 2003 treatise on the divergent post-Cold War paths taken by Europe and the United States, called "Of Paradise and Power," American foreign policy pundit Robert Kagan wrote: "On major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." Whereas Europe, Kagan wrote, was focused on building a political paradise of unity within a civilized world regulated by international law, the US busied itself fighting off "rogue states" intent on destroying the world order. This year's annual trans-Atlantic survey commissioned by the German Marshall Fund shows that, when it comes to global security issues at least, Kagan wasn't far off the mark.
  The gap, the survey found, is particularly pronounced on the issue of Afghanistan. Less than a quarter of those surveyed in 11 European Union countries were optimistic that NATO will ultimately be successful in stabilizing the situation in Afghanistan, with just 10 percent of Germans answering in the affirmative. By contrast, just over half of those Americans surveyed thought the Western alliance would ultimately find success. After a year of negative headlines, numbers were down on both sides of the Atlantic, but the drop was more significant in Europe. [Imperialism]
• U.S. Still Top Arms Supplier to South as Record Sale to Saudis Pends
  By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Sep 14, 2010 (IPS) - Despite an unusual dip in global weapons sales in 2009, the United States retained its spot as the world's top arms supplier of developing countries, according to an authoritative new report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The report, the latest in an annual series produced by CRS on conventional arms sales, was released Monday as the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon will ask Congress as early as next week to approve a record 60-billion-dollar sale of jet fighters and helicopters to Saudi Arabia. The proposed sale, which could be supplemented by an additional 30-billion-dollar deal to upgrade the Saudi kingdom's naval forces and yet another for new missile- defence systems, would not only consolidate Washington's position as the world's dominant arms provider. It would also by itself exceed the value of all conventional arms transfers agreements signed worldwide by developing and developed countries alike in 2009 - 57.5 billion dollars, according to the CRS report - and would easily restore Saudi Arabia's status as the developing world's biggest arms consumer, a position from which it was dethroned in 2009 by new arms agreements signed by Brazil and Venezuela. "Sixty billion dollars is about half of what the Pentagon spends on weapons every year," said William Hartung, a veteran arms-sales analyst at the New America Foundation. "It's a huge bail-out for the military contractors who are facing a period when Pentagon spending is levelling off." The report, which is prepared each year by CRS's top arms expert, Richard Grimmett, is widely considered to be one of the most authoritative on the conventional arms trade because it is based on classified information, as well as public data, and its methodology has remained consistent for nearly three decades. Its statistics include both military sales and assistance. [Arms sales]
• Misreporting Venezuela's economy
  If you want a perfect illustration of media toeing the official line, look no further than the forecasts of Venezuela's economic doom
  Mark Weisbrot guardian.co.uk, Saturday 11 September 2010 17.00 BST The bulk of the media often gets pulled along for the ride when the United States government has a serious political and public relations campaign around foreign policy. But almost nowhere is it so monolithic as with Venezuela. Even in the runup to the Iraq war, there were a significant number of reporters and editorial writers who didn't buy the official story. But on Venezuel, the media is more like a jury that has 12 people but only one brain. [Media]
• Making a Mockery of the Real Crime of Rape: Assange Beseiged
  By ISRAEL SHAMIR and PAUL BENNETT The plot thickens as our favorite hero of the Matrix; our own “Captain Neo” Julian Assange, faces danger yet again. When we last parted company with the legendary founder of WikiLeaks, he was breathing a sigh of relief after dodging spurious double-rape charges. The complaints were dropped, and our hero was free to roam the globe once again. But soap opera plots are repetitive; the story was quickly recycled and now our brave captain is again under threat of being castrated on Stockholm’s Stora Torget, or whatever the latest craven penalty is for molesting sacred Nordic virgins in a land where Vikings once ruled.
  The Swedes have a practical reason behind their deceptively slapstick police-work. The WikiLeaks founder, pursued by malevolent forces around the world, sought momentary relief beneath Sweden’s reputation as a bastion of free speech. But the moment Julian sought the protection of Swedish media law, the CIA immediately threatened to discontinue intelligence sharing with SEPO, the Swedish Secret Service. That got the present right-wing government out of its chair, as it does everything it can to bury the Prime Minister Olof Palme’s legacy of careful neutrality. The suspicion of whether the rape farce is an orchestrated campaign, might be illuminated by these facts: (1) Sweden sent troops to Afghanistan, (2) Assange’s WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Diary which exposed this cruel and needless neo-colonial campaign. Furthermore, the expected release of new secret materials by WikiLeaks might just influence the general elections on September 19. Perhaps that explains the sudden police raid on a WikiLeaks server. [Sweden] [US dominance]
• Poll: Clear GOP Advantage Ahead of Midterms
  By MARK MURRAY Updated 5:45 AM CDT, Tue, Sep 7, 2010 Getty Images A combination of sky-high GOP enthusiasm, a deep sense of pessimism about the country’s direction and dissatisfaction with President Barack Obama's stewardship of the economy has given Republicans a clear advantage heading into the November midterm elections, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. With the Labor Day holiday marking the traditional starting point of the campaign season, Republicans have a nine-point edge among those considered likely voters, plus a near 20-point lead among those expressing the highest amount of interest in the midterms. In addition, six in 10 believe the country is on the wrong track; nearly two-thirds think the nation is in a state of decline; and a similar number aren't confident that their children’s generation will enjoy a better life. [Decline] [Obama]
• Elections and Obama's Foreign Policy Choices
  September 14, 2010 | 0856 GMT PRINT Text Resize: By George Friedman We are now nine weeks away from the midterm elections in the United States. Much can happen in nine weeks, but if the current polls are to be believed, U.S. President Barack Obama is about to suffer a substantial political reversal. While we normally do not concern ourselves with domestic political affairs in the United States, when the only global power is undergoing substantial political uncertainty, that inevitably affects its behavior and therefore the dynamics of the international system. Thus, we have to address it, at least from the standpoint of U.S. foreign policy. While these things may not matter much in the long run, they certainly are significant in the short run.
  The other option is to shift from the weak part of the presidency to the strong part, foreign policy, where a president can generally act decisively without congressional backing. [Domestic] [Obama]
• Clinton declares 'new moment' in U.S. foreign policy in speech
  By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, September 9, 2010 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared Wednesday that "a new American moment" has arrived in international relations, "a moment when our global leadership is essential, even if we must often lead in new ways." In a lengthy speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in which she defended the Obama administration's foreign policy approach, Clinton said that "this is a moment that must be seized - through hard work and bold decisions - to lay the foundations for lasting American leadership for decades to come." [Decline] [US global strategy]
• When Nuclear Terrorism Isn't Terrorism
  By Russ Wellen, September 13, 2010 Wait, is this one of those articles that tries to justify terrorism as a legitimate tactic for a people fighting an occupying power? No, but we are questioning why atrocities committed by a state don't qualify as terrorism. After all, as Jim Holt wrote at Slate in 2002 of terrorism . . . The broadest definition is the deliberate killing of noncombatants. That, for example, is how Caleb Carr characterizes terrorism in his recent book The Lessons of Terror. For this he was taken to task in the New York Times Book Review by Michael Ignatieff, who insisted that if the slaughter is carried out by "a state army under regular command, as part of a formally declared campaign to defeat another state," then it ought not to be called terrorism. In other words, wrote Holt, "The decision to reserve 'terrorism' for nonstate acts of terror, or to extend it to state acts, is a semantic one." [Nuclear terrorism]
• Ryanair crews’ no-frills idea: Drop the boss
  By Pilita Clark, Aerospace Correspondent Published: September 13 2010 22:25 | Last updated: September 13 2010 22:25 Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has for years endured complaints from passengers about his famously no-frills Irish airline. Now a senior Ryanair pilot has taken the rare step of publicly challenging his boss after the outspoken chief executive said he was trying to convince authorities to let his aircraft fly with only one pilot. A flight attendant could do the job of a co-pilot if needed, Mr O’Leary said last week, because “the computer does most of the flying now”. Captain Morgan Fischer, who trains other pilots at Ryanair’s Marseilles base, says he knows the airline is dedicated to keeping its costs as low as possible, so why not go one better – and replace Mr O’Leary with a junior flight attendant?
• Bad Economy Drives Down American Arms Sales
  By THOM SHANKER Published: September 12, 2010 WASHINGTON — The global economic recession significantly pushed down purchases of weapons last year to the lowest level since 2005, a new government study has found. The report to Congress concluded that the value of worldwide arms deals in 2009 was $57.5 billion, a drop of 8.5 percent from 2008. While the United States maintained its role as the world’s leading supplier of weapons, officials nonetheless saw the value of its arms trade sharply decline in 2009. This was in contrast to 2008, when the United States increased the value of its weapons sales despite a drop in business for competitors in the global arms bazaar. For 2009, the United States signed arms deals worth $22.6 billion — a dominating 39 percent of the worldwide market. Even so, that sales figure was down from $38.1 billion in 2008, which had been a surprising increase over the $25.7 billion in 2007 that defied sluggish economic trends. [Arms sales]
• Clinton Speech Offers Policy Overview
  Alex Brandon/Associated Press WASHINGTON — It was not quite as lofty as Madeleine K. Albright’s description of the United States as the world’s “indispensable nation,” but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came close to channeling her predecessor on Wednesday in declaring a “new American moment.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on Wednesday. In a speech meant to showcase the successes of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, Mrs. Clinton emphatically reasserted the primacy of American power in a dangerous world. Whether it is American aid after the floods in Pakistan or American brokering of the recently revived Middle East peace negotiations, she said, “The world is counting on us.”
  “After years of war and uncertainty,” she said, “people are wondering what the future holds, at home and abroad. So let me say it clearly: The United States can, must, and will lead in this new century.”
  Given the sweeping nature of her remarks, Mrs. Clinton said surprisingly little about Afghanistan, where the United States is trying to extricate itself from a nine-year war, or about North Korea, where it is nervously watching Kim Jong-il’s apparent effort to turn power over to one of his sons. [US global strategy] [Decline]
• The Guns of August Lowering the Flag on the American Century
  By Chalmers Johnson
  In 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published a book about the start of World War I and called it The Guns of August. It went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. She was, of course, looking back at events that had occurred almost 50 years earlier and had at her disposal documents and information not available to participants. They were acting, as Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it, in the fog of war. So where are we this August of 2010, with guns blazing in one war in Afghanistan even as we try to extricate ourselves from another in Iraq? Where are we, as we impose sanctions on Iran and North Korea (and threaten worse), while sending our latest wonder weapons, pilotless drones armed with bombs and missiles, into Pakistan's tribal borderlands, Yemen, and who knows where else, tasked with endless "targeted killings" which, in blunter times, used to be called assassinations? Where exactly are we, as we continue to garrison much of the globe even as our country finds itself incapable of paying for basic services?
  Let me begin by asking: What harm would befall the United States if we actually decided, against all odds, to close those hundreds and hundreds of bases, large and small, that we garrison around the world? [Imperialism] [Decline]
• A Strategy for Afghanistan
  By JOHN CHIPMAN It is time for Western governments to develop a new approach to their engagement in Afghanistan. The present counterinsurgency strategy is too ambitious, too draining and out of proportion to the threat posed by that country. It is well to recall the original purpose of the Western presence there: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and prevent its return. War aims traditionally expand, but in Afghanistan they have ballooned since 2001 into a comprehensive strategy to make Afghanistan stable and secure, as well as to develop and modernize the country and its government. This is a case not just of mission creep, but of mission multiplication. [Strategic incoherence] [US global strategy]
• 9/11 and America’s Secret Terror Campaign
  The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda, Part III
  By Andrew Gavin Marshall     Global Research, September 10, 2010 This is Part III of the three-part series, ``The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda`` Part 1: The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda. The CIA’s Drug-Running Terrorists and the “Arc of Crisis” Part 2: Empire, Energy and Al-Qaeda: The Anglo-American Terror Network   Anticipating An Attack   For several years prior to the events of 9/11, top American strategists had been acknowledging the necessity of what they oft-termed a “new Pearl Harbor”, a momentous attack upon America itself, in order to mobilize the American populace for a new global war of domination.   As Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, “America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space [of Central Asia] and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.”[1] Brzezinski acknowledged in his book that, “the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being.”[2] He also wrote that, “The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.”[3]   In 1999, Andrew Krepinevich, Executive Director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments testified before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. He stated that the US faces an “unprecedented challenge”:   [T]he need to transform our armed forces into a very different kind of military from that which exists today, while sustaining the military’s ability to play a very active role in supporting U.S. near-term efforts to preserve global stability within a national security strategy of engagement and enlargement.[4]   After advocating a massive re-imagining of the role and nature of US military might, pushing the notion of a “revolution in military affairs” and an acceleration of imperial ambitions, he told the Senate Committee:   There appears to be general agreement concerning the need to transform the U.S. military into a significantly different kind of force from that which emerged victorious from the Cold and Gulf Wars. Yet this verbal support has not been translated into a defense program supporting transformation. [. . . ] While there is growing support in Congress for transformation, the “critical mass” [i.e., public support] needed to effect it has not yet been achieved. One may conclude that, in the absence of a strong external shock to the United States—a latter-day “Pearl Harbor” of sorts—surmounting the barriers to transformation will likely prove a long, arduous process.[5]  [US global strategy] [Pretext]
• Stiglitz Says Europe Made Wrong Bet With Austerity
  September 07, 2010, 11:16 AM EDT Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- European governments made a “wrong bet” by pushing for austerity after the global recession, resulting in slower economic growth for the region and the U.S., Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said. “Europe has made a wrong bet with austerity,” Stiglitz, 67, told reporters today in Budapest. If Germany, the U.K. and France remain committed to budget cutting, “that will have systemic consequences for the entire Europe.” Europe’s economy is at risk of sliding back into recession as governments reduce spending to rein in budget deficits, Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank and now a professor of economics at Columbia University in New York, said in an interview with Dublin-based RTE Radio on Aug. 24. [Crisis]
• Things Could Be Worse
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: September 9, 2010   TOKYO “Japan’s problems now are the same as they were in the 1990s, when you were writing about them. It’s depressing.” So declared one economist I spoke to here. “But the Japanese don’t seem all that depressed,” objected another. Both were right — and the conversation crystallized some thoughts I’ve been having about Japan’s situation, and ours. A decade ago, Japan was a byword for failed economic policies: years after its real estate bubble burst, it was still suffering from chronic deflation and slow growth. Then America had its own bubble, bust and crisis. And these days, Japan’s record doesn’t look that bad to an American eye.
  More broadly, if Republicans regain power, they will surely do what they did during the Bush years: they won’t seriously try to address the economy’s troubles; they’ll just use those troubles as an excuse to push the usual agenda, including Social Security privatization. They’ll also surely try to repeal health reform, which would be another twofer, reducing economic security even as it increases long-term deficits. So I find myself almost envying the Japanese. Yes, their performance has been disappointing. But things could have been worse. And the case Democrats now need to make — the case the president finally began to make in Cleveland this week — is that if Republicans regain power, things will indeed be worse. Americans, understandably, are disappointed over, frustrated with and angry about the state of the economy; but disappointment is better than disaster. [Crisis] [Decline]
• What the Asian Debate about U.S. Hegemony Tells Us
  By Evelyn Goh Sep 7, 2010 Recent Asian debates about the US role in global and regional security stem from two decades of strategic transition from Cold War bipolarity to uncertain US unipolarity challenged by unilateralism and rising powers. These debates span the region, and are driven as much by domestic political transitions and nationalist imperatives as they are by longer-term strategic planning.
  The mistake in so much strategic analysis is in focusing on the wielders of power at the expense of ignoring the subjects of power. If the post-Cold War regional activism in East Asia teaches us anything, it is that smaller players have an impact on the efficiency and efficacy of great powers. What the US exercises in Asia is hegemony – not just preponderance of power or primacy – because of the critical element of regional support for its strategic leadership. Within the scholarly literature, the most interesting recent work has focused on the agency and choices of East Asian states in this period of transition. The Singapore debates exactly encapsulate some of these crucial processes of deliberation in the region. [Decline] [Client]
• ElBaradei calls for election boycott, but opposition split
  Egypt’s opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei has called for a boycott of the upcoming parliamentary election, media reports Wednesday said. In his latest remarks, ElBaradei said a boycott of the poll would lead to the demise of the ruling National Democratic Party’s government. However, the main opposition group in the country, the officially outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, said it had not yet decided on its next move. [Democracy] [Human right] [Double standards] [Islam]
• Fidel Castro says remarks about Cuban model 'not working' misinterpreted
  Former president had previously been reported to have admitted failure of economic system (10)Tweet this (19)Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 September 2010 23.06 BST Article history Former president Fidel Castro is reported to have said: 'The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore.' Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters Fidel Castro said today that his comment to a US journalist about Cuba's system not working had been misinterpreted. The former president told a meeting at the University of Havana that the remark, which caused a sensation when reported earlier this week, did not reflect his view. He meant "the exact opposite", he said.
  Raúl has said Cuba cannot blame the decades-old US embargo for all its economic ills and that serious reforms are needed. Fidel's statement was seen as bolstering the president's behind-the-scenes tussle with apparatchiks resisting change. [Media] [Sanctions] [Disinformation]
• Fidel Castro says communism doesn't work
  Former Cuban president says Marxist model 'doesn't even work for us' in offhand remark to US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg (203)Tweet this (97)Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 September 2010 17.31 BST Article history Fidel Castro, pictured earlier this month, criticised Cuba's state-dominated system. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters It was a casual remark over a lunch of salad, fish and red wine but future historians are likely to parse and ponder every word: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us any more." Fidel Castro's nine-word confession, dropped into conversation with a visiting US journalist and policy analyst, undercuts half a century of thundering revolutionary certitude about Cuban socialism. [Media] [Disinformation]
• US soldiers 'killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies'
  Soldiers face charges over secret 'kill team' which allegedly murdered at random and collected fingers as trophies of war (4064)Tweet this (1139)Chris McGreal in Washington The Guardian, Thursday 9 September 2010 Article history Andrew Holmes, Michael Wagnon, Jeremy Morlock and Adam Winfield are four of the five Stryker soldiers who face murder charges. Photograph: Public Domain Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret "kill team" that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies. Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians [War crimes]
• US Gets Ready to Knock The World Offline
  06.09.2010 Leonid Savin, political scientist After October 1 thousands of US military hackers and spies will get down to their cyber war activities. The declarations for taking cyber defense measures can be heard more and more often in the US. US analysts state that information and communication networks, on which the national infrastructure depends on, are becoming vulnerable for cyber criminals.
  Numerous publications in the US mass media show that the reform of the national cyber defense forces as well as the introduction of the doctrine and strategy of the cyber war are soon to be completed. As for the US cyber strategy we can assume that it is in line with the general concept of the US global leadership. [Cyberwar]
• U.S. Strategy In Eurasia And Drug Production In Afghanistan. Part II
  06.09.2010 Tiberio Graziani, Editor-in-chief of Eurasia - Rivista di studi geopolitici (Journal of Geopolitical Studies) Part I As we well know now, the drug production in Afghanistan has gone up more or less 40 times since the country’s occupation by NATO. If we examine the measures adopted so far by U.S. forces aimed at containing and overcoming the drug trafficking issue in the broader context of U.S. geopolitical policies, we can observe that U.S. and NATO forces are apparently “wasting” their time: drug production and distribution in the southern part of the country are still going on. As we well know, a large-scale drug production is impossible in this area, because of the ongoing fighting. Hence, U.S. and NATO forces are focusing their strategic interest in the northern part of the country. Here, they have built roads and bridges linking Afghanistan to Tajikistan (the road to Russia via Uzbekistan), Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan (see A. Barentsev, Afghan Heroine flow channelled to Russia, FONDSK). This modus operandi unveils the real intentions of the Pentagon and Washington: opening a road towards Russia, starting from Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics. In fact, NATO and other western forces are not waging a genuine fight against drug production and trafficking. [Drugs] [US global strategy] [AfPak]
• Timing key as US stir-fries sanctions
  By Peter Lee The targets, the tactics, even the dramatis persona of the Barack Obama administration's 2010 sanctions strategy largely repeat the George W Bush administration's fruitless campaign against Iran and North Korea from 2005 to 2007. Once again, obtaining or compelling China's compliance in the sanctions regime is a key element in the considerations of the United States. An important difference is that, in 2010, China is largely isolated and at odds with the European Union, Russia and South Korea - groups and nations that in the past provided [Sanctions] [US global strategy] [China confrontation]
• The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda. The CIA’s Drug-Running Terrorists and the “Arc of Crisis” Part I
  By Andrew Gavin Marshall Global Research, September 5, 2010 Introduction As the 9th anniversary of 9/11 nears, and the war on terror continues to be waged and grows in ferocity and geography, it seems all the more imperative to return to the events of that fateful September morning and re-examine the reasons for war and the nature of the stated culprit, Al-Qaeda. The events of 9/11 pervade the American and indeed the world imagination as an historical myth. The events of that day and those leading up to it remain largely unknown and little understood by the general public, apart from the disturbing images repeated ad nauseam in the media. The facts and troubled truths of that day are lost in the folklore of the 9/11 myth: that the largest attack carried out on American ground was orchestrated by 19 Muslims armed with box cutters and urged on by religious fundamentalism, all under the direction of Osama bin Laden, the leader of a global terrorist network called al-Qaeda, based out of a cave in Afghanistan. The myth sweeps aside the facts and complex nature of terror, al-Qaeda, the American empire and literally defies the laws of physics. As John F. Kennedy once said, “The greatest enemy of the truth is not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic.” This three-part series on “The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda” examines the geopolitical historical origins and nature of what we today know as al-Qaeda, which is in fact an Anglo-American intelligence network of terrorist assets used to advance American and NATO imperial objectives in various regions around the world.
• Fractured justice: the UN Secretary-General's Gaza flotilla enquiry
  Bob Rigg, 7 September 2010 Subjects:International politicsTurkeyisrael & palestine - old roads, new maps The UN Secretary General has promised to investigate the Gaza flotilla incident in a manner which is "prompt, impartial, credible and transparent" and "conforming to international standards". But it looks as if politics is triumphing over justice About the authorBob Rigg is former senior editor, Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and former chair, NZ National Consultative Committee on Disarmament.In the dawn of 31 May 2010 Israeli soldiers rappelled down onto the deck of a former Istanbul passenger ferry called the Mavi Marmara, one of a small international flotilla aiming to penetrate the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza strip. The flotilla had sailed from Turkey in the full glare of international publicity, leaving the Israelis with plenty of time to come up with an appropriate and measured response. Nine passengers died from Israeli gunshot wounds (8 Turks and one Turkish-American), while 24 were injured (one American), some severely. The flotilla of six vessels carried about 700 protesters from 38 countries. Ten Israeli commandos suffered relatively minor injuries.
• The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond
  By Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes Sunday, September 5, 2010 Writing in these pages in early 2008, we put the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war at $3 trillion. This price tag dwarfed previous estimates, including the Bush administration's 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war. But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low. For example, the cost of diagnosing, treating and compensating disabled veterans has proved higher than we expected. Moreover, two years on, it has become clear to us that our estimate did not capture what may have been the conflict's most sobering expenses: those in the category of "might have beens," or what economists call opportunity costs. For instance, many have wondered aloud whether, absent the Iraq invasion, we would still be stuck in Afghanistan. And this is not the only "what if" worth contemplating. We might also ask: If not for the war in Iraq, would oil prices have risen so rapidly? Would the federal debt be so high? Would the economic crisis have been so severe? The answer to all four of these questions is probably no.
• American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?
  Mark Lyons for The New York Times For nine years after the attacks of Sept. 11, many American Muslims made concerted efforts to build relationships with non-Muslims, to make it clear they abhor terrorism, to educate people about Islam and to participate in interfaith service projects. They took satisfaction in the observations by many scholars that Muslims in America were more successful and assimilated than Muslims in Europe. [Islam] [Global insurgency]
• Free Cuba Phone Market Urged on Obama by Nokia, AT&T
  August 31, 2010, 11:28 AM EDT Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Nokia Oyj, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are urging the U.S. government to ease rules that keep them from operating in Cuba even after President Barack Obama loosened telecommunications regulations last year to promote democracy on the communist island. [Sanctions]
• Bloated US intelligence needs an urgent diet
  Source: Global Times [08:09 September 03 2010] Comments Editor's Note: In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, a huge portion of US intelligence has been contracted to private firms and organizations. Nine years later, even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates doubts whether the US government is still in control of its most sensitive activities. Was such privatization an inevitable choice, or was 9/11 taken advantaged by a group of ill-intentioned, corrupt officials? Can US intelligence be restored to a manageable size? Global Times (GT) reporter Chen Chenchen interviewed Tim Shorrock (Shorrock), a commentator on US national security and East Asian politics, and author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (2008), on these issues.
  GT: Since contractors wanted to get contracts renewed, they probably exaggerated threats against national security. To what extent were contractors' intelligence reports trusted by government agencies? Are there specific examples of exaggerated reports by private companies resulting in bad government decisions? Shorrock: There are about 200 firms that really control most of the business with the intelligence community, as well as the national security community. Their reports are trusted very highly by the government. Bush's Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, came to his job directly from a contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton. President Obama's chief counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, was also a contractor before coming to the White House. As for examples of tainting intelligence, that's very difficult to show because these operations are classified and secret. We don't know what's in reports passed up the chain to senior government officials, nor do we know what portion of intelligence reports are written by contractors. [Intelligence] [MISCOM] [Privatisation]
• Iraq War from a Historical Perspective
  03.09.2010 Alexander Frolov, publicist In accord with the withdrawal timetable rolled out back in 2008, B. Obama ordered the pullout of the majority of the US forces from Iraq. The plan is that only some 50,000 US servicemen will stay to train the Iraqi army and security services. Now comes the time to assess the campaign that took seven years, the gains drawn from it by the US, and the repercussions it had globally. US President F. Roosevelt's notorious remark concerning a Nicaraguan dictator - “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch” - epitomizes the political philosophy that guides the endeavors of Washington to promote democracy and its choice of partners among country leaders. It is an open secret that there was an epoch when S. Hussein used to be “our son of a bitch” to the US, and it was his falling out of favor with his former patrons rather than any sins he might be guilty of that he eventually paid for with his life. Washington simply decided to help the US business solve some of its strategic problems by punishing the defiant Iraqi leader who sat on vast oil reserves. The widely disseminated myths that Iraq maintained WMD stockpiles and that Baghdad had links with Al Qaeda provided a pretext for the invasion of Iraq.
  The leadership in N. Korea also realized that nothing less than a nuclear status can guarantee the country against US aggression. [Client] [Pretext] [Iraq] [US global strategy] [Nuclear weapons]
• Afghanistan: North Atlantic Military Bloc's Ten-Year War In South Asia
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, September 1, 2010 Stop NATO - 2010-08-31 In slightly over a month, on October 7, the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan will enter its tenth year. The conflict represents the longest continuous combat operations in the history of the United States and Afghanistan alike. With the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for the only time in its existence activating its Article 5 mutual military assistance clause in September 2001 and thus entering the Afghan fray, European nations that had not been at war since the Second World War are now engaged in an endless combat mission. There are 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, 120,000 of them under the command of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Military personnel from over a quarter of the 192 members of the United Nations. They include soldiers from almost every European country, several Asia-Pacific states, and nations in the Americas and the Middle East. NATO has grown from 19 to 28 members since it took control of ISAF in 2003 and has expanded military partnerships with several nations that have deployed troops to Afghanistan, from Australia to Georgia, Montenegro to South Korea, Armenia to the United Arab Emirates. [Imperialism] [US global strategy] [US military] [AfPak]
• Surrender of Japan: the end of World War II
  02.09.2010 Taras Dyachenko, publicist Today marks the 65th anniversary since the end of World War II. On 14 August, 1945, Emperor Hirohito issued the Imperial Rescript of Surrender announcing that Japan accepted the terms set down in the Potsdam Declaration. On 15 August the country’s Foreign Ministry sent a telegram to its envoy in Switzerland asking him to inform the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and China on the decision made by the Japanese Emperor. At the time the Japanese troops started to surrender, though more than two weeks remained before the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on board USS Missouri battleship on 2 September. Fights went on mainly on the Soviet-Japanese front. “The fate of Imperial Japan is being decided in Manchuria”, General Okamura, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Army, wrote on 12 August. But on 17 August, Emperor Hirohito issued an imperial edict bringing the war to a close. The edict said: “Now that Russia has joined the war, we see it wrong to continue fighting for it might bring new sufferings to our country and undermine the foundations of the empire”. Not the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but participation of the Soviet Army in the war was the main reason for Japan to stop fighting. According to estimates released by the allies, without the Soviet participation the war could have lasted for another 1,5-2 years, taking the lives of about 1 million American and 0,5 million British soldiers, as well as more than 10 million Japanese lives. Both Moscow and Tokyo understood that the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was first of all addressed to the Soviet Union, to show who was a true ruler in the postwar world. [US global strategy] [Nuclear weapons] [1945]
• U.S. Strategy In Eurasia And Drug Production In Afghanistan
  01.09.2010
  Tiberio Graziani, Editor-in-chief of Eurasia - Rivista di studi geopolitici (Journal of Geopolitical Studies) Part I The following analysis offers a geopolitical approach aimed at understanding the relationship between U.S. worldwide strategy and the presence of North American forces in Afghanistan. U.S. penetration in the Eurasian landmass is highlighted in special relation to the Central Asian area, considered as the underbelly of Eurasia in the context of U.S. geopolitics. In order to identify the real players in the Afghan theatre, certain general concepts used in geopolitical and international relations studies have been applied. The main characteristics of potential candidates able to deal with the Afghan drug question are discussed. Among these a particular role devolves on Iran, Russia and China. In any event, due to the interrelation between the U.S. strategy in Eurasia and the stabilization of Afghanistan, the latter can be fully accomplished only in the framework of a Eurasian integration process.
  Considering today’s main global actors, namely the U.S., Russia, China and India, their geographic location in the two distinct areas of America and Eurasia, and, above all, their relations in terms of power and world geo-strategy, Afghanistan constitutes, together with the Caucasus and the Central Asian Republics, a large area (fig. 1), whose destabilization offers an advantage to the U.S., i.e. to the only geopolitical player external to the Eurasian context. In particular, the destabilization of this large region affords the U.S. at least three geopolitical and geo-strategic opportunities: a) its progressive penetration in the Eurasian landmass; b) the containment of Russia; c) the creation of a vulnus in the Eurasian landmass. [US global strategy] [Drugs] [Destabilisation]
• Review: Washington Rules
  By Andrew Feldman, August 26, 2010 For his first 40 years, Andrew Bacevich lived the conventional life of an army officer. In the military world where success depended on conformity, he followed the rules and “took comfort in orthodoxy…[finding] assurance in conventional wisdom.” Comfort, that is, until he had a chance to peer behind the Iron Curtain, and was shocked to find East Germany more third-world shambles than first-rate threat. That experience, combined with the introspection that followed his subsequent retirement from the army, led Bacevich to reevaluate the relationship between truth and power. After having taken his superiors at their word for decades, he slowly came to understand “that authentic truth is never simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high…is inherently suspect. The exercise of power necessarily involves manipulation and is antithetical to candor.”
  As a new trinity, he suggests that “the purpose of the U.S, military is not to combat evil or remake the world but to defend the United States and its most vital interests…the primary duty station of the American soldier is in America…consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self defense.” [Imperialism] [Naiveté] [MISCOM]
• 'It's too soon to tell' how the Iraq war went
  By Anne Applebaum Monday, August 30, 2010; A13 On Tuesday, Barack Obama will make a speech about Iraq. With 50,000 troops still in the country in an "advisory capacity" he can't declare victory, so he will instead celebrate "the end of combat operations." If he follows others who have already marked this occasion, his comments will focus on Iraq: the state of Iraqi democracy, the level of violence, the impact seven years of war has had on Iraqi society. All of which is fair enough. But I hope he spares a few minutes to assess the impact that seven years of war has had on American society -- and American foreign policy. I supported the invasion of Iraq, I think the surge was a success and I believe that an Iraqi democracy could be a revolutionary force for good in the Middle East. Yet even if violence abates, even if all American troops go home, we have still paid a very high price for our victory -- much higher than we usually admit. Aside from the very real blood and the very real money spent in Iraq, there were other casualties, some of them hard to count and classify. Here are a few of them: America's reputation for effectiveness. The victory was swift. But the occupation was chaotic. The insurgency appeared to take Washington by surprise, and no wonder: The Pentagon was squabbling with the State Department; soldiers had no instructions and didn't speak the language. The overall impression, in Iraq and everywhere else, was of American incompetence -- and, after Abu Ghraib, of stupidity and cruelty as well. Two years ago, a German Marshall Fund poll showed that vast numbers of our closest friends felt that the "mismanagement" of Iraq -- not the "invasion" of Iraq -- was the biggest stumbling block for allies of the United States. [Decline] [Incompetence]
• An Arms Sales Suspect, Bargaining With Secrets
  By SCOTT SHANE Published: August 29, 2010 WASHINGTON — Accused of a 15-year run as one of the world’s biggest arms traffickers, Viktor Bout is thought to be a consummate deal maker. Now his future may hang on whether he can strike one last bargain: trading what American officials believe is his vast insider’s knowledge of global criminal networks in exchange for not spending the rest of his life in a federal prison. [Arms sales] [Extraterritoriality] [Double standards]
• Brazil, India and China -- not quite superpowers yet
  By Carlos Lozada Sunday, August 29, 2010 Brazil, China and India aren't ready for prime time. It's an article of faith among the liberal, open-minded, well-meaning, Davos-crowd intelligentsia: The leadership of the big global institutions -- the International Monetary Fund, the U.N. Security Council, the World Bank and the like -- must be opened up to emerging powers. The current structures reflect old post-World War II realities and no longer make sense. It's time to more fully include China, India, Brazil and other countries that are becoming dominant players in the 21st century.
  Sounds very fair and nice and post-American-worldy, but Jorge Castañeda thinks it's a lousy idea. In a provocative piece in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, the former foreign minister of Mexico warns that bringing in these new players threatens the principles and practices of democracy, free trade, nuclear nonproliferation, environmentalism and international justice that such institutions -- and most of their current leadership -- seek to spread. Castañeda challenges the countries most often cited as candidates to join the grown-ups' table (sic) . China, already a permanent member of the Security Council, supports the regimes in Burma and Sudan and has complicated efforts to deal with Iran's and North Korea's nuclear ambitions. India ignores human rights violations in Sri Lanka, has never ratified the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and drags its feet on climate change. Brazil has been too cozy with Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, not questioning the jailing of political opponents, crackdowns on journalism or electoral fraud. And the list goes on. [Decline] [Client] [China rising]
• Winning, Losing and War
  August 28, 2010 By PETER BAKER WASHINGTON
  AS the last officially designated American combat forces left Iraq, television cameras caught the exultation of a soldier finally heading home.
  “We won!” he yelled. “It’s over! America, we brought democracy to Iraq!”
  Which naturally raises an intriguing and provocative question: Did we win? Seven years later, after all the spilled blood, after all the roadside bombs and sectarian strife, after all the terror and torment, did the United States actually win the war in Iraq? The soldier was right in that the United States deposed a dictator and brought democracy to Iraq — a rudimentary, still-in-progress, somewhat dysfunctional democracy that has yet to seat a government nearly six months after an election, but a democracy nonetheless. And certainly it looks more like victory than it did just three years ago in the depths of the devastation before the American troop surge and the Sunni uprising against Al Qaeda in Iraq. But don’t look for sailors kissing nurses in Times Square or ticker-tape parades in the streets of Washington. Don’t look for President Obama or most other elected leaders to use terms like “victory” to describe what happened in Iraq. Whatever progress has been achieved has come at great sacrifice and seems fragile and incomplete at best. Rather than winning, Mr. Obama describes his goal as “responsibly ending this war.” “We neither won nor lost,” said Lee H. Hamilton, the former Democratic congressman from Indiana who served as co-chairman of the Congressionally chartered Iraq Study Group that in 2006 recommended pulling nearly all American combat troops out by 2008. “The best that can be said is that at enormous cost, we’ve given them a chance to establish a stable country.” Making a final evaluation, of course, would be premature.
  The debate underscores the changing nature of war. The United States claimed victory in most of the wars it has fought from the American Revolution through World War II. The Korean War essentially ended in a stalemate, with American-led troops repelling North Korean invaders but then being pushed back to the prewar border. Vietnam is widely seen as a defeat after Americans withdrew and the South fell to the North. The first Gulf War succeeded in pushing Iraq out of Kuwait. [Strategic incoherence] [[US global strategy] [Korea War]

• Mullen: Debt is top national security threat
  By the CNN Wire StaffAugust 27, 2010 -- Updated 2208 GMT (0608 HKT) STORY HIGHLIGHTS Joint chiefs of staff chairman says debt competes with military spending The Pentagon budget has more than doubled in 10 years The Defense Department must "cut the fat," Mullen says. (CNN) -- The national debt is bad for the military, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen is telling business men and women and others on a three-day "Conversations with the Country" tour across the Midwest. Mullen's trip, which ends Friday in Cleveland, Ohio, is aimed at encouraging business owners to hire veterans. "The most significant threat to our national security is our debt," he told CNN Wednesday. "And the reason I say that is because the ability for our country to resource our military -- and I have a pretty good feeling and understanding about what our national security requirements are -- is going to be directly proportional -- over time, not next year or the year after, but over time -- to help our economy. "That's why it's so important that the economy move in the right direction, because the strength and the support and the resources that our military uses are directly related to the health of our economy over time."
  Mullen has been telling his audiences that interest on the debt will nearly equal the defense budget in two years, but Congressional Budget Office numbers, in a report released in January, show the interest payment approaching the Pentagon's 2000 budget in 2012 and reaching its 2010 budget in 2019. [Pentagon]
• Why the "Merchant of Death" Won't Ever See Trial
  Robert Amsterdam International lawyer on emerging markets, politics of business, and rule of law The recent decision by a Thai appeals court to extradite the alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout, touted as the "Merchant of Death" in popular books and movies, raised many hopes that this important case would finally see trial before a U.S. court. This opportunity, however, may yet be squandered, as the jet meant to transport one of the world's most wanted prisoners sits waiting on a Bangkok runway for almost a week now with the extradition process stalled. The allegations against Bout, which are well documented by Amnesty International, the United Nations, and a number of other NGOs, may yet be outweighed by the complex political considerations, as Russia, the United States, and Thailand assemble to form a Bermuda Triangle of disappearing accountability.
  Tellingly, a high-ranking Russian diplomat has just published an article arguing that if Bout is put on trial, the "reset" with the United States is over, period. No Bout, no reset, no good relations. Although projected as a personal opinion, many are interpreting this article as a direct message from the Kremlin to the Obama Administration. [Arms sales] [Double standards] [US Russia] [Resurgence]
• Fidel Castro claims Osama bin Laden is a US spy
  Former Cuban president says the 9/11 mastermind is in the pay of the CIA and cites WikiLeaks as his source (365)Tweet this (205)Chris McGreal in Washington guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 August 2010 23.24 BST Article history Former Cuban president Fidel Castro meets Lithuanian author and conspiracy theorist Daniel Estulin in Havana today Photograph: Alex Castro/EPA Fidel Castro has more reason than most to believe conspiracy theories involving dark forces in Washington. After all, the CIA tried to blow his head off with an exploding cigar. But the ageing Cuban revolutionary may have gone too far for all but the most ardent believer in the reach and competence of America's intelligence agency. He has claimed that Osama bin Laden is in the pay of the CIA and that President George Bush summoned up the al-Qaida leader whenever he needed to increase the fear quotient. The former Cuban president said he knows it because he has read WikiLeaks.
• Beck, Palin tell thousands to 'restore America'
  Beck: America is turning 'back to God' From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, broadcaster Glenn Beck has told a crowd of tens of thousands of people gathering on the National Mall that their country has "wandered in darkness" for too long. By Philip Rucker, Carol Morello and Amy Goldstein Saturday, August 28, 2010; 3:37 PM A sea of people rallied at the hallowed site of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday as conservative commentator Glenn Beck and other heroes of the "tea party" movement honored Americans serving in the military and delivered impassioned calls to turn the nation back to God and to protect the traditional values that they said make the country exceptional.
  The story of America is the story of humankind." [Exceptionalism] [Decline]
• Space Warfare: Preparing the "Battlespace" for A New Imperial Adventure
  Secretive Mini-Shuttles and Spy Satellites By Tom Burghardt
  Global Research, August 23, 2010 Antifascist Calling... - 2010-08-22 Last spring, Antifascist Calling reported on the launch of the Pentagon's secretive X-37B mini space shuttle, a 29-foot long unmanned orbital test vehicle (OTV). Built by Boeing Corporation, the multibillion dollar project was the culmination of a decades-long dream of Pentagon space warriors: to field a reusable spacecraft that combines an airplane's agility with the means to travel at 5 miles per second in orbit. After the craft's successful April 22 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) denied that the X-37B was a prototype for a near-earth weapons platform. Back in 2005 however, The New York Times reported that General Lance W. Lord, then commander of AFSPC, told an Air Force conference that "space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny. ... Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future."
• Key Karzai Aide in Corruption Inquiry Is Linked to C.I.A.
  By DEXTER FILKINS and MARK MAZZETTI Published: August 25, 2010 KABUL, Afghanistan — The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.
  Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts met last Saturday in Kabul with President Hamid Karzai. Mr. Kerry said he believed that he had won a commitment from the Afghan president to allow an American-backed anticorruption unit to work unhindered. Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both. [Corruption] [Double standards] [Bizarre]
• WikiLeaks releases CIA paper on U.S. as 'exporter of terrorism'
  By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 25, 2010; 11:14 PM The United States has long been an exporter of terrorism, according to a secret CIA analysis released Wednesday by the Web site WikiLeaks. And if that phenomenon were to become a widely held perception, the analysis said, it could damage relations with foreign allies and dampen their willingness to cooperate in "extrajudicial" activities, such as the rendition and interrogation of terrorism suspects. That is the conclusion of the three-page classified paper produced in February by the CIA's Red Cell, a think tank set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet to provide "out-of-the-box" analyses on "a full range of analytic issues." [Terrorism] [Double standards]
• Israel to sell back gas to Egypt at $12b profit – report
  Israel could make a 600% return on the resale of gas to meet a shortage in Egypt. 24 August 10 12:57, Omer Rabin Egyptian daily "Al Shaab" reports that the Egyptian government is seeking to buy back 1.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas sold to Israel as part of the deal signed in 2005, under US pressure, and whose price per cubic meter was set at a level that in retrospect was significantly lower than the market price. Anonymous sources told "Al Shaab" that internal discussions at Egypt's Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources determined that at least half the natural gas sold to Israel under the deal would have to be repurchased at $14 billion, even though it was sold for $2 billion. [Tribute]
• Deluded About Iraq, Clueless About Iran
  Tony Karon: Get Ready for Another Flawed Media Conversation From Folks Who Ought to Know Better
  America's march to a disastrous war in Iraq began in the media, where an unprovoked U.S. invasion of an Arab country was introduced as a legitimate policy option, then debated as a prudent and necessary one. Now, a similarly flawed media conversation on Iran is gaining momentum. [Media]
• Turkey Alleged to Use Chemical Weapons on Rebels
  Friday, Aug. 13, 2010 The allegation by human rights activists that the Turkish military used chemical weapons to kill eight rebels last September is supported by photographs which purportedly depict the dead Kurds, Der Spiegel reported yesterday (see GSN, July 2). The images are said to show eight operatives for the Kurdistan Workers' Party who have suffered burns and other extensive bodily damage. German photo forgery specialist Hans Baumann has verified the photographs were not faked and a Hamburg University Hospital forensic analysis also determined the PKK members are likely to have been killed "due to the use of chemical substances." Turkey is a state party to the Chemical Weapons Convention which prohibits the production, stockpiling and use of chemical warfare materials. The country is not known now or in the past to have operated a chemical weapons program, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative. [cbw] [Intelligence] [Double standards]
• Air base expansion plans reflect long-term investment in Afghanistan
  By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, August 23, 2010; A06 Three $100 million air base expansions in southern and northern Afghanistan illustrate Pentagon plans to continue building multimillion-dollar facilities in that country to support increased U.S. military operations well into the future. Despite growing public unhappiness with the Afghan war -- and President Obama's pledge that he will begin withdrawing troops in July 2011 -- many of the installations being built in Afghanistan have extended time horizons. None of the three projects in southern and northern Afghanistan is expected to be completed until the latter half of 2011. All of them are for use by U.S. forces rather than by their Afghan counterparts.
  According to the material sent to Congress, the two aircraft could be C-5 or equivalent strategic transports "in order to expand major logistical and combat support operations into the region (sic)." [US global strategy] [AfPak]
• How Fox Betrayed Petraeus
  By FRANK RICH Published: August 21, 2010 THE “ground zero mosque,” as you may well know by now, is not at ground zero. It’s not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room. It’s not going to determine President Obama’s political future or the elections of 2010 or 2012. Still, the battle that has broken out over this project in Lower Manhattan — on the “hallowed ground” of a shuttered Burlington Coat Factory store one block from the New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club — will prove eventful all the same. And the consequences will be far more profound than any midterm election results or any of the grand debates now raging 24/7 over the parameters of tolerance, religious freedom, and the real estate gospel of location, location, location. Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming.
  So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York? [US global strategy] [Islam] [Global insurgency] [Domestic] [Media][Softpower] [Decline]
• Pentagon strikes it rich
  By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - The timing of the publication of a major New York Times story on the vast untapped mineral wealth that lies beneath Afghanistan's soil is raising major questions about the intent of the Pentagon, which released the information. Given the increasingly negative news that has come out of Afghanistan - and of United States strategy there - some analysts believe the front-page article is designed to reverse growing public sentiment that the war is not worth the cost. "What better way to remind people about the country's potential bright future - and by people I mean the Chinese, the Russians, the Pakistanis and the Americans - than by publicizing or republicizing valid (but already public) information about the region's potential wealth?" wrote Marc AmBinder, the political editor of The Atlantic magazine, on his blog. [Pentagon] [AfPak] [Camouflage]
• Professor at Harvard fabricated thesis paper
  Marc Hauser, psychology professor at Harvard University, is solely responsible for eight instances of scientific misconduct. The university found there were “problems involving data acquisition, data analysis, data retention and the reporting of research methodologies and results” with his paper. A 2002 paper in the journal ‘Cognition,’ which showed that cotton-top tamarin monkeys were like human infants in being able to recognize patterns in groups of syllables, has been retracted. Also, two other papers require corrections. Hauser is an international expert in the evolution of morality who spoke at a forum in Sydney last year with Dalai Lama (sic). He is also an author of the book ‘Moral Minds: How nature designed out universal sense of right and wrong.’ Prof. Hauser, who is on leave, apologized in a statement, saying he had learnt a lot from the investigation and would change his approach to research and practices in his lab. [Bizarre]
• Thai gov. to take final decision on extradition of Russian arms dealer Bout to U.S.
  The Thai government will take the final decision on the extradition to the United States of suspected Russian arms trader Viktor Bout, Thai state news agency THA said on Saturday.
  Former Russian army officer, Viktor Bout, 44, was arrested in Thailand in March 2008 under a request from the United States, which accuses him of illegally trading arms [Arms sales] [Double standards] [Extraterritoriality]
• Suspected Russian arms dealer Bout to be extradited to U.S., Thai court rules
  Thai court rules for Bout extradition A Thai appeals court rules that Russian suspected arms smuggler Viktor Bout can be extradited to the United States to face terrorism charges. By John Pomfret Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, August 21, 2010 The forthcoming extradition of a major reputed arms dealer to the United States could yield the Obama administration a treasure trove of intelligence about the networks that move weapons and drugs around the world and about the governments that secretly facilitate the traffic. That is, if he cooperates. An appeals court in Thailand on Friday overturned a lower court's ruling and ordered that Viktor Bout, a 43-year-old former Russian military translator, be sent to the United States, where he faces federal charges of conspiring to sell weapons to a terrorist organization, money laundering and sanctions busting. The Thai court decision, announced after months of diplomatic pressure from the United States, surprised many in the U.S. government who followed the case. [Arms sales] [Double standards] [Extraterritoriality] [Intelligence]
• The Transformer
  Bob Gates never thought he'd be Barack Obama's defense secretary. Now, in an exclusive interview, the most revolutionary Pentagon leader since Robert McNamara tells FP why he said yes, when he'll get out of Washington, and what legacy he hopes to leave behind.
  BY FRED KAPLAN | SEPT. / OCT. 2010 Only somewhat less dramatically, Gates has heralded a shift in military planning from the "major combat operations" anticipated in the Cold War to the "asymmetrical conflicts" against insurgents and rogue states that plague the 21st-century world US global strategy] [US military] [Global insurgency] [Pacification]
• Change That's Not: 'Obama On Bush Route'
  John Pilger: Wikileaks Should Teach Journalists to Question 'Official Statements', US Foreign Policy Recent sanctions against Iran are an attempt by the US to return the country to its sphere of influence, claims veteran journalist John Pilger. "Iran was a pillar of the American empire in the Middle East. That was swept away in 1979 by the Islamic revolution, and it has been American foreign policy to get that back," he said. "It has absolutely nothing to do with so-called nuclear weapons. The nuclear power in the Middle East is the fourth biggest military power in the world and that is Israel. It has something like 500 or more nuclear warheads. It is never discussed." Pilger added that Barack Obama has failed to change the trajectory of US foreign policy and following George W. Bush's line. "For the first time in US presidential history -- it has not happened before -- a president has taken the entire defense department bureaucracy, and the Secretary of State for Defense, from a previous discredited administration. We have basically Robert Gates and the same generals running American foreign policy with a lot of help from people of like mind." [Obama] [Continuity]
• Obama is Preparing to Bomb Iran
  Webster G. Tarpley TARPLEY.net July 21, 2010 After about two and a half years during which the danger of war between the United States and Iran was at a relatively low level, this threat is now rapidly increasing. A pattern of political and diplomatic events, military deployments, and media chatter now indicates that Anglo-American ruling circles, acting through the troubled Obama administration, are currently gearing up for a campaign of bombing against Iran, combined with special forces incursions designed to stir up rebellions among the non-Persian nationalities of the Islamic Republic. Naturally, the probability of a new fake Gulf of Tonkin incident or false flag terror attack staged by the Anglo-American war party and attributed to Iran or its proxies is also growing rapidly. [Pretext]
• Confronting both China and Russia: U.S. Risks Military Clash With China In Yellow Sea
  By Rick Rozoff
  Global Research, July 16, 2010 Stop NATO Delayed until after the United States achieved a United Nations Security Council statement on July 9 condemning the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, Washington’s plans for naval maneuvers in the Yellow Sea near Chinese territorial waters are forging ahead.
  The drumbeat of confrontation has been steadily increasing in volume and tempo since the sinking of a South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, on March 26 with the resultant death of 46 crew members. An investigation into the incident was organized by the U.S. and included experts from the U.S., South Korea, Britain, Australia and Sweden, but not from China and Russia which both border the Korean Peninsula. On May 20 the five-nation team released a report blaming a North Korean torpedo for the sinking of the Cheonan. North Korea denied the accusation and neither Russia nor China, excluded from the investigation, have concurred with the U.S. accusation.
  President Hu and the Chinese government as a whole would be fully justified in suspecting that mounting U.S. threats are aimed not only (and perhaps not so much) against North Korea as against China itself.
  Fellow Southeast Asian nation Malaysia has just announced the deployment of its first military contingent to assist NATO’s war in Afghanistan, “as ties with the United States deepen.”
  When the two American secretaries meet with South Korea’s defense and foreign ministers and, as State Department spokesman Philip Crowley recently claimed, “likely approve a proposed series of U.S. and Korea combined military exercises, including new naval and air exercises in both the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea” [33], the world should prepare for the threat of a second Korean war, a second U.S.-China armed conflict. [China confrontation] [Cheonan]
• The Source of Wars
  "Today, everything hangs by a thread".... An incident could set in motion an all out nuclear war
  By Fidel Castro Ruz
  Global Research, July 15, 2010 Cuba Debate - 2010-07-11 On July 4, I said that neither the United States nor Iran would give in: “one, prevented by the pride of the powerful, and the other because it has the capacity and the will to fight oppression, as we have seen so many times before in the history of mankind.” In nearly every war, one party wishes to avoid it and, sometimes, the two parties do. This time it will happen although one of the parties does not wish it. That was the case of the two World Wars of 1914 and 1939, only 25 years one from the other. The carnage was awful in both wars, which would not have erupted had it not been for previous miscalculations. Both defended imperialist interests and believed they could accomplish their goals without the exceedingly high price finally paid.
• America's Imperial Design. Prompt Global Strike: World Military Superiority Without Nuclear Weapons
  by Rick Rozoff
  Global Research, April 11, 2010 A war can be won without being waged. Victory can be attained when an adversary knows it is vulnerable to an instantaneous and undetectable, overwhelming and devastating attack without the ability to defend itself or retaliate. What applies to an individual country does also to all potential adversaries and indeed to every other nation in the world. There is only one country that has the military and scientific capacity and has openly proclaimed its intention to achieve that ability. That nation is what its current head of state defined last December as the world's sole military superpower. [1] One which aspires to remain the only state in history to wield full spectrum military dominance on land, in the air, on the seas and in space. To maintain and extend military bases and troops, aircraft carrier battle groups and strategic bombers on and to most every latitude and longitude. To do so with a post-World War II record war budget of $708 billion for next year. Having gained that status in large part through being the first country to develop and use nuclear weapons, it is now in a position to strengthen its global supremacy by superseding the nuclear option. [US military] [Disarmament] [Nuclear weapons] [Military balance] [PGS]
• Military Action Against Iran: Impact and Effects
  Paul Rogers, July 2010 Israeli Military Strike on Iran Will Lead to a Protracted War and Will Not Solve Nuclear Crisis The potential for an Israeli military strike on Iran over its nuclear programme has grown sharply, but its consequences would be devastating and would lead to a long war, warns a Paul Rogers in his report “Military Action Against Iran: Impact and Effects”.* The study follows Israeli reports that Syria is manufacturing Iranian M-600 missiles for Hezbollah, the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu calling Iran “the ultimate terrorist threat” and saying it was a mistake to think Iran’s nuclear ambitions could be contained, and a call from the United Arab Emirates Ambassador in Washington for a military strike on Iran. The report builds on Rogers' briefing, "Iran: Consequences of a War" (2006), and analyses recent developments, arguing that Israel is now fully capable of attacking Iran as it has deployed many new systems including US-built long-range strike aircraft and armed drones. The report outlines the likely shape of an Israeli strike, saying it would: Be focused not only on destroying ‘military real estate’ – nuclear and missile targets - but also would hit factories and research centres, and even university laboratories, in order to do as much damage as possible to the Iranian expertise that underpins the programme. Would not be limited to remote bases but would involve the direct bombing of targets in Tehran. It would probably include attempts to kill those technocrats who manage Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes. Be widely viewed across the Middle East as having been undertaken with the knowledge, approval and assistance of the United States, even if carried out solely by Israel. [US global strategy] [Iran] [Israel]
• Kyrgyzstan, America and the Global Drug Trade: Deep Forces, Coups d'Etat, Narcotics and Terror
  By Peter Dale Scott
  Global Research, July 14, 2010 The Asia-Pacific Journal - 2010-07-13 Will the current crisis in Kyrgyzstan lead to greater instability, and perhaps an expansion of the current conflict in Central Asia? There are good reasons to be concerned. Deep forces, not adequately understood, are at work there; and these forces have repeatedly led to major warfare in the past. The pattern of events unfolding in Kyrgyzstan is ominously reminiscent of how America became involved in Laos in the 1960s, and later in Afghanistan in the 1980s. American covert involvement in those countries soon led to civil wars producing numerous casualties and refugees. It will take strenuous leadership from both Obama in Washington and Medvedev in Moscow to prevent a third major conflict from breaking out in Kyrgyzstan. I call the pattern I refer to “a Laotian syndrome” of coups, drugs, and terror, since it was first clearly illustrated by American interventions in Laos in the late 1950s and 1960s. The syndrome involves a number of independent but interactive elements whose interconnection in the past has not generally been recognized. What it reflects is not a single agenda, but a predictable symbiosis of divergent groups, responding to the powerful forces that the drug traffic creates. [US global strategy] [Drugs]
• 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll
  Conducted by the University of Maryland in conjunction with Zogby International With special thanks to the Carnegie Corporation of New York Shibley Telhami, Principal Investigator Nonresident Senior Fellow, Saban Center at Brookings Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of M Maryland aryland EMBAGOED UNTIL 10:00 AM, THURSDAY AUGUST 5, 2010 [Public opinion]
• Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents
  By SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI and ROBERT F. WORTH Published: August 14, 2010 WASHINGTON — At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba. But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight. Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes. [Imperialism]
• 'Obama gave Erdogan an ultimatum'
  By JPOST.COM STAFF 16/08/2010 US may ban weapon sales if Turkey-Israel relations don't improve. US President Barack Obama personally warned Turkish Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erodgan that the US will not sell weapons to Turkey if it does not change its position towards Israel, the Financial Times reported on Monday. The ultimatum is particularly important to Turkey, who was reportedly planning to buy American drone aircraft to attack Kurdish group PKK after the US pulls out of Iraq next year. [Arms sales] [Separatism] [Israel]
• How Long Will US Forces Continue to Occupy Japan and Korea? China, the US and the New Division of Power in the Asia-Pacific
  Tanaka Sakai Translation by Kyoko Selden Japanese original text is available here [PDF]. Introduction In a May 7, 2010 report that was among the first-and most controversial-anywhere to dissect the South Korea-US verdict on the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, Tanaka Sakai posed compelling questions about the official claims. The present article looks forward rather than back to assess possible regional and global ramifications of the Cheonan Incident for emerging power relations in the Asia-Pacific. Tanaka argues that, together with the failure to resolve the issue of the transfer of the Futenma base that is at the heart of the impasse in the US-Japan-Okinawa relationship, the stalemate over the Cheonan Incident illustrates the multipolarization of power that is part of the decline of American power and a redefinition of power relations in the Pacific consequent on China's rise. --Mark Selden
  The theory of the North's culpability was not arbitrarily announced by the South Korean government. Rather, South Korea was made to go along with the US strategy of heightening conflict and thus it landed in the quagmire of failed plans
  Recently, North Korea guided Hong Kong investors to the Kaesong Industrial Zone, which was created by South Korean investment. This implies a message directed to South Korea that North Korea may take it from South Korea and transfer it to the Chinese. [US Japan alliance] [US global strategy] [SK NK policy] [Realignment]
• US Military Bases on Guam in Global Perspective1
  Catherine Lutz The island of Guam is a most remarkable place of cultural distinctiveness and resourcefulness and of great physical beauty. The Chamorro people who have lived here for 4000 years also have an historical experience with colonialism and military occupation more long-lived and geographically intensive, acre for acre, than anywhere else in the Pacific and perhaps even in global comparative scale (Aguon 2006). It is today embroiled in a debate over when, how, or if the United States military will acquire more land for its purposes and make more intensive use of the island as a whole. This military expansion has been planned in Washington, with acquiescence and funding from Tokyo, in order to relocate some 8,000 Marines and 9,000 dependents from Okinawa, as well as US Navy, Army, and Air Force assets and operations to Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas (CNMI) (Erickson and Mikolay 2006). The plans are breathtaking in scope, including removal of 71 acres of coral reef from Apra Harbor to allow the entry and berthing of nuclear aircraft carriers, the acquisition of land including the oldest and revered Chamorro village on the island at Pagat for a live-fire training range, and an estimated 47 percent increase in the island’s population, already past its water-supply carrying capacity. The military expansion is being planned with one-third of the island already in military hands and a substantial historical legacy of environmental contamination and depletion, external political control, and other problems brought by the existing military presence. [Bases] [Imperialism] [Client]
• Our Taxes are Off to War — 2010 Edition
  by RandomNonviolence Share this on Twitter - Our Taxes are Off to War — 2010 Edition Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 11:14:27 AM PDT More than half of our income taxes this year will go to the military. The charts below (click for larger versions) show how our income tax dollars were spent in the year just completed — FY2009 — which ended last September 30 (data from Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2011, Table 8.7). As you can see, the government sent $657 billion or 53.1% of all discretionary funds to the military. This represents an average of about $5,615 from each of the 117 million households in the US. In the current year (FY2010), the government estimates that $714 billion will be spent on the military. This is more than twice as much as the $295 billion spent in FY2000 (73% more when adjusted for inflation). Despite these gigantic past increases, President Obama’s budget calls for further increasing the military budget in FY2011 to $744 billion. [Militarisation]
• Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2011
  Statistics of US Budget
• Immersion in propaganda, race-based nationalism and the un-figure-outable vortex of Juche Thought: Colin Marshall talks to B.R. Myers, author of The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters
  Brian Reynolds Myers is contributing editor to the Atlantic and professor of international studies at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea. In his new book, The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters, he examines North Korean propaganda meant for both internal and external consumption and through it constructs the closed country’s view of itself, its relationship to other countries and the Kim dynasty that has controlled it for 60 years [Propaganda] [Bizarre]
• US War Crimes: Cancer Rate in Fallujah Worse than Hiroshima
  By Tom Eley Global Research, July 23, 2010 The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004. According to the authors of a new study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,” the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945. The epidemiological study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH), also finds the prevalence of these conditions in Fallujah to be many times greater than in nearby nations. The assault on Fallujah, a city located 43 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the most horrific war crimes of our time. After the population resisted the US-led occupation of Iraq—a war of neo-colonial plunder launched on the basis of lies—Washington determined to make an example of the largely Sunni city. This is called “exemplary” or “collective” punishment and is, according to the laws of war, illegal. The new public health study of the city now all but proves what has long been suspected: that a high proportion of the weaponry used in the assault contained depleted uranium, a radioactive substance used in shells to increase their effectiveness. [War crimes]
• Covert Action Suspected in Iranian Nuclear Troubles
  Friday, July 23, 2010 Iran's uranium enrichment work has encountered a number of technical difficulties in the last year, prompting experts to speculate over what role clandestine interference might have played in the troubles, the Financial Timesreported yesterday (see GSN, July 22). (Jul. 23) - A 2005 demonstration outside Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility. The Middle Eastern nation's enrichment program has hit technical setbacks possibly caused by international sabotage, according to analysts (Majid Saaedi/Getty Images). The U.N. Security Council and various governments have adopted punitive measures aimed at pressuring Iran to halt uranium enrichment, a process that could produce nuclear-weapon material as well as fuel for civilian applications. Tehran has maintained its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful. The number of uranium enrichment centrifuges operating at Iran's Natanz complex two months ago had fallen to 3,936, a 20 percent decrease from the previous May, according to International Atomic Energy Agency figures. As of May of this year, 4,592 machines installed at the site were not operating, according to the U.N. nuclear watchdog's latest safeguards report. In addition, the centrifuges in operation were only performing at about one-fifth their possible capacity, Federation of American Scientists analyst Ivan Oelrich said. “Nothing we know can rule out sabotage and clearly something fishy is going on,” Oelrich said. “But just because there is sabotage does not rule out the possibility that the Iranians are also grossly incompetent.” One expert in academia attributed the enrichment slowdown to "a concerted intelligence operation which is able to debilitate and set back the Iranian program.” “It is not foolproof. But a large number of Iranian centrifuges have crashed and up to half have had to be replaced in recent times. This success didn’t happen entirely accidentally,” the expert said.
• Analysis: Helicopter crash leaves tough questions for IAF
  By YAAKOV KATZ 28/07/2010 There is a lot of respect for the IDF in Romania. BRAN, Romania – There is a lot of respect for the IDF in Romania. When the Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter – called the Yasour by the Israel Air Force – crashed here on Monday, the commander of the Romanian Air Force immediately told his Israeli counterpart, Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan, that whatever he wanted he could get. On Tuesday, that was made clear during a visit to the scene of the crash in the Carpathian Mountains, where Romanian soldiers were heavily deployed after receiving orders from the IDF to secure the perimeter and prevent unauthorized people from approaching the site. [Imperialism]
• Showcase Afghan Army Mission Turns Into Debacle
  August 12, 2010 By ROD NORDLAND KABUL, Afghanistan — An ambitious military operation that Afghan officials had expected to be a sign of their growing military capacity instead turned into an embarrassment, with Taliban fighters battering an Afghan battalion in a remote eastern area until NATO sent in French and American rescue teams. The fighting has continued so intensely for the past week that the Red Cross has been unable to reach the battlefield to remove the dead and wounded. The operation, east of Kabul, was extraordinary in that it was not coordinated in advance with NATO forces and did not at first include coalition forces or air support. The Afghans called for help after 10 of their soldiers were killed and perhaps twice as many captured at the opening of the operation nine days ago.
• Forgetful Mullen's 'unintended consequences'
  By Kaveh L Afrasiabi Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the United States' joint chiefs of staff, caused a media stir by revealing on Sunday that the US has prepared a plan of attack on Iran, once again reminding Tehran that "all options are on the table" and that the fury of US military might may soon descend upon Iran if it continues with its controversial nuclear program. Such calculated escalation of Washington's rhetoric elicited an expected Iranian denunciation and the pledge of a firm response throughout the Middle East and beyond. Despite its superpower wherewithal, the US military has major areas of vulnerability that Iran can exploit, primarily though the overstretch and drain on resources of already fighting in two theaters of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the proximity of US forces to Iran and its intermediate and long-range missiles. US ships' vulnerability to anti-ship cruise missiles and Iran's ability to strike back at any attack in the region, including Lebanon, Gaza, and above all the narrow Strait of Hormuz, are also considerations leading to the conclusion that an aggressive response would likely instigate a regional conflagration. Amid estimates that oil prices could nearly double with the onset of any military flare-ups between Iran and the US or Israel, an attack leading to an aggressive response would be detrimental to the world economic recovery. It is therefore pertinent to question Mullen's passing reference to such an attack's "unintended consequences". Mullen seems to have forgotten his own insight, shared with an audience at Columbia University in April, that an attack on Iran could be "incredibly destabilizing", perhaps as much as the possession of nuclear bombs by Tehran itself. That was then. Now, all of a sudden, the US media is inundated with hatched commentaries on "the case for attacking Iran", often by pro-Israel pundits trying to minimize the risks of an attack on Iran, some portraying this as a convenient "surgical strike" to knock off Iran's nuclear installations and thus set back Iran's program for many years. More serious US pundits on the other hand are somewhat more cautious. A recent "war game" at Brookings Institution concluded that an attack on Iran "could easily spin out of control''. Any idea that Iran would respond to an attack with a great deal of huff and puff but ultimately self-restraint in the face of overwhelming US-Israeli firepower would be a recipe for disillusionment. [US Global strategy] [US military]
• Imperial Overkill and the Death of U.S. Empire
  By Francis Shor, July 27, 2010 The oft-cited reference to Afghanistan as the “graveyard of empires” haunts the increasingly desperate military measures of the United States in that beleaguered country. However, beyond Afghanistan and the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian basin region, the imperial projects of the United States are, more and more, a commitment to Pentagon aggression and profligacy. Imperial overstretch has transmogrified into imperial overkill. [Imperialism] [Decline] [Militarisation]
• Panel: Military Unaffordable -- And Too Small
  By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. , NationalJournal.com Thursday, July 29, 2010 4:45 PM A congressionally chartered panel reported today that the current U.S. military is simultaneously too expensive -- to an "unsustainable" degree -- and too small. Chaired by former Defense Secretary William Perry and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, the panel of 20 national security luminaries was chartered by Congress to provide an alternative to the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, delivered in February and itself a congressionally mandated report, although widely criticized as bureaucratic and unimaginative. While the 2010 QDR focuses on the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Hadley-Perry "alternative QDR" deliberately looks 20 years out and particularly emphasizes building a larger Navy to counter the rising power of China. The body of the report brings to mind the old Woody Allen line that "The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small." On the one hand, the panel writes, the military needs both more manpower and more modern equipment: "There is a significant and growing gap between the 'force structure' of the military -- its size and its inventory of equipment -- and the missions it will be called on to perform in the future... [so] we propose an alternative force structure with emphasis on increasing the size of the Navy." At the same time, the panel acknowledges, we cannot pay for what we already have: "The [currently planned] force structure, not including the additional increments the Panel believes necessary, will be unsustainable unless growth in defense entitlements, increases in overhead costs, and cost overruns of major acquisition programs are all brought under control." The Hadley-Perry panel recommends a host of good-government reforms to square this circle. Notable, and controversial, changes would include: •acquiring equipment quickly based on currently available, "good enough" technology rather than investing in long, drawn-out programs to develop gee-whiz tech; •converting many military personnel benefits from in-kind -- like commissary privileges -- to cash; and •reorganizing Congress to create a single appropriations subcommittee with authority over all national security-related spending, to include not only the Defense Department but also State and the intelligence community. The report has already been attacked by both the libertarian CATO Institute and former Clinton budgeteer Gordon Adams as assuming an open-ended and expensive commitment for the U.S. as "the world's policeman." [US military] [US global strategy] [Pacification]
• There's Still Hope for the World
  Fidel Praises Global Research
  By Fidel Castro Ruz
  Global Research, August 1, 2010 For 57 years, two generations of Cubans, the one that came before us and our own, which led both from January 1 to today, have fought against the most powerful empire humanity has ever known. I do not harbor the slightest fear of seeming to exaggerate; I say this with modesty, even embarrassment. It hurt to see how hundreds of millions of young people in the world were not even able to learn how to read and write, or are semi-illiterate, or do not have jobs, and are ignorant of everything related to the inalienable rights of human beings. A colossal crime is being committed against thousands of millions of adolescents and young people of both sexes, whose wonderful intelligence is manipulated by the mass media, and in fact, many of them, especially males, are turned into soldiers to die in unjust, genocidal wars carried out all over the planet. The economic system that has prevailed is incompatible with the interests of humanity. It must end and it will end. The new generations of young Cubans will make their message be heard, the one born from their country's experiences; they will fulfill a sacred duty imposed by the era in which it befell them to live. They will do so with humility, and brandishing the truth, without any stupid beliefs in racial or national superiority of any kind. I have asked myself many times, why do our children and adolescents have to die? Why do our young people have to die? Why does all this intelligence, where so many virtues could be implanted and cultivated, have to disappear? Why do their parents have to die in fratricidal wars? Imagine that the website Global Research deserves no credit at all; that the theory of Gregory Ryskin, a biochemical engineer at Northwestern University, regarding the methane bubble that article writer Terrence Aym associated with the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, deserves no attention at all, inviting us to sleep peacefully.
  The Global Research site published the only explanation possible for the sinking of the Cheonan, a sophisticated antisubmarine ship capable of detecting a ship of that type from 185 kilometers away. Obviously, it could not be sunk by an old, Russian-made submarine built more than 50 years ago. [Imperialism] [Cheonan]
• "Unregulated Greed has Destroyed the Capitalist System": The Big Things That Matter And The Little Things That Annoy
  By Paul Craig Roberts
  Global Research, August 12, 2010 I write about major problems: the collapsing US economy, wars based on lies and deception, the police state based on “the war on terror” and other fabrications such as those orchestrated by corrupt police and prosecutors, who boost their performance reports by convicting the innocent, and so on. America is a very distressing place. The fact that so many Americans are taken in by the lies told by “their” government makes America all the more depressing. Often, however, it is small annoyances that waste Americans’ time and drive up blood pressures. One of the worst things that ever happened to Americans was the breakup of the AT&T telephone monopoly. As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in 1981, if 150 percent of my time and energy had not been required to cure stagflation in the face of opposition from Wall Street and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, I might have been able to prevent the destruction of the best communications service in the world, and one that was very inexpensive to customers. [Capitalism] [Offshoring]
• U.S. TO DELAY GUAM TROOP MOVE
  Yomiuri Shimbun (Satoshi Ogawa, "U.S. TO DELAY GUAM TROOP MOVE", Washington, 2010/07/29) reported that a planned transfer of about 8,000 U.S. marines from Okinawa Prefecture to Guam could be delayed beyond the 2014 target, perhaps by up to six years, according to an office of the U.S. Defense Department. A final environmental impact statement released by the department's Joint Guam Program Office on Tuesday includes a proposal to delay the transfer of the troops and their dependents to as late as 2020 to reduce environmental impact from the personnel relocation and associated construction projects. However, the statement said a new time frame would be decided later. [US Global strategy] [US military] [US-Japan alliance]
• Will US attack Iran?
  Vladimir Golovkin Aug 11, 2010 18:52 Moscow Time Tehran’s nuclear program has long been a corner-stone in its relationship with the United States. Economic sanctions have rallied Iranians against Washington and its allies. Is a U.S. invasion of Iran possible and what effect will it have? Rajab Safarov, General Director of the Center for Modern Iran, fears the world is on the brink of a global conflict: "I think that the passive position of Russia encourages the West to behave more boldly and cynically towards Iran. Russia is a major player in international politics. If it sticks to a position that an invasion or any other military solution to the Iranian issue must not take place under any circumstances, then Americans will adjust their plans on Iran." In Mr. Safarov’s view, the key aim the Americans have in mind is a change of regime in Iran. Barack Obama intends to pull troops out of Iraq. But instead of going home, they will be moved to Afghanistan. As long as the current Iranian regime stays at power, the United States can hardly hope to attain success in either Iraq or Afghanistan. A massive attack against Iran can create the illusion that the Obama Administration has won but only for a short time.
• Hidden Intelligence Operation Behind the Wikileaks Release of "Secret" Documents?
  By F. William Engdahl Global Research, August 11, 2010 Since the dramatic release of a US military film of a US airborne shooting of unarmed journalists in Iraq, Wiki-Leaks has gained global notoreity and credibility as a daring website that releases sensitive material to the public from whistleblowers within various governments. Their latest “coup” involved alleged leak of thousands of pages of supposedly sensitive documents regarding US informers within the Taliban in Afghanistan and their ties to senior people linked to Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence. The evidence suggests however that far from an honest leak, it is a calculated disinformation to the gain of the US and perhaps Israeli and Indian intelligence and a coverup of the US and Western role in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan. [Disinformation] [Intelligence]
• EGYPT: Fears of a food crisis after Russia's wheat export ban
  August 8, 2010 | 8:44 am Russia's decision to ban grain exports is fueling anxiety among Egyptians that an international wheat crisis could lead to massive food shortages in the Arab world's most populous country. Egypt is the world's top wheat importer, annually buying 6 million to 7 million tons from the international market. About 50% of that comes from Russia. However, record high heat, accompanied by wildfire and drought, has forced Moscow to abandon its commitments on wheat exports in order to protect Russian needs. That means Egypt will not receive 540,000 tons of wheat that was scheduled for delivery by Sept. 10. Uribe's appointment to Gaza flotilla probe guarantees its failure José Antonio Gutiérrez and David Landy, The Electronic Intifada, 6 August 2010
• Uribe's appointment to flotilla probe guarantees its failure
  Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez has been criticized for his abuses of human rights defenders. (Center for American Progress) At the beginning of this month the Israeli government announced it would cooperate with one out of two international UN-sponsored investigation commissions into the 31 May Gaza Freedom Flotilla massacre, a move which UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon claimed was "unprecedented." However, the details of this commission and who will take part in it -- particularly the notorious outgoing president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez -- cast doubt over its impartiality. The commission is composed of four persons, one chosen by Turkey, one chosen by Israel and two chosen from a list provided by Israel. The latter two are former Prime Minister of New Zealand Geoffrey Palmer, who will be the chair, and Uribe, who will serve as vice-chair. While Palmer, an expert in international law, is an uncontroversial choice, the appointment of Uribe is as perplexing as it is shocking [Coverup]
• Hostage to Events
  In an exclusive interview, the State Department's leading Iran expert discusses his resignation and why the Islamic Republic and the United States keep on talking past each other. BY BARBARA SLAVIN | JULY 27, 2010 John Limbert knows better than anyone not to have high expectations about U.S.-Iran relations. One of 52 Americans held hostage by Iranians for 444 days in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Limbert came back from retirement nine months ago to head the State Department's Iran desk in hopes he could help end the bitter enmity between the U.S. and Iran. Those hopes have been dashed as Iran rejected U.S. overtures and the Obama administration pivoted to a familiar pattern of economic sanctions. On Friday, Limbert is stepping down from his position. In an interview Tuesday -- his first since rumors of his departure were confirmed earlier this month -- he said he had promised the U.S. Naval Academy, where he had been teaching history and political science, that he would return for the fall semester. But he acknowledged personal regret that U.S.- Iran relations have not made more progress. "I have the sense right now that we -- the Obama administration writ large -- are not in the place we wanted to be," Limbert said. While he said the administration is determined to pursue efforts to negotiate with Iran, he fears that both countries risk regressing to the dysfunctional pattern that has kept them largely at odds for three decades. "Here's the problem," Limbert said. "For 30 years, careers were made both here and in Tehran by how nasty you could be to the other side and how creative you could be in being nasty to the other side. So if you're going to change that, what happens if it doesn't get some immediate result? It's very easy to slip back into what you always have been doing." [MISCOM]
• After Mubarak
  By ROSE ARAN 08/06/2010 16:11 Transition may be far less traumatic than feared. CAIRO – Walking through the sweltering heat of the city’s streets, a visitor sees few signs that change is on the way in Egypt. Outdated posters of a young Hosni Mubarak – circa 1981 – remain in place, adorning buildings and highways, hanging alongside images of the 1973 Suez Canal crossing, the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids of Giza. Legions of men sit calmly in cafés, watching soccer matches over tea and nargileh, or sheesha, as Egyptians call it. Interior Ministry security forces stand in the spots they always occupy on nearly every street corner, taking a nap on the barrels of their rifles and looking bored with their task of maintaining domestic tranquility. The local media – particularly the widely circulated state-sponsored outlets – often refrain from discussing the all-too-hot issue that has been reverberating through Western media in recent months: President Hosni Mubarak’s state of health and post-Mubarak Egypt.
  But the fears are largely unfounded. As a recent editorial by the popular pan-Arab daily newspaper Al-Hayat states, Egypt is no Somalia: those predicting scenarios of radical change display an “incomprehension of the mechanisms of rule” in a country where decades of state-building are more likely to bring about a peaceful and stable transition of power, though probably not a democratic one. [Succession]
• Why World War II ended with Mushroom Clouds
  65 years ago, August 6 and 9, 1945: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  By Jacques R. Pauwels
  Global Research, August 6, 2010 In order to finish the war against Japan, Truman thus had a number of very attractive options. He could accept the trivial Japanese condition with regard to immunity for their emperor; he could also wait until the Red Army attacked the Japanese in China, thus forcing Tokyo into accepting an unconditional surrender after all; or he could starve Japan to death by means of a naval blockade that would have forced Tokyo to sue for peace sooner or later. Truman and his advisors, however, chose none of these options; instead, they decided to knock Japan out with the atomic bomb. This fateful decision, which was to cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women and children, offered the Americans considerable advantages. First, the bomb might force Tokyo to surrender before the Soviets got involved in the war in Asia, thus making it unnecessary to allow Moscow a say in the coming decisions about postwar Japan, about the territories which had been occupied by Japan (such as Korea and Manchuria), and about the Far East and the Pacific region in general. The USA would then enjoy a total hegemony over that part of the world, something which may be said to have been the true (though unspoken) war aim of Washington in the conflict with Japan. It was in light of this consideration that the strategy of simply blockading Japan into surrender was rejected, since the surrender might not have been forthcoming until after – and possibly well after - the Soviet Union’s entry into the war [Nuclear weapons] [US global strategy]
• America Goes Dark
  By PAUL KRUGMAN
  Published: August 8, 2010 Paul Krugman Published: August 8, 2010 The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno. Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.
  In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter. It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.
  So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere. [Decline]

• Fidel Castro warns U.S. against war with Iran
  HAVANA — A relaxed and lucid Fidel Castro returned to the limelight Monday after years spent largely out of public view, discussing world events in a raspy voice in his most prominent television interview since falling seriously ill four years ago. The 83-year-old former president talked about how tension between the United States and both North Korea and Iran could ultimately trigger a global nuclear war, in an interview on "Mesa Redonda" — or "Round Table" — a daily Cuban talk show on current events. The conversation ranged widely, from Pakistan's need for energy to America's out of control defense spending and China's decision to lend Cuba money to buy energy efficient light bulbs.
• Gen. Petraeus runs into resistance from Karzai over village defense forces
  By Joshua Partlow and Karen DeYoung Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, July 10, 2010 KABUL -- As he takes charge of the war effort in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus has met sharp resistance from President Hamid Karzai to an American plan to assist Afghan villagers in fighting the Taliban on their own. A first meeting last week between the new commander and the Afghan president turned tense after Karzai renewed his objections to the plan, according to U.S. officials. The idea of recruiting villagers into local defense programs is a key part of the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, and Karzai's stance poses an early challenge to Petraeus as he tries to fashion a collaborative relationship with the Afghan leader. Senior U.S. officials say that the United States would like to expand the program to about two dozen sites across Afghanistan, double the current number, and are hoping to overcome Karzai's concerns. But the issue is delicate to many who fear that such experiments could lead Afghanistan further into warlordism and out-of-control militias. [Client]
• Charges for Soldier Accused of Leak
  By STEVEN LEE MYERS Published: July 6, 2010 BAGHDAD — An American soldier in Iraq who was arrested on charges of leaking a video of a deadly American helicopter attack here in 2007 has also been charged with downloading more than 150,000 highly classified diplomatic cables that could, if made public, reveal the inner workings of American embassies around the world, the military here announced Tuesday. The full contents of the cables remain unclear, but according to formal charges filed Monday, it appeared that a disgruntled soldier working at a remote base east of Baghdad had gathered some of the most guarded, if not always scandalous, secrets of American diplomacy. He disclosed at least 50 of the cables “to a person not entitled to receive them,” according to the charges. With the charges, a case that stemmed from the furor over a graphic and fiercely contested video of an attack from an American helicopter that killed 12 people, including a reporter and a driver for Reuters, mushroomed into a far more extensive and potentially embarrassing leak. [Imperialism] [Human rights]
• Afghan War: Petraeus Expands U.S. Military Presence Throughout Eurasia
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, July 5, 2010 Stop NATO On July 4 General David Petraeus assumed command of 142,000 U.S. and NATO troops in a ceremony in the Afghan capital of Kabul. He succeeded the disgraced and soon to be retired General Stanley McChrystal as chief of all foreign troops in Afghanistan, those serving under U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A)/Operation Enduring Freedom and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). He now commands military units from 46 official troop contributing nations and others from several additional countries not officially designated as such but with forces in or that will soon be deployed to Afghanistan, such as Egypt, Jordan and Colombia. Neither the Carthaginian commander Hannibal during the Second Punic War nor Napoleon Bonaparte in the wars that bore his name commanded troops speaking as many diverse tongues. That Petraeus took charge of soldiers from fifty nations occupying a conquered country on his own country's Independence Day has gone without commentary, either ironic or indignant. [Imperialism]
• Occupation – the Muslim perspective
  It seems almost an impossible ambition: the United States invades and fights wars on Muslim lands and yet wants to convince Muslims that it respects their rights and interests. How are American actions and words interpreted across the Islamic world? Journalist Philip Smucker traveled through the Middle East, Asia and Africa in search of answers. He spoke with students, intellectuals, insurgents, politicians and U.S. diplomats and military officers for his book “My Brother, My Enemy: America and the Battle of Ideas Across the Islamic World,” published this month by Prometheus Books. Here, he assesses the Muslim perspective of the word occupation. By Philip Smucker Occupy: from Latin occupare, from ob- toward + -cupare (akin to capere to seize.) While travelling in the Islamic realm for my book, there was one word root that kept popping up in conversations: occupy, occupation, occupiers and occupied. Young Muslims I spoke to in my travels through the Holy Land, Africa, South Asia and the Isles of Indonesia used the word “occupation” constantly. Its two main uses applied to Israel’s “occupation” of the land that would become the state of Palestine and to America’s “occupation” of Afghanistan. On the surface, these “occupations” look very different to most Americans. British writer and former diplomat Rory Stewart explained to me in Afghanistan that Americans can’t easily grasp what occupation means to the occupied. “The United States has been slow to realize this because – of course – the United States is itself a revolutionary country,” he said. “It believes in freedom. It sees itself as an opponent of colonialism. It is very, very difficult for the United States to understand that many people around the world now perceive it as an imperial, colonial power trying to occupy them. Because that is not the intention of the United States.” [In denial] [Imperialism] [Global insurgency]
• Heineken Named Favorite Beer in Asia
  Heineken was voted the No. 1 beer in the 2010 Asia's Top 1000 Brands survey. The survey was conducted by market researcher TNS and Media Magazine on 3,322 consumers aged between 15 and 64 in 10 Asian countries including Korea, Australia, China and India. Respondents were questioned about their favorite brands in 12 major product and service categories, including liquor and tobacco, cars, beverages, food, media and communications, electronics, cosmetics, and travel and leisure. The premium Dutch beer brand was followed by Denmark's Carlsberg, China's Tsingtao, and Tiger from Thailand. The top five brands across all categories were Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG and Canon.
• Iranian nuclear scientist heads homeward in anger
  By Greg Miller and Thomas Erdbrink Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, July 14, 2010; 5:06 AM An Iranian nuclear scientist who had disappeared in Saudi Arabia last summer stepped out of a cab in front of Iran's diplomatic mission in Washington on Monday, asking for a ticket back to his homeland. Shahram Amiri told officials that he had been abducted by U.S. intelligence operatives and had spent much of the past year in Tucson being questioned about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Amiri's reappearance was as mysterious as his disappearance and came just weeks after a series of Internet videos added to the intrigue surrounding the case. In the videos, Amiri claimed alternately to have been kidnapped by the CIA and to have come to this country on his own accord to pursue a PhD. Early Wednesday, an Iranian news agency reported that Amiri left the U.S. for Iran. The case has emerged as a source of embarrassment for both governments. [Abductees]
• An Asian bank for low-income women is out to teach Wall Street a lesson.
  It’s pretty safe to say that three years ago no one could have predicted that one of the few financial institutions to be opening new branches and expanding lending in America would be a Bangladeshi bank that specialized in loans to people below the poverty line (the vast majority of them women). But that’s just what has happened. Grameen America, the U.S. offshoot of the famous Asian microlending institution founded by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, is now in its third year of operation in America, and even as the major banks, still battered from the financial crisis, are keeping credit tighter than ever, particularly to the small and midsize businesses that need it so desperately, Grameen is expanding. This summer, the little Bangladeshi bank—already operating in New York; Omaha; and Washington, D.C.—will move into its fourth U.S. city, San Francisco, fueled by a series of loans from institutions like Wells Fargo and Capital One that, aside from basking in the glow of good PR, have realized that they are more likely to get their money back by lending to African-American hairdressers in Queens or Latina food-cart operators in D.C. than by chucking money at middle-class whites who have bought more McMansion than they can afford.
• How Obama lost Muslim hearts and minds
  By FAWAZ A. GERGES Published: Jun 19, 2010 18:01 Updated: Jun 19, 2010 23:42 Exactly a year ago, in June 2009, the then-recently installed American president, Barack Obama, made a landmark speech in Cairo symbolically to "reset" US relations with the Muslim world. He eloquently addressed critical challenges facing the US in the Muslim world and rhetorically offered a new paradigm, a new beginning, for managing relations between "America and Islam." The speech sent a clear message: “I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings….” A year after President Obama's historic speech, the reality of his Middle East policy is in sharp contrast to the promising rhetoric and high expectations he raised. Obama's address, coupled with a concerted outreach strategy, made a deep impression among many Arabs and Muslims. They hoped that the young African-American president would seriously confront the challenges facing the region and establish a new relationship with the world of Islam. Although it is not too late for Obama to close the gap between rhetoric and action, he has, sadly, not taken bold steps to achieve a breakthrough in America's relations with the Muslim world. His foreign policy is more status quo and damage control than transformational. [Continuity]
• US opposes Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline
  By Sarath Kumara 9 July 2010 Despite opposition from the US, Pakistan signed an agreement with Iran on June 13 to go ahead with a $US7.6 billion gas pipeline between the two countries that will provide a desperately-needed supply of energy to Pakistan from 2014. The deal cuts across Washington’s efforts to isolate Iran economically through UN Security Council sanctions and its own unilateral penalties against Tehran’s nuclear programs. The agreement signed between the Iranian Gas Export Company and the Pakistan Inter State Gas Limited will provide 21.5 million cubic metres of gas daily to Pakistan. The pipeline will run from Iran’s large South Pars gas field. Islamabad will carry out a feasibility study over the next year for its section of the pipeline before beginning construction. US special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, has warned that the pipeline agreement could fall foul of Congressional legislation aimed at penalising foreign companies doing business with Tehran, including those engaged in Iran’s energy sector. He told the media on June 20 that it would be “a disaster” if “an agreement was reached which then triggered something under the law.” The US has been pressing Pakistan since January to drop the plan. India, which was also to have been involved, has already done so. [Imperialism] [US global strategy] [Energy]
• Pipeline Geopolitics: The Russia German Nord Stream Strategic Gas Pipeline
  By F. William Engdahl Global Research, July 9, 2010 In the postwar history of the Federal Republic, German Chancellors tend to disappear once they pursue political goals that deviate from the Washington global agenda too much. In the case of Gerhard Schroeder, it involved two unforgiveable “sins.” The first was his open opposition to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The second, far more serious strategically, was his negotiations with Russia’s Putin to bring a major new natural gas pipeline directly from Russia, bypassing then-hostile Poland, to Germany. Today the first section of that Nord Stream gas pipeline has reached the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern coastal town of Lubmin on the Baltic Sea, making Lubmin into a geopolitical pivot for Europe and Russia
  Gerhard Schroeder in effect owed his job to the quiet but influential backing of US President Bill Clinton who, according to our German SPD sources, demanded that a Schroeder Red-Green coalition, if elected, support a US-NATO war against Serbia in 1999. Washington wanted to end the era of Helmut Kohl. By 2005, however, Schroeder was far too “German” for Washington, and, reportedly, the Bush Administration turned its considerable attention to backing a successor. His last act as Chancellor was to approve a giant gas pipeline from Russia’s port of Vyborg near the Finnish border to Lubmin, called Nord Stream
  Completion of South Stream would weld a major geopolitical bond between the countries of the EU, Central Europe and Russia, something that would represent for Washington a geopolitical nightmare. US policy since World War II has been to dominate western Europe first by fanning the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and after 1990, by extending NATO eastwards to the borders of Russia. An increasingly independent western Europe turning east rather than across the Atlantic, could spell a major defeat for continued US “sole Superpower” domination. [Imperialism] [US global strategy] [Energy]
• Gen. Petraeus runs into resistance from Karzai over village defense forces
  By Joshua Partlow and Karen DeYoung Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, July 10, 2010 KABUL -- As he takes charge of the war effort in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus has met sharp resistance from President Hamid Karzai to an American plan to assist Afghan villagers in fighting the Taliban on their own. A first meeting last week between the new commander and the Afghan president turned tense after Karzai renewed his objections to the plan, according to U.S. officials. The idea of recruiting villagers into local defense programs is a key part of the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, and Karzai's stance poses an early challenge to Petraeus as he tries to fashion a collaborative relationship with the Afghan leader. Senior U.S. officials say that the United States would like to expand the program to about two dozen sites across Afghanistan, double the current number, and are hoping to overcome Karzai's concerns. But the issue is delicate to many who fear that such experiments could lead Afghanistan further into warlordism and out-of-control militias. [Client]
• Nudge on Arms Further Divides the U.S. and Israel
  By MARK LANDLER WASHINGTON — It was only one paragraph buried deep in the most plain-vanilla kind of diplomatic document, 40 pages of dry language committing 189 nations to a world free of nuclear weapons. But it has become the latest source of friction between Israel and the United States in a relationship that has lurched from crisis to crisis over the last few months. At a meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty — a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons. Israel believed it had assurances from the Obama administration that it would reject efforts to include such a reference, an Israeli official said, and it saw this as another sign of unreliability by its most important ally. [NPT] [Strategic incoherence]
• The new Turkey reality
  by AVNI DOGRU* Some US media outlets and right-wing pundits have been astoundingly vocal in their criticism of Turkey over the last few weeks in response to the “flotilla incident” and Turkey’s vote against sanctions on Iran at the UN Security Council. There are two main reasons for this negative and unjustified reaction. The first is obviously motivated by their desire to protect Israel. The second is to punish Turkey for voting against the West’s agenda at the UN Security Council. Even though past experience may delude some in the Western world into thinking that such threats and pressure may work, this is no longer the case. The times have changed and these kinds of reactions are self-defeating for both the US and Israel and will likely harm US-Turkish relations and US national interests irreparably in the long run. Turkish and US national interests are more aligned now than ever before in history [Realignment]
• Iran Seeks Identities of Nations That Sold CW Materials to Iraq
  Friday, July 2, 2010 Iran's envoy to the international body that oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention on Tuesday urged the disclosing of the names of Western nations that provided materials that helped Iraq produce chemical warfare agents, Tehran's state-controlled Fars News Agency reported (see GSN, July 1, 2009). The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons should publicize the names of the alleged 15 nations so the international community can understand their involvement in the chemical weapons attacks launched by the Hussein regime during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Iranian Ambassador to the Netherlands Kazzem Qaribabadi said at a meeting of the OPCW Executive Council in The Hague. Iraqi chemical weapons are believed to have injured or killed tens of thousands of Iranians during the war. An estimated 100,000 Iranian citizens continue to experience breathing difficulties, skin and eye afflictions, compromised immune systems, mental health distress, genetic issues and possibly cancer as a result of the chemical attacks, according to Fars (Fars News Agency I, June 30). "The world community should ask for the trial of the U.S. and 14 European countries for selling chemical weapons" to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Saeed Jalili said Tuesday in remarks observing the anniversary of an Iraqi chemical strike on Sardasht, a Kurdish city in northwestern Iran (Fars News Agency II, June 30). [cbw]
• War in Iraq Defies U.S. Timetable for End of Combat
  NEAR TULUL AL-BAQ, Iraq — President Obama has set an August deadline for the end of the combat mission in Iraq. Here at this makeshift desert camp in the insurgent badlands of northern Iraq, a mission is under way that is not going to stop then: American soldiers hunting terrorists and covertly watching an Iraqi checkpoint staffed by police officers whom the soldiers say they do not trust. “They’re not checking anybody, and they’re wondering why I.E.D.’s are getting in to town,” said Staff Sgt. Kelly E. Young, 39, from Albertville, Ala., as he watched the major roadway that connects Baghdad with Mosul, regarded as the country’s most dangerous city. He referred to improvised explosive devices, the military term for homemade bombs. The August deadline might be seen back home as a milestone in the fulfillment of President Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq, but here it is more complex. American soldiers still find and kill enemy fighters, on their own and in partnership with Iraqi security forces, and will continue to do so after the official end of combat operations.
• The atheist and the rabbi: Arguing about God with Christopher Hitchens
  By David Wolpe Sunday, July 4, 2010 Ambling across the lobby with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, my antagonist nodded to me and said, "Hello, darling." It was almost time for another public debate with Christopher Hitchens. In the meantime, on we battle; Hitchens challenges me with how much evil happens in a good God's world. I talk about religion's contributions, its spur to altruism, and point to the mystery of consciousness and the wide testimony of religious experience. I claim that he has no warrant for free will if everything is a product of genetics and environment. He compares God to the dictator of North Korea -- except with a dictator, "at least you are released from his grip at death." Later we sign copies of our books for the audience. Five or 10 kindly souls stand in my line. His stretches out as long as the eye can see. He looks up at me and winks. The smart money, he seems to be saying, is in heresy. [Image]
• College: Big Investment, Paltry Return
  The value of a college degree is a middle-class article of faith. But exclusive new research suggests it may be far less than previously thought
  By Francesca Di Meglio If there's one truism that goes virtually unchallenged these days, it's that a college degree has great value. Beyond the great books, beyond the critical reasoning skills, and beyond the experience itself, there's another way that a college degree has value: Over the course of a working life, college graduates earn more than high school graduates. Over the past decade, research estimates have pegged that figure at $900,00, $1.2 million, and $1.6 million. But new research suggests that the monetary value of a college degree may be vastly overblown. According to a study conducted by PayScale for Bloomberg Businessweek, the value of a college degree may be a lot closer to $400,000 over 30 years and varies wildly from school to school. According to the PayScale study, the number of schools that actually make good on the estimates of the earlier research is vanishingly small. There are only 17 schools in the study whose graduates can expect to recoup the cost of their education and out-earn a high school graduate by $1.2 million, including four where they can do so to the tune of $1.6 million. At more than 500 other schools, the return on investment, or ROI, is less—sometimes far less. College, says Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at PayScale, "is not the million-dollar slam dunk people talk about." [Education] [Decline]
• Dangerous game: a reply to Gita Sahgal and her supporters
  Victoria Brittain, 30 June 2010
  In the week following June 26, International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the co-author with Moazzam Begg of his book Enemy Combatant: the terrifying true story of a Briton in Guantanamo, comes to the defence of his work and that of Cageprisoners. A bitter controversy has only fed Islamophobia, demonised an innocent person, and obscured the real human rights issues at stake [Global insurgency] [Gender]
• The Two Sides of a Barbed-Wire Fence
  By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF KARMEL, West Bank June 30, 2010 The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is widely acknowledged to be unsustainable and costly to the country’s image. But one more blunt truth must be acknowledged: the occupation is morally repugnant. On one side of a barbed-wire fence here in the southern Hebron hills is the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir, where Palestinians live in ramshackle tents and huts. They aren’t allowed to connect to the electrical grid, and Israel won’t permit them to build homes, barns for their animals or even toilets. When the villagers build permanent structures, the Israeli authorities come and demolish them, according to villagers and Israeli human rights organizations. On the other side of the barbed wire is the Jewish settlement of Karmel, a lovely green oasis that looks like an American suburb. It has lush gardens, kids riding bikes and air-conditioned homes. It also has a gleaming, electrified poultry barn that it runs as a business. Elad Orian, an Israeli human rights activist, nodded toward the poultry barn and noted: “Those chickens get more electricity and water than all the Palestinians around here.” It’s fair to acknowledge that there are double standards in the Middle East, with particular scrutiny on Israeli abuses. After all, the biggest theft of Arab land in the Middle East has nothing to do with Palestinians: It is Morocco’s robbery of the resource-rich Western Sahara from the people who live there. None of that changes the ugly truth that our ally, Israel, is using American military support to maintain an occupation that is both oppressive and unjust. Israel has eased checkpoints this year — a real improvement in quality of life — but the system is intrinsically malignant. [Human rights] [Imperialism]
• Risk-tolerant China investing heavily in Iraq as U.S. companies hold back
  By Leila Fadel and Ernesto Londoño Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, July 2, 2010 AL-AHDAB OIL FIELD, IRAQ -- China didn't take part in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq or the bloody military battles that followed. It hasn't invested in reconstruction projects or efforts by the West to fortify the struggling democracy in the heart of the Middle East. But as the U.S. military draws down and Iraq opens up to foreign investment, China and a handful of other countries that weren't part of the "coalition of the willing" are poised to cash in. These countries are expanding their foothold beyond Iraq's oil reserves -- the world's third largest -- to areas such as construction, government services and even tourism, while American companies show little interest in investing here. [Unintended consequences] [Imperialism] [China rising]
• Counterinsurgency Down for the Count in Afghanistan…
  But the War Machine Grinds On and On and On By Ann Jones President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy isn’t working. So said a parade of Afghanistan watchers during the flap over war commander General Stanley McChrystal’s firing. But what does that phrase, so often in the media these days, really mean? And if the strategy really isn’t working, just how can you tell? The answers to these questions raise even more important ones, including: Why, when President Obama fires an insubordinate and failing general, does he cling to his failing war policy? And if our strategy isn’t working, what about the enemy’s? And if nothing much is working, why does it still go on nonstop this way? Let’s take these one at a time. [AfPak] [Imperialism] [Strategic incoherence]
• Afghanistan: an impossible choice
  Paul Rogers, 1 July 2010 The replacement of one United States general by another to lead the war against the Taliban leaves untouched the essentials of a failing campaign.
  These are deep-seated if essentially contrary views, which tend to an uncomfortable judgment: that starting the war in Afghanistan was an appalling if understandable mistake and that there is actually very little that western states can do now to improve the situation, apart from getting out (see “Afghanistan: the fatal error”, 24 June 2010). Such a conclusion is probably too radical even for an intelligent person of the calibre of General Petraeus to contemplate. [AfPak] [Imperialism] [Strategic incoherence]
• Why McChrystal Did It
  by Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 284, July 1, 2010 Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine in which he and his staff insulted the civilian leaders of his country. He was fired for insubordination by Pres. Obama. Even his defenders said that McChrystal's remarks were impolitic and a mistake. Given the fact that McChrystal is an exceptionally intelligent and very ambitious person, why did he do it? McChrystal gave the interview in order that he be fired. And why did he want to be fired? He wanted to be fired because he knew that the policies he was pursuing and championing in the war in Afghanistan were not working, could not work. And he didn't want to be the one tarnished with the public blame.
  What could Obama do? He had to fire McChrystal. Then, he tossed the hot potato to Petraeus, who couldn't refuse it. The next year or two are going to be a fast-moving game in which Obama and Petraeus are going to try to shift the public's blame for the defeat on the other. The far right, the friends of Cheney and Rumsfeld, are not fooled. Diana West, one of their pundits, says: "The COIN nightmare continues." For her, COIN means ordering troops "to exercise fantasies of cultural relativism that makes lefty sense in a PC classroom, but are nothing short of appalling on the front line." A slightly less acerbic view was that of retired Col. Douglas Macgregor: "The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense." Of course, Macgregor is right. What are the policy choices? The far right wants perpetual war. The only alternative is early and complete withdrawal. Obama doesn't want the first and is politically afraid to embrace the second. So he sends CIA Director, Leon Panetta, out to give ABC News an interview, saying that making progress in Afghanistan is "harder" and going more slowly than anticipated. Indeed, it is. [Imperialism] [Obama] [Strategic incoherence] [Dissension]
• After Afghan Shift, Top U.S. Civilians Face Tricky Future
  Abdul Khaleq/Associated Press Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, with Maj. Gen. Richard P. Mills near Kabul. General David H. Petraeus called Mr. Holbrooke his “wingman.” By MARK LANDLER Published: June 30, 2010 WASHINGTON — As General David H. Petraeus takes command in Afghanistan, the two top American civilian officials in the war face an uncertain and tricky future, working with a newly empowered military leader, under the gaze of an impatient president who has put them on notice that his fractious war council needs to pull together. Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative to the region, and Karl W. Eikenberry, the ambassador to Afghanistan, both hung on to their jobs in the uproar that followed Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s career-ending quotes in Rolling Stone magazine. But privately, at least one senior White House official suggested using General McChrystal’s exit as an excuse for a housecleaning, according to senior officials. That was rejected as too disruptive during a military campaign that relies heavily on civilian support, these people said. [Strategic incoherence]
• Tony Blair wins 2010 Liberty Medal award for work on peace
  Tony Blair awarded $100,000 Liberty Medal for "relentless pursuit" of peace in Northern Ireland and the Middle East (139)Tweet this (86)Comments (193) Tony Blair, 2010 Liberty Medal winner, addresses the nation at the start of the Iraq war in 2003. Photograph: Paul McErlane/Reuters Tony Blair, in his inevitable career progression from world leader to elder statesman, picks up another award, this time the 2010 Liberty Medal, a prize given annually by the National Constitution Centre in Philadelphia [Bizarre]
• Revolution and Repression in America
  The Technological Revolution and the Future of Freedom, Part 2
  By Andrew Gavin Marshall Global Research, June 29, 2010 Introduction As outlined in Part 1 of this series, “The Technological Revolution and the Future of Freedom,” there are two major geopolitical realities in the world today, both largely brought about as a result of the “Technological Revolution” in which technology and electronics have come to define and shape our society. The Technological Revolution has led to a diametrically opposed, antagonistic, and conflicting geopolitical reality: never before has humanity been so awakened to issues of power, exploitation, imperialism and domination; and simultaneously, never before have elites been so transnational and global in orientation, and with the ability to impose such a truly global system of scientific despotism and political oppression. These are the two major geopolitical realities of the world today. Never in all of human history has mankind been so capable of achieving a true global political psycho-social awakening; nor has humanity ever been in such danger of being subjected to a truly global scientific totalitarianism, potentially more oppressive than any system known before, and without a doubt more technologically capable of imposing a permanent despotism upon humanity. So we are filled with hope, but driven by urgency. In all of human history, never has the potential nor the repercussions of human actions and ideas ever been so monumental.

• The way to lie about another war
  John Pilger Published 03 June 2010 15 comments Print version Email a friend Listen RSS The CIA set a precedent with the Tonkin “incident”, sparking off the Vietnam war. Today, we see the same arts of spin at work in Israel’s reasons for the bloody assault on the Muslim aid ships to Gaza.
  A similar master illusion now consumes Asian governments. On 20 May, South Korea announced it had "overwhelming evidence" that a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine sank one of its warships, the Cheonan, in March with the loss of 46 sailors. The US keeps 28,000 troops in South Korea, where the public has long supported détente with Pyongyang. On 26 May, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, flew to Seoul and demanded that the "international community must respond" to "North Korea's outrage". She flew on to Japan, where the new North Korean "threat" eclipsed the briefly independent foreign policy of the Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, elected last year with popular opposition to America's permanent military occupation of Japan. (On 2 June Hatoyama resigned, having failed to move a US military base in Okinawa.) The "overwhelming evidence" is a propeller that "had been corroding at least for several months", reported the Korea Times. In April, the director of South Korea's national intelligence, Won Se-hoon, told a parliamentary committee that there was no evidence linking the sinking of the Cheonan to North Korea. The defence minister agreed. And the head of South Korea's military marine operations said, "No North Korean warships have been detected [in] the waters where the accident took place." The reference to an "accident" suggests the warship struck a reef and broke in two. To the American media, North Korea's guilt is beyond doubt, just as North Vietnam's guilt was beyond doubt, just as Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, just as Israel can terrorise with impunity. But, unlike Vietnam and Iraq, North Korea has nuclear weapons, which helps to explain why it has not been attacked, not yet: a salutary lesson to other countries, such as Iran, currently in the cross hairs.
• Remember Vietistan?
  By Saul Landau, June 25, 2010 The McChrystal debacle dramatizes how military thinking dominates U.S. policy — look at how much of the budget the Pentagon commands — as well as the utter hopelessness of achieving anything but draining defeat from the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. This lesson should have been learned after Vietnam. As Yogi Berra said, it's "déjà vu all over again."
  In early November 1963, just before Kennedy's assassination, some Vietnamese generals staged a coup against Diem — with tacit U.S. approval, if not downright encouragement — and assassinated him. Diem's killers became heads of state, backed immediately by Washington. His widow, Madame Nhu, blamed the U.S. government for the assassination: "Whoever has the Americans as allies does not need enemies." [Imperialism] [Client]
• Turkey, America, and Empire's Twilight
  By Conn Hallinan, June 25, 2010 When U.S. forces found themselves beset by a growing insurgency in Iraq following their lighting overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the most obvious parallel that came to mind was Vietnam: an occupying army, far from home, besieged by a shadowy foe. But Patrick Cockburn, the Independent's (UK) ace Middle East reporter, suggested that the escalating chaos was more like the Boer War than the conflict in Southeast Asia. It was a parallel that was lost on most Americans, very few of whom know anything about the short, savage, turn-of-the-century war between Dutch settlers and the British Empire in South Africa. But the analogy explains a great deal about the growing influence of a country like Turkey, and why Washington, despite its military power and economic clout, can no longer dominate regional and global politics. [Decline]
• The Mysterious Death of Dr David Kelly: Damning New Evidence Points to a Cover-up by Tony Blair's Government
  by Miles Goslett and Stephen Frost Global Research, June 27, 2010 Miles Goslett, Stephen Frost The official story of Dr David Kelly is that he took his own life in an Oxfordshire wood by overdosing on painkillers and cutting his left wrist with a pruning knife. He was said to be devastated after being unmasked as the source of the BBC’s claim that the Government had ‘sexed up’ the case for war in Iraq. A subsequent official inquiry led by Lord Hutton into the circumstances leading to the death came to the unequivocal conclusion that Kelly committed suicide. Yet suspicions of foul play still hang heavy over the death of the weapons expert whose body was found seven years ago next month in one of the most notorious episodes of Tony Blair’s premiership. [Coverup]
• Transcript: Interview with Henry Kissinger
  By Daniel Dombey Published: June 28 2010 23:21 | Last updated: June 28 2010 23:21 Dr Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and informal adviser to subsequent occupants of the White House, spoke to the Financial Times on June 25 about the war in the Afghanistan in the wake of Barack Obama’s decision to accept the resignation of Gen Stanley McChrystal as commander of the Nato and US-led forces. Dr Kissinger supports Mr Obama’s goals in Afghanistan, but says current plans to begin handing over responsibility to Afghan forces in July 2011 – and to begin drawing down US troops at that time - are unrealistic. While he calls for Gen David Petraeus, Gen McChrystal’s prospective replacement in the field, to look at that strategy anew, he says the Afghan commander should do so discreetly, rather than initiating a protracted high profile review of the sort that President Obama chaired last year [US global strategy]
• Tycoons given go-ahead for financial takeover of Le Monde
  €100m promised to recapitalise bankrupt historic French daily; journalists approve bid as 'most coherent proposition' (9)Tweet this (42)Kim Wilsher in Paris guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 June 2010 22.55 BST Article historySince its first edition came out on 19 December 1944, printed on a single sheet, Le Monde has been universally accepted as France's paper of record. Today, the evening daily has turned a new page in its history when a trio of tycoons was given the go-ahead for a takeover to save it from bankruptcy. Its supervisory board voted to select a consortium – Pierre Bergé, an arts patron and partner of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, banker Matthieu Pigasse, and internet tycoon Xavier Niel, described by some newspapers as a "porn billionaire" – to begin talks to take financial control, though they have promised that the journalists will have editorial freedom. In return, Le Monde is promised an injection of €100m to repay debts and invest in a future which will be dominated by the growth of news and comment over the internet – the trio also say they want to integrate the paper with its website.
• In Ordinary Lives, U.S. Sees the Work of Russian Agents
  By SCOTT SHANE and CHARLIE SAVAGE Published: June 29, 2010 WASHINGTON — They had lived for more than a decade in American cities and suburbs from Seattle to New York, where they seemed to be ordinary couples working ordinary jobs, chatting to the neighbors about schools and apologizing for noisy teenagers. ARLINGTON, VA. Two suspects, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, were arrested at the high-rise complex where they lived. But on Monday, federal prosecutors accused 11 people of being part of a Russian espionage ring, living under false names and deep cover in a patient scheme to penetrate what one coded message called American “policy making circles.” [Espionage]
• The Third Depression
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: June 27, 2010 Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31. Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline — on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses. We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense. And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending. [Crisis]
• Roots of U.S. Troubles in Afghanistan: Civilian Bombing Casualties and the Cambodian Precedent
  Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen The U.S. war in Afghanistan is “going badly,” according to the New York Times. Nine years after American forces invaded to oust the repressive Taliban regime and its Al-Qaeda ally, “the deteriorating situation demands a serious assessment now of the military and civilian strategies.”1 Aerial bombardment, a centrepiece of the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan, has had a devastating impact on civilians there. Along with Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents and suicide bombers, who have recently escalated their slaughter of the Afghan population, U.S. and NATO aircraft have for years inflicted a horrific toll on innocent villagers. When U.S. bombs hit a civilian warehouse in Afghanistan in late 2001, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded: “We’re not running out of targets, Afghanistan is.” There was laughter in the press gallery. But the bombing continued and spread to Iraq in 2003, with the United States determined to use “the force necessary to prevail, plus some,” and asserting that no promises would be made to avoid “collateral damage.”2 Afghan and Iraqi civilian casualties, in other words, were predictable if not inevitable. The show of strength aside, didn’t the U.S. underestimate the strategic cost of collateral damage? If “shock and awe” appeared to work at least in 2001 against the Taliban regular army, the continued use of aerial bombardment has also nourished civilian support for the Taliban and Al Qaeda anti-U.S. insurgency. In March 2010, the New York Times reported that “civilian deaths caused by American troops and American bombs have outraged the local population and made the case for the insurgency.”3 Beyond the moral meaning of inflicting predictable civilian casualties, and contravention of international laws of war, it is also clear that the political repercussions of air strikes outweigh their military benefits. [Global insurgency] [US military] [Strategic incoherence]
• Through the Wormhole: The Secret State's Mad Scheme to Control the Internet
  By Tom Burghardt Global Research, June 27, 2010 Antifascist Calling... Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once famously wrote that "war is the continuation of politics by other means." A century later, radical French philosopher Michel Foucault turned Clausewitz on his head and declared that "politics is the continuation of war by other means." In our topsy-turvy world where truth and lies coexist equally and sociopathic business elites reign supreme, it would hardly be a stretch to theorize that cyber war is the continuation of parapolitical crime by other means. Through the Wormhole In Speed and Politics, cultural theorist Paul Virilio argued that "history progresses at the speed of its weapons systems." With electronic communications now blanketing the globe, it was only a matter of time before our political masters, (temporarily) outflanked by the subversive uses to which new media lend themselves, would deploy what Virilio called the "integral accident" (9/11 being one of many examples) and gin-up entirely new categories of threats, "Cyber Pearl Harbor" comes to mind, from which of course, they would "save us." [Cyberwar] [Surveillance]
• The 36 Hours That Shook Washington
  Barry Blitt By Frank Rich Published: June 25, 2010 THE moment he pulled the trigger, there was near-universal agreement that President Obama had done the inevitable thing, the right thing and, best of all, the bold thing. But before we get carried away with relief and elation, let’s not forget what we saw in the tense 36 hours that fell between late Monday night, when word spread of Rolling Stone’s blockbuster article, and high noon Wednesday, when Obama MacArthured his general. That frenzied interlude revealed much about the state of Washington, the Afghanistan war and the Obama presidency — little of it cheering and none of it resolved by the ingenious replacement of Gen. Stanley McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus, the only militarily and politically bullet-proof alternative. [US global strategy] [Strategic incoherence]
• In search of the real Philip Larkin
  Twenty-five years after Philip Larkin's death, the view of the English poet as a misogynist appears unfair. A new book of letters to his long-time partner Monica Jones reveals a caring if anguished lover, while those who knew him well remember a gentle – and very witty – man Rachel Cooke The Observer, Sunday 27 June 2010 Article history Philip Larkin, pictured in Oxford, in 1943: For the poet, there was an "intensely romantic glamorisation of delay and yearning". Photograph: Bruce Montgomery /Larkin Estate Most eyes, right now, are on the festival of football that is the World Cup. In Hull, though, a different kind of festival is beginning. Larkin25 is a 25-week-long celebration of the poet Philip Larkin's life and work, timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of his death. If the organisers know how apt it is to be marking the anniversary of a death rather than a birth – unlike most of us, Larkin didn't start with the death-fear at 40; it clammily took hold of him when he was still in his 20s – they are not letting on. Larkin25 is a determinedly jolly, unironic affair, and the poet it love bombs so enthusiastically would have hated it.
  There are plenty of dispatches from inside Larkin's head: anguished, indecisive, plaintive, and saucy (he tells her about a fantasy he has been having in which she is wearing a particular pair of black knickers, a pair with a hole in them). But there is also gossip, cricket (a mutual passion), jokes (they use a silly, shared argot: "haddock" for headache, "bogray" for buggery, and so on), an amazing bunch of first drafts ("Church Going", "Myxomatosis", "An Arundel Tomb") and, above all, book talk.
• Gen. McChrystal allies, Rolling Stone disagree over article's ground rules
  By Karen DeYoung and Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, June 26, 2010 It was 2:30 Tuesday morning in Kabul, after a busy day of travel to Kandahar and meetings with top Afghan officials, when Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was awakened by an aide with grim news. "There's a Rolling Stone article out," the aide told McChrystal. "It's very, very bad." Forty hours later, McChrystal had been relieved of his command, his 34-year military career in tatters. Apart from a terse apology, McChrystal has not discussed publicly the disparaging remarks that he and his aides made about administration officials and that appeared in the article.
• Western media play along in the disinformation game
  By GREGORY CLARK Are they being manipulated by governments? Or, are they just plain lazy, happy to go along with what everyone else is saying and what readers want to believe without wanting to look too closely into relevant background? I refer to the way the Western media, both lately and in the past, have accepted blatant and often dangerous news distortions.
  Closer to home, we have the reports of the March torpedo attack on a South Korean warship, killing 46 seamen. Western media blasting North Korea for the attack make little or no mention of the fact that it was in disputed waters and that, if caused by North Korea, it would almost certainly have been retaliation for a November 2009 South Korean attack on a North Korean patrol boat in the same area, also with casualties. Even less mention is made of the fact that the waters are disputed because of an arbitrary line drawn by the United States under the 1953 Korean War armistice. Determining the correct line would be a key item in the peace agreement that North Korea wants but that the U.S. has delayed, hoping for regime collapse in the North. There are even doubts whether there was an attack. Sweden, the only neutral member in an international group investigating the affair, withdrew from the final report (see the article by John McGlynn in the June 7 Asia-Pacific Journal). Two other possible causes for the sinking have been put forward, but little of this finds mention in Western media, where calls for strong retaliation and U.N. condemnation against North Korea wax large. [Cheonan] [Media] [Disinformation]
• Peace campaigner, 85, classified by police as 'domestic extremist'
  John Catt and his daughter were placed under surveillance at more than 80 lawful protests (46)Tweet this (27)Paul Lewis and Rob Evans guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 June 2010 19.44 BST Article history John Catt and his daughter, Linda, talk about being classified as 'domestic extremists' Link to this video For John Catt, protest has never been about chaining himself to a railing or blocking a road in an act of civil disobedience. The 85-year-old peace campaigner's far milder form of dissent typically involves turning up at a demonstration with his daughter, Linda, taking out his sketch pad and drawing the scene. However this, it seems, has been enough for police to classify Catt and his 50-year-old daughter "domestic extremists", put their personal information on a clandestine national database and record their political activities in minute detail. Secret files have revealed how police have systematically documented their political activities, undermining official claims that only hardcore activists were placed under surveillance. [Surveillance] [Human rights]
• Mark Lawson on Alan Plater: 'Bright, socialist and proudly northern'
  Throughout his long and varied career the TV writer helped maintain high standards across the industry (3)Tweet this (20) Alan Plater, who has died of cancer, was a notably versatile writer. Frequently employed on police series, his career spanned pioneering episodes of Z Cars and Softly Softly to an episode of ITV's Lewis screened in the final months of his life.
• The global political awakening
  By Zbigniew Brzezinski
  Published: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 A new president is assuming office in the midst of a widespread crisis of confidence in America's capacity to exercise effective leadership in world affairs. That may be a stark thought, but it is a fact. Though U.S. leadership has been essential to global stability and development, the cumulative effects of national self indulgence, financial irresponsibility, an unnecessary war and ethical transgressions have discredited that leadership. Making matters worse is the global economic crisis. The resulting challenge is compounded by issues such as climate, health and social inequality - issues that are becoming more contentious because they have surfaced in the context of what I call "the global political awakening." For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination. [Imperialism] [Globalisation] [Global insurgency] [China rising]
• The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order
  The Technological Revolution and the Future of Freedom, Part 1
  By Andrew Gavin Marshall
  Global Research, June 24, 2010 There is a new and unique development in human history that is taking place around the world; it is unprecedented in reach and volume, and it is also the greatest threat to all global power structures: the ‘global political awakening.’ The term was coined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, and refers to the fact that, as Brzezinski wrote: For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination.[1] It is, in essence, this massive ‘global political awakening’ which presents the gravest and greatest challenge to the organized powers of globalization and the global political economy: nation-states, multinational corporations and banks, central banks, international organizations, military, intelligence, media and academic institutions. The Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC), or ‘Superclass’ as David Rothkopf refers to them, are globalized like never before. For the first time in history, we have a truly global and heavily integrated elite. As elites have globalized their power, seeking to construct a ‘new world order’ of global governance and ultimately global government, they have simultaneously globalized populations. [Imperialism] [[Global insurgency]
• Stanley McChrystal: The gung-ho general and the rock magazine
  Why on earth would a tough commander like General McChrystal speak his mind to left-leaning rock magazine Rolling Stone? (7)Tweet this (1)Comments (36) Alexander Chancellor guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 June 2010 20.34 BST Article history President Barack Obama meets General Stanley McChrystal in 2009. Photograph: Pete Souza/LANDOV/Press Association Images The issue of Rolling Stone that led to the greatest showdown between a US president and an overbearing general since Harry Truman fired Douglas MacArthur during the Korean war gave only modest billing to its explosive scoop. Its cover story was "Lady Gaga Tells All", illustrated by a photo of the pop star almost naked with a pair of machine guns; and articles about Dennis Hopper, BP and the Bonnaroo rock festival in Tennessee all took precedence over its exposure of the arrogance and insubordination of America's top military commander in Afghanistan. Only near the bottom of the page appeared a small coverline reading "Obama's General: why he's losing the war", referring to the now-dismissed General Stanley McChrystal.
• America Detached from War
  Bush’s Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales from the Crypt By Tom Engelhardt
  Admittedly, before George W. Bush had his fever dream, the U.S. had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drone surveillance planes in the skies over Kosovo in the late 1990s. By November 2001, it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan. In November 2002, a Predator drone would loose a Hellfire missile on a car in Yemen, a country with which we weren’t at war. Six suspected al-Qaeda members, including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole would be turned into twisted metal and ash -- the first “targeted killings” of the American robotic era. [Imperialism] [US military] [Military balance]
• U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study
  4:48pm EDT By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday. The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.
• General alarm as Barack Obama summons Stanley McChrystal to the White House
  Commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan must face the music after mocking senior politicians in Rolling Stone magazine (63)Tweet this (37)Chris McGreal in Washington and Jon Boone in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 June 2010 20.47 BST Article history General Stanley McChrystal travels to Kandahar. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images Barack Obama will confront General Stanley McChrystal at the White House tomorrow as he decides whether to sack the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan over disparaging and "contemptuous" remarks about senior administration officials, including the president himself. The White House said "all options are on the table" after an "angry" Obama summoned McChrystal to Washington to explain quotes in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine in which the general and his senior aides accuse the US ambassador to Afghanistan of undermining the war, call the president's national security adviser "a joke" and mock Joe Biden, the vice-president. There is also indirect criticism of the president as "uncomfortable and intimidated" by senior military officials.
• The Runaway General
  Stanley McChrystal, Obama's top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House
  By Michael Hastings Jun 22, 2010 10:00 AM EDT This article appears in RS 1108/1109 from July 8-22, 2010, on newsstands Friday, June 25. 'How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?" demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It's a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He's in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany's president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him. "The dinner comes with the position, sir," says his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Flynn. McChrystal turns sharply in his chair. "Hey, Charlie," he asks, "does this come with the position?" McChrystal gives him the middle finger. On the ground with the Runaway General: Photos of Stanley McChrystal at work. The general stands and looks around the suite that his traveling staff of 10 has converted into a full-scale operations center. The tables are crowded with silver Panasonic Toughbooks, and blue cables crisscross the hotel's thick carpet, hooked up to satellite dishes to provide encrypted phone and e-mail communications. Dressed in off-the-rack civilian casual – blue tie, button-down shirt, dress slacks – McChrystal is way out of his comfort zone. Paris, as one of his advisers says, is the "most anti-McChrystal city you can imagine." The general hates fancy restaurants, rejecting any place with candles on the tables as too "Gucci." He prefers Bud Light Lime (his favorite beer) to Bordeaux, Talladega Nights (his favorite movie) to Jean-Luc Godard. Besides, the public eye has never been a place where McChrystal felt comfortable: Before President Obama put him in charge of the war in Afghanistan, he spent five years running the Pentagon's most secretive black ops. [Obama] {dissension] [Global insurgency] [[US global strategy]
• Obama-McChrystal showdown may be pivotal moment
  By Steven Thomma, Nancy A. Youssef and Margaret Talev | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will confront Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Wednesday in a high-stakes showdown that could be a pivotal moment in America's longest war and a defining point of Obama's presidency. Obama will meet the commander of the Afghanistan war face to face at the White House, a meeting that could end with the president reprimanding or firing McChrystal for making and condoning disparaging remarks about Obama, top members of his administration and a U.S. ally in a magazine article.
• McChrystal’s Fate in Limbo as He Prepares to Meet Obama
  Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama said his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, had used “poor judgment” in an article that appeared in Rolling Stone. By HELENE COOPER, THOM SHANKER and DEXTER FILKINS Published: June 23, 2010 WASHINGTON — President Obama will confront the fate of his top commander in Afghanistan Wednesday after a firestorm over remarks the general and members of his staff made that were contemptuous of senior administration officials. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has prepared a letter of resignation, though President Obama had not made up his mind whether to accept it when they meet Wednesday morning.
• Weakening, possible firing of McChrystal compounds sense of peril in Afghanistan
  By Karen DeYoung and Scott Wilson Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 23, 2010 The firestorm sparked by the general responsible for creating and implementing President Obama's Afghanistan strategy has further set back U.S. prospects in a war that was already on shaky ground. Combat delays, rising casualties and new reports of Afghan corruption have led to growing skepticism in Congress and among the American public. The weakening, and possible firing, of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal over disrespectful comments he made about Obama and his policy team has compounded the sense of peril.
• Obama Relieves McChrystal of Command
  By HELENE COOPER and JACK HEALY Published: June 23, 2010 WASHINGTON — President Obama removed Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as commander of American forces in Afghanistan on Wednesday, and tapped as his replacement the general’s boss and the architect of the 2007 surge in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus. Mr. Obama, standing with General Petraeus and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the White House Rose Garden to underline the continuity and solidity of his Afghan policy, said that he had accepted General McChrystal’s resignation “with considerable regret.” Mr. Obama said he had done so not out of personal insult over a magazine article featuring contemptuous quotes from the general and his staff about senior administration officials, but because it showed the general had not met standards of behavior for a commander, which threatened to erode trust among administration and military officials, as well as undermine civilian control of the military. [Obama] [Dissension] [Global insurgency] [US global strategy]
• Global Bonapartism
  By VIJAY PRASHAD When the Finance Ministers of the Advanced States set up the G7 in 1974-75, their tongues quivered with the taste of centuries of power. The Soviet Union had begun its plummet into obsolescence. Its collapse was held off by a decade through the rise of oil prices and the cannibalization of the remarkable achievements of an earlier generation. The Third World had threatened the established order with its vdemand for a New International Economic Order (1973), but that would quickly be dispatched through financial trickery, one that led directly to the massive debt crisis of the 1980s and the inflation of the power of Wall Street, the City of London and the Frankfurt Finanzplatz. No rivals stood in the way of the G7. The European and Japanese Ministers happily bound their economies into dollar seigniorage, with the euro and the yen now secondary currencies in the world of international settlements. The United States was the leading edge. Its wingmen stood around: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. Everyone beamed. The future was theirs. Like Achilles, the G7 not only killed its Hector, the hopes of the rest of the planet, but it now tied the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America behind its chariot and dragged it across the battlefield. Structural adjustment conditionalities, aerial bombardment: this was the loot and pillage of the era that opened up in 1975.
• "This is Moving Toward Chaos" Is Pakistan Unraveling?
  By JOSHUA BROLLIER and KATHY KELLY "The military is the muscle that protects the ruling elite from the wrath of the people,” says Pakistani political analyst Dr. Mubashir Hassan. “Right now, people are out on the street; blocking roads, attacking railway stations, etc. If you read the papers, it seems as though a general uprising has started all over Pakistan.” Dr. Hassan says that sporadic outbursts of anger in Pakistan won’t coalesce into a people’s revolution anytime soon. The demonstrators are too disorganized. But, the sheer volume of daily protests shows that many sectors of Pakistani society have pressing needs and priorities that do not include enlistment as foot soldiers in a proxy force for the United States’ War on Terror. [AfPak] [Global insurgency] [Imperialism]
• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange breaks cover but will avoid America
  US desperate to ask hacker what he knows of classified messages about Iraq and Afghanistan wars (371)Tweet this (257)Ian Traynor in Brussels guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 June 2010 20.14 BST Article history Julian Assange of WikiLeaks spoke to the Guardian in Brussels after emerging from a month in hiding. The elusive founder of WikiLeaks, who is at the centre of a potential US national security sensation, has surfaced from almost a month in hiding to tell the Guardian he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert. Julian Assange, a renowned Australian hacker who founded the electronic whistleblowers' platform WikiLeaks, vanished when a young US intelligence analyst in Baghdad was arrested. The analyst, Bradley Manning, had bragged he had sent 260,000 incendiary US state department cables on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. The prospect of the cache of classified intelligence on the US conduct of the two wars being put online is a nightmare for Washington. The sensitivity of the information has generated media reports that Assange is the target of a US manhunt. "[US] public statements have all been reasonable. But some statements made in private are a bit more questionable," Assange told the Guardian in Brussels. "Politically it would be a great error for them to act. I feel perfectly safe … but I have been advised by my lawyers not to travel to the US during this period."
  Manning is being held incommunicado by the US military in Kuwait after "confessing" to a Californian hacker on a chatline, declaring he wanted "people to see the truth". He said he had collected 260,000 top secret US cables in Baghdad and sent them to WikiLeaks, whose server operates out of Sweden. Adrian Lamo, the California hacker he spoke to, handed the transcripts of the exchanges to the FBI. Manning was promptly arrested in Baghdad at the end of last month and transferred to a US military detention unit in Kuwait. He has been held for more than three weeks without charge. Assange said WikiLeaks had hired three US criminal lawyers to defend Manning but that they had been granted no access to him. Manning has instead been assigned US military counsel.
  Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers – a top secret study about the Vietnam war – in 1973, spoke to the Daily Beast. He said: "I would think that [Assange] is in some danger. Granted, I would think that his notoriety now would provide him some degree of protection." [Human rights]
• Dr Robert M Gates Question and Answer Session at The Shangri-La Dialogue
  The 9th IISS Asia Security Summit Singapore Saturday 05 June 2010 First Plenary Session Strengthening Security Partnerships in the Asia-Pacific QA Dr Robert M Gates Secretary of Defense, United States Provisional Transcript: Question and Answer Session Dr John Chipman Mr Secretary, thank you very much, and especially for the strong message that you gave us that strategic rivalries are not inevitable and that sustained and reliable military cooperation with China is important. You made many other important reflections as well, which will have inspired debate and comment. Yoichi Kato, National Security Correspondent, The Asahi Shimbun Thank you, Mr Secretary, for a comprehensive and very clear message. You talked about the credibility of US deterrence and I would like to ask you about deterrence in a conventional way. What happened in Korea, namely the sinking of the South Korean ship by North Korea, was of great concern to the regional states, including Japan, in the sense of the credibility of the US deterrence. Apparently, North Korea was not deterred from making that attack and I hope this was not an indication of the deterioration of the US deterrence in this region. Could you please tell us what we should read into the incident in terms of the credibility of the US deterrence? Thank you. Dr Robert Gates First of all, I think what it demonstrates is that a surprise and unprovoked attack by a country is very difficult to defend against, and particularly in a period when there has been no escalation of tensions that would lead people to place their forces on a higher level of alert. So I think we have seen once again the military benefits of a surprise attack, I am sad to say. I think the reality is US military power, and particularly conventional power, is, in my view, as strong today as it has ever been in the Pacific. We are looking at ways to strengthen it further. Part of the effort that I have underway in terms of reallocations within the US defense budget is in fact to protect our force structure to ensure that we can continue our ship-building, building of modern aircraft, and so on to be able to deal with whatever threats emerge, both here in Asia and elsewhere in the years to come, despite economic stringencies that affect most of our countries. So I think the reality is there is no question about the strength of our conventional forces. There is no question about the striking capability of those forces. The question that people have to contemplate is: what are the consequences for a country like North Korea of an unprovoked surprise attack on a neighbour? For nothing to happen would be a very bad precedent here in Asia and so I think we need to work together in terms of how to deal with this.
  Major General Zhu Chenghu, National Defense University, People’s Republic of China Sir, I want to make a very short comment on your remarks on the suspension of the military ties between our two countries. It seems to me that it is not fair enough to owe the suspension of the military ties between China and the US to the PLA or to the Chinese government because the Chinese have never hurt or damaged the interests of the US, whilst the sales of arms to Taiwan really hurts the core interests of China. I believe this sort of arms sale sends the wrong signal to the Chinese – that is the Chinese are taking the Americans as partners as well as friends whilst you Americans take the Chinese as the enemy. The sole purpose, according to the understanding of most Chinese, of the arms sale is intended to prevent the unification of China. Therefore, when the Chinese core interest is hurt, I think this sort of response is quite understandable. This is my comment on your remarks. I have a question: as you know, recently two incidents have attracted the attention and aroused the concern of the world community. One is the Cheonan incident. On this incident, as you know, there are controversial views on who did it. The other incident that has happened recently in the Mediterranean Sea was committed by the Israeli military. It seems to me that there is a wide gap in US attitudes and policy towards the two incidents. Would you please compare the policies and attitudes of the US towards these two incidents that recently happened? Thank you. Dr Robert Gates First of all I would just like to state for the record that the United States does not consider China to be an enemy, but as a partner in many areas. There are a growing number of areas where we are working together, which makes the lack of progress on the military side stand out all the more. I go back to a comment that I made at the very outset of the question and answers session: The attack on the Cheonan was a surprise attack without any warning and with the death of 46 sailors. Regarding the tragedy in the eastern Mediterranean, there were warnings issued to the ships. I won’t make judgements on responsibility or fault - I believe there is value in an investigation that has international credibility in terms of responsibility in that case - however, there was no surprise associated with it. I believe it needs to be investigated and we will withhold judgement until that investigation is complete, however, I think there is no comparison whatsoever between what happened in the eastern Mediterranean and what happened to the Cheonan. [Cheonan] [China confrontation] [Coverup] [Double standards]
• Pakistan, Afghanistan begin talks about dealing with insurgents
  By Karin Brulliard and Karen DeYoung Saturday, June 19, 2010 ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Afghanistan and Pakistan are talking about how to make peace with insurgents fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, including one faction considered the coalition forces' most lethal foe, according to Pakistani and U.S. officials. This Story New turn in Afghan, Pakistani relations U.S. buying helicopters from Russia The discussions reflect the beginnings of a thaw in relations between Kabul and Islamabad, which are increasingly focused on shaping the aftermath of what they fear could be a more abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops than is now anticipated.
• A Volcano's Fallout: Strategies for Disruption
  Just-in-time inventory and low-cost sourcing and offshoring are two production practices to be reconsidered in the wake of Eyjafjallajokull By Mark Pearson and Bill Read When the eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano sent a stream of ash into the sky, news headlines focused mostly on European airspace being shuttered and millions of passengers being stranded. The broader long-term questions for business are now taking shape: How will an erupting volcano—or any major disruption, natural or otherwise—affect global commerce, and what can be done to mitigate both risk and economic disaster in the future? [Offshoring]
• Why America needs war
  by Jacques R. Pauwels Wednesday, Apr. 30, 2003 at 12:00 PM Wars are a terrible waste of lives and resources, and for that reason most people are in principle opposed to wars. The American President, on the other hand, seems to love war. Why? Many commentators have sought the answer in psychological factors. Some opined that George W. Bush considered it his duty to finish the job started, but for some obscure reason not completed, by his father at the time of the Gulf War; others believe that Bush Junior expected a short and triumphant war which would guarantee him a second term in the White House. I believe that we must look elsewhere for an explanation for the attitude of the American President. The fact that Bush is keen on war has little or nothing to do with his psyche, but a great deal with the American economic system. This system -- America’s brand of capitalism -- functions first and foremost to make extremely rich Americans like the Bush “money dynasty” even richer. Without warm or cold wars, however, this system can no longer produce the expected result in the form of the ever-higher profits the moneyed and powerful of America consider as their birthright [Capitalism] [Militarisation]
• BP spill fund echoes in India's Bhopal justice cry
  6:52am EDT By Krittivas Mukherjee NEW DELHI, June 17 (Reuters) - Indian activists seeking justice in the world's worst industrial disaster are accusing the United States of "double standards", saying it was punishing firms polluting American soil but ignoring their mistakes abroad. The Obama administration on Wednesday pushed oil giants BP Plc (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (BP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to agree a $20 billion fund to pay damages for a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that has threatened fishing and tourism and killed birds and marine life. That fund has ignited calls in India for Washington to show similar accountability for U.S. firm Union Carbide. Its Indian factory in the central city of Bhopal leaked a poisonous gas 26 years ago, killing 3,500 people. [Double standards]
• Afghanistan, and the world’s resource war
  Paul Rogers, 17 June 2010
  A new report that highlights Afghanistan’s extensive mineral deposits provides fuel for the United States’s military project. But it also signals the existence of a wider resource-competition that reflects the 21st-century’s emerging geopolitics. About the author Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University and is openDemocracy’s international-security editor.A notable feature of the Afghanistan war in 2010 has been the way that assessments of its progress have varied regularly between optimism and pessimism. The current mood in Washington, evident in congressional hearings that have thrown some light on the problems, tends to the bleaker end of the spectrum - in marked contrast to the optimism of a few months ago (see Karen De Young and Greg Jaffe, “Concern on Capitol Hill about Afghanistan war grows”, Washington Post, 15 June 2010). What makes this attitude even more interesting is that its spread coincides with the appearance of reports that Afghanistan possesses mineral reserves worth at least $900 billion. The implication is that Afghanistan, and by extension the war being waged there, evidently vital geo-strategic importance that goes beyond even the campaign against the Taliban (see James Risen, “U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan”, New York Times, 14 June 2010). [Imperialism] [Disinformation]
• Call the Politburo, We’re in Trouble Entering the Soviet Era in America
  By Tom Engelhardt
  Mark it on your calendar. It seems we’ve finally entered the Soviet era in America. You remember the Soviet Union, now almost 20 years in its grave. But who gives it a second thought today? Even in its glory years that “evil empire” was sometimes referred to as “the second superpower.” In 1991, after seven decades, it suddenly disintegrated and disappeared, leaving the United States -- the “sole superpower,” even the “hyperpower,” on planet Earth -- surprised but triumphant. [Imperialism] [Decline] [Militarisation]
• General David Petraeus faints during grilling over US in Afghanistan
  • Hearing suspended for the day as Petraeus recovers • Dehydration, jetlag and lack of food cited as causes (87)Tweet this (46)Ewen MacAskill in Washington guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 June 2010 20.21 BST Article history General David Petraeus collapses while testifying before the Senate armed services committee. Photograph: Astrid Riecken/EPA America's top commander, General David Petraeus, fainted during a congressional hearing as he was being grilled by senators sceptical about US strategy in Afghanistan. His collapse came about an hour into the hearing as a Republican senator, John McCain, questioned him about recent setbacks. McCain stopped mid-sentence, his face frozen, as Petraeus slumped forward from his seat on to the witness table. The hearing was suspended as Petraeus, looking dazed, was led out by army colleagues. He returned 20 minutes later, blaming not McCain's questions but dehydration.
• Obama besieged by worsening problems on many fronts
  By Margaret Talev, Jonathan S. Landay and David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — As a candidate for president, Barack Obama saw President George W. Bush's missteps in the Gulf Coast, war policy and the economy as easy targets for criticism. Now Obama is being dogged by variations on the same themes, his judgment under the microscope of public scrutiny and his options for action limited Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/15/95941/obama-besieged-by-worsening-problems.html#ixzz0r0Xino2L [Continuity]
• Impossible Choices in a World Depression
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 283, June 15, 2010 As the world's leaders and pundits continue to deny the reality of the world depression - they won't even use the word - the impossible choices that are faced by government after government become more and more obvious every day.
  So there it is - damned if you do, and damned if you don't. The financial speculators have created a disastrous fall in the world-economy. The ball was then thrown to the states to solve the problem. The states have less money and more demands on them. What can they do? They can borrow, until those who lend money won't do it, or demand too high a rate of interest. They can tax, and the businesses say that this will cut back their ability to create jobs. They can reduce expenditures. And in addition to the terrible pain this inflicts on everyone, but especially on the more vulnerable, this action also will reduce the possibility of growth, as Mr. Coulton points out for Spain. Of course, there is one big place to reduce expenditures - the military. Military expenditures do provide jobs but far fewer than if the money were used otherwise. This does not apply only to the biggest spenders like the United States. A virtually uncommented aspect of Greece's debt problems was its heavy expenditure on the military. But are governments ready to reduce significantly military expenditures? It doesn't seem too likely.
  The way out of all of this is not some small adjustment here or there - whether of the monetarist or the Keynesian variety. To emerge from the economic box in which the world finds itself requires a fundamental overhaul of the world-system. This will surely have to come, but how soon? [Crisis] [Military expenditure]
• Concern on Capitol Hill about Afghanistan war grows
  By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, June 15, 2010; A01 A series of political and military setbacks in Afghanistan has fed anxiety over the war effort in the past few weeks, shaking supporters of President Obama's counterinsurgency strategy and confirming the pessimism of those who had doubts about it from the start. The concerns, fed largely by unease over military operations in southern Afghanistan that are progressing slower than anticipated, spurred lawmakers to schedule last-minute hearings this week to assess progress on the battlefield and within the Afghan government. Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of the Central Command, and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Mich?le A. Flournoy are to appear Tuesday in the Senate and Wednesday in the House to answer questions about the offensives in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, and about what many see as the continuing erratic behavior of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. [AfPak] [Imperialism] [Client]
• Hillary for Defense? The president may also want her for veep to rally the base in 2012.
  By LESLIE H. GELB   The biggest political surprises often hide in plain sight. President Obama might be planning one because his re-election could hinge on it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be at the heart of this blockbuster. Here's how and why it could happen. Step one may come in a year or so when Defense Secretary Robert Gates retires as clouds darken over Afghanistan and possibly Iraq, and brawls erupt over cutting military spending. Mr. Gates has given Mr. Obama credibility on national security, which was why he was asked to stay at the Pentagon after the 2008 election. But there were other reasons. While Democrats knew they lacked public trust on national security, they couldn't scrape up a plausible Democrat for the job. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a former career military man, was a candidate but reportedly declined the honor. The White House would find itself in the same pickle after Mr. Gates's departure, with no Democrat commanding the necessary bipartisan stature. That is, no one except Hillary Clinton. Politically, no Democrat is better positioned. She has established herself as right of center or near conservative on national security. With Mr. Gates gone, Mr. Obama would need political cover, and Mrs. Clinton has the necessary hard-line standing in the country and in Congress. She'd give him more political protection for tough decisions on Afghanistan, for example, than would any other Democrat. She also has terrific relations with the military brass, including Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired generals like the highly respected Army four-star Jack Keane. She knows defense issues from her days on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Senate would approve her in two days.
  Her position at State could be readily filled by Chuck Hagel. The former Republican senator from Nebraska is generally aligned on foreign policy with Mr. Obama, perhaps more so than Mrs. Clinton herself. His confirmation would be easy. And removing this modest, no-fuss politician later on, if Mr. Obama wanted someone else at Foggy Bottom, would not make waves.
• U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan  
  Tyler Hicks/The New York Times A bleak Ghazni Province seems to offer little, but a Pentagon study says it may have among the world’s largest deposits of lithium. By JAMES RISEN Published: June 13, 2010 WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials. The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.  [Imperialism]
• Israel Names Panel to Examine Ship Raid  
  By ISABEL KERSHNER and FARES AKRAM Published: June 13, 2010 JERUSALEM — In an effort to dampen international criticism and stave off calls for an international inquiry, Israel announced the composition late Sunday of a government-appointed commission with foreign participation to investigate the circumstances surrounding its deadly commando raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza in late May.
  The Israeli panel, to be called the Independent Public Commission, will be led by a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice, Jacob Turkel. It will include two Israeli experts in international law and two foreign observers — Lord David Trimble, a Nobel Peace laureate from Ireland, and Brig. Gen. Ken Watkin, former judge advocate general of the Canadian Forces — whose inclusion is intended to add credibility to the inquiry and to secure foreign support for it. The proposed commission is to be presented to the Israeli cabinet on Monday for its approval, which is expected [Coverup] [Cheonan]  
• The Atlantic Bridge
  Group founded by Liam Fox to enhance the ‘Special relationship’ between Britain the US
• Israel’s Greatest Loss: Its Moral Imagination
  If a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions are inflicting, what hope is there for the rest of us? By By Henry Siegman Following Israel’s bloody interdiction of the Gaza Flotilla, I called a life-long friend in Israel to inquire about the mood of the country. My friend, an intellectual and a kind and generous man, has nevertheless long sided with Israeli hardliners. Still, I was entirely unprepared for his response. He told me—in a voice trembling with emotion—that the world’s outpouring of condemnation of Israel is reminiscent of the dark period of the Hitler era.
  So, yes, there is reason for Israelis, and for Jews generally, to think long and hard about the dark Hitler era at this particular time. For the significance of the Gaza Flotilla incident lies not in the questions raised about violations of international law on the high seas, or even about “who assaulted who” first on the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, but in the larger questions raised about our common human condition by Israel’s occupation policies and its devastation of Gaza’s civilian population. If a people who so recently experienced on its own flesh such unspeakable inhumanities cannot muster the moral imagination to understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions—and even its legitimate security concerns—are inflicting on another people, what hope is there for the rest of us? [Human rights] [Israel]
• Pentagon hunts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in bid to gag website
  Soldier Bradley Manning said to have leaked diplomatic cables to whistleblower, plus video of US troops killing Iraqis (236)Tweet this (113)Chris McGreal in Washington guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 June 2010 19.02 BST Article historyThe Wikileaks footage of an Apache helicopter attack that killed civilians in Iraq American officials are searching for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks in an attempt to pressure him not to publish thousands of confidential and potentially hugely embarrassing diplomatic cables that offer unfiltered assessments of Middle East governments and leaders. The Daily Beast, a US news reporting and opinion website, reported that Pentagon investigators are trying to track down Julian Assange – an Australian citizen who moves frequently between countries – after the arrest of a US soldier last week who is alleged to have given the whistleblower website a classified video of American troops killing civilians in Baghdad. The soldier, Bradley Manning, also claimed to have given WikiLeaks 260,000 pages of confidential diplomatic cables and intelligence assessments.
• David Cameron flight diverted over fears of Taliban attack
  Government plays down significance of scare as prime minister is forced to abandon visit to British troops in Helmand (5)Tweet this (24)Nicholas Watt in Camp Bastion guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 June 2010 20.09 BST Article history Speaking in Kabul, prime minister says 'nobody wants British troops to be in Afghanistan a moment longer than is necessary' Link to this video David Cameron was forced to abandon a visit to British troops on the frontline in Helmand province tonight after an intelligence report suggested the Taliban was plotting to target an unnamed VIP. The prime minister's Chinook helicopter diverted after five minutes in the air when the information was received. Aides said the intelligence first suggested that Taliban fighters were planning on shooting down a helicopter but that did not cause any alarm. But later information, in which militants were said to be targeting a VIP on board a helicopter in the area, was enough to persuade the military to cancel Cameron's's visit to the Shahzad patrol base in Helmand province. [Intelligence]
• Sanctions' Effectiveness Widely Questioned
  Jim Lobe* WASHINGTON, Jun 9 (IPS) - While top U.S. officials touted the U.N. Security Council's approval Wednesday of a new sanctions resolution against Iran as a major diplomatic breakthrough, most nuclear and Iran specialists say it is unlikely to be effective and could prove counterproductive. Even if, as expected, they are followed up by additional unilateral sanctions on the part of both the United States and the members of the European Union (EU), the aim of persuading Iran to curb its nuclear programme is unlikely to be achieved, according to these experts. "It's almost impossible to find anyone here in Washington who believes sanctions will make any difference," noted Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked on Iran issues under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush at a forum on Iran at the Wilson International Centre for Scholars Monday. "The Iranian leadership has demonstrated that under pressure they are most averse to compromise," she added, noting that the Islamic Republic has faced much more formidable diplomatic and economic pressures in its 31-year history, particularly during the Iran-Iraq War and when the price of oil fell to record lows. Other analysts said the new sanctions, particularly if combined with additional U.S. and EU measures directed at Iran's financial and energy sectors, are likely to strengthen hard-liners in Tehran and rally nationalist sentiment behind them. [Sanctions] [Iran]
• Israeli document: Gaza blockade isn't about security
  By Sheera Frenkel | McClatchy Newspapers JERUSALEM — As Israel ordered a slight easing of its blockade of the Gaza Strip Wednesday, McClatchy obtained an Israeli government document that describes the blockade not as a security measure but as "economic warfare" against the Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Palestinian territory. Israel imposed severe restrictions on Gaza in June 2007, after Hamas won elections and took control of the coastal enclave after winning elections there the previous year, and the government has long said that the aim of the blockade is to stem the flow of weapons to militants in Gaza. Last week, after Israeli commandos killed nine volunteers on a Turkish-organized Gaza aid flotilla, Israel again said its aim was to stop the flow of terrorist arms into Gaza. However, in response to a lawsuit by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli government explained the blockade as an exercise of the right of economic warfare. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/09/95621/israeli-document-gaza-blockade.html#ixzz0qR2scTng [Sanctions]
• Fisherman Confirmed Exposed to Mustard Agent
  Wednesday, June 9, 2010 A New Jersey fisherman who became ill and developed skin blisters earlier this week after his boat hauled in several aging munitions was confirmed to have come into contact with mustard blister agent, the Associated Press reported yesterday
  From the end of World War II through 1970, the U.S. Defense Department disposed of some conventional and chemical weapons by tossing them into offshore waters. Congress outlawed all munitions dumping in the seas in 1972. Patchy record-keeping has made it extremely difficult to figure out decisively what quantities and what kinds of munitions were disposed of in the oceans. A U.S. Army analysis in 2001 identified 74 cases of munitions dumping 42 in foreign offshore waters and 32 in domestic coastal waters. In one instance in 1967, the military offloaded more than 4,500 blister agent-filled bulk containers and 7,380 munitions filled with sarin nerve agent into waters off the New Jersey coast. A fisherman suffered mustard exposure in 1976 near Hawaii while a shell carrying the blister agent turned up six years ago in clamshell material used for a driveway in Delaware after being hauled up close to New Jersey. [cbw]
• Helen Thomas, under siege about Israel comments, retires
  By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Helen Thomas, the longest serving White House correspondent, retired Monday after comments she made about Israel over the weekend drew condemnation from both the White House and the White House Correspondents Association. Hearst News Service announced Thomas's retirement in a news story transmitted Monday morning. The story said her retirement was immediate. "I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians," the story quoted Thomas as saying. "They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.’’ Thomas will mark her 90th birthday on Aug. 4. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that Thomas's comments, in which she said Jews should leave Israel and return to Europe, were reprehensible. The White House Correspondents Association called them indefensible. The association's board also said it was reconsidering Thomas’s special seat in the front row of the White House briefing room. "I think those remarks were offensive and reprehensible," Gibbs said when asked about her comments at Monday’s press briefing. "I think she should and has apologized. Because, obviously, those remarks …do not reflect, certainly, the opinion of, I assume, most of the people in here and certainly not of the administration." Thomas did not attend Monday morning's briefing, which feaetured Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the administration's point man on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Thomas was asked about Israel on May 27. The video was recorded by the website RabbiLive.com on the day the White House held a Jewish Heritage event. The video was released Friday. "Any comments on Israel," an offscreen voice asks Thomas. “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine,” Thomas says. “Where should they go?” the offscreen voice asks. She responds that they should go home to Germany, Poland or the United States. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/07/95436/white-house-comments-about-helen.html#ixzz0qFL0O380 [Media] [Israel]
• General sounds alarm on U.S. Army training
  By Nancy A Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — The Army's ability to train its forces is "increasingly at risk" because of the nation's protracted commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the general in charge of training has told the Army's chief of staff. In a Feb. 16 memo to Gen. George W. Casey, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, says that the Army has lost thousands of uniformed trainers because of troop demands in Iraq and Afghanistan, has had to put junior officers in charge of some key training functions and has delayed initial instruction for nearly 500 pilots because it doesn't have enough trainers. Only 30 percent of the instructors at Army training schools are in the military, Dempsey says, with the Army increasingly dependent on outside contractors. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/03/89799/general-sounds-alarm-on-us-army.html?storylink=MI_emailed#ixzz0qFLOgpTQ [Privatisation]
• Helen Thomas never shied from piping up. In the end, that was the problem.
  By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, June 8, 2010 Helen Thomas ended a storied career at the White House dating from the Kennedy era on Monday, days after making inflammatory remarks on Israel to a rabbi with a video camera. "Frankly, I was shocked," said Rabbi David Nesenoff, who was at the White House for a Jewish heritage celebration on May 27 and simply asked the Hearst Newspapers columnist, "Any comments on Israel?" Her response -- that Israeli Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Germany, Poland and America -- triggered a wave of denunciations that a narrowly worded apology did little to quell. "This was vile, a paradigm of hate talk," said Nesenoff, who was accompanied by his 17-year-old son and a friend. "She felt comfortable saying this in front of two boys with yarmulkes on." While the 89-year-old Thomas is renowned as a trailblazer who aggressively questioned 10 presidents -- including President Obama, whom she pressed last month on Afghanistan -- her hostility toward Israel has been no secret within the Beltway. Though she gave up her correspondent's job a decade ago, she retained her front-row briefing-room seat, even as colleagues sometimes rolled their eyes at her obvious biases. "She asked questions no hard-news reporter would ask, that carried an agenda and reflected her point of view, and there were some reporters who felt that was inappropriate," said CBS correspondent Mark Knoller. "As a columnist she felt totally unbound from any of the normal policies of objectivity (sic) that every other reporter in the room felt compelled to abide by, and sometimes her questions were embarrassing to other reporters." [Media]
• Civil-Military Relations and the U.S. Strategy Deficit
  By Mackubin T. Owens February 2010 The primary focus of those who have examined civil-military relations since the 1990s has been on the issue of civilian control of the military. Of course, civilian control is important, especially in the case of a liberal society such as the United States. But civilian control is only one part of the civil-military equation. The effectiveness of the military is equally important because failure on the battlefield threatens the very existence of the polity the military is sworn to defend. The issue of civilian control means very little if the military instrument is unable to ensure the survival of the state. Unfortunately very little has been written on the relationship between civil-military relations and success in war. But difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought the issue to the fore. Writing in the spring 2009 issue of World Affairs, Richard Kohn observed that: Nearly twenty years after the end of the Cold War, the American military, financed by more money than the entire rest of the world spends on its armed forces, failed to defeat insurgencies or fully suppress sectarian civil wars in two crucial countries, each with less than a tenth of the U.S. population, after overthrowing those nations’ governments in a matter of weeks. He attributes this lack of effectiveness to a decline in the U.S. military’s professional competence with regard to strategic planning. [US global strategy] [Pentagon] [Pacification]
• Can the United States Do Grand Strategy?
  FPRI-Temple University Consortium on Grand Strategy • The Telegram No. 3 April 2010 By Walter A. McDougall Walter A. McDougall is Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania and a Senior Fellow of FPRI, where he co-chairs the History Institute for Teachers. This paper was delivered in October 2009 at the Consortium on Grand Strategy, a project sponsored jointly by FPRI and Temple University’s Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy and chaired by Richard Immerman and William Hitchcock. The Consortium was established in 2009 as part of the Hertog Program on Grand Strategy. In spring 2003, following the last lecture in my survey course on U.S. diplomatic history since 1776, a brilliant, inquisitive student approached me in the hall to ask a final, confidential question. She said that my course helped her appreciate, as never before, how swiftly the United States had become the mightiest nation ever, with unprecedented military, economic, and cultural influence. But how long would it last? How long did I think the United States could stay on top? [US global strategy] [Pentagon] [Decline]
• Turkey's foreign policy moves raise concern in West and at home
  By Mary Beth Sheridan Monday, June 7, 2010 ISTANBUL -- The women wore veils. The men donned green Hamas headbands with swirling Arabic script. They gathered by the thousands in a sunny, working-class plaza in Istanbul, bellowing: "Damn Israel!" The Saturday demonstration seemed incongruous with the image Turkey has long had in the West as a secular friend of Israel and the United States. But in recent days, public anger has flared over Israel's bloody seizure of a Turkish-flagged aid ship headed to the Gaza Strip, which is under an Israeli blockade. The incident occurred as Turkey has been strengthening ties with Muslim governments in the region -- becoming more vocally pro-Palestinian and trying to head off new U.N. sanctions on Iran. That has prompted worried speculation at home and abroad: Is Turkey turning away from the West? [Imperialism] [US global strategy] [Israel]
• Afghan Heroine (sic) Flow Channeled to Russia
  24.05.2010 Alexander Barentsev, political scientist According to head of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Assistant Secretary of State D. Johnson, the US State Department`s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report should reject the idea of opium poppy crop eradication.
  It must be realized that at present all conceivable conditions are created in Afghanistan for channeling the flow of heroin from the country to Russia. The answer to the question whose interests the arrangement is supposed to advance should not be hard to find. [Drugs] [US global strategy]
• Washington Asks: What to Do About Israel?
  By HELENE COOPER June 4, 2010 WASHINGTON — Some topics are so inflammatory that they are never discussed without first inserting a number of caveats. And so, when Anthony Cordesman, a foreign policy dignitary in this town’s think tank circuit, dropped an article on Wednesday headlined “Israel as a Strategic Liability,” he made sure to open with a plethora of qualifications. First, he noted, America’s commitment to Israel is motivated by morality and ethics — a reaction to the Holocaust, to Western anti-Semitism and to American foot-dragging before and during World War II that left European Jews slaughtered by the Nazis. Second, Israel is a democracy with the same values as the United States. Third, the United States will never abandon Israel, and will help it keep its military edge over its neighbors. And America will guard Israel against an Iranian nuclear threat. But once Mr. Cordesman had dispensed with what in the newspaper world is called the “to-be-sure” paragraphs, he laid out a dispassionate argument that has gained increased traction in Washington — both inside the Obama administration (including the Pentagon, White House and State Department) and outside, during forums, policy breakfasts, even a seder in Bethesda. Recent Israeli governments, particularly the one led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Cordesman argued, have ignored the national security concerns of its biggest benefactor, the United States, and instead have taken steps that damage American interests abroad. [US global strategy] [Global insurgency] [Client]
• Surveillance cameras in Birmingham track Muslims' every move
  About 150 car numberplate recognition cameras installed in two Muslim areas, paid for by government anti-terrorism fund (217)Tweet this (109)Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 June 2010 17.30 BST Article history An automatic numberplate recognition camera to the right of a CCTV camera in the mainly Asian area of Sparkbrook in Birmingham. Photograph: Andrew Fox Counterterrorism police have targeted hundreds of surveillance cameras on two Muslim areas of Birmingham, enabling them to track the precise movements of people entering and leaving the neighbourhoods. The project has principally been sold to locals as an attempt to combat antisocial behaviour, vehicle crime and drug dealing in the area. But the cameras have been paid for by a £3m grant from a government fund, the Terrorism and Allied Matters Fund, which is administered by the Association of Chief Police Officers. About 150 automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR) cameras have been installed in Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook in recent months. Birmingham's two predominantly Muslim suburbs will be covered by three times more ANPR cameras than are used to monitor the entire city centre. They include about 40 cameras classed as "covert", meaning they have been concealed from public view. [Surveillance] [Global insurgency] [human rights]
• Immigrant Convicted of Violating Iran Embargo
  By BENJAMIN WEISER Published: June 4, 2010 An Iranian immigrant who said he came to the United States “to live the American dream” was convicted on Friday of violating the Iran trade embargo by using an informal money-transfer system known as hawala to move millions of dollars between the United States and Iran. Post a CommentHawala, which operates outside normal banking channels, is used widely, often by expatriates and migrant workers from around the world to send legally earned money back to their families. Prosecutors charged that the defendant, Mahmoud Reza Banki, 33, obtained $3.4 million from family members in Iran and used his bank account in New York to help dozens of other people and firms around the world move an equivalent amount of money to Iran. Mr. Banki “played a critical role in the operation of this hawala system,” a federal prosecutor, E. Danya Perry, told the jury in her closing argument on Wednesday. She said Mr. Banki helped facilitate transfers through the bank account in New York and via messages sent to Iran. “He did this over and over and over again, over several years,” she said. Mr. Banki, who had been held without bond since his arrest in January, looked stunned and shook his head in apparent disbelief as the verdict was announced. [Sanctions] [Human rights]
• U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role
  By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 4, 2010 Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials. Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group. [Imperialism] [Continuity]
• Obama Cancels Asia Trip as Concern on Spill Mounts
  By PETER BAKER and HENRY FOUNTAIN Published: June 4, 2010 Sign in to Recommend WASHINGTON – President Obama canceled his trip to Australia, Indonesia and Guam late Thursday night as oil continued to stream into the Gulf of Mexico in what he has called the worst environmental disaster in American history
  This was the second time Mr. Obama has scrubbed the trip to Australia and Indonesia. He was originally scheduled to travel there in March but canceled at the last minute to stay in Washington to lobby for passage of his health care legislation. [Domestic]
• Fidel Castro claims Obama lives in fantasy world
  By WILL WEISSERT The Associated Press Wednesday, June 2, 2010; 12:34 PM HAVANA -- Fidel Castro speculated Wednesday that a nuclear strike on Iran might help President Barack Obama win a second term in the White House and also suggested the United States could attack North Korea.
  Castro also referred to "the current danger North Korea could be attacked by the United States" because of "the recent incident that happened in that country's waters" - apparently a reference to allegations that North Korea attacked and sank a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors. Castro, 83, said China might be able to block such an attack by using its veto in the U.N. Security Council, implying that Washington was likely to seek that body's authorization before a move against North Korea. [Cheonan]
• U.S. is world's top user of targeted killings, U.N. says
  By the CNN Wire Staff Washington (CNN) -- The United States was identified Wednesday as the world's No. 1 user of targeted killings -- largely as a result of its dependence on unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A report released by the United Nations called the drone attacks part of a "strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability" and warned that they are contributing to an erosion of longstanding international rules governing warfare. It urged states to identify publicly the rules of international law believed to provide a basis for any attempted targeted killings as well as the rationale for deciding to kill instead of capture individuals. "The rules being set today are going to govern the conduct of many states tomorrow," said New York University law professor Philip Alston, the report's author. "The international community needs to be more forceful in demanding accountability." Alston, who also works for the U.N. Human Rights Council, said roughly 40 countries possess drone technology, and many of them either already have or attempting to acquire the capability to launch missiles from drones. "I'm particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals around the globe," he said. This "ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions." In the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency, unmanned aircraft -- or drones -- attacked militant targets 45 times. Since President Barack Obama took office, the numbers have risen sharply: 53 last year and 39 so far this year in Pakistan alone, according to the New America Foundation, a Washington foreign policy think tank. [Imperialism] [Double standards] [Legality] [Personalisation] [Assassination]
• Al-Qaeda is likely to replace No. 3 leader with ease
  By Craig Whitlock and Greg Miller Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The death of al-Qaeda's third-ranking leader in a drone strike was portrayed by U.S. officials Tuesday as a severe setback to the terrorist organization. But if history is any guide, the network will have no problem replacing him. On at least 10 occasions in the past decade, al-Qaeda has sustained the loss of a senior operative described at some point as the No. 3 figure in its hierarchy. Each time, the group has moved quickly to appoint a successor, demonstrating a resilience that has enabled it to survive a dozen years of open warfare with the United States and defy repeated predictions of its demise. [Global insurgency] [personalisation][Assassination]
• President Obama's been under a cloud
  By Dana Milbank Wednesday, June 2, 2010 Dr. Frankenstein: What a filthy job! Igor: Could be worse. Dr. Frankenstein: How? Igor: Could be raining. [It starts to rain.] -- "Young Frankenstein" The heavens must be angry at Barack Obama. It had been probably the worst week of his presidency so far, his administration at the mercy of events: the failure to cap the oil spill in the gulf, the economic crisis in Europe, the new tensions with Iran and North Korea, the developing scandal over the White House's job offer to Joe Sestak and, finally, Israel's deadly interception of an aid mission to Gaza. Then came the rain. [Obama]
• American Denial Living in a Can’t-Do Nation
  By Tom Engelhardt Graduates of the class of 2010, I’m honored to have been asked to address you today, but I would not want to be you. I graduated in 1966 on a gloriously sunny day; then again, it was a sunnier moment in this country. We were, after all, still surfing the crest of post-World War II American wealth and productivity. The first oil crisis of 1973 wasn’t even on the horizon.
  You, the graduating class of 2010, are caught in a system; then again, so are our leaders. In recent years, we’ve had two presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who could not be mistaken for one another. In most obvious ways -- style, thinking, personality, politics, sensibility, impulses -- they couldn’t be more different, as have been the ways they have approached problems. One was a true believer in the glories of American military and executive power, the other is a manager of a declining power and what passes for a political “pragmatist” in our world. Yet, more times than is faintly comfortable, the two of them have ended up in approximately the same policy places -- whether on the abridgement of liberties, the expansion of the secret activities of military special operations forces across the Greater Middle East, the CIA drone war in the Pakistani borderlands and elsewhere, the treatment of prisoners, our expanding wars, Pentagon budgets, offshore oil drilling and nuclear power, or other topics which matter in our lives. This should be more startling than it evidently is for most Americans. If the policies of these two disparate figures often have a tweedledum-and-tweedledee-ish look to them, then what we face is not specific party politics or individual style, but a system with its own steamroller force, and its own set of narrow, repetitive “solutions” to our problems. We also face an increasingly militarized, privatized government, its wheels greased by the funds of giant corporations, that now regularly seems to go about the business of creating new Katrinas.
  The hollowing out, however, goes deeper -- right down to the feeling that, with disaster in the air, little can be done and nothing reversed. The can-do nation of my youth has given way to a can’t-do nation with a busted government. [Decline] [Continuity]
• German president Horst Köhler quits over Afghanistan gaffe
  Abrupt resignation over 'misunderstandings' adds to pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel (36)Tweet this (71)Kate Connolly in Berlin guardian.co.uk, Monday 31 May 2010 19.21 BST Article history Television journalists stand outside Bellevue palace in the rain after the surprise resignation of the German president, Horst Köhler. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images Germany's president, Horst Köhler, resigned without warning today, after intense criticism of remarks in which he suggested military deployments were central to the country's economic interests. Köhler's departure leaves a vacuum that will only add to Angela Merkel's growing political woes, amid criticism over a lack of decisive leadership, and a four-year low rating for her government in opinion polls. Köhler, 67, was accused of advocating a form of "gunboat policy" after saying that a large economic power like Germany, with its significant global trading interests, must be willing to deploy its military abroad. Though a member of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), he has previously managed to stay out of the political fray. In a radio interview given on his return from a tour of German military bases in Afghanistan earlier this month, Köhler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund, said that the largely pacifist German public was finally coming to terms with the concept that their country could no longer avoid involvement in military missions, which helped "protect our interests, for example, free trade routes, or to prevent regional instability, which might certainly have a negative effect on our trade, jobs and income". [Imperialism] [AfPak]
• Israeli Raid Complicates (sic) U.S. Ties and Push for Peace
  By HELENE COOPER and ETHAN BRONNER Published: May 31, 2010 WASHINGTON — Israel’s deadly commando raid on Monday on a flotilla trying to break a blockade of Gaza complicated President Obama’s efforts to move ahead on Middle East peace negotiations and introduced a new strain into an already tense relationship between the United States and Israel. [Double standards]
• America and the world’s jungle
  Paul Rogers, 27 May 2010 An official directive that grants the United States army expanded counterinsurgency powers reveals Washington’s imprisonment in an exhausted vision of security. About the author An early decision of Bill Clinton after he became president in January 1993 was the appointment of R James Woolsey as director of the CIA. At his Senate confirmation hearings, Woolsey was asked how he would to characterise the current era, following the end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He replied that the United States had slain a "large dragon" (the Soviet threat) only to find itself living "in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes" (see “A world beyond control”, 22 May 2008). [Imperialism] [US military] [Agency] [US global strategy]

• Illinois Senate candidate admits claim about military award was inaccurate
  By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 29, 2010; 5:41 PM The Republican candidate for President Obama's old Senate seat has admitted to inaccurately claiming he received the U.S. Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year award for his service during NATO's conflict with Serbia in the late 1990s. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Navy reservist who was elected to Congress in 2001, acknowledged the error in his official biography after The Washington Post began looking into whether he had received the prestigious award, which is given by top Navy officials to a single individual annually.
  Kirk was assigned to a unit based in Aviano, Italy, during the conflict. A professional group, the National Military Intelligence Association, gave the unit an award for outstanding service, according to a revised résumé posted on Kirk's Web site Saturday. The association's Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor Award celebrates "the exceptional achievements of an outstanding Naval Intelligence career professional," but the citation in 2000 contains no mention of Kirk and instead designates the entire Intelligence Division Electronic Attack Wing at Aviano. Kirk, whose campaign has emphasized his military service as a reservist, similarly misstated the award during a House committee hearing in March 2002. In a remark recorded by C-Span, he said, "I was the Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year," an achievement he depicted as providing special qualifications to discuss national security spending. [Corruption]
• Kyrgyzstan as a Geopolitical Pivot in Great Power Rivalries
  Washington, Moscow, Beijing and the Geopolitics of Central Asia
  By F. William Engdahl Global Research, May 25, 2010 Part I: Kyrgyzstan as a Geopolitical Pivot The remote Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan is what Britain’s Halford Mackinder might call a geopolitical ‘pivot’—a land that, owing to its geographical characteristics, holds a pivotal position in Great Power rivalries. Today the tiny remote country is being shaken by what appears to be an extremely well-planned popular uprising to topple US-backed president Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Preliminary analysts suggested that Moscow had more than a passing interest in promoting regime change there and that the events unfolding might be Moscow’s attempt to stage its own ‘reverse’ version of Washington’s ‘Color Revolutions’ -- Georgia’s Rose Revolution of 2003 or Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, as well as the 2005 Tulip Revolution that brought the pro-US Bakiyev to power. In the midst of this ongoing power shift in Kyrgyzstan, however, who is doing what to whom, is far from clear. At the very least, what is playing out has huge strategic implications for military security throughout the Eurasian Heartland -- from China to Russia and beyond. It therefore has staggering implications for the future of the United States in Afghanistan and Central Asia and by extension in all Eurasia.
• U.S. Cyber Command: Waging War In World’s Fifth Battlespace
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, May 27, 2010 Stop NATO - 2010-05-26 On May 21 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced the activation of the Pentagon’s first computer command. And the world’s first comprehensive, multi-service military cyber operation. U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), initially approved on June 23, 2009, attained the status of what the Pentagon calls initial operations capability eleven months afterward. It is to be fully operational later this year. CYBERCOM is based at Fort Meade, Maryland, which also is home to the National Security Agency (NSA). The head of the NSA and the related Central Security Service is Keith Alexander, U.S. Army lieutenant general on the morning of May 21 but promoted to four-star general before the formal launching of Cyber Command later in the day so as to become its commander. [Cyberwar]
• Obama's national security strategy: A little George Bush, lots of Bill Clinton
  By Samuel R. Berger Sunday, May 30, 2010 President Obama's national security strategy released by the White House on Thursday, tackles a delicate but unavoidable question: How do we respond to security challenges in an era of financial distress at home and reordering of political power abroad? For some time now, it has been clear that U.S. national security strategy needs rethinking. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the global economic crisis, cyber-terror threats and even the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico underscore that the challenges America faces in 2010 have changed, even from just a decade ago. And while U.S. military supremacy is certainly not at risk, new international arrangements -- such as the shift in focus from the G-8 club of powerful nations to the G-20, which incorporates emerging countries such as China and Brazil -- are needed so that the costs and benefits of a stable international order are shared. The United States cannot solve most global threats without help, nor should we bear the burden alone. [US global strategy] [Inversion] [Decline]
• The American Century Is So Over
  Dilip Hiro May 27, 2010 Irrespective of their politics, flawed leaders share a common trait. They generally remain remarkably oblivious to the harm they do to the nation they lead. George W. Bush is a salient recent example, as is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. When it comes to foreign policy, we are now witnessing a similar phenomenon at the Obama White House. Here is the Obama pattern: choose a foreign leader to pressure. Threaten him with dire consequences if he does not bend to Washington’s will. When he refuses to submit and instead responds vigorously, back off quickly and overcompensate for failure by switching into a placatory mode. [Obama] [Continuity]
• General Petraeus's Secret Ops
  Robert Dreyfuss May 25, 2010 A secret military directive signed last September 30 by General David Petraeus, the Centcom commander, authorizes a vast expansion of secret US military special ops from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East to Central Asia and “appears to authorize specific operations in Iran,” according to the New York Times. If President Obama knew about this, authorized it and still supports it, then Obama has crossed a red line, and the president will stand revealed as an aggressive, militaristic liberal interventionist who bears a closer resemblance to the president he succeeded than to the ephemeral reformer that he pretended to be in 2008, when he ran for office. If he didn’t know, if he didn’t understand the order, and if he’s unwilling to cancel it now that it’s been publicized, then Obama is a feckless incompetent. Take your pick. If Congress has any guts at all, it will convene immediate investigative hearings into a power grab by Petraeus, a politically ambitious general, and the Pentagon’s arrogant Special Operations team, led by Admiral Eric T. Olson, who collaborated with Petraeus. And Congress needs to ask the White House, What did you know, and when did you know it?
  The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.… The seven-page directive appears to authorize specific operations in Iran, most likely to gather intelligence about the country’s nuclear program or identify dissident groups that might be useful for a future military offensive. [Imperialism] [Takeover] [Pentagon] [Obama]
• CIA's secret Iraq weapon revealed: a Saddam gay sex tape
  Bizarre US plots included exploding cigars to kill Fidel Castro and fake video of Osama bin Laden's campfire drinking (361)Tweet this (91)Paul Harris in New York guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 May 2010 19.17 BST Article history A portrait of Saddam Hussein at Baghdad University in 2003. Photograph: Francoise De Mulder/ Corbis In their time, America's secret agencies have tried some outlandish schemes to attack their country's enemies, including, most famously, an attempt to do away with Cuba's Fidel Castro by using an exploding cigar. But in a scenario more the preserve of careless Hollywood starlets such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, the CIA appears to have plotted to undermine Saddam Hussein with a gay sex tape. According to the Washington Post's security blog, some of America's spooks believed that shooting a fake video of Saddam cavorting with a teenage boy might destabilise his regime in the runup to the US-led invasion in 2003. "It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera. Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session," the Washington Post quoted one former CIA official as saying. Nor was the Saddam sex tape the only idea floating around the more bizarre corners of the CIA's Iraq Operations Group. Other ploys involved interrupting Iraqi television with a false newsflash that would announce Saddam was handing over power to his hated and feared son Uday. The presumed idea was to shock the Iraqi people into rising up against their leaders and thus make the invasion a lot easier. Perhaps thankfully, the tape and fake news broadcast were never made and the Post reported that top CIA brass repeatedly rejected the ideas. But that did not stop a CIA video being shot of a fake Osama bin Laden sitting around a camp fire, drinking booze and boasting of his own gay conquests. The video apparently used some of the CIA's "darker skinned" employees as extras playing the terror chief's henchmen. It does not seem to have been released. [Disinformation][Black] [Softwar]
• It’s Called ‘War Porn’
  By Tanya Cariina Hsu Global Research, May 25, 2010 “And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honour and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.” George Bernard Shaw, Caesar’s Monologue, “Caesar and Cleopatra,” 1898 War has always been a turn-on, its thrill as old as mankind itself. It is intense; it is raw; it is primal. It reaches into every nerve, so carnal it borders on the sexually erotic. And many who cannot participate want to watch. It’s called war porn.[1] As a way to bypass blockages placed against credit card purchases placed from Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers swap their own footage of enemy kills with sexual pornography sites, in exchange for X-rated videos. Military personnel regularly submit thousands of these' snuff videos’ enhanced with heavy metal rock music; the more graphic the footage the higher the rating attributed by website viewers.
  Just as the slaughter of civilians can be viewed in the comfort of an armchair in America, the videos are just as readily accessible by the very enemy the US military seeks to eradicate. It is a world wide web, after all. The Iraqi who has witnessed his entire family blown to pieces by an American bomb, the Afghan who has experienced nothing but war since his birth, the Pakistani who suffers US drones dropping missiles on his land: they are each able to watch the same scenes in their own homes. They too hear the thrilling cries of a soldier as he relishes dropping explosives upon families’ homes, on a mother and child walking along a road, or on a group of men returning from a day’s work. They too can see the macabre mauling and mutilation by dogs as they tear into the remains of an Iraqi soldier, or view compilation videos of ‘identify the internal body parts' lay strewn across the ground, audible cheers in the background byte soldiers as they engage. Watching war porn, the enemy also feels a burning rush. Not of the electric bolt of adrenalin surging through his body when a trigger is pulled, but from the passion for revenge. [Imperialism]
• Crises trigger global flight from risk
  By Jennifer Hughes, Senior Markets Correspondent Published: May 25 2010 19:09 | Last updated: May 25 2010 23:44 Fears of a eurozone banking crisis and rising tensions on the Korean peninsula rocked global markets on Tuesday as investors sold risky assets and sought safety in the government debt of countries like Germany and the US. [Cheonan] [Unintended consequences]
• The tragicomedy of Iran sanctions
  By Massoud Parsi Saturday, May 22, 2010 15:16 Mecca time, 12:16 GMT FOCUS: OPINION In recent days, the debate surrounding Iran's nuclear programme has taken a number of unexpected and dramatic turns. On Monday, a joint declaration by Iran, Turkey and Brazil stated that Iran will ship 1,200kg of low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for higher-enriched nuclear fuel for a medical research reactor. The declaration was the first concrete step toward implementing a proposal presented by Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the IAEA, approximately a year before and supported by the UN security council just six months ago.
  It has also reaffirmed the fears of many regarding US intentions: the administration of Barack Obama, the US president, remains every bit as unilateralist as that of George Bush, his predecessor, and it displays equal disdain for multilateral negotiations despite the new rhetoric. Peace appears to be a non-option for the Nobel Peace Prize winner. And with such 'leadership', the UN security council sinks further towards irrelevance or perhaps even self-destruction.
  The timing is apt. Iran marks May 22 as the anniversary of its economic 'siege' by the US. Following the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, Jimmy Carter, the then US president, imposed sanctions on Iran, freezing around $12bn worth of Iranian assets abroad [Sanctions] [Continuity]
• The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment
  June 10, 2010 by Peter Beinart In 2003, several prominent Jewish philanthropists hired Republican pollster Frank Luntz to explain why American Jewish college students were not more vigorously rebutting campus criticism of Israel. In response, he unwittingly produced the most damning indictment of the organized American Jewish community that I have ever seen [Zionism] [Israel]
• Iran, Sun Tzu and the dominatrix
  By Pepe Escobar
  Let's face it: Hillary Clinton is one hell of a dominatrix. At first the United States Secretary of State said the Brazil-Turkey mediation to get Iran to accept a nuclear fuel swap was destined to fail. Then the US State Department said it was the "last chance" for an agreement without sanctions. And finally, less than 24 hours after a successful agreement in Tehran, Hillary whips the UN Security Council into submission and triumphantly proclaims to the world a draft resolution for a fourth UN round of sanctions against Iran has been reached. She framed the drive towards sanctions as "an answer to the efforts undertaken in Tehran over the last few days". Wait a minute. Immediately after a genuine - and fruitful - mediation on a very sensitive dossier by two emerging powers - and honest brokers - in the multipolar world, Brazil and Turkey, Washington and its two European Union allies at the Security Council, France and Britain, torpedo it. Is this what passes for global "diplomacy"? No wonder key US allies Brazil and Turkey, both non-permanent members of the Security Council, and both key regional powers, were fuming after such a public slapping. Brazil at first said it would not even discuss sanctions at the UN. Then Brazil and Turkey sent a formal letter to the UN, asking to be part of the negotiations of the "Iran Six" about the sanctions "to prevent the adoption of measures going against a peaceful solution".
• Prepare to be pummelled by the political predictions
  The political pundits are out in force – but should we set much store by their predictions? Probably not (58) o Aditya Chakrabortty o The Guardian, Tuesday 13 April 2010 Get the towels ready. Stock up on those smelling salts. And water, buckets of water. Whatever you do, prepare yourself – because over the next 23 days, the political pundits are going to give you a battering.
  Having strident views, however wrong, is probably also better for an expert's career. After Tetlock presented his findings in San Francisco a few years ago, his host, Stewart Brand, told a story that officials haven't since denied. In the 1980s, Brand's business partner was asked to speak to the top brass at the CIA about the outlook for the Soviet Union. He ran through a few scenarios, including one in which the Soviet bloc broke up. One sign that this might happen, he said, would be if a relative- unknown called Mikhail Gorbachev rose up through the party ranks. At this point, one of the CIA analysts jumped in. The presentation was fine, he said, but there was no way the Soviet Union was going to break up – not in his lifetime, not in his children's lifetime. That analyst's name, said Brand, was Robert M Gates. He is now the US secretary of defence.[Intelligence] [Prediction]
• Tabloid tape shows Sarah Ferguson offering access to ex-husband for cash
  By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 24, 2010 A London tabloid disclosed video footage Sunday of Sarah Ferguson telling an undercover reporter that she would arrange access to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, in return for substantial payments. The Duchess of York did not dispute the authenticity of the tape, in which she appears to ask for a down payment of $40,000 in cash, followed by 500,000 pounds (about $724,000), which she says would "open doors." She said in a statement: "I very deeply regret the situation and the embarrassment caused. It is true that my financial situation is under stress, however, that is no excuse for a serious lapse in judgment."
  On the video, Ferguson, 50, invokes the prince -- the couple, who have two daughters, divorced in 1996 -- by saying: "Look after me, and he'll look after you. . . . You'll get it back tenfold. I can open any door you want." [Corruption] [Media]
• Into Kandahar, Yesterday and Tomorrow
  By JOHN F. BURNS Published: May 21, 2010 LONDON — In the postcards of the mind, it is the starkest of all the images of Kandahar, dating back more than 20 years to the period immediately after Soviet troops withdrew from the city, and standing ever since as a grim warning of the folly of foreign military adventures in Afghanistan: hundreds of acres of rubble, whole quarters of the city reduced to fields of blasted concrete and steel, and further out, in the poorer districts, a shattered chocolate-box of a landscape formed by ragged mud walls that had once been home to tens of thousands of people seeking refuge from the war raging in the Afghan hinterland. Outfought by the mujahedeen fighters of the 1980s, and desperate to hang on in the city that more than any other symbolizes Afghanistan’s history of national resistance, Soviet forces had resorted, like the Americans in Vietnam, to obliteration by bombing. That was as good as an admission that they had lost, and when they finally pulled back across the Hindu Kush, they left behind little by way of a memorial to the 14,000 Soviet troops who lost their lives, or to the Kremlin’s tens of billions of wasted rubles, beyond the scrap of blasted helicopters, tanks and armored vehicles that litter Afghanistan to this day. The images of that dismal time came rushing back last week when the Taliban, legatees of the mujahedeen, sent a suicide bomber in a vehicle loaded with nearly a ton of high explosives to attack a NATO convoy in western Kabul, killing at least 18 people, among them five NATO soldiers, four of them officers. In the grisly calculus of the current conflict, the attack was a Taliban triumph, and photographs from the scene pressed the message home. Behind the carnage, like a forbidding sentinel, stood the artillery-blasted ruins of the old royal palace at Darulaman, another monument to the Soviet disaster. When I walked through the Kandahar rubble in the spring of 1989, the Soviet Union’s collapse, hastened by the imperial overreach in Afghanistan, was barely three years away. Now, like others with experience of that time, I find recollections of the Soviet debacle sounding like a tocsin in the mind, warning of the miseries that await America if the war’s trajectory remains as it is, toward expanding influence for the Taliban and their Al Qaeda cohorts, and mounting signs, for the corrupt Kabul government and its frustrated allies, that the war against the Islamic militants may ultimately be unwinnable. [AfPak] [Global insurgency]
• Hillary Clinton takes break from international issues, visits world's fair in China
  By John Pomfret Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, May 23, 2010 SHANGHAI -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton took a few hours off Saturday from her attempts to ensure that war doesn't erupt on the Korean Peninsula and that Iran doesn't get the bomb to bask in one of the singular successes of her 17 months as the nation's top diplomat: the U.S. pavilion at China's first world's fair. Clinton toured the American and Chinese pavilions at Expo 2010 Shanghai China, exchanged pleasantries with local officials, cooed over children's artwork, hobnobbed with the expo's Gumby-like mascots and was serenaded by scattered calls of "We love you, Hillary!" "I'm just relieved," Clinton said when asked how she felt about the experience. She has reason to be. When she took office in January 2009, U.S. participation in the event was questionable.
  The result, however, resembles more a convention center in a medium-size American city than a national showcase -- a warren of dark rooms with movie screens that pales in comparison to the ambitious pavilions of, among others, Saudi Arabia, which features the world's biggest Imax screen, and Germany, festooned with hundreds of giant red balls. North Korea's pavilion has a fountain, a grotto and videos of "real life" in Pyongyang. Iran's boasts exhibitions of scientific equipment, a stuffed version of its first cloned goat on the first floor and a carpet market, with Iranian fruit juices, upstairs. In addition, the message Clinton experienced at the American pavilion was so larded with corporate advertising that even some of the visiting U.S. officials appeared to have been taken aback. [Incompetence]
• Times Square bomber: Pakistani novels shed light on why
  By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers KARACHI, Pakistan — Americans who are searching for an explanation for the attempted bombing of New York's Times Square this month should pick up two recent and critically acclaimed novels by Pakistani authors, which tell how the events that followed 9/11 made Pakistani New Yorkers feel alienated and angry. [Global insurgency]
• British troops in Helmand placed under US command
  • Move likely to provoke mixed feelings among veterans • Announcement made as British soldier is killed in Helmand (11)Tweet this (22)Richard Norton-Taylor, security editor guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 May 2010 17.36 BST Article history British soldiers walk towards a military helicopter in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photograph: Afp/AFP/Getty Images British troops based in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan are to come under US operational command in a move publicly welcomed by defence chiefs today but likely to provoke mixed feelings among veterans of the conflict. The decision will immediately affect about 8,000 British troops. Helmand, the most dangerous province in Afghanistan, has been regarded as very much a British responsibility. The move reflects the growing number of US troops being deployed in Helmand – about 20,000 – and the reality that the UK does not have sufficient forces to counter an insurgency that shows little sign of diminishing.
• Supplanting the United States Constitution: War, National Emergency and "Continuity of Government"
  By Peter Dale Scott Global Research, May 19, 2010 In July 1987, during the Iran-Contra Hearings grilling of Oliver North, the American public got a glimpse of “highly sensitive” emergency planning North had been involved in. Ostensibly these were emergency plans to suspend the American constitution in the event of a nuclear attack (a legitimate concern). But press accounts alleged that the planning was for a more generalized suspension of the constitution. As part of its routine Iran-contra coverage, the following exchange was printed in the New York Times, but without journalistic comment or follow-up: [Congressman Jack] Brooks: Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C. were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster? Both North’s attorney and Sen. Daniel Inouye, the Democratic Chair of the Committee, responded in a way that showed they were aware of the issue: Brendan Sullivan [North's counsel, agitatedly]: Mr. Chairman? [Senator Daniel] Inouye: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch upon that? Brooks: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed, by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was an area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation. Inouye: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.[1] But we have never heard if there was or was not an executive session, or if the rest of Congress was ever aware of the matter. According to James Bamford, “The existence of the secret government was so closely held that Congress was completely bypassed.”[2] (Key individuals in Congress were almost certainly aware.) [Democracy]
• Texas schools board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns
  US Christian conservatives drop references to slave trade and sideline Thomas Jefferson who backed church-state separation Cynthia Dunbar is one of a clutch of US Christian evangelists who have grasped control of the Texas education board. Photograph: Harry Cabluck/AP Cynthia Dunbar does not have a high regard for her local schools. She has called them unconstitutional, tyrannical and tools of perversion. The conservative Texas lawyer has even likened sending children to her state's schools to "throwing them in to the enemy's flames". Her hostility runs so deep that she educated her own offspring at home and at private Christian establishments. Now Dunbar is on the brink of fulfilling a promise to change all that, or at least point Texas schools toward salvation. She is one of a clutch of Christian evangelists and social conservatives who have grasped control of the state's education board. This week they are expected to force through a new curriculum that is likely to shift what millions of American schoolchildren far beyond Texas learn about their history. The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy.
• Aging Congress flummoxed by ATMs
  By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 21, 2010 Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has long pushed an amendment to limit those pesky and expensive transaction fees at automated teller machines, but his fellow senators didn't go along with the idea this week. Sen. Ben Nelson (D), for example, told the Omaha World-Herald this week that he has never once used an ATM, relying on bank tellers instead. His Nebraska colleague, Sen. Mike Johanns (R), has used his ATM card fewer than five times. And Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, told the newspaper that he has a bank card but doesn't use it for cash. "I've never used an ATM, so I don't know what the fees are. It's true, I don't know how to use one," Nelson, 69, said.
• Russ Feingold: Defending the top one percent from the bottom 99
  By Stephen Gowans Posted in Zimbabwe by gowans on May 15, 2010 US Senator Russ Feingold is displeased. The legislation he helped draft in 2001 to cripple Zimbabwe’s economy as punishment for the country’s land reform program, which redistributed the land of 4,000 settlers to 300,000 landless indigenous families, has been exposed for what it is: a major instrument in a program of economic warfare designed to restore the property of expropriated farmers and drive the land reform program’s champions, Zanu-PF, from government. Feingold is counterpunching with new legislation which he hopes will prove less of a liability to US propaganda, which has misdirected blame for Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown to Zanu-PF policies. At the same time, the new legislation aims to strengthen the West’s agent on the ground, the Movement for Democratic Change. New US legislation introduced by US Senator Russ Feingold to update a 2001 bill that has been used to cripple Zimbabwe’s economy is aimed at supporting members of Zimbabwe’s coalition government who support US goals of restoring the property rights of settlers, while pressuring land reform champions to step down from government posts. The current legislation, ZDERA, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, was passed into law in 2001 as an instrument to be employed in the program of ousting the Zanu-PF government. Zanu-PF, a merger of forces that had played the leading role in the country’s liberation from settler minority rule, provoked Western reaction when it rejected harsh conditions imposed by the IMF in the late 1990s and then introduced a fast-track land reform program. The land reform program expropriated settler farms without compensation, redistributing land to indigenous Zimbabweans. The beneficiaries of the program were over 300,000 previously landless families who were resettled on land previously owned by 4,000 farmers, mostly of British origin. [Sanctions] [Softwar]
• A Handsome Investment Opportunity: Washington’s Plan for a Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe
  Posted in Imperialism, Zimbabwe by gowans on July 21, 2009 By Stephen Gowans Washington’s plan for a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe has been sketched out by Michelle D. Gavin, White House advisor and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council [1], while she was a research fellow at the influential Council on Foreign Relations. In Planning for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe [2], a paper which spells out “a vision for (Zimbabwe’s) future and a plan for how to get there,” Gavin explains how the “existing roster of (Zimbabwe’s) civil society leaders…lends itself to the U.S. desire” to put Zimbabwe’s valuable natural resources, including its farmland, up for sale to U.S. investors. Gavin cautions that a populist and nationalist reaction against the U.S. plan could arise, and recommends three counter measures: a job creation program; co-opting the corps of Zimbabwe’s middle-level military officers with training programs, exchanges and pay increases; and entrepreneurship programs to divert the energies and attention of politicized youth. [Imperialism] [Thinktank] [Softwar] [Sanctions]
• Putting the Pentagon on a Diet
  Will Bad Times and a Bad Economy Finally Discipline the Pentagon? By Christopher Hellman
  Is that the wake-up smell of coffee wafting through the halls of the Pentagon? After a decade and a half of unparalleled budget growth, top Defense Department officials are finally talking about the possible end of their spending spree. And they’re not alone. In recent years, Republicans and Democrats in Congress and successive administrations have not only repeatedly resisted efforts to control Pentagon spending, but regularly pushed for more dollars to go into the defense and national security budgets. And many of them still are.
  Here are some of the facts Gates offered, quoted directly from his remarks: * The U.S. operates 11 large [aircraft] carriers, all nuclear powered. In terms of size and striking power, no other country has even one comparable ship. * The U.S. Navy has 10 large-deck amphibious ships that can operate as sea bases for helicopters and vertical-takeoff jets. No other navy has more than three, and all of those navies belong to our allies or friends. Our Navy can carry twice as many aircraft at sea as all the rest of the world combined. * The U.S. has 57 nuclear-powered attack and cruise missile submarines -- again, more than the rest of the world combined. * Seventy-nine Aegis-equipped combatants carry roughly 8,000 vertical-launch missile cells. In terms of total missile firepower, the U.S. arguably outmatches the next 20 largest navies. * All told, the displacement of the U.S. battle fleet -- a proxy for overall fleet capabilities -- exceeds, by one recent estimate, at least the next 13 navies combined, of which 11 are our allies or partners. * And, at 202,000 strong, the Marine Corps is the largest military force of its kind in the world and exceeds the size of most world armies.
  And keep in mind, that’s just the Navy. [Military industrial complex] [Pentagon] [Military balance]
• Obama's Slippery Slope. Ginning-Up the "Terror" Threat, Shredding the Constitution
  By Tom Burghardt Global Research, May 17, 2010 Antifascist Calling When Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen and 30-year-old son of a retired senior Pakistani Air Force officer was arrested in the failed plot to detonate a car-bomb in Times Square May 1, U.S. counterterrorism officials and their stenographers in the corporate media proclaimed a "connection" between Shahzad and the far-right jihadi outfit, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Never mind that such "evidence" relies on the thinnest of reeds: that Shahzad had recently traveled to Pakistan, was allegedly in "contact" with the TTP and had even received "training" from a sectarian, clan- and tribal-based organization wary of outsiders who nevertheless, allegedly "approved" of an ill-conceived plan to kill hundreds of New Yorkers. Last week on NBC's "Meet the Press," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder claimed, "We know that they [TTP] helped facilitate it. We know that they helped direct it. And I suspect that we are going to come up with evidence which shows that they helped to finance it. They were intimately involved in this plot." Holder's "evidence"? Why statements by former CIA torture-enabler and current Obama counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, "confirming" the administration's threadbare assertions. [Terrorism] [Global insurgency] [Evidence]
• British Library digitizing 40 million newspapers
  The Associated Press Tuesday, May 18, 2010; 7:01 PM LONDON -- The British Library said Wednesday it was digitizing up to 40 million pages of newspapers, including fragile dailies dating back three and a half centuries. Once digitized, the British newspapers documenting local, regional and national life spanning to the 1700s will be fully searchable and accessible online, the national library said. The vast majority of the British Library's 750 million pages of newspapers - the largest collections in the world - are currently available only on microfilm or bound in bulky volumes. Thousands of researchers have to make a trip to an archive building just outside London to look through them.
• Project Syndicate
  Project Syndicate is a voluntary, member-based institution. Its mission is to: * bring the highest quality commentaries and analysis by the world’s most distinguished voices to local audiences everywhere; and * strengthen the independence of printed and electronic media in transition and developing countries. As of May 2010, Project Syndicate membership included 433 leading newspapers in 150 countries. Financial contributions from member papers in advanced countries support the services provided by Project Syndicate free of charge or at reduced rates to members in developing countries. Additional support comes from the Politiken Foundation and the Open Society Institute.
  WHAT WE DO Project Syndicate provides the world’s foremost newspapers with exclusive commentaries by prominent leaders and opinion makers. [Imperialism] [Softpower]
• Global Views of United States Improve While Other Countries Decline
  Global views of the United States have improved markedly over the last year while views of many countries have become more negative, according to the latest BBC World Service poll across 28 countries. For the first time since the BBC started tracking in 2005, views of the United States‘ influence in the world are now more positive than negative on average. The survey, conducted by GlobeScan/PIPA among more than 29,000 adults, asked respondents to say whether they considered the influence of different countries in the world to be mostly positive or mostly negative. It found that the United States is viewed positively on balance in 20 of 28 countries, with an average of 46 per cent now saying it has a mostly positive influence in the world, while 34 per cent say it has a negative influence. Compared to a year earlier, negative ratings of the United States have dropped a striking
  Germany is the most favourably viewed nation (an average of 59% positive), followed by Japan (53%), the United Kingdom (52%), Canada (51%), and France (49%). The European Union is viewed positively by 53 per cent. In contrast, Iran is the least favourably viewed nation (15%), followed by Pakistan (16%), North Korea (17%), Israel (19%), and Russia (30%). [Image] [Media]
• America, the fragile empire
  Here today, gone tomorrow -- could the United States fall that fast?
  Opinion February 28, 2010|By Niall Ferguson
  For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public have tended to think about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms. From Polybius to Paul Kennedy, from ancient Rome to imperial Britain, we discern a rhythm to history. Great powers, like great men, are born, rise, reign and then gradually wane. No matter whether civilizations decline culturally, economically or ecologically, their downfalls are protracted.
  One day, a seemingly random piece of bad news -- perhaps a negative report by a rating agency -- will make the headlines during an otherwise quiet news cycle. Suddenly, it will be not just a few policy wonks who worry about the sustainability of U.S. fiscal policy but the public at large, not to mention investors abroad. It is this shift that is crucial: A complex adaptive system is in big trouble when its component parts lose faith in its viability.
  Over the last three years, the complex system of the global economy flipped from boom to bust -- all because a bunch of Americans started to default on their subprime mortgages, thereby blowing huge holes in the business models of thousands of highly leveraged financial institutions. The next phase of the current crisis may begin when the public begins to reassess the credibility of the radical monetary and fiscal steps that were taken in response. Neither interest rates at zero nor fiscal stimulus can achieve a sustainable recovery if people in the United States and abroad collectively decide, overnight, that such measures will ultimately lead to much higher inflation rates or outright default. Bond yields can shoot up if expectations change about future government solvency, intensifying an already bad fiscal crisis by driving up the cost of interest payments on new debt. Just ask Greece. Ask Russia too. Fighting a losing battle in the mountains of the Hindu Kush has long been a harbinger of imperial fall. What happened 20 years ago is a reminder that empires do not in fact appear, rise, reign, decline and fall according to some recurrent and predictable life cycle. It is historians who retrospectively portray the process of imperial dissolution as slow-acting. Rather, empires behave like all complex adaptive systems. They function in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable period. And then, quite abruptly, they collapse. Washington, you have been warned. [Decline] [Imperialism]
• Alice in Videoland: Looking Through a Rectangular TV Window into an Alternative Universe
  By William Bowles Global Research, May 16, 2010 Strategic Foundation - 2010-05-12 “The fantasy of the faraway place, the fantasy of the skin, the fantasy of being somebody else” — John Berger, ‘Ways of Seeing’ Sometimes, and not often enough, insights, understandings and new ideas just pop into your mind, unbidden. How? I have no idea but as the brain apparently operates somewhere on the quantum level, figuring out how it happens I suspect is and always will be impossible. Somehow, watching television interferes with this process, specifically the bit (or is it bits?) of the brain that can distinguish between fantasy and reality. So anyway I'm watching TV, flicking through the channels and come across yet another ‘reality’ show (if ever there’s case for misleading labeling this is it). This time it’s yet another refreeze of the courageous ‘entrepreneur’ genre called ‘High Street Dreams’ (BBC1, 10 May, 2010). Two families fight it out to launch their ‘brand’ on the High Street, that is to say in two giant shopping centers. One family is trying to launch a prepackaged burger called I think Muddy Feet or maybe that was the ‘brand’. The other, the name escapes me, chili sauces. So much for the power of branding.
  As I’m watching this fusion of multiple ‘realities’ I realize that TV operates as an alternate universe to ours and we look in through a small, rectangular window, glued voyeuristically to images of ourselves as either, who we would really like to be or conversely, damn glad that we’re not. [Media]
• Miss USA Rima Fakih: Hezbollah babe or just a girl in a bikini?
  To win the title of Miss USA, Rima Fakih paraded across a Las Vegas stage in a nearly microscopic bikini. She skirted disaster when she almost tripped in her glittery white evening gown. Finally, she told the judges that health insurance should cover birth control pills. Fakih, a 24-year-old Arab-American whose family hails from Lebanon, has almost nothing in common with the religious zealots who inspire militant Islam. Yet the tiara had scarcely come to rest on her cascading dark tresses Sunday night when the far reaches of the right wing blogosphere went ballistic. Debbie Schlussel, a conservative blogger, charged that Fakih was a radical Muslim because she shares her family name with some officials in Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite Muslim group. The Jewish Internet Defense Force, a pro-Israeli website, proclaimed it "a dark day for America." Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/17/94317/new-miss-usa-islamic-fundamentalism.html#storylink=omni_popular#ixzz0oGYWHvPx [Bizarre] [Global insurgency]
• Review Cites Flaws in U.S. Antimissile Program
  By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER Published: May 17, 2010 President Obama’s plans for reducing America’s nuclear arsenal and defeating Iran’s missiles rely heavily on a new generation of antimissile defenses, which last year he called “proven and effective.” His confidence in the heart of the system, a rocket-powered interceptor known as the SM-3, was particularly notable because as a senator and presidential candidate he had previously criticized antimissile arms. But now, a new analysis being published by two antimissile critics, at M.I.T. and Cornell, casts doubt on the reliability of the new weapon. [Missile defense]
• Candidate’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ From History
  Senate. By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ Published: May 17, 2010 “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.” There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records. [Spin]
• The Long Winding Red Road to Ratchaprasong and Thailand’s Future
  Philip J. Cunningham The sniper shooting of Seh Daeng, Maj. Gen. Khattiya Sawasdipol, on May 13, 2010 by an unknown assailant while chatting with foreign reporters ruptured the standoff between Reds and Yellows in the heart of Bangkok and signals a new stage in the movement and its repression. Seh Daeng, whose nickname means “red commander”, was the reddest of the red shirts, while his daughter, who was at his side in the hospital until his death, is a staunch supporter of the yellow shirts, illustrative of the convoluted politics of the era. To understand those politics, we take a tour through modern Thai history before turning to the present conjuncture.
• Making the Invisible Empire Visible
  Film Review by John Junkerman Mention “The Insular Empire” to the average American, and they’d likely have no idea what you were talking about. They probably still wouldn’t get it if you gave them another clue: “America in the Mariana Islands.” These are the title and subtitle of a new film by Vanessa Warheit, which began screening on PBS earlier this year. It is the singular misfortune of the residents of Guam and the Northern Marianas to have been born on tiny islands of great strategic value in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The consequence has been their colonial subordination for four centuries to a succession of empires: Spain, the United States, Germany, Japan, and, since the Pacific War, the US again. A “colony” of the American “empire”? Of course, the US does not acknowledge that the “territory” of Guam and the “commonwealth” of the Northern Mariana Islands are colonies. But, as the film points out, the residents of these islands bear American passports yet have only token representation in the US Congress. They have the ‘right’ to fight in the US military (soldiers from Guam have died in Iraq and Afghanistan at a per capita rate four times as high as any US state), but they don’t have a vote in the election of the commander-in-chief. One third of Guam is controlled by the US military and the island is slated for a massive military buildup, but as a “non-self-governing territory,” the islanders have no say in the matter. [Imperialism][Media]
• Noam Chomsky barred by Israelis from lecturing in Palestinian West Bank
  US academic denies claim that misunderstanding by border officials was to blame for ban (245)Tweet this (59)Ed Pilkington in New York guardian.co.uk, Sunday 16 May 2010 23.58 BST Article history Noam Chomsky - refused entry to Palestinian West Bank by Israel during lecture tour Rex Features Noam Chomsky, whose withering critiques of political establishments have earned him the wrath of regimes of all persuasions around the world, was todayforbidden by Israeli immigration officers from entering the Palestinian West Bank. Chomsky said he was disappointed and surprised to have been turned back from the Allenby bridge across the Jordan river, which is understood to be the first time he has been refused entry by the Israelis. He had been due to give a series of lectures on domestic and foreign policy at Birzeit University and the Institute for Palestine Studies in Ramallah, in the West Bank. He told Al-Jazeera television that the immigration official who interviewed him had made it clear that "the government of Israel doesn't like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world".
• Afghan prosecutor issues arrest warrant for US army officer over police killing
  • Kabul prosecutor seeks 'outlaw militia' for killings • Hamid Karzai's brother denies link to accused group (114)Tweet this (67)Stephen Grey in Kandahar guardian.co.uk, Sunday 16 May 2010 20.39 BST Article history Afghan soldiers patrol a Taliban stronghold in Kandahar. An Afghan prosecutor has issued an arrest warrant for a US special forces officer over the murder of a police chief by US-trained militia. Photograph: Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters An Afghan prosecutor has issued an arrest warrant for an American special forces commander over allegations that a police chief was murdered by a US-trained militia. Brigadier General Ghulam Ranjbar, the chief military prosecutor in Kabul, has accused the US of creating an outlaw militia which allegedly shot dead Matiullah Qateh, the chief of police in the city of Kandahar. The militia, which Ranjbar claimed is armed and trained by US special forces, also allegedly killed Kandahar's head of criminal investigations and two other officers, when they attempted to free one of their members from a courthouse. [AfPak] [Client]
• Files reveal Britain's secret biological weapons trials in second world war
  Porton Down scientists studied food-and-mouth, typhoid and cholera for disease attacks (11)Tweet this (53)Owen Bowcott and Rob Evans guardian.co.uk, Sunday 16 May 2010 18.57 BST Article historyBritish scientists experimented with ways of spreading foot-and-mouth disease, and lethal infections such as dysentery, cholera and typhoid in secret biological warfare trials during the second world war. An extensive list of the contagious agents and plagues that could be turned into weapons of mass destruction is revealed in files from a War Cabinet committee released to the National Archives. The government was known to have produced 5m anthrax-filled cakes to infect cattle in Germany during the war, but the latest documents show research was carried out into a far larger variety of diseases, mostly in Porton Down, near Salisbury, and Pirbright in Surrey. [cbw]
• Disturbing parallels
  A series of photos showing disturbing parallels between Nazi Germany and contemporary Israel.
• The American Taliban are coming
  By Pepe Escobar Intricate shadowplay surrounds the (failed) smoking sports utility vehicle Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. Earlier in 2010, the Central Intelligence Agency warned al-Qaeda might try an attack inside the US "within the next six months". It did happen - like clockwork - with the added bonus that the alleged perpetrators are even more convenient than al-Qaeda. United States Attorney General Eric Holder is now sure "the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack. We know that they helped facilitate it. We know that they probably helped finance it and that he [Shahzad] was working at their direction". President Barack Obama's homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan basically said the same thing.
  Despite this, no hard evidence has been presented
  Nobody really knows whether Shahzad really saw Pashtun civilians in Waziristan droned to death - apparently the definitive motive for his jihadi act. But whether he witnessed it in person or he read and heard about it, it's immaterial. What he must certainly have felt was that both Pashtun nationalism and Islam were under attack. With his house in the US foreclosed, his bank suing him and his marriage reportedly on the rocks, he hardly needed another push to "smash the mirror" and cross to the other side.
  The age of the virtual jihadi nomad is a go. Forget the Osamas; now it's the time for the Shahzads. Illegal, covert drone wars are bound to spawn - spin or no spin - a terrible, absurd and deadly string of blowback. Lookout, the American Taliban are coming. [Global insurgency]
• Obama’s Flailing Wars
  A Study in BP-Style “Pragmatism”
  By Tom Engelhardt
  On stage, it would be farce. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, it’s bound to play out as tragedy. Less than two months ago, Barack Obama flew into Afghanistan for six hours -- essentially to read the riot act to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whom his ambassador had only months before termed “not an adequate strategic partner.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen followed within a day to deliver his own “stern message.” While still on Air Force One, National Security Adviser James Jones offered reporters a version of the tough talk Obama was bringing with him. Karzai would later see one of Jones’s comments and find it insulting. Brought to his attention as well would be a newspaper article that quoted an anonymous senior U.S. military official as saying of his half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a reputedly corrupt powerbroker in the southern city of Kandahar: “I'd like him out of there... But there's nothing that we can do unless we can link him to the insurgency, then we can put him on the [target list] and capture and kill him." This was tough talk indeed.
  On a larger scale, the flip-flop seemed to reflect tactical and strategic incoherence -- and not just in relation to Karzai. To all appearances, when it comes to the administration's two South Asian wars, one open, one more hidden, Obama and his top officials are flailing around
  By just about every recent account, including new reports from the independent Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon, the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is going dreadfully, even as the Taliban insurgency gains potency and expands.
  The vision may be long gone, but the wars live on with their own inexorable momentum. Add into the mix American domestic politics, which could discourage any president from changing course and de-escalating a war, and you have what looks like a fatal -- and fatally expensive -- brew. [Strategic incoherence] [Obama] [AfPak] [Domestic] [Client]
• War without Borders": Obama's "Long War"
  By Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, May 15, 2010 The concept of the "long war" has characterised military doctrine since the end of World War II. The broader objective of global military dominance in support of an imperial project was first formulated under the Truman administration in the late 1940s at the outset of the Cold War. The 2000 Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was the backbone of the NeoCon's agenda was predicated on "waging a war without borders". The PNAC's declared objectives was to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars" in different regions of the World as well perform the so-called military "constabulary" duties "associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions". Global constabulary implies a Worldwide process of military policing and interventionism. (Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding Americas Defenses.pdf, September 2000) The diabolical nature of this military project was adopted and implemented from the very outset of the Obama administration. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, Obama has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than his predecessor in the White House. [Imperialism] [Continuity]
• Setting the Record Straight on Grassroots Jihadism
  May 13, 2010 | 0856 GMTPRINT Text Resize: By Scott Stewart In the wake of the botched May 1 Times Square attack, some observers have begun to characterize Faisal Shahzad and the threat he posed as some sort of new or different approach to terrorism in the United States. Indeed, one media story on Sunday quoted terrorism experts who claimed that recent cases such as those involving Shahzad and Najibullah Zazi indicate that jihadists in the United States are “moving toward the “British model.” This model was described in the story as that of a Muslim who immigrates to the United Kingdom for an education, builds a life there and, after being radicalized, travels to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan and then returns to the United Kingdom to launch an attack. A close look at the history of jihadist plots in the United States and the operational models involved in orchestrating those plots suggests that this so-called British model is not confined to Great Britain. Indeed, a close look at people like Shahzad and Zazi through a historical prism reveals that they are clearly following a model of radicalization and action seen in the United States that predates jihadist attacks in the United Kingdom. In fact, in many U.K. terrorism cases, the perpetrators were the children of Muslim immigrants who were born in the United Kingdom, such as suicide bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Hasib Hussain and cyberjihadist Younis Tsouli, and were not first-generation immigrants like Faisal Shahzad. [Terrorism] [Agency] [Migration]
• Chemtrails: The Consequences of Toxic Metals and Chemical Aerosols on Human Health
  Part I by Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri     Global Research, May 12, 2010 - 2010-05-07 For decades, we have known that heavy metals and chemicals can cause grave physical harm. Going back to Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” we have known and been amply warned of the serious consequences of using or being exposed to these poisons in our daily activities. Thousands of these are well-documented carcinogens.   Building on Carson’s ground-breaking research, we also know that certain kinds of chemicals can and do disrupt human [and other animals’] entire immune system. Going back 30 years, researchers were investigating what became known as endocrine [hormone] disrupting chemicals and how they were affecting frogs [who sometimes had five legs or hermaphroditic characteristics], other aquatic animals, and mammals. These animals were the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. In another pioneering book, “Our Stolen Future,” authors Dr. Theo Colburn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers clearly demonstrate that 1 + 1 hormone-disrupting chemicals did not equal 2. Rather, in a nightmare of mathematical proportions, these poisons acted synergistically; and 1+1 could equal up to 1,600 times the original dose. We are also exposed to more than 100,000 chemicals regularly. Most of them have never been tested for human safety. So, almost nothing has been done to reduce human exposure to a myriad of hazardous chemicals. In fact, over the past decade, the Bush administration dismantled many environmental laws in existence for 30 years, to let corporations off the proverbial hook. [Just look at what’s unfolding in the Gulf with the BP oil spill.] [Green] [Climate change]
• Why Dubai's Islamic austerity is a sham – sex is for sale in every bar
  Couples who publicly kiss are jailed, yet the state turns a blind eye to 30,000 imported prostitutes, says William Butler The Observer, Sunday 16 May 2010 Article history The bosomy blonde in a tight, low-cut evening dress slid on to a barstool next to me and began the chat: Where are you from? How long are you here? Where are you staying? I asked her what she did for a living. "You know what I do," she replied. "I'm a whore." As I looked around the designer bar on the second floor of the glitzy five-star hotel, it was obvious that every woman in the place was a prostitute. And the men were all potential punters, or at least window-shoppers [Globalisation] [Double standards] [Islam]  
• U.S. Is Still Using Private Spy Ring, Despite Doubts
  By Mark Mazzetti Published: May 15, 2010 WASHINGTON — Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation. Gen. David D. McKiernan was replaced last May as the top commander in Afghanistan. Earlier this year, government officials admitted that the military had sent a group of former Central Intelligence Agency officers and retired Special Operations troops into the region to collect information — some of which was used to track and kill people suspected of being militants. Many portrayed it as a rogue operation that had been hastily shut down once an investigation began. [Privatisation]
• Thailand’s King Sees His Influence Fading
  By Seth Mydans and Thomas Fuller Published: May 15, 2010 BANGKOK — A battle over Thailand’s future is raging, but the one man who has been able to resolve such intractable conflicts in the past has been notably silent: King Bhumibol Adulyadej, long a unifying father figure for his nation. Thailand is convulsed by a bitter struggle between the nation’s elite and its disenfranchised poor, played out in protests that have paralyzed Bangkok for weeks and now threaten to expand. The ailing 82-year-old king finds his power to sway events ebbing as the fight continues over the shape of a post-Bhumibol Thailand. “It’s much bigger than the issue of succession,” said Charles Keyes, an expert on Thailand at the University of Washington in Seattle. “It’s a collapse of the political consensus that the monarchy has helped maintain.” As his country suffers through its worst political crisis in decades, the king has disappointed many Thais by saying nothing that might calm the turmoil, as he did in 1973 and 1992 when with a few quiet words he halted eruptions of political bloodletting. For more than two months now, demonstrators known as the red shirts, who represent in part the aspirations of the rural and urban poor, have occupied parts of Bangkok, forcing major malls and hotels to close as they demand that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva dissolve Parliament and hold a new election [Democracy]
• Whodunnit?
  Criminal profilers were once the heroes of police work, nailing offenders with their astonishing psychological insights. So why did it all fall apart?
  Jon Ronson The Guardian, Saturday 15 May 2010 One day, 70 years ago, a package was left on a windowsill at the Consolidated Edison power plant in New York. It was a bomb, with a note attached: "CON EDISON CROOKS – THIS IS FOR YOU." It didn't explode. However, 33 more successful devices did and, at a loss, the NYPD did something no one had ever attempted outside the pages of a Conan Doyle novel. They handed the case file to a psychiatrist, a West Village man called James Brussel. He closed his eyes, went into a kind of trance and – as he later reported in his bestselling memoir, Casebook Of A Crime Psychiatrist – it came to him. There was, for a start, something overly formal about the wording of his notes. They spoke of "The Con Edison's dastardly deeds". He seemed foreign-born. And suffering from an Oedipal complex. He was unmarried, a loner, maybe living with his mother. Then Brussel delivered his now legendary coup de grace: " 'One more thing,'  I said, my eyes closed tight. I saw the Bomber: impeccably neat, absolutely proper. 'When you catch him he'll be wearing a double-breasted suit.' " 'Jesus!' one of the detectives whispered. " 'And it will be buttoned,' I said. I opened my eyes. Without another word, they left." A suspect soon emerged. He was George Metesky, an unmarried Slavic former employee of Con Edison. They raided his house at midnight. He opened the door in his pyjamas, immediately confessed to being "the mad bomber", went to get dressed and reappeared wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned. And, with that, criminal profiling was born. Not much happened in the immediate aftermath of the Brussel triumph. He was considered a bit of a one-off genius, and in the 1960s profiling didn't really enter the fabric of police investigations. But in 1972 a Brussel fan and student, an FBI officer called Howard Teten, created a profiling unit at the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia. Straight away they scored a hit. A seven-year-old girl had been murdered and the profilers at Quantico determined the killer to be a young, white male who killed for sexual gratification and may have kept body parts as souvenirs. The profile led them to David Meirhofer, who confessed and a few hours later killed himself.  
  The conference speakers are scrupulous about presenting only papers based on statistics. And so, as the day progresses, I learn that in New Zealand sexual fantasy rapists (who act out their long-harboured daydreams) are willing to travel 6.62km to commit their crimes, whereas violent, spur-of-the-moment rapists tend to travel only 3.71km. Almost everything here is stranger rape related. It's the meat and potatoes of the profession because, as one profiler tells me, the mind of, say, a robber is not a mystery  
• Column One: Time to plan for war
  By Caroline Glick 07/05/2010 15:53 The repeated abdication of responsibility by the Obama administration from preventing nuclear non-proliferation leaves it on Israel's shoulders. So much for US President Barack Obama’s famed powers of persuasion. At the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference that opened this week, the Obama administration managed to lose control over the agenda before the conference even started. Obama administration officials said they intended to use the conference as a platform to mount international pressure on Iran to stop its illicit nuclear proliferation activities. But even before the conference began, with a little prodding from Egypt, the administration agreed that instead of focusing on Iran, the conference would adopt Iran’s chosen agenda: attacking Israel for its alleged nuclear arsenal.
  So as Iran – an NPT signatory – makes a mockery of the treaty by building nuclear weapons in contempt of its treaty obligations, the US has actively supported Iran’s bid to use the NPT review conference as yet another UN forum for bashing Israel. It bears recalling that the primary goal of the NPT is to prevent nuclear proliferation. From the amount of attention Israel is receiving at the NPT review conference, you could easily get the impression that Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal is the gravest proliferation threat in the world today. But history shows that this is nonsense. Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal, which it has reportedly fielded for four decades, has not led to a regional nuclear arms race. [NPT] [Chutzpah] [Israel]
• Global Perspectives on European and Central Asian Trajectories of Change from State Socialism
  David Lane On Christmas Day 1991, the Red Flag was hauled down from the Kremlin Tower. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist. Gorbachev’s attempted reform of state socialism, his policy of perestroika, had failed. There followed a transformation of all the former European socialist countries and those of the USSR. The major systemic changes subsequently advocated by the reformers were the removal of the dominant Communist Party and its replacement by democratic forms and a move to markets in place of centralised planning. The advisers guiding the transformation process were informed by a world view which led them to believe that when totalitarian controls were lifted, the previous regime would be subject to a spontaneous and complete collapse and its institutions and the psychological orientations of the population could be relatively easily replaced.1 An assumption often made by economic and political reformers was that the major social institutions in the old system were fundamentally flawed and that reform was impossible.2 A system transfer would secure the new institutions of capitalism and democracy. This position also assumed that the state socialist societies were states of a single generic type;3 if the coercive powers of the totalitarian state were removed, a political and economic tabula rasa would be revealed on which Western institutions might freely be constructed.
  The driving motors of internal reform of the socialist systems (the rise of counter political elites and a population predisposed to a market system) were not present (or not to the same degree) in the Asian republics of the former USSR. The initial move to markets and electoral democracy did not have widespread popular appeal. Statist developments in Russia under Putin and the state led transformation of China, rather than the market driven central European states, are more appropriate models for central Asia. It seems likely that they will consolidate into ‘hybrid regimes’ with elements of market economic relations concurrent with state rather than electoral political coordination. [Socialism]
• Noam Chomsky: The U.S. Continues to Be a Terrorist State
  By Joel Whitney, Guernica Posted on May 12, 2010, Printed on May 12, 2010 If Noam Chomsky’s critics have a common refrain, it is pointing to his habit of being far too hard on America’s motives and too easy on its opponents. The former, of course, is his métier. The latter criticism has limited (though a few important) instances. In fact, Chomsky’s central question is how do you punish the crook who owns the jailhouse, pays the police their salaries, and fails consistently to see his crimes as such? Or perhaps, how do you get a self-enamored hypocrite to reckon with his pathology? Certainly not by repeating the praise, or what Chomsky sometimes calls America’s “state religion” of self-worship. And despite this, in a very limited way, Chomsky does give credit where credit is due. In his forthcoming book Hopes and Prospects, Chomsky admits that a black family in the White House is historic. But he credits not “America,” a “system of power” defined by “market interventions” in the economy that once tolerated, and even fought for, the right to own humans as slaves. Nor does he give much credit to “Brand Obama,” as he calls the phenomenon that elected our new president, insisting that the new president is “likely to ‘have more influence on boardrooms than any president since Ronald Reagan.’” In fact, Chomsky gives credit for the 2008 election, in a way, to himself and his ilk. In an early manuscript of the book, Chomsky writes, “The two candidates in the Democratic primary were a woman and an African-American. That, too, was historic. It would have been unimaginable forty years ago. The fact that the country has become civilized enough to accept this outcome is a considerable tribute to the activism of the nineteen sixties and its aftermath, with lessons for the future.” As such, this small tome is Chomsky’s legacy book. And high time. His landmark critique of B.F. Skinner that crippled behaviorism’s predominance in psychology and linguistics turns fifty this year. His first book on politics, American Power and the New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays, turns forty. The Essential Chomsky, edited by Anthony Arnove, came out from the New Press last year, in time for Chomsky’s eightieth birthday. And Chomsky’s wife died of cancer last winter, which would make anyone take stock. Regularly voted into the “top public intellectual” polls various magazines frequently run, the linguist and foreign policy critic, said to be worth two million dollars, remains a polarizing figure. [Imperialism]
• Doubts grow on McChrystal's war plan
  By Gareth Porter WASHINGTON - Although General Stanley McChrystal's plan for wresting the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar from the Taliban is still in its early stages of implementation, there are already signs that the setbacks and obstacles it has experienced have raised serious doubts among top military officials in Washington about whether the plan of the commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan is going to work. Skepticism about McChrystal's ambitious aims was implicit in the way the Pentagon report on the war, issued April 26, assessed the progress of the campaign in Marjah. Now, it has been given even more pointed expression by an unnamed "senior military official" quoted in a column in the Washington Post Sunday by David Ignatius. The senior military officer criticized McChrystal's announcement in February that he had "a government in a box, ready to roll in" for the Marjah campaign, for having created "an expectation of rapidity and efficiency that doesn't exist now", according to Ignatius. [AfPak] [Pacification]
• Afghan war costs now top Iraq
  President Obama made clear Wednesday that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan would remain long after troops are withdrawn, a process he hopes to begin in July 2011.
  By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — The monthly cost of the war in Afghanistan, driven by troop increases and fighting on difficult terrain, has topped Iraq costs for the first time since 2003 and shows no sign of letting up. Pentagon spending in February, the most recent month available, was $6.7 billion in Afghanistan compared with $5.5 billion in Iraq. As recently as fiscal year 2008, Iraq was three times as expensive; in 2009, it was twice as costly. The shift is occurring because the Pentagon is adding troops in Afghanistan and withdrawing them from Iraq. And it's happening as the cumulative cost of the two wars surpasses $1 trillion, including spending for veterans and foreign aid. Those costs could put increased pressure on President Obama and Congress, given the nation's $12.9 trillion debt. [Imperialism] [US global strategy]
• Israel Minister: Iran, Syria, And North Korea Are New 'Axis Of Evil'
  Malcolm Foster | 05/12/10 06:23 AM | TOKYO — Israel's foreign minister on Wednesday declared North Korea, Syria and Iran the new "axis of evil," claiming that North Korean weapons seized in Bangkok in December were bound for Middle Eastern militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said during a visit to Japan that the three countries are cooperating and pose the biggest threat to world security because they are building and spreading weapons of mass destruction. [Proliferation] [Chutzpah] [Arms sales] [Double standards]
• An Act of Open Insubordination? Implications of the Cheonan Incident for Domestic Politics in North Korea
  By Ruediger Frank
  The stern of the South Korean ship Cheonan is docked on a barge off Baengnyeong Island near the maritime border with North Korea, norwest of Seoul. (Photo: Lee Jung-Hoon/Yonhap/Reuters) A few years ago, when tensions were escalating between China and Taiwan, I met a colleague from the Chinese Studies department of my university in the hallway who told me how deeply concerned he was about the risk of an armed conflict. With the ignorance of an outsider, I took this lightly; and indeed nothing happened.
  Of all the possible scenarios for why North Korea would have been involved in the Cheonan incident, the one that should worry us the most is the possibility that it was NOT Kim Jong Il who gave the orders
  If the North Koreans torpedoed the ship, and if it was not done after a self-destructive order by Kim Jong Il, this may be proof of a destabilization of the current leadership in Pyongyang [NLL] [Maverick] [Dissension]
• Press Statement on Greek demonstrations
  The Communist Party of Greece (marxist-leninist) salutes the hundreds of thousands workers, youth, unemployed and pensioners who demonstrated their wrath against the barbarity of the measures promoted by the government and the imperialist European Union and IMF mechanisms, all over Greece. We stress on the unprecedented mass anger and determination of the workers to fight in order to overthrow the measures and oust the IMF and EU criminals who along with the local capital attempt to eliminate the social majority and the future of the country and its people.
• The New Prison Industrial-Complex
  State Budgets and Technology in the Age of Declining State Revenue
  By Paul C. Wright URL of this article: Global Research, May 5, 2010 There is a new technological trend in the United States that promises to use advances in Internet, GPS, and chemical detection technology to manage states’ surging prison and parolee populations. Several states, particularly those with massive budget deficits like California and Michigan, are unable to shoulder the burden of housing more inmates in their dangerously overcrowded prisons. They are therefore dramatically increasing the use of GPS technology to monitor the whereabouts and activities of parolees, as well as using the technology for home detention programs and even alcohol consumption monitoring. While it is true that GPS ankle bracelets have been in use for a few years now, new technology, laws, and applications are increasing the use of such devices in what is soon to be a booming industry – fully dependent upon the corrections system. [Incarceration] [Human rights]
• Interrogator says Khadr was told he'd likely be raped in U.S.
  By Carol Rosenberg | Miami Herald GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — To get teen terror suspect Omar Khadr to cooperate, a former U.S. Army interrogator testified Thursday, he told the wounded Canadian a "fictitious" tale of an Afghan youth who was gang-raped in an American prison and died. "We'd tell him about this Afghan gets sent to an American prison and there's a bunch of big black guys and big Nazis," said the former interrogator who was since convicted of detainee abuse and was identified in court only as Interrogator No. 1. [War crimes]
• Radicalization of Times Square suspect was gradual, investigators say
  By Greg Miller and Jerry Markon Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 7, 2010; 12:45 AM The suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing appears to have been acting out of anger toward the United States that had accumulated over multiple trips to his native Pakistan, culminating in a lengthy recent stay in which he committed to the bombing plot while undergoing training with elements of the Pakistani Taliban, U.S. officials said Thursday. U.S. officials said Faisal Shahzad's radicalization was cumulative and largely self-contained -- meaning that it did not involve typical catalysts such as direct contact with a radical cleric, a visible conversion to militant Islam or a significant setback in life. U.S. officials said they are assembling a portrait of Shahzad -- based in part on the account he has given interrogators -- that may help explain why he attracted scant scrutiny during his transition from student and young father in the Connecticut suburbs to the man accused of parking a vehicle packed with explosives in Times Square. Shahzad's transition "was a gradual thing that started years ago," said a senior U.S. intelligence official with access to interrogation reports from the probe. "It wasn't suddenly, 'I found God, and this is the right path.' There is a combination of religion and anger."
  The official noted that Shahzad had made at least a dozen return trips to Pakistan since arriving in the United States in 1999 and that the CIA's campaign of Predator strikes and Pakistan's recent military operations are focused on a part of the country very close to where Shahzad grew up. [Global insurgency]
• "Evil Guys List"? "Free Journalism" in the Service of US Foreign Policy The Role of Reporters without Borders
  By F. William Engdahl Global Research, May 5, 2010 An organization calling itself Reporters Without Borders (RWB; French: Reporters sans frontières, or RSF) has just named Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, China’s President Hu Jintao, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev and Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko to their list of Forty Worst Predators of Press Freedom for 2010. Most significant about their list of ‘bad guys’ is the geopolitical relation of those leaders and those countries to the current ‘enemies list’ of the US State Department. That is no accident, as becomes clear when we look more closely at who funds RWB. In their declaration RWB states, “Since these predators have faces, we must know them to better denounce them. Reporters without Borders has decided to draw their portraits.” Their colourful language is no accident. The term predator conjures up images of horror in most people.
  The slick media image that RWB presents to the world, such as using the term “predators,” is no accident. It is the product of RWB’s ad agency. Announcing the list of forty on May 3 on their website, RWB states, “The list of Predators of Press Freedom is released today, backed by a campaign ad produced by the Saatchi & Saatchi agency... There are 40 names on this year’s list of predators... that cannot stand the press, treat it as an enemy and directly attack journalists. They are powerful, dangerous, violent and above the law.”[3] Saatchi & Saatchi is one of the world’s most influential “hidden persuaders” or PR firms. They are credited with the campaign that brought Margaret Thatcher to power and are the ad firm for Gordon Brown’s Labour Party. Clients have included Citigroup, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, Proctor & Gamble. One might ask where RWB gets the finances to hire such elite advisors? NED hiding behind RWB The most interesting question is not the deeds of Hu Jintao or Putin or Ahmadinejad in the last year in relation to their national press, but rather who is judging these leaders. We might well ask, “Who judges the judges?” The answer is, Washington. Reporters Without Borders is an international Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). According to its website it is headquartered in Paris, France. Paris is a curious home base for an organization that, as it turns out, is financed by the US Congress and by agencies tied to the US government. [Media] [Softwar] [NGO]
• Britain's Election: Welcome to No Choice Democracy
  By Finian Cunningham Global Research, May 2, 2010 British voters go to the polls on Thursday in a general election that promises to be historic – for all the wrong reasons. Firstly, voter turnout threatens to hit a post-Second World War record low. Over the past six decades, the percentage of eligible Britons casting their vote has steadily fallen from 80-70 per cent to around 60 per cent. With public apathy and antipathy towards the three main political parties – the incumbent Labour government, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats – running at all-time highs, there is a real prospect that the British general election of 2010 will see as many citizens forfeiting their democratic right as those turning out to vote. [Democracy]
• All-Volunteer Wars
  Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 10:35am, May 5, 2010.
  Yawn… How Many Times Have You Seen This Headline?
  After a week away, here’s my advice: in news terms, you can afford to take a vacation. When I came back last Sunday, New Orleans was bracing for tough times (again). BP, a drill-baby-drill oil company that made $6.1 billion in the first quarter of this year and lobbied against “new, stricter safety rules” for offshore drilling, had experienced an offshore disaster for which ordinary Americans are going to pay through the nose (again). News photographers were gearing up for the usual shots of oil-covered wildlife (again). A White House -- admittedly Democratic, not Republican -- had deferred to an energy company’s needs, accepted its PR and lies, and then moved too slowly when disaster struck (again). Okay, it may not be an exact repeat. Think of it instead as history on cocaine.
  Oh, and let me mention one last repetitive moment. You may remember that, in March 2004, just a year after he launched the invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush appeared at the annual black-tie dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association and narrated a jokey slide show. It showed him looking under White House furniture and around corners for those weapons of mass destruction that his administration had assured Americans would be found in Iraq in profusion, and which, of course, were nowhere to be seen. "Those weapons of mass destruction,” the president joked, “have got to be here somewhere." Hard to imagine such a second such moment, certainly not from the joke writers of Barack Obama, who appeared at a White House Correspondents' Association dinner while I was gone, and garnered this positive headline at the wonk Washington political website Politico.com for his sharp one-liners: “Obama Tops Leno at WHCD.” The accompanying piece hailed the president for showing off “his comedic chops” and cited several of his quips to make the point. Here was one of them, quoted but not commented on (nor even considered worth a mention in the main Washington Post piece on his appearance, though it was noted in a Post blog): “The Jonas Brothers are here!... Sasha and Malia are huge fans but boys don't get any ideas. I have two words for you: Predator Drones. You'll never see it coming." The audience at the correspondents’ dinner reportedly “laughed approvingly.” And why not? Assassinate the Jonas brothers by remote control if they touch his daughters? What father with access to drone killers wouldn’t be tempted to make such a joke? We’re talking, of course, about the weaponry now associated with what media pieces still laughably call the CIA’s “covert war" or “covert missions” in Pakistan. So covert that a quip about them openly slays the elite in Washington. Of course, you might (or might not) wonder just how funny such a one-liner might seem at a Pakistani media roast. And I wonder as well just what possessed another American president to do it again? Okay, it’s not an oil spill off the coast of planet Earth or an actual air strike in some distant land, just a joke in a nation that loves stand-up, even from its presidents. Still, I think you'll have to admit that the repetition factor is eerie. By the way, don’t mistake repetition for sameness. If you repeat without learning, assessing, and changing, then things don’t stay the same. They tend to get worse. [Imperialism] [Solipsism] [Continuity]
• Afghanistan: a phantom endgame
  Paul Rogers, 3 May 2010 The nature and future of Afghanistan’s war is now bound to international political calculation, not least the United States’s electoral timetable. The first months of 2010 have seen a large-scale military campaign by thousands of United States and Afghan forces to take control of the Taliban-dominated district around Marjah in the centre of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, backed by efforts to persuade the local population to support the government and oppose Taliban influence (see “The Afghan whirlwind”, 26 February 2010).
  The first problem relates to the possible use of Afghan national army (ANA) troops inside Kandahar. From the viewpoint of the United States military it makes eminent sense to avoid deploying US troops within the heart of the city for any length of time, given the local population’s deep opposition to their presence. But there are severe doubts over the combat abilities and commitment of the Afghan troops, and in any event the fact that many of them come from other parts of Afghanistan could make them seem as almost as much foreign occupiers as their American patrons. The overall outcome, suggested too by the experience of earlier “joint operations” around Marjah, suggests that US troops will end up bearing the brunt of the fighting. The second problem is that even were the coalition troops to establish control of Kandahar (or appear to), multiple precedent indicates that the Taliban and its allies merely go to ground and marshal their resources for a renewed assault. In Marjah, for example, Taliban supporters tend to be so indistinguishable from the population of the area that they have been able to claim compensation for deaths, injuries and damage to property from the US marines - which could then be used to acquire weapons and munitions [Pacification] [Global insurgency]
• The Mercenary Owners, They Are a Changin' (Sort of)
  Jeremy Scahill May 3, 2010 Blackwater and DynCorp, the two leading mercenary firms servicing the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have both undertaken steps toward significant structural changes over the past month. In the case of DynCorp, the ownership of the whole business seems to be changing hands, while Blackwater is dumping its private air force. [Privatisation]
• History's Mad Hatters The Strange Career of Tea Party Populism
  By Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman On a winter’s day in Boston in 1773, a rally of thousands at Faneuil Hall to protest a new British colonial tax levied on tea turned into an iconic moment in the pre-history of the American Revolution. Some of the demonstrators -- Sons of Liberty, they called themselves -- left the hall and boarded the Dartmouth, a ship carrying tea, and dumped it overboard.
  Today’s Tea Party movement, like so many of its “populist” predecessors, is a house of contradiction, a bewildering network of crosscutting political emotions, ideas, and institutions. [Democracy]
• Peres: North Korea 'duty free' arms shop for Iran
  By ARON HELLER The Associated Press Sunday, May 2, 2010; 11:23 AM JERUSALEM -- Israeli President Shimon Peres accused North Korea on Sunday of acting as a "duty free shop" for weapons that reach Iran and militants in Lebanon and Syria. Peres provided no proof to back up his claims, but his comments echoed similar allegations last month in which he accused Syria of providing Scud missiles to Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. [Arms sales] [Chutzpah] [Double standards]
• The Pentagon Book Club
  By Nick Turse
  This article appeared in the May 17, 2010 edition of The Nation. April 29, 2010 In the spring of 1984, a young Army officer wrote a seminar paper about the use of force in the post-Vietnam era. Three years later he returned to the subject in a Princeton University doctoral dissertation titled "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam." What "today's junior officers think about Vietnam--which is fast becoming ancient history--is likely to undergo significant change before they assume positions of power and influence," he claimed. In his dissertation, he sought to investigate the legacy of the war and its "chastening effect on military thinking about the use of force," which made military leaders, he contended, "more cautious than before." "Caution has its virtues, of course," he wrote. However, "the lessons from which that caution springs are not without flaws." Among the flawed lessons he identified were a professional aversion to counterinsurgency operations, "a new skepticism about the efficacy of American forces in the Third World countries where social, political, and economic factors are the causes of unrest" and "a widespread fear among officers that assignment to counterinsurgency, special forces type missions will be the end of their career." The author of those words is David Petraeus, now a four-star general and commander of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan [US military] [US global strategy] [War crimes]
• Is Europe Imploding?
  by Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 280, May 1, 2010 Europe has had its nay-sayers since it started on the long road to unification. There were many who believed it impossible. And there were many who thought it undesirable. Still one has to say that, in the long and sinuous path it has taken since 1945, the project of European unification has done remarkably well. After all, Europe had been torn apart by nationalist conflict for at least 500 years, conflict which culminated in the particularly nasty Second World War. And revenge seemed to be the dominating emotion. As of 2010, what is now called the European Union (EU) houses within it a common currency, the euro, which is used by 16 countries. It also has a zone with 25 members, called Schengen, which permits somewhat free movement without visas. It has a central bureaucracy, a human rights court, and is on track to having a president and a foreign minister. One shouldn't exaggerate the strength of all these structures, but one shouldn't underestimate the degree to which all this has represented, for good or ill, the overcoming of nationalist resistance throughout Europe, especially in some of the stronger states. Yet, it is also the case that right now Europe seems in some important ways to be imploding. The code words for this implosion are "Greece" and "Belgium."
• Iraq demands return of its Jewish archive
  By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 30, 2010 The soldiers came looking for weapons of mass destruction. What they found in the flooded basement of Saddam Hussein's secret police headquarters was a legacy of destruction -- the demise of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. There was a treasure trove of Torahs and Haggadas, centuries old. And there were marriage records, university applications, financial documents -- the living record of a community, seized by the Mukhabarat from the homes of Jews as they fled Iraq under pressure and amid persecution, with only a handful remaining. Now comes the historical conundrum: Who owns these materials? In the chaotic aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, the thousands of sodden documents were spirited out of the country with an assist from then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney's office and a vague promise of their return once they had been restored. With the materials still sitting in a College Park office building, stabilized but with mold on them, the Iraqi government is demanding that they be shipped back, saying they are the property of the Iraqi people.

• Labor Protests Test Egypt’s Government
  Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times By MICHAEL SLACKMAN Published: April 28, 2010 CAIRO — Day after day, hundreds of workers from all over Egypt have staged demonstrations and sit-ins outside Parliament, turning sidewalks in the heart of the capital into makeshift camps and confounding government efforts to bring an end to the protests. Nearly every day since February, protesters have chanted demands outside Parliament during daylight and laid out bedrolls along the pavement at night. The government and its allies have been unable to silence the workers, who are angry about a range of issues, including low salaries. Using an emergency law that allows arrest without charge and restricts the ability to organize, the Egyptian government and the ruling National Democratic Party have for decades blocked development of an effective opposition while monopolizing the levers of power. The open question — one that analysts say the government fears — is whether the workers will connect their economic woes with virtual one-party rule and organize into a political force.
• Ex-CIA fugitive was subdued with Taser
  Ex-CIA operative Andrew Warren had to be subdued twice with electric shocks when a fugitive task force tried to arrest him at a Norfolk hotel this week, according to law enforcement sources. “He appeared to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol,” a law enforcement official, who asked for anonymity in exchange for quoting from a field report on the incident, said of Warren.
  The former CIA officer is scheduled for trial in June on a charge that he drugged two women in Algiers, where he was the top U.S. intelligence official in 2008, before sexually assaulting them.
  They say that Warren, a Muslim convert, had earned an unsavory reputation long before his prestigious Algiers assignment, citing what they said was a habit of frequenting strip clubs and prostitutes with his informants {Islam]
• US panel names 13 countries as religious violators
  By WILLIAM C. MANN The Associated Press Thursday, April 29, 2010; 12:02 AM WASHINGTON -- Saudi Arabia and China are among 13 countries a U.S. government panel named on Thursday as serious violators of religious freedom. The panel's report also criticized the current and former administrations in Washington for doing far too little to make basic religious rights universal. That is the goal of the congressional act that founded the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 1998. The commission investigates conditions in what it calls "hot spots," where religious freedom is endangered. Its job is to recommend U.S. government policies to improve conditions. It is a "small but critically important point of intersection of foreign policy, national security and international religious freedom standards," the report said. "Regrettably that small point seems to shrink year-after-year for the White House and he State Department." This year's list of 13 "countries of particular concern" included all eight named last year - Myanmar, also known as Burma; China; Eritrea; Iran; North Korea; Saudi Arabia; Sudan; and Uzbekistan - plus Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam. [Religion] [Manipulation] [Softwar]
• America and the Dictators From Ngo Dinh Diem to Hamid Karzai
  By Alfred W. McCoy
  The crisis has come suddenly, almost without warning. At the far edge of American power in Asia, things are going from bad to much worse than anyone could have imagined. The insurgents are spreading fast across the countryside. Corruption is rampant. Local military forces, recipients of countless millions of dollars in U.S. aid, shirk combat and are despised by local villagers. American casualties are rising. Our soldiers seem to move in a fog through a hostile, unfamiliar terrain, with no idea of who is friend and who is foe.
  This scenario is obviously a description of the Obama administration’s devolving relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul this April. It is also an eerie summary of relations between the Kennedy administration and South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon nearly half a century earlier, in August 1963. If these parallels are troubling, they reveal the central paradox of American power over the past half-century in its dealings with embattled autocrats like Karzai and Diem across that vast, impoverished swath of the globe once known as the Third World.
  When the U.S. Embassy pressed for reforms, he simply stalled, convinced that Washington, having already invested so much of its prestige in his regime, would be unable to withhold support. Like Karzai in Kabul, Diem's ultimate weapon was his weakness -- the threat that his government, shaky as it was, might simply collapse if pushed too hard.
  In the experiences of both Ngo Dinh Diem and Hamid Karzai lurks a self-defeating pattern common to Washington's alliances with dictators throughout the Third World, then and now. Selected and often installed in office by Washington, or at least backed by massive American military aid, these client figures become desperately dependent, even as they fail to implement the sorts of reforms that might enable them to build an independent political base. Torn between pleasing their foreign patrons or their own people, they wind up pleasing neither. As opposition to their rule grows, a downward spiral of repression and corruption often ends in collapse; while, for all its power, Washington descends into frustration and despair, unable to force its allies to adopt reforms which might allow them to survive. [Client] [Imperialism]
• Manuel Noriega, ex-Panamanian dictator, sent from Miami to France
  Manuel Noriega flown to France to face money-laundering charges (12)Tweet this (55)Ed Pilkington in New York and Lizzy Davies in Paris The Guardian, Tuesday 27 April 2010 Article history Manuel Noriega, the former drug-running dictator of Panama ousted by a US invasion in 1989, has been flown from America to Paris where he will face trial on fresh money laundering charges. Noriega's extradition brings to an end his 21-year spell in a Miami jail, where he held a unique status. He was the first head of a foreign country to be convicted of crimes in the US courts, and he became America's only official prisoner of war. [Double standards] [Legality]
• We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint
  A PowerPoint diagram meant to portray the complexity of American strategy in Afghanistan certainly succeeded in that aim. By ELISABETH BUMILLER Published: April 26, 2010 WASHINGTON — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti. “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter. The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Sudan's first multiparty elections in more than 2 decades maintain status quo
  By Sudarsan Raghavan Monday, April 26, 2010; 8:02 PM As observers predicted, Sudan's first multiparty elections in more than two decades did not change the status quo. In the north, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will remain in power after winning 68 percent of the vote, according to results released Monday. In the semiautonomous south, Salva Kiir Mayardit will retain his post as president after winning 93 percent of the vote. [Democracy]
• Is Burma truly as economically misgoverned as is made out to be?
  April 21st, 2010 Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International Two presumptions surface axiomatically in Western commentary of Burma’s macro-economy: that rife with mismanagement and ridden by an ‘institutionalised rent extraction mechanism,’ Burma has been reduced, developmentally, to among the most destitute states in the world. Further, that before the rot set in, it was once Southeast Asia’s most promising economy. Both presumptions appear in Lex Rieffel and Raymond Gilpin’s contribution, as well as, implicitly or explicitly, within the recently released Asia Society Task Force Report on Burma. But how accurate are both presumptions? A quick reading of the UNDP’s latest Human Development Index (HDI) rankings, perhaps the most authoritative and multi-faceted gauge of national well-being, suggests that the Rieffel-Gilpin presumption of Burma’s ranking as ‘among the lowest in the world by almost all socioeconomic indicators’ is at variance with the facts. Despite Burma’s poor income per capita, overall it is ranked 138 among 182 nations. [media] [Mismanagement] [Victim]
• Fred Halliday 1946 – 2010
  Anthony Barnett, 26 April 2010 Fred Halliday died this morning in Barcelona where he had been battling with cancer. His twenty plus books (there are more to come), his compelling lectures, his wide ranging, powerful essays and journalism, provided a constant source of inspiration for many of us around the world. He was a like a one-man international: dedicated and passionate in the cause of justice; hard-headed in insisting upon the obstacles that had to be overcome; scathing about the stupidities of those who proclaimed they were the force of progress; constantly aware of the deeper levels of cultural and religious irrationality and its shaping power – and capable of making astoundingly well-informed judgments about almost anywhere on the planet.
• Brainier Brawn "Smart power": a brief history
  BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON | MAY/JUNE 2010 The term "smart power" is just half a decade old, but the concept behind it goes back much further. Grand strategists from Carl von Clausewitz to Lawrence of Arabia advocated a mix of "hard" military power and "soft" ideological sway as the recipe for winning wars. To its boosters in today's Washington, smart power is a way to better husband U.S. resources in a changing world; to detractors, it's a slick marketing phrase masking a policy of weakness. Either way, smart power is now not just a theoretical construct but a way to cash in. The U.S. defense industry has seized on smart-power-style contracts, monetizing a catchphrase that has become the hallmark of the Obama administration. [Softpower]
• Elite U.S. Units Step Up Effort in Afghan City Before Attack
  By THOM SHANKER, HELENE COOPER and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. Published: April 25, 2010 Related Small bands of elite American Special Operations forces have been operating with increased intensity for several weeks in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan’s largest city, picking up or picking off insurgent leaders to weaken the Taliban in advance of major operations, senior administration and military officials say. The looming battle for the spiritual home of the Taliban is shaping up as the pivotal test of President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, including how much the United States can count on the country’s leaders and military for support, and whether a possible increase in civilian casualties from heavy fighting will compromise a strategy that depends on winning over the Afghan people. It will follow a first offensive, into the hamlet of Marja, that is showing mixed results. And it will require the United States and its Afghan partners to navigate a battleground that is not only much bigger than Marja but also militarily, politically and culturally more complex. Two months after the Marja offensive, Afghan officials acknowledge that the Taliban have in some ways retaken the momentum there, including killing or beating locals allied with the central government and its American backers
• Amid outrage over civilian deaths in Pakistan, CIA turns to smaller missiles
  By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, April 26, 2010 The CIA is using new, smaller missiles and advanced surveillance techniques to minimize civilian casualties in its targeted killings of suspected insurgents in Pakistan's tribal areas, according to current and former officials in the United States and Pakistan. [Imperialism] [Spin] [WMD]
• Egypt a ticking time bomb
  The Arab world’s leading nation has become a political and cultural backwater — and that’s not good By Eric Margolis, QMI Agency Last Updated: April 25, 2010 2:00am As battered air travellers struggle to recover from Iceland’s volcanic big bang, another explosion is building up. This time, it’s a political one that could rock the entire Mideast, where rumours of war involving the U.S., Syria, Israel and Iran are intensifying. President Hosni Mubarak, the U.S.-supported strongman who has ruled Egypt with an iron hand for almost 30 years, is 81 and in frail health. He has no designated successor. Mubarak, a general, was put into power with U.S. help after the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat by nationalist soldiers. Sadat had been a CIA “asset” since 1952.
  Now, as Mubarak’s health fails, the U.S. and Israel are increasingly alarmed his death could produce a political eruption in long-repressed Egypt. Mubarak has been trying to groom his son, Gamal, to succeed him. But Egyptians are deeply opposed. The powerful 72-year old intelligence chief, Gen. Omar Suleiman, an ally of the U.S. and Israel, is another possible strongman. CIA will also be grooming another army or air force general for the job. [Global insurgency] [US Global strategy] [Democracy] [Double standards]
• The big picture: On the way to the Falklands War, 1982A portrait of a modern warfare: sunglasses, headphones and beer as Britain defends the empire.
  Photograph by Martin Cleaver (6)Tweet this (3)Peter Conrad The Observer, Sunday 25 April 2010 Article history Recruits aboard the HMS Hermes relax on the flight deck as it heads for the Falkland Islands. Photograph: Martin Cleaver/PA Archive Here is the face of modern warfare or, rather, its back. Over the scrawny shoulders of the raw recruits, we have a confidential glimpse of what's actually involved when Britain gears up for a last absurd imperial adventure
• Computerized Front Running and Financial Fraud
  How a Computer Program Designed to Save the Free Market Turned Into a Monster By Ellen Brown Global Research, April 23, 2010 Web of Debt - 2010-04-21 While the SEC is busy investigating Goldman Sachs, it might want to look into another Goldman-dominated fraud: computerized front running using high-frequency trading programs. Market commentators are fond of talking about “free market capitalism,” but according to Wall Street commentator Max Keiser, it is no more. It has morphed into what his TV co-host Stacy Herbert calls “rigged market capitalism”: all markets today are subject to manipulation for private gain. Keiser isn’t just speculating about this. He claims to have invented one of the most widely used programs for doing the rigging. Not that that’s what he meant to invent. His patented program was designed to take the manipulation out of markets. It would do this by matching buyers with sellers automatically, eliminating “front running” – brokers buying or selling ahead of large orders coming in from their clients. The computer program was intended to remove the conflict of interest that exists when brokers who match buyers with sellers are also selling from their own accounts. But the program fell into the wrong hands and became the prototype for automated trading programs that actually facilitate front running. Also called High Frequency Trading (HFT) or “black box trading,” automated program trading uses high-speed computers governed by complex algorithms (instructions to the computer) to analyze data and transact orders in massive quantities at very high speeds. Like the poker player peeking in a mirror to see his opponent’s cards, HFT allows the program trader to peek at major incoming orders and jump in front of them to skim profits off the top. Note that these large institutional orders are our money -- our pension funds, mutual funds, and 401Ks. [Finance]
• Study highlights problems for U.S. strategy in Afghanistan
  By Ben Arnoldy, Christian Science Monitor NEW DELHI — While current U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine in Afghanistan broadly conforms to historical best practices, the Taliban have a number of advantages that have produced insurgent success in the past, according to a new study of 89 past and ongoing insurgencies worldwide. [US global strategy] [Global insurgency] [Imperialism] [MISCOM]
• Election debate: Nick Clegg survives the storm
  • Lib Dem leader narrowly won debate, Guardian ICM poll finds • Cameron accuses Brown of lying over pensioner leaflets • Leaders clash over Trident, immigration and Europe    (91)Tweet this (131)Patrick Wintour and Polly Curtis The Guardian, Friday 23 April 2010 Nick Clegg's bandwagon appeared to have kept up its momentum last night at the end of a second far more personalised leaders' TV debate in which he made an emotional final appeal: "Don't let anyone tell you that this time it can't be different – it can." Expecting a backlash from Gordon Brown and David Cameron following a week in his which his popularity has surged, Clegg appeared to hold his own, and a slew of instant polls showed continuing and robust support for his party – a Guardian/ICM poll last night gave Clegg victory. But all the party leaders appeared to have upped their game from last week. Gordon Brown, giving a far more prime-ministerial performance, opened by admitting: "If it is all about style and PR, count me out." But he made some pointed attacks and rounded on Clegg in particular over the Liberal Democrats' stance on nuclear disarmament, telling him to "get real".
  After the stunning surprise impact of his first TV debate, Clegg was unlikely to have the same revelatory impact a second time. Nevertheless, he appeared to negotiate the potentially dangerous waters of his policies on Europe, immigration and the independent nuclear deterrent. In one of the more memorable moments of the night, Brown rounded on the Liberal Democrat leader, telling him to "get real" on the need to replace Trident, and accused him of favouring an amnesty for illegal immigrants. On Trident, Brown turned to Clegg and said: "I have to deal with these situations every day and I say to you Nick: get real. Get real. Because Iran, you're saying, might be able to have a nuclear weapon and you wouldn't take action against them but you're saying that we've got to give up our Trident submarine and our nuclear weapons now. Now get real about the danger that we face if we have North Korea, Iran and other countries with nuclear weapons and we give up our own." [Nuclear weapons] Double standards]
• U.S. Faces Choice on New Weapons for Fast Strikes
  By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER Published: April 22, 2010 WASHINGTON — In coming years, President Obama will decide whether to deploy a new class of weapons capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour and with such accuracy and force that they would greatly diminish America’s reliance on its nuclear arsenal. Yet even now, concerns about the technology are so strong that the Obama administration has acceded to a demand by Russia that the United States decommission one nuclear missile for every one of these conventional weapons fielded by the Pentagon. That provision, the White House said, is buried deep inside the New Start treaty that Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev signed in Prague two weeks ago. Called Prompt Global Strike, the new weapon is designed to carry out tasks like picking off Osama bin Laden in a cave, if the right one could be found; taking out a North Korean missile while it is being rolled to the launch pad; or destroying an Iranian nuclear site — all without crossing the nuclear threshold. In theory, the weapon will hurl a conventional warhead of enormous weight at high speed and with pinpoint accuracy, generating the localized destructive power of a nuclear warhead.   [US global strategy] [Nuclear weapons]
• The professor, his wife, and the secret, savage book reviews on Amazon
  A top historian has revealed who rubbished rivals' works in online postings Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 April 2010 18.49 BST An extraordinary literary "whodunnit" over the identity of a mystery reviewer who savaged works by some of Britain's leading academics on the Amazon website has culminated in a top historian admitting that the culprit (sic) was, in fact, his wife.
  Though, having been alerted to the problem, Amazon had by now removed the offending reviews,
• U.S. military, diplomats at odds over how to resolve Kandahar's electricity woes
  By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 23, 2010 KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- U.S. military commanders and senior diplomats are locked in a dispute over the best way to bring more electricity to Afghanistan's second-largest city, complicating a major campaign to win over the population of Kandahar and push out the Taliban. The standoff has reached the top two U.S. officials in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry, illuminating the sometimes-sharp differences between the military and civilian officials over how to stabilize this nation. Convinced that expanding the electricity supply will build popular support for the Afghan government and sap the Taliban's influence, some officers want to spend $200 million over the next few months to buy more generators and millions of gallons of diesel fuel. Although they acknowledge that the project will be costly and inefficient, they say President Obama's pledge to begin withdrawing troops by July 2011 has increased pressure to demonstrate rapid results in their counterinsurgency efforts, even if it means embracing less-than-ideal solutions to provide basic public services. "This is not about development -- it's about counterinsurgency," said a U.S military official at the NATO headquarters in Kandahar, advocating rapid action to help Afghan officials boost the power supply. "If we don't give them more fuel, we'll lose a very narrow window of opportunity." U.S. diplomats and reconstruction specialists, who do not face the same looming drawdown, have opposed the military's plan because of concerns that the Afghan government will not be able to afford the fuel to sustain the generators. Mindful of several troubled development programs over the past eight years, they want the United States to focus on initiatives that Afghans can maintain over the long term. [Dissension] [Incompetence] [Pentagon]
• The Offshore Outsourcing of American Jobs: A Greater Threat Than Terrorism
  By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, April 19, 2010 Creators Syndicate - 2005-04-18 Is offshore outsourcing good or harmful for America? To convince Americans of outsourcing's benefits, corporate outsourcers sponsor misleading one-sided "studies." Only a small handful of people have looked objectively at the issue. These few and the large number of Americans whose careers have been destroyed by outsourcing have a different view of outsourcing's impact. But so far there has been no debate, just a shouting down of skeptics as "protectionists." Now comes an important new book, Outsourcing America, published by the American Management Association. The authors, two brothers, Ron and Anil Hira, are experts on the subject. One is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the other is professor at Simon Fraser University. [Offshoring]
• Kyrgyzstan: Another Colour Revolution Bites the Dust
  So what’s the real story behind the coup in Kyrgyzstan ? By Eric Walberg Global Research, April 13, 2010 The pretense that a president of a modest country like Kyrgyzstan can play in big league politics is shed with the ouster of the tulip revolutionary president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, after last week’s riots in the capital Bishkek that left 81 dead and government buildings and Bakiyev’s various houses trashed. Bakiyev tried to have the best of both big power worlds, last year brashly threatening to close the US airbase, vital to the war in Afghanistan, after signing a cushy aid deal with Russia, and then reversed himself when the US agreed to more than triple the rent to $60 million a year and kick in another $100m in aid. As a result he lost the trust of both, and found himself bereft when the going got tough last week, as riots exactly like those that swept him to power erupted.
• Ahmadinejad says, Thank you America
  by Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 279, April 15, 2010 Relations between Iran and the United States have been turbulent for almost 60 years now. Before the Second World War, the Shah of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi, sought to maneuver between the outside demands and pressures of Great Britain, the U.S.S.R. and Germany. When the war broke out, he proclaimed neutrality. This led to an allied Soviet-British invasion in 1941. The allies forced the Shah to abdicate in favor of his son. The Soviet forces remained in northern Iran and in 1946 made demands for an oil concession there. The British considered Iran to be part of their sphere of influence and controlled the very profitable Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). The Cold War had started and the British did not wish to countenance such a demand. The Soviet forces withdrew from Iran, more or less as part of the implicit Yalta agreement on division of spheres of influence. In 1951 however, Mohammed Mossadegh became Prime Minister, as head of a nationalist party, and he nationalized the AIOC, a move to which the Shah, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, was opposed. In the struggle between the two, Mossadegh obtained enough popular support to marginalize the Shah and force him into de facto exile. The British were at this point in effect turning over their role everywhere in the Middle East to the United States. It was thus the CIA that orchestrated a coup in Iran on August 16, 1953 and arranged that the Shah return to Teheran and resume full political control. The oil nationalization was cancelled and the British firm reinstalled.
  Thirty years of U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Iran seem to have backfired terribly. (Or perhaps we should talk of almost 60 years.) Iran is today stronger than ever, in large part because of U.S. policies. If you were Ahmadinejad, would you not say, thank you America? [Unintended consequences] [Reverse-desire]
• America's Imperial Design. Prompt Global Strike: World Military Superiority Without Nuclear Weapons
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, April 11, 2010 A war can be won without being waged. Victory can be attained when an adversary knows it is vulnerable to an instantaneous and undetectable, overwhelming and devastating attack without the ability to defend itself or retaliate. What applies to an individual country does also to all potential adversaries and indeed to every other nation in the world. There is only one country that has the military and scientific capacity and has openly proclaimed its intention to achieve that ability. That nation is what its current head of state defined last December as the world's sole military superpower. [1] One which aspires to remain the only state in history to wield full spectrum military dominance on land, in the air, on the seas and in space. To maintain and extend military bases and troops, aircraft carrier battle groups and strategic bombers on and to most every latitude and longitude. To do so with a post-World War II record war budget of $708 billion for next year. Having gained that status in large part through being the first country to develop and use nuclear weapons, it is now in a position to strengthen its global supremacy by superseding the nuclear option. The U.S. led three major wars in less than four years against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq from 1999-2003 and in all three cases deployed from tens to hundreds of thousands of "boots on the ground" after air strikes and missile attacks. The Pentagon established military bases in all three war zones and, although depleted uranium contamination and cluster bombs are still spread across all three lands, American troops have not had to contend with an irradiated landscape. Launching a nuclear attack when a conventional one serves the same purpose would be superfluous and too costly in a variety of ways. [US global strategy] [Nuclear weapons] [Missile defense]
• U.S. Pushes Iran Sanctions, But China Holds Back
  Article By JONATHAN WEISMAN WASHINGTON—U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, meeting on the first day of a nuclear security summit, agreed to step up pressure on Iran for its nuclear program, the U.S. said, but the two nations still appear divided on how to apply that pressure. Just weeks before the Obama administration hopes to advance sanctions against Iran at the United Nations, the U.S. said the two presidents had instructed their governments to work together on potential sanctions designed to punish Tehran for its nuclear program. China described the outcome differently, emphasizing diplomacy as usual and avoiding any reference to sanctions.
• Halal comedy? You might as well ask for halal bacon
  The organiser said not to talk about religion, sex or the president. But when you tell a comedian not to do something … (131)Tweet this (31)Comments (104) Shazia Mirza guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 April 2010 20.00 BST Article historyIn all the countries that I have travelled to to perform standup comedy – the United States being a regular destination – I have never been held up or interrogated at customs. Or I hadn't, until I arrived in Pakistan last week. I spent six hours at Lahore customs, as I did not have a visa in my British passport to enter the country. The people who organised my gig had mistakenly assumed that because my parents were born in Pakistan and I too am brown, they would automatically let me in. The customs officer asked: "Are you Pakistani?" Yes. "Where were you born?" England. "That makes you a foreigner." I get called a foreigner in my parents' country of birth, and I get called a foreigner in my own country of birth. He looked through my passport, which is filled with US visas. He said: "Are you a spy?" No, I'm a standup comedian. "What's that?" I tell jokes. "And will you be doing that in this country?" Yes. "Oh, is this the entertainment for the Taliban?" he asked, quite seriously. No, I replied. He said: "What I should do is deport you, but if you give me $100, I'll see what I can do." I paid it. I got in.
  In Lahore this time I am told by armed security personnel before going on stage: "Be careful, it's best you only do halal comedy." Halal comedy? There is no such thing. That's like saying, I only eat halal bacon. I had some requests from members of the audience who came to my dressing room before the show to ask me specifically to do jokes about sex and religion. Which is what I had intended to do, anyway. After the gig I had to have two armed bodyguards outside my bedroom while I slept. (That's no use: I need uniformed men in my bed, not outside it.)
  After the show I was invited to a party. I walked in, to be offered a joint of marijuana, followed by a joint of opium, followed by vodka and then a discussion on porn. I was asked: "What's your favourite porn film?" I have never watched porn. I tried to lie but I couldn't think of a porn movie, so I told the truth: I've never watched porn. This was met with "You've never watched porn? Let us show you some!" A collection of 600 films was pulled out from behind the bookcase. I was then offered a male Russian hooker for the night. There it is – the hypocrisy of a sexually repressed, censored society: I can't say "gay" on stage, but after the show, opium and prostitutes are on offer. [Halal]
• U.S. move against radical cleric could provoke backlash in Yemen
  By Sarah A. Topol | Christian Science Monitor SANAA, Yemen — Yemen appeared to balk this weekend at the Obama administration's decision to authorize the capture or assassination of Anwar al Awlaki, an American cleric who's been linked to the 9/11 attackers, the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day underwear bomber. :Anwar al Awlaki has always been looked at as a preacher rather than a terrorist and shouldn't be considered as a terrorist unless the Americans have evidence that he has been involved in terrorism," Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al Qirbi told reporters last week. [Global insurgency] [Client]
• Over 200,000 flee military offensive in Pakistan
  By SEBASTIAN ABBOT (AP) – 3 hours ago ISLAMABAD — More than 200,000 people have fled Pakistan's latest offensive against Taliban militants in the northwest, the United Nations said Monday, as fresh clashes in the remote region killed 41 insurgents and two soldiers. The military has pounded the Orakzai tribal region with airstrikes and artillery in an attempt to rout insurgents from the rugged, mountainous area near the Afghan border. Many Taliban fighters fled to Orakzai last year to escape a separate army offensive in their tribal stronghold of South Waziristan. The exodus of civilians from Orakzai adds to the more than 1.3 million people driven from their homes by fighting in the northwest and unable to return. [human rights]
• Russia helped fuel unrest in Kyrgyzstan
  By Philip P. Pan Monday, April 12, 2010 BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN -- Less than a month before the violent protests that toppled the government of Kyrgyzstan last week, Russian television stations broadcast scathing reports portraying President Kurmanbek Bakiyev as a repugnant dictator whose family was stealing billions of dollars from this impoverished nation. The media campaign, along with punishing economic measures adopted by the Kremlin, played a critical role in fanning public anger against Bakiyev and bringing people into the streets for the demonstrations that forced him to flee the capital Wednesday, according to protest leaders, local journalists and analysts [Media] [Double standards] [Resurgence]
• Believe It or Not (2010 Imperial Edition) U.S. War-Fighting Numbers to Knock Your Socks Off
  By Tom Engelhardt
  In my 1950s childhood, Ripley’s Believe It or Not was part of everyday life, a syndicated comics page feature where you could stumble upon such mind-boggling facts as: "If all the Chinese in the world were to march four abreast past a given point, they would never finish passing though they marched forever and forever.” Or if you were young and iconoclastic, you could chuckle over Mad magazine’s parody, “Ripup’s Believe It or Don’t!” With our Afghan and Iraq wars on my mind, I’ve been wondering whether Ripley’s moment hasn’t returned. Here, for instance, are some figures offered in a Washington Post piece by Lieutenant General James H. Pillsbury, deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, who is deeply involved in the “drawdown of the logistics operation in Iraq”: “There are... more than 341 facilities; 263,000 soldiers, Defense Department civilians and contractor employees; 83,000 containers; 42,000 vehicles; 3 million equipment items; and roughly $54 billion in assets that will ultimately be removed from Iraq.” Admittedly, that list lacks the “believe it or not” tagline, but otherwise Ripley’s couldn’t have put it more staggeringly. And here’s Pillsbury’s Ripley-esque kicker: the American drawdown will be the "equivalent, in personnel terms alone, of relocating the entire population of Buffalo, New York." When it comes to that slo-mo drawdown, all the numbers turn out to be staggering. They are also a reminder of just how the Pentagon has been fighting its wars in these last years -- like a compulsive shopper without a 12-step recovery program in sight. Whether it’s 3.1 million items of equipment, or 3 million, 2.8 million, or 1.5 million, whether 341 “facilities” (not including perhaps ten mega-bases which will still be operating in 2011 with tens of thousands of American soldiers, civilians, and private contractors working and living on them), or more than 350 forward operating facilities, or 290 bases are to be shut down, the numbers from Iraq are simply out of this world.
• Kaczynski Often a Source of Tension Within E.U.
  By JUDY DEMPSEY and DIANE CARDWELL Published: April 10, 2010 Half of an unusual tandem of power, Mr. Kaczynski was elected president in 2005 from the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice Party, led by his identical twin, Jaroslaw, whom he later appointed prime minister.
• U.S. Now Trying Softer Approach Toward Karzai
  By HELENE COOPER and MARK LANDLER Published: April 9, 2010 WASHINGTON — After more than a year of watching America’s ability to influence President Hamid Karzai ebb, Obama administration officials now admit privately that the tough-love approach Mr. Obama adopted when he came to power may have been a big mistake. The difference in approach was evident in two recent scenes on Air Force One. Scene 1, March 28: Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, visited reporters flying with the president from Washington to Kabul and promised that President Obama would take on the Afghan president for ignoring American demands on corruption and drug trafficking. Scene 2, Friday: General Jones visited reporters, this time traveling with the president to Washington from Prague, and told them that Mr. Obama had sent Mr. Karzai a thank-you note expressing gratitude to the Afghan leader for dinner in Kabul. “It was a respectful letter,” General Jones said. What happened between these two scenes? Mr. Karzai publicly lashed out against Western governments, hosted the president of Iran and said he would join the Taliban if the international community kept pressuring him. [Client]
• The AfPak war: failures of success
  Paul Rogers, 8 April 2010 Subjects:Conflict International politics Afghanistan Pakistan global security globalisation The Barack Obama administration places drone attacks at the heart of its military strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But its enemy too is capable of making deadly use of evolving technology. About the author Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University and is openDemocracy’s international-security editor.A number of news reports in March-April 2010 claims that the accelerated use of armed-drones is having a hugely disruptive effect on the al-Qaida movement. Most of these reports, which appear to emanate from CIA sources, identify western Pakistan as a key area where drones are damaging the Pakistani Taliban and other insurgent elements (see Joby Warrick & Peter Finn, “CIA director says secret attacks in Pakistan have hobbled al-Qaeda”, Washington Post, 18 March 2010). It is understandable that United States agencies (and some analysts) seek to put a positive emphasis on developments in the “AfPak” war, especially so soon after the announcement of Barack Obama’s military “surge” strategy in Afghanistan (see “Afghanistan: victory talk, regional tide”, 25 March 2010). But the narrative of drone “success” needs to be examined with care, and put in the context of wider events that suggest the existence of other serious dynamics in the evolving war. [AfPak] [Legality]
• U.S. looks to nonnuclear weapons to use as deterrent
  By Craig Whitlock Washington Post staff writer Thursday, April 8, 2010 As the White House pushes for cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the Pentagon is developing a weapon to help fill the gap: missiles armed with conventional warheads that could strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour. U.S. military officials say the intercontinental ballistic missiles, known as Prompt Global Strike weapons, are a necessary new form of deterrence against terrorist networks and other adversaries. As envisioned, the conventional missiles would give the White House a fresh military option to consider in a crisis that would not result in a radioactive mushroom cloud. [US global strategy] [Asymmetry]
• White House warns Karzai visit could be cancelled
  By Edward Luce in Washington Published: April 6 2010 21:44 | Last updated: April 6 2010 21:44 The Obama administration on Tuesday said it would consider cancelling next month’s US visit by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s controversial president, if he came out with further “untruthful”, “troubling” and “confusing” statements. The warning, issued by Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s spokesman, comes five days after Mr Karzai issued a blistering attack on foreign “occupying forces” and just nine days after Mr Obama held a meeting with his Afghan counterpart on an unannounced visit to Kabul. In his remarks last week, Mr Karzai also accused the US of wanting a “puppet government” in Afghanistan. [Client]
• U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric
  By SCOTT SHANE Published: April 6, 2010 WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday. Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the United States as an imam, is in hiding in Yemen.
  It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president. [Imperialism] [global insurgency] [Religion] [Human rights]
• Muslim cleric Aulaqi is 1st U.S. citizen on list of those CIA is allowed to kill
  By Greg Miller Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 7, 2010 A Muslim cleric tied to the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner has become the first U.S. citizen added to a list of suspected terrorists the CIA is authorized to kill, a U.S. official said Tuesday. [Imperialism] [global insurgency] [Religion] [Human rights]
• Big Brother and the Hidden Hand of the "Free Market" "Managing" Data and Dissent in America
  By Tom Burghardt
  Global Research, April 5, 2010 Antifascist Calling... - 2010-04-04 Repression doesn't come cheap, just ask the FBI. As the securitization of daily life increase at near exponential rates (all to keep us "safe," mind you) the dark contours of an American police state, like a pilot's last glimpse of an icy peak before a plane crash, wobbles into view. In the main, such programs include, but are by no means limited to the following: electronic surveillance (call records, internet usage, social media); covert hacking by state operatives; GPS tracking; CCTV cameras linked-in to state databases; "smart" cards; RFID chipped commodities and the spooky "internet of things;" biometrics, and yes, the Pentagon has just stood up a Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA); data-mining; watch listing; on and on it goes. Pity our poor political minders, snowed-under by a blizzard of data-sets crying out for proper "management"! Or, as sycophantic armchair warrior and New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, would have it, "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist--McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15." So true; yet neither can an aggregate of repressive police and intelligence agencies function without an army of corporate grifters who guide that "hidden hand" and not-so-hidden fist into highly profitable safe harbors. Call it Big Brother meets market fundamentalism. And so, the heat is on as America's premier political police agency struggles to "modernize" their case file management system. [Surveillance]
• Middle-class Muslims fuel French halal boom
  Retailers and restaurants cash in on rapidly expanding and highly profitable market in halal food and drinks Few things define the traditional good life in France better than champagne and foie gras, but few would have thought them symbols of social integration – until now. A boom in sales of halal products, including alcohol-free bubbly and goose liver paté approved by Islamic law, is being driven by the emergence of an affluent middle class of young Muslims. Known as the beurgeois – a play on bourgeois and the word beur, slang for a French person of North African descent – these new consumers are behind a rapidly expanding and highly profitable market in halal food and drinks. [Halal]
• White House troubled by Afghan leader's remarks
  By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, April 5, 2010; 12:01 PM KABUL -- President Obama's visit to Kabul last week, intended in part to forge a closer working relationship with President Hamid Karzai, has helped produce the opposite: an angry Afghan leader now attacking the West for what he perceives as an effort to manipulate him and weaken his rule. Karzai's relationship with his U.S. backers in the past week has taken a sharp turn for the worse after his two anti-Western speeches in three days, remarks that some officials see as a rehearsed, intentional move away from the United States. [Client]
• Many Nations Disregard U.N. Antiterror Mandate
  Monday, April 5, 2010 A significant number of nations have failed to demonstrate that they have met the requirements of a U.N. resolution demanding efforts to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear and other WMD materials, the Associated Press reported Saturday. Some of these states are suppliers of uranium, which would be converted for use in a nuclear weapon (see GSN, Dec. 7, 2009). (Apr. 5) - An employee of a uranium mine in Niger examines rocks containing the material in 2005. Uranium-mining African nations, including Niger, have not reported on efforts to comply with a U.N. resolution aimed at preventing terrorists from obtaining radioactive materials and other possible WMD ingredients (Pierre Verdy/Getty Images). U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540 requires countries to undertake actions to prevent acts of terrorism involving biological, chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons. It also "imposes strict reporting requirements on states, but few have fully met them," the International Commission on Nonproliferation and Nuclear Disarmament found in a December 2009 report. The resolution is the only worldwide legal framework that seeks to cut off extremist organizations from nuclear technology; all U.N. member states are obligated to follow its strictures.
  The Shinkolobwe, Congo mine that produced the uranium in the nuclear bomb the United States used on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II has been officially closed for decades. However, thousands of miners have been removing cobalt and possibly uranium from the site in recent years. The International Atomic Energy Agency has worried that the mine and a nuclear research reactor in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, might not have adequate security. [Imperialism] [UNUS] [Proliferation]
• Drones Batter Qaeda and Allies Within Pakistan
  By Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah Published: April 4, 2010 The strikes have cast a pall of fear over an area that was once a free zone for Al Qaeda and the Taliban, forcing militants to abandon satellite phones and large gatherings in favor of communicating by courier and moving stealthily in small groups, they said. The drones, operated by the C.I.A., fly overhead sometimes four at a time, emitting a beelike hum virtually 24 hours a day, observing and tracking targets, then unleashing missiles on their quarry, they said.  
• U.S. Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women
  By Richard A. Oppel Jr. Published: April 5, 2010 The admission immediately raised questions about what really happened during the Feb. 12 operation — and what falsehoods followed — including a new report that Special Operations forces dug bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide the nature of their deaths. A NATO official also said Sunday that an Afghan-led team of investigators had found signs of evidence tampering at the scene, including the removal of bullets from walls near where the women were killed. On Monday, however, a senior NATO official denied that any tampering had occurred. The disclosure could not come at a worse moment for the American military: NATO officials are struggling to contain fallout from a series of tirades against the foreign military presence by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has also railed against the killing of civilians by Western forces. [Client]  
• Karzai Steps Up Attacks on NATO, Boxing In the West
  By Alissa J. Rubin Published: April 4, 2010 There are no good options on the horizon, many analysts say, for reining in Mr. Karzai or for penalizing him, without potentially damaging Western interests. The reluctant conclusion of diplomats and Afghan analysts is that for now, they are stuck with him. Many fear the relationship is only likely to become worse, as Mr. Karzai draws closer to allies like Iran and China, whose interests are often at odds with those of the West, and sounds sympathetic enough to the Taliban that he could spur their efforts, helping their recruitment and further destabilizing the country. [US Global strategy] [Client]  
• Hurting U.S. Efforts to Win Minds, Taliban Disrupt Pay
  By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. Published: April 3, 2010 The approach helped turn the tide of insurgency in Iraq. But in Marja, where the Taliban seem to know everything — and most of the time it is impossible to even tell who they are — they have already found ways to thwart the strategy in many places, including killing or beating some who take the Marines’ money, or pocketing it themselves. Just a few weeks since the start of the operation here, the Taliban have “reseized control and the momentum in a lot of ways” in northern Marja, Maj. James Coffman, civil affairs leader for the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, said in an interview in late March. “We have to change tactics to get the locals back on our side.” Col. Ghulam Sakhi, an Afghan National Police commander here, says his informants have told him that at least 30 Taliban have come to one Marine outpost here to take money from the Marines as compensation for property damage or family members killed during the operation in February. “You shake hands with them, but you don’t know they are Taliban,” Colonel Sakhi said. “They have the same clothes, and the same style. And they are using the money against the Marines. They are buying I.E.D.’s and buying ammunition, everything.” [Global insurgency]
• Gunmen in military garb kill at least 24 in Sunni area south of Baghdad
  By Leila Fadel and Jinan Hussein Sunday, April 4, 2010 BAGHDAD -- Gunmen pretending to be Iraqi security forces and U.S. soldiers killed at least 24 people here, shooting some and slitting others' throats as they moved from house to house, officials and residents said Saturday. The victims of the hour-long incident included women and children, but most were members of the Awakening, Sunni paramilitary forces also known as the Sons of Iraq that battled insurgents at the behest of the U.S. military. The targeted killings were perhaps the most brutal
  Sunni Arabs who worked with the Americans as Sons of Iraq say they feel particularly vulnerable. "The Awakening people now are the easy targets for everyone," said Qais al-Jubouri, a tribal leader who worked with the U.S. military and the Iraqi military and government to forge reconciliation in his area of southern Baghdad. Jubouri, who won a seat in the next parliament, has been on the run since the issuance of an arrest warrant against him that he deemed politically motivated. "The government targets us, and al-Qaeda targets us," he said. "The Americans are done with us, and they threw us under the bus. They lured us as friends, one by one." [Global insurgency] [Client] [US global strategy]
• Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions, Covering '1 January to 31 December 2009
  This report focuses on key countries that we assess are seeking WMD capabilities.(Iran, NK, Syria, China, Russia)
  North Korea Nuclear In February 2007, North Korea agreed as part of the Six-Party Talks to "shut down and seal for the purposes of eventual abandonment the Yongbyon nuclear facility, including the reprocessing facility" as part of the Initial Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement of September 2005
  North Korea in April 2009 launched a Taepo Dong 2 which passed over Japan. It failed in its stated mission of orbiting a small communications satellite, but successfully tested several technologies associated with an ICBM. The UN Security Council subsequently issued a presidential statement condemning the launch as a contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1718. [Wmd] [Satellite] [Double standards] [Arms sales]
• Goldman Sachs: Don't Blame Us
  When it comes to its role in the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs has a message for the world: Not guilty. Not one bit By Roben Farzad This Issue April 12, 2010 The bankers at Goldman Sachs (GS), by traditional measures, ought to be on top of the world. Eighteen months removed from the depths of the financial crisis, Goldman posted a $13.4 billion profit in 2009, a Wall Street record. When Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein went on a recruiting trip to Stanford, he was greeted by an overflow crowd. Goldman cast off its Troubled Asset Relief Program yoke and proceeded to pay its employees more than $16 billion. The firm is moving into a new $2.1 billion headquarters on the Hudson River. [Crisis]
• Karzai rails against foreign presence, accuses West of engineering voter fraud
  By Joshua Partlow and Scott Wilson Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, April 2, 2010; 12:58 AM KABUL -- President Hamid Karzai on Thursday delivered one of his most stinging criticisms to date of the foreign presence in Afghanistan, accusing the West and the United Nations of wanting a "puppet government" and of orchestrating fraud in last year's election. [Client]
• Hedge Fund Managers’ Pay Roared Back Last Year
  By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and LOUISE STORY Published: March 31, 2010 The Lazarus-like recovery of the nation’s big banks did not benefit just the bankers — it also created huge paydays for hedge fund managers, including a record $4 billion gain in 2009 for one bold investor who bet big on the financial sector. [Crisis] [Corruption]
• Travelers with Muslim names find themselves fighting for U.S. visas
  By Edward Cody washington post foreign service Thursday, April 1, 2010 LYON, FRANCE -- The clean-cut young Frenchman seemed to have everything going for him. A graduate of an elite French engineering school, he had interned at the upper-crust Rothschild bank in Paris, handled wealth management for a while on Wall Street and was accepted for a prestigious master's degree program at the University of California at Berkeley. Except for one thing: His name was Mohamed Youcef Mami. The State Department held up his student visa for more than two months for "administrative processing," which according to diplomats is the euphemism-of-art for a check against multiple watch lists maintained by intelligence agencies in Washington designed to prevent suspected terrorists from entering the United States. [Islam] [Global insurgency] [US global strategy]
• Western Civilization and the Economic Crisis: The Impoverishment of the Middle Class
  By Andrew Gavin Marshall Global Research, March 30, 2010 This is Part 2 of the series, "When Empire Hits Home." Part 1: War, Racism and the Empire of Poverty The western nations of the world have built their great wealth and societies on the exploitation and plundering of the people and resources of the rest of the world. The wealth, freedom, and structures of our societies have been built on the starvation, robbery, deprivation and murder of millions upon millions of the world’s people, both historically and presently. It seemed for a time that “Western Civilization” had worked, even if only for the west. We saw the emergence and growth of a vibrant middle class, which has its origins in the Industrial Revolution, out of which we also saw the formation of the “nuclear family.” The middle classes of the west grew in wealth, education, and access. While the great problems of the world, and for the majority of the world’s people, persisted and expanded exponentially, the great purpose of the middle class was siphoned and expanded into facilitating the development of a massive consumerist society. The function of the middle class became that of consuming, not necessarily contributing to determining the direction of society. Nevertheless, life was good; or so it seemed. Thus, the people were by and large able to turn a blind eye to the plight of the world’s majority. As the decades progressed, however, the great western empires, increasingly united under the umbrella of a US-led NATO empire, grossly expanded their plundering and exploitation of the rest of the world. New avenues for capitalist expansion needed to be found, more money to be made, more assets to be owned, more power to be had. As a part of this process, class structure was being reorganized, which meant that the middle class was to undergo an evolution. In the past few decades, the middle class has been forced to survive on debt. In order to maintain the image of middle class, and to maintain the functions of the middle class (i.e., to consume), the middle class needed access to credit and had to descend into a class of debt. Now, as the world is undergoing a rapid social, political, and economic transformation, the middle class has been marked for death. As a debt crisis takes the nations of the world into debt servitude, the middle classes of the western world will lose their access to credit, and will be forced into repaying their debts. As nations fall under a debt crisis, the middle class will collapse with it. A class built and sustained on debt is not sustainable. We are entering into a period of rapid class transformation on a global scale. [Crisis]
• A Hint of Victory?
  Paul Rogers, March 2010 Introduction In the early part of March, a number of reports from the United States suggested that substantial progress was being made at last in southern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, so much that there were indications that the conflicts with the al-Qaida movement and the Taliban were moving in favour of the United States and its coalition partners. This view was in many ways an extension of a wider analysis that had come to the fore towards the end of 2009 and was discussed in the January 2010 briefing in this series. That briefing had a cautious conclusion, pointing to developments in Yemen, the Christmas Day attempt to destroy a passenger jet en route for Detroit and the attack on a CIA forward-operating base in Khost Province. The attack in Khost, in particular, showed evidence of long-term planning and penetration of the coalition intelligence system, suggesting that al-Qaida was far from in retreat. Since then, however, there have been such positive indications of progress from Washington that it is appropriate to return to this issue and discuss whether this evolving “narrative of possible victory” does indeed represent a clear change.
  Part of the reason for the presentation of a narrative of possible victory is the political environment in the United States. After initial enthusiasm for an era of change, the Obama administration lost a lot of support during the course of 2009, with the greatest area of controversy being its proposals for healthcare reform. It also suffered from constant criticism of its security posture from two quite different sources. [AfPak] [Spin] [Domestic]
• An arms race in Northeast Asia?
  John Feffer In the early 1990s, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the world was anticipating a “peace dividend” from the end of the cold war. In one part of the world, however, military spending was not slowing down. “Asia is in the midst of its most peaceful period of the 20th century,” The Economist editorialized in 1993, “yet its nations are continuing to arm themselves at an alarming rate.”1 A similar assessment came from Newsweek: “East Asia’s arms race already makes it one of the few places where defense budgets are rising—and the current drive to modernize local navies and air forces will look tame if North Korea is permitted to develop nuclear weapons.”2 The arms spending in Asia attracted media attention in the early 1990s in large part because it was seemingly anomalous. The rest of the world was scaling back or, at least, considering doing so. [Arms sales] [Tribute]
• US foreign policy: Waiting on a sun king
  By Edward Luce and Daniel Dombey Published: March 30 2010 22:22 | Last updated: March 30 2010 22:22 Barack Obama at the Great Wall of China last year. Unlike his predecessor Richard Nixon, who turned to Henry Kissinger for advice, the US president has no big foreign policy strategist For better or for worse, Washington has grown used to the fact that Barack Obama runs the most centralised – or “White House-centric” – administration since Richard Nixon. When Nixon wanted foreign policy advice, everyone knew where he got it from: Henry Kissinger, variously his national security adviser and secretary of state. In contrast, Mr Obama has no big foreign policy strategist. Even insiders give different answers when asked to whom he turns for advice on the big international questions. But almost all agree with the following observation. “The truth is that President Obama is his own Henry Kissinger – no one else plays that role,” says a senior official. “Every administration reflects the personality of the president. This president wants all the trains routed through the Oval Office [US global strategy] [Obama]

• Google and Yahoo criticise Australia's 'heavy-handed' internet filter plans
  US is also 'concerned' at plans to block flow of information and experts say state-controlled check will slow browsers (64)Tweet this (105)Comments (126) Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 March 2010 21.45 BST Article history Google have expressed concern over Australian government's plans to introduce internet filters Photograph: Virginia Mayo/AP Australia came under fire today from the United States for its proposed internet filtering system, which, if implemented, would be the strictest of any democracy. A US state department official said that it had raised concerns with Australia over the plans, which are to be voted on by its parliament. "We remain committed to advancing the free flow of information, which we view as vital to economic prosperity and preserving open societies globally," Michael Tran, a state department spokesman told the Associated Press. "We don't discuss the details of specific diplomatic exchanges, but I can say that we have raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials." Internet companies Google and Yahoo have already condemned the proposal as a heavy-handed measure that could restrict access to legal information. Australia's communications minister, Stephen Conroy, said the filter would block access to sites that include child pornography, sexual violence and detailed instructions in crime or drug use. The list of banned sites could be updated based on public complaints. But he declined to say what the US had told Australia. National censorship of overseas sites is becoming a trade issue. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, told the Guardian last week :"Since services and information are our most successful exports, if regulations in China effectively prevent us from being competitive, then they are a trade barrier." Many countries – including the UK – use filtering systems to limit access to outlawed material: in the UK the independent Internet Watch Foundation lists sites internet service providers (ISPs) are asked to block. The list is secret, and frequently updated. In Germany and Canada ISPs use similar blocking systems; in Italy gambling sites are blocked.
• Feds thinking outside the box to plug intelligence gaps
  WASHINGTON — Three recent events — the foiled Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner, the Dec. 30 assassination of seven CIA officers and contractors by a Jordanian double agent in Afghanistan and the difficulties that U.S. Marines in Marjah, Afghanistan, have encountered — all have something in common: inadequate intelligence. To lower the odds of similar troubles in the future, the government has launched a swarm of spooky, out-of-the-box research projects known collectively as the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. "The intelligence community needs to place bets on high-risk, high-payoff research that might not work, (but if it did) would give us an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries," IARPA director Lisa Porter said in an interview at her sparkling new headquarters just outside Washington in College Park, Md. "We need to fundamentally change the way we do business." [Intelligence]
• Afghan Leader Is Seen to Flout Influence of U.S.
  By DEXTER FILKINS and MARK LANDLER Published: March 29, 2010 KABUL, Afghanistan — This month, with President Hamid Karzai looking ahead to a visit to the White House, he received a terse note from aides to President Obama: Your invitation has been revoked. The reason, according to American officials, was Mr. Karzai’s announcement that he was emasculating an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in Mr. Karzai’s re-election last year. Incensed, Mr. Karzai extended an invitation of his own — to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who flew to Kabul and delivered a fiery anti-American speech inside Afghanistan’s presidential palace.
  Indeed, the recent behavior by Mr. Karzai offers the latest illustration of the central dilemma that faces the Obama administration in Afghanistan: how to influence the actions of an ally who they increasingly regard as unreliable, without undermining America’s ultimate goals here. [Client] [Imperialism]
• India finds Russia a good friend to count on
  March 25th, 2010 Author: Mahendra Ved Two summits in three months is unusual, even considering the strategic ties India and Russia have nurtured for over five decades. On March 12, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited India for the fifth time, with the previous four having been whilst he was President. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was also in Moscow last December as part of what has become an annual dialogue taking place each winter. Since 2000, Putin has either visited Singh or received him in Moscow. In 2000, he told then defence minister George Fernandes: ‘Please tell your people, I am India’s best friend.’ [Russia India] [Client]
• Courting Pakistan: Last week's strategic dialogue with the U.S. was a good step forward.
  By Shuja Nawaz The United States and Pakistan is the world's oddest couple, with an on-again, off-again friendship that has survived since the 1950s. Last week both sides completed a "strategic dialogue" in Washington amid fears that they were headed for another break-up. Those fears can only be countered if both the U.S. and Pakistan keep the larger goal in mind: the development of a stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan. Last week's dialogue reiterated common goals on some key issues, including energy, infrastructure, agriculture and trade. But the hard issues—the Afghan Taliban operating inside Pakistani space, the Pakistan-India conflict over Kashmir, and Islamabad's wish for a civil nuclear deal similar to the one given to India—were politely avoided in public commentary. Part of the problem is Pakistan's wariness of U.S. intentions. As the late Pakistani dictator General Zial ul Haq once explained to his ambassador in Washington, Jamsheed Marker: "Being friends with the United States is like living on the banks of a great river. Every four years it changes course, and leaves you either flooded, or high and dry!" The U.S. showers aid and attention on Pakistan when it suits its strategic interests in the region and then leaves. Pakistan meanwhile seeks security against a larger and potentially hostile neighbor to the east: India. Each pretends to meet the other's needs while papering over differences [US global strategy] [Client]
• Catholic Order Admits Its Founder Abused Boys Over Decades
  By Rachel Donadio Published: March 26, 2010 ROME — A powerful Roman Catholic religious order acknowledged in a statement on Friday that its founder, a close ally of the late Pope John Paul II, molested seminarians and fathered several children, and it expressed “sorrow and grief” to anyone “damaged by our founder’s actions.” The statement was the first official admission by the Legionaries of Christ that its charismatic Mexican founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, who died in 2008, was responsible for many “grave acts.” Around two dozen people had claimed that Father Maciel’s molesting of boys continued for decades. The statement was viewed as an important development because Father Maciel was a beloved friend of Pope John Paul, and the accusations of abuse against him were vetted personally by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. The order’s account of the scandal surrounding its founder comes ahead of the recommendations of a recently completed apostolic visitation, a high-level Vatican inquiry, which is expected to render a harsh verdict about Father Maciel, experts said. The Vatican has also been forced to grapple with a new wave of abuse cases in Europe, including a number in the pope’s home country, Germany, where he has come under scrutiny for his handling of a pedophile priest in 1980, when he was an archbishop in Munich. For years, the Vatican ignored complaints against Father Maciel, who enjoyed a strong cult of personality. But in 2004 Cardinal Ratzinger reopened a stalled investigation into the order when he was the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, sending a Vatican official to interview Legionaries and accusers of Father Maciel worldwide. The Legionaries’ statement offered no concrete changes to the management or traditions of the order, but in a rare case of a religious order disavowing its founder, it said, “We accept and regret that, given the gravity of his faults, we cannot take his person as a model of Christian or priestly life.”
• Full Circle: NATO Completes Takeover Of Former Yugoslavia
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, March 25, 2010 In 1991 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a nominally defensive military bloc with sixteen members that, as the cliche ran, had never fired a shot. In 1991 the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the only simultaneously multiethnic and multiconfessional nation (entirely) in Europe, consisting of six federated republics with diverse constituencies. By 2009 NATO had grown to 28 full members and at least that many military partners throughout Europe and in Africa, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Asia and the South Pacific. Next month NATO is to hold a summit in Estonia to be attended by the foreign ministers of 56 nations. Last month a meeting of NATO's Military Committee in Brussels included the armed forces chiefs of 63 nations, almost a third of the world's 192 countries. By 2008 the former Yugoslavia has been fragmented into six recognized nations (the former federal republics of Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia) and a semi-recognized province of Serbia, Kosovo.
  In 1991 the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and from the following year onward the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, presented an obstacle to NATO's drive to the east - the former Soviet Union and Asia - and to the south - the Middle East and Africa. In the story of Aesop's a bundle of sticks tied together could not be broken but, once separated, each could be easily snapped in two. In completing the fragmentation of Yugoslavia NATO removed a crucial impediment to its expansion into a global military force. In its place it has acquired seven new members and candidates and as many potential sites for training camps, air and naval bases, and transit points for moving troops and weapons to new war zones on three continents and in the Middle East. [Fragmentation] [Imperialism]
• The Afghan Ant Hole: The New US-NATO Offensive will Run into Trouble
  By Eric Walberg Global Research, March 24, 2010 NATO plans for Afghanistan this year are shaping up nicely: negotiate with the Taliban, but at the same time kill them in Kandahar and Kunduz. A joint operation involving several thousand troops was launched in Kandahar last week, the second one this year after Operation Mushtarak in Helmand province. Kandahar has been the bailiwick of 2,500 contingent of Canadian troops who have suffered heavy losses in this mountainous home of the Taliban. It is ruled by a Canadian national, Governor Tooryalai Wesa, a close friend of President Hamid Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, chairman of the Kandahar provincial council, infamous for his involvement in the drug trade. Already, there are strong indications from Marja, that the new offensive will run into trouble. The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing there two weeks ago that killed 35. Though Marja now has one coalition soldier or policeman for every eight residents, after dark the city is like “the kingdom of the Taliban”, said a tribal elder in Marja. “The government and international forces cannot defend anyone even one kilometre from their bases.” The new governor of Marja, Haji Abdul Zahir, like Wesa, a foreign national (German) parachuted in by the occupation forces, said the militants post “night letters” at mosques and on utility poles and hold meetings in randomly selected homes, demanding that residents turn over the names of collaborators. [Imperialism]
• Thirty Years after Khomeini: Will Egypt Turn into another Iran?
  The 83-year-old President Mubarak of Egypt has been in power since 1981. Concerns about his health draw much greater attention to the question of who will next rule the nation of Egypt. "When it happens, it will rock the world..: octogenarian Mubarak, will leave office, either by his own decision or that of Providence, probably within the next three years. So far, few in the West have paid much attention. But Egyptians certainly are getting ready, and we should do so as well", says Georgetown University Professor Michelle Dunne, expert on Arab politics and U.S. policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. President Mubarak has been polishing his son Gamal to be his successor - in a country which is supposed to be a republic with elected officials! Unlike Sadat and Nasser, Mubarak has persistently refused to appoint a vice-president. Egyptians are enraged at the thought that Mubarak's son, Gamal, would be their next ruler as in Syria. They believe he would continue the same route of his father by enriching the elite while ignoring the increasing demands of the masses for reform. Mubarak has ruled Egypt with an iron fist; he has turned Egypt into a police state with a security force infrastructure that numbers nearly 2 million recruits. Mubarak's regime has grown very unpopular and detested by most Egyptians. Prices of basic food items and commodities are skyrocketing. The Final Days? The possible fall of the centralized government of Egypt and the Mubarak's regime could send shock waves throughout the globe
  President Obama is likely to find himself facing an unbelievably bad choice in the largest Arab country. Would America intervene militarily to preserve Gamal's faltering rule, making good on all the strategic promises implied by the $50 billion in aid to Egyptian regimes since 1975?
  According to Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria, "If we could choose one place to press hardest to reform, it should be Egypt.... In Egypt, we must ask President Mubarak to insist that the state-owned press drop its anti-American and anti-Semitic rants, end the glorification of suicide bombers and begin opening itself up to other voices in the country [Succession] [Imperialism] [US global strategy]
• US rebuffs Europe over airline ownership
  By Joshua Chaffin in Brussels, Jeremy Lemer in New York and Pilita Clark in London Published: March 25 2010 18:33 | Last updated: March 25 2010 21:25 British Airways expressed dismay on Thursday night after the US rebuffed European efforts to loosen contentious foreign ownership rules protecting US airlines that have been a sticking point in transatlantic aviation negotiations for years. The two sides signed a draft agreement in Brussels on Thursday on the second stage of an open skies deal to open up access to each other’s airline markets. [Protection]
• Frum Forced Out at Conservative Institute
  By Adam Nagourney Updated: Over the past week, David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization, has emerged as one of the leading critics of the way Republicans dealt with President Obama’s health care bill. [Thinktank] [Neocon]
• Good-Bye: Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It
  By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
  There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest. Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it. Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.” Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.
  As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.
  The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off. Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com [Offshoring] [Media]
• Obama's export plan won't necessarily create jobs
  The Obama administration's effort to boost employment by promoting U.S. exports may be undercut as business owners find ways to increase production without new hiring and as trade disputes threaten to crimp American sales abroad. Administration officials have crisscrossed the country this week touting President Obama's recently announced initiative to double exports in five years, a jump that would push U.S. overseas sales to $3 trillion annually and, the White House says, create 2 million jobs. But economists, business officials and others say that companies emerging from the recession may have ways to meet new export orders without adding new employees -- by accelerating underused production lines, restoring full workweeks to employees or improving worker productivity, for example.
• Obama's ambitious export plan may rekindle free-trade battle
  U.S. exports declined last year as the world economy slowed, falling to $1.5 trillion from a peak of more than $1.8 trillion in 2008   By Howard Schneider Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, March 12, 2010 President Obama unveiled plans Thursday to double U.S. exports over the next five years in hopes of spurring job growth, an ambitious goal that may rekindle the battle over free-trade policy. The president acknowledged the formidable barriers to his goal: doubts in Congress over new free-trade agreements, misaligned currencies that make Chinese products cheaper on global markets, and continued weakness in global demand, all problems that could dwarf efforts to promote U.S. products and services abroad. But, Obama said in a speech, "in a time when millions of Americans are out of work, boosting our exports is a short-term imperative." [Protection]
• Dutch minister: US is blocking trade talks
  By TOBY STERLING The Associated Press Tuesday, March 23, 2010; 7:20 AM AMSTERDAM -- The Dutch economic affairs minister has accused the U.S. government of being the most important hindrance to global trade talks, the so-called Doha round of negotiations which have dragged on for almost a decade. In an interview published Tuesday in financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad, Maria van der Hoeven said the U.S. is unwilling to compromise on any significant issues. It's a position she said was unwise for the world's largest economy. "The United States is the country of free trade and free markets, but that does have two sides to it, you can't just take and not give," she said. Spokesman Ruud Stevens confirmed the quotes in the paper were complete and accurate. "The Americans can build fences around their country, but when the time comes other countries will do the same," she said. [Protectionism]
• The Accidental Domestic President For Barack Obama, the world will have to wait.
  BY JAMES TRAUB | MARCH 23, 2010 Woodrow Wilson famously told a friend, just before taking office, that "it would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs." George W. Bush, yet more innocent of the subject than Wilson, might well have said the same thing, had he been one to traffic in the ironies of fate. So might have Bill Clinton. It's a typical pattern for U.S. presidents to find their domestic agenda upended by unforeseen crises abroad. Barack Obama is the rare, perhaps unique, example of the opposite phenomenon. As a candidate, Obama's message of change applied equally to "the ways of Washington" and to America's place in the world. He had, as I concluded after spending time with him in the summer of 2007, a real worldview; he spoke of foreign affairs not in the language of threat but of opportunity, offering a new voice, and a new face, with which America could enlist allies to shape a new world order and tackle global warming, nuclear nonproliferation, the problem of fragile states. That was then. When the White House announced last week that Obama would postpone a planned trip to Asia to lobby for his health-care legislation, it confirmed that foreign policy would take a back seat to America's grave domestic and political problems [Domestic]
• The great American refusal
  Godfrey Hodgson, 23 March 2010 Subjects: United States democracy & power american power & the world Barack Obama’s healthcare-reform bill is a real legislative achievement. But the toxic atmosphere surrounding its passage reflects widespread denial of the very legitimacy of his presidency. This is a new twist on a story that began in the 1960s, says Godfrey Hodgson. There was a time, during the presidency of James Monroe (1817-25), that came to be called the “era of good feelings”. When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, tens of millions of Americans shared his own dream: that after the rage and bitterness of the previous administration, another such era would return. Nothing of the kind has occurred: as the president’s health-reform plan struggles past the finishing-post, partisan bitterness is sharper than ever. Washington veterans cannot remember a time when the political atmosphere was as noxious as it is today. [Decline]
• Israel, Obama and the Doomsday Weapon: The Root Cause
  By Uri Avnery
  It is already a commonplace to say that people who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat their mistakes. Some 1942 years ago, the Jews in the province called Palaestina launched a revolt against the Roman Empire. In retrospect, this looks like an act of madness.
  The next phase is also repeating itself: the leaders of Israel are starting a rebellion against the new Rome.
  WHAT BEGAN as an insult to the Vice President of the United States is developing into something far bigger. The mouse has given birth to an elephant. Lately, the ultra-right government in Jerusalem has started to treat President Barack Obama with thinly veiled contempt. The fears that arose in Jerusalem at the beginning of his term have dissipated. Obama looks to them like a paper black panther. He gave up his demand for a real settlement freeze. Every time he was spat on, he remarked that it was raining.
  THIS WEEK, Petraeus conveyed an unequivocal message: after reviewing the problems in his AOR (Area Of Responsibility) – which includes, among others, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Yemen – he turned to what he called the “root causes of instability” in the region. The list was topped by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his report to the Armed Services Committee he stated: “The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR…The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.”
  If Obama decides to fight back and activate his doomsday weapon – the accusation that Israel puts the lives of American servicemen at risk – this would have catastrophic consequences for Israel. [US global strategy] [Israel] [Client]
• A Crisis in U.S. / Israeli Relations? Sure. But ...
  Why Israel Always Prevails
  By Jeffrey Blankfort If the State Department had issued travel advisory warnings to US government officials about to travel to Israel, Vice President Joe Biden would have no doubt ignored them. A better friend to Israel could not have been found in the 36 years that Biden represented Delaware in the US Senate and there was speculation that his popularity among Jewish voters and major Jewish donors was the primary reason he was added to the Democratic ticket. According to all reports, Biden’s trip was to mend fences with the Israeli officials and with the Israeli Jewish public which had become disenchanted with the Obama administration where the president’s popularity is measured in the low single digits. [US global strategy] [Israel] [Client]
• American Naifs Bringing Ruin to Other Lands
  By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, March 18, 2010 According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran.” http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/final-destination-iran-1.1013151 The next step will be a staged “terrorist attack,” a “false flag” operation as per Operation Northwoods, for which Iran will be blamed. [Media] [Disinformation]
• Operation Northwoods
  Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a false-flag plan that originated within the United States government in 1962. The plan called for Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other operatives to commit genuine acts of terrorism in U.S. cities and elsewhere. These acts of terrorism were to be blamed on Cuba in order to create public support for a war against that nation, which had recently become communist under Fidel Castro. One part of the Operation Northwoods plan was to "develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington." Operation Northwoods included proposals for hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate a foreign government. The plan stated: "The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere." [Disinformation]
• Can the U.S. still tackle big problems? Lessons from the health-care battle.
  Is our system broken? Has our 234-year experiment with democracy failed in a fit of partisanship? William Eggers and John O'Leary revisit major U.S. government initiatives since World War II to assess what it takes to get things done. By William D. Eggers and John O'Leary Sunday, March 21, 2010 At the height of the debate over health care last month, Vice President Biden put into simple terms a feeling that has become pervasive across America. "Washington, right now, is broken," he said. This Story When Washington goes big Is our system broken?This Story Can the Constitution stop health-care reform? Q&A, Mon., 3 p.m.: Outlook: Is health-care reform unconstitutional? When Washington goes big This from a nation that won World War II, split the atom and, yes, even put a few guys on the moon. For years, Washington has been shooting at some big targets -- fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, reforming immigration policy -- and too often missing the mark. And the arduous health-care reform effort, with its year-long debate, recriminations and dividing lines, only seems to prove how fraught and complex it has become for America to tackle ambitious tasks [Decline] [Incompetence]  
• US general: Gay Dutch soldiers caused Srebrenica massacre
  John Sheehan, a former Nato commander, sparks outrage over claims homosexual soldiers weakened the Dutch army A senior US officer and former Nato commander sparked outrage in the Netherlands today by declaring that gay soldiers in the Dutch military were one of the reasons for the Srebrenica massacre, the worst act of mass murder in Europe committed since the second world war.
• In choosing its battle names, the military must know its target audience
  By Christian Davenport Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, March 20, 2010 In the hypercharged rush of combat, the adrenaline flows and the rhetoric soars. After the "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq, many of the names the military gave early battles were pugnacious: Operation Scorpion Sting, Operation Iron Hammer, Operation Ivy Serpent. But as the military changed tactics, trying to win over the local population with on-the-ground diplomacy, some nicknames started to soften. Hence Operation Glad Tidings of Benevolence and Operation Together Forward. Names are important, especially in war. Like a good advertising jingle, war names must be catchy and concise. But above all else, they have to sell -- all sorts of things, to all sorts of people: inspiration to the troops, righteousness to Americans at home, partnership to allied countries, peace and promise to non-combatant civilians. And, to the enemy: We're-coming-to-kill-you aggression. The key question: "Who is your target audience?" said Brig. Gen. Sean Macfarland, who is credited with helping turn around the insurgent violence in Ramadi, the provincial capital of Iraq's Anbar province. "If it's just internal consumption, you want to give a name the soldiers and Marines will get pumped up about. But if it's more for Iraqi consumption, it has to translate well. And if it's going to be in newspaper headlines and be commented about on op-ed pages, then you have to give it a more politically correct name." So when the military's top officers decided recently that the denouement of the Iraq war merited a name, they treaded carefully, no doubt mindful of the chortling that followed President George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" announcement in 2003. Last month, the Obama administration decided: As of Sept. 1, Operation Iraqi Freedom will become Operation New Dawn, a name designed to symbolize the dramatic drawdown of U.S. forces that is planned and to "recognize our evolving relationship with the government of Iraq," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates wrote in a memo. [Spin] [Imperialism]
• America and Israel: a historic choice
  Paul Rogers, 18 March 2010 Subjects:Conflict International politics Israel United States middle east american power & the world global security globalisation israel & palestine - old roads, new maps The serious row between Washington and Tel Aviv is about far more than the construction of homes in east Jerusalem; it goes to the heart of the close military alliance between the two states. A rare public dispute between the United States and Israel has dominated the international news agenda for over a week. Its spark, the Israeli interior-ministry’s announcement on 9 March 2010 of the proposed construction of 1,600 housing-units in east Jerusalem, was made more inflammable by the coincident visit to Israel of US vice-president Joe Biden as part of an attempt to revivify the moribund middle-east peace-process. A striking feature of what followed has been the US’s apparent readiness to escalate the row, in a way that has led commentators (and Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren) to speak of a “historic” crisis between these routinely firm allies. The effusion of political rhetoric around the issue, however, tends to overshadow a deeper and even more potent aspect of the quarrel: the military one, and in particular the urgent concern of some senior United States military figures that Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is damaging America’s security interests across the region - and hampering its efforts to prosecute the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. [US global strategy] [Pentagon] [Israel] [Client]
• Iran’s Natural Gas Riches: US Knife to the Heart of World Future Energy
  By Finian Cunningham Global Research, March 18, 2010 The scheduled start of drilling this month by China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) in Iran’s South Pars gas field could be both a harbinger and explanation of much wider geopolitical developments. First of all, the $5 billion project – signed last year after years of foot dragging by western energy giants Total and Shell under the shadow of US-led sanctions – reveals the main arterial system for future world energy supply and demand. Critics have long suspected that the real reason for US and other western military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is to control the Central Asian energy corridor. So far, the focus seems to be mainly on oil. For example, there have been claims that a planned oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea via Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea is the main prize behind the US’s seemingly futile military campaign in those countries. But what the CNPC-Iranian partnership shows is that natural gas is the bigger prize that will be pivotal to the world economy, and specifically the dual flow of this fuel westwards and eastwards from Central Asia to Europe and China. [US global strategy] [Energy]
• US Firm Accused in Military Tech Case
  (AP) DENVER (AP) - A U.S. company is accused of illegally exporting defense technology used by the U.S. military to South Korea (sic), China, Russia and Turkey, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. [Imperialism] [Sanctions] [Client]
• Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu in climbdown over US demands for peace• Prime minister agrees to postpone building plans
  • Some concessions made in private, say diplomats Ewen MacAskill in Washington guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 March 2010 The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, last night caved into US demands over the Middle East peace process, opening the way for a resumption of talks with the Palestinians. [Client]
• Spy base attackers 'helping al Qaeda'
  By Jarrod Booker 4:00 AM Friday Mar 19, 2010 Facebook Twitter Email Print Expand US commentator Ralph Cossa said that the Waihopai trio's 'peace' defence really protects terrorists. Photo / Tim Cuff Shrink US commentator Ralph Cossa said that the Waihopai trio's 'peace' defence really protects terrorists. Photo / Tim CuffThree activists cleared by a jury after intentionally damaging a Government spy base committed an act akin to protecting al Qaeda and the Taleban, says an American security expert. Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told the Herald from Hawaii yesterday that he was disappointed but not shocked to hear of the decision of a Wellington jury to acquit the trio on charges of burglary and wilful damage at the Waihopai base near Blenheim. [Surveillance] [Global insurgency] [Imperialism]
• Soaring IED attacks in Afghanistan stymie U.S. counteroffensive
  By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 18, 2010; A10 Taliban fighters more than doubled the number of homemade bombs they used against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan last year, relying on explosives that are often far more primitive than the ones used in Iraq. The embrace of a low-tech approach by Taliban-trained bombmakers -- they are building improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, out of fertilizer and diesel fuel -- has stymied a $17 billion U.S. counteroffensive against the devices in Iraq and Afghanistan, military officials say. Electronic scanners or jammers, which were commonly deployed in Iraq, can detect only bombs with metal parts or circuitry. "Technology is not going to solve this problem," said Army Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, director of the military's Joint IED Defeat Organization, or JIEDDO. "I don't think you can defeat the IED as a weapon system. It is too easy to use." [Global insurgency]
• Ukraine Geopolitics and the US-NATO Military Agenda: Tectonic Shift in Heartland Power
  Part I by F. William Engdahl
  Global Research, March 16, 2010 On February 14 Ukraine's Election Commission declared Viktor Yanukovych the winner in that embattled country's Presidential runoff vote, defeating former Prime Minister and Orange Revolution instigator Yulia Tymoshenko. Contrary to the positive spin Washington is trying to put on the events, they mark the definitive death of Ukraine's much-touted “Orange Revolution.“ The relevant question at this juncture is what the defeat of Ukraine's Orange Revolution signifies for the future of the Eurasian Heartland, as British geopolitician Halford Mackinder termed the region? Even more significantly, what does it imply for a two-decade long Pentagon attempt to weaken and ultimately cripple Russia as a military power in Washington's awesome and overly-ambitious agenda of Full Spectrum Dominance?
  The "revolution" that swept Viktor Yushchenko into power on a wave of US dollars and support from US-backed NGO's, was initially conceived at the Washington-financed RAND corporation. RAND had studied the swarming pattern of bees and similar phenomena, and applied these to modern mobile communication, text messaging and civil protest as tactics for regime change and covert warfare. [US global strategy] [NGO]
• Israel Plays with Fire
  Author: Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus and Board Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations March 16, 2010 The Daily Beast Israel's right-wingers are congratulating themselves on their announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem during Vice President Biden's visit last week. They think this stance, so unwelcome in Washington, this public and gratuitous insult to America's negotiating position in the region, will compel President Obama to back down. They reinforced this notion Tuesday through Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reaffirmation of the building plans-plus the insult of announcing yet additional building plans. They're very wrong. Israel's move was stupid, dangerous, and self-defeating. Worst of all, it seriously damaged Israeli-American relations and American power in the Middle East. Israeli leaders will not like the way their little power slap plays out. And it is they who should be figuring out how to make the necessary amends-and soon, before further contamination sets in. Let me say up front that I am a strong supporter of Israel. To me, the United States' tie with the Jewish nation is both emotional and strategic. Israel is a "strategic aircraft carrier" for America in a chaotic part of the world. Washington should never cast doubt on its commitment to Israel's security. But Israel is not America's sole vital interest in this treacherous terrain. If Israelis further complicate an already complicated Middle East, it won't be good for the United States or for Israel. [US global strategy] [Client]
• Waihopai three walk free
  By EMILY WATT - The Dominion Post Last updated 08:51 18/03/2010 Three activists who freely admitted breaking into a government spybase near Blenheim and slashing an inflatable plastic dome covering a satellite dish have walked free. Their defence – that they mounted the attack to prevent others' suffering – has been successfully used by Iraq-war protesters overseas, but is thought to be a New Zealand first. Teacher Adrian Leason, 45, Dominican friar Peter Murnane, 69, and farmer Sam Land, 26, were charged with burglary and wilful damage at the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) base at Waihopai. The prosecution said the trio cut their way through fences into the base on April 30, 2008, then slashed the plastic cover over a satellite dish with sickles. The three men readily admitted attacking the base, but said they were driven by a belief that the satellite caused human suffering and their actions to shut it down, if only temporarily, were lawful. A jury in Wellington District Court took two hours to acquit them of all charges yesterday. A similar defence – known as the greater good defence – has been run by protesters in Britain, Ireland and Germany. In 2006, a jury acquitted five peace campaigners who used an axe and hammers to cause US$2.5 million damage to a United States Navy plane that was refuelling at Shannon airport, Ireland, in 2003 on its way to Kuwait to deliver supplies for use in the impending war. In the US last month, anti-abortion campaigner Scott Roeder was convicted by a judge of murdering an abortion doctor after failing with a similar defence. His lawyers had argued for a lesser conviction because Roeder believed that the killing was justified to save the lives of unborn children. Auckland lawyer Peter Williams, QC, did not know of the greater good defence being used in New Zealand before. "I would have thought it would have been looked at somewhat sceptically by the conservative New Zealand judiciary. "I've always thought it was quite a good defence myself. It's very democratic." Wellington lawyer John Miller said that, in acquitting the men, the jury would have to have decided whether they genuinely believed their actions would save lives and, if so, whether the force they used was reasonable. "If you believe someone's in grave danger of suffering and you prick a balloon [at the spybase], that seems quite reasonable, given your subjective belief." [Surveillance] [Imperialism]
• Taliban Hit Back in Marja With a Campaign of Intimidation
  By ROD NORDLAND Published: March 17, 2010 KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban have begun waging a campaign of intimidation in Marja that some local Afghan leaders worry has jeopardized the success of an American-led offensive there meant as an early test of a revised military approach in Afghanistan. The Taliban tactics have included at least one beheading in a broader effort to terrorize residents and undermine what military officials have said is the most important aim of the offensive: the attempt to establish a strong local government that can restore services. The offensive ousted the Taliban from control of their last population center in southern Helmand Province, but maintaining control over such territory has proved elusive in the past. Though Marja has an occupation force numbering more than one coalition soldier or police officer for every eight residents, Taliban agitators have been able to wage an underground campaign of subversion, which residents say has intensified in the past two weeks. “After dark the city is like the kingdom of the Taliban,” said a tribal elder living in Marja, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of the Taliban. “The government and international forces cannot defend anyone even one kilometer from their bases.” [Global insurgency]
• Israel-U.S. Tensions Continue to Percolate
  Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Mar 16 (IPS) - Despite assurances by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Tuesday that the United States and Israel share a "close, unshakeable bond", the week-old crisis between the two allies continued to percolate here Tuesday. Washington cancelled a planned trip to the region by its special Middle East peace envoy, while its top regional military commander warned that the failure to make progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the "perception" that the U.S. favoured Israel in that conflict were damaging to U.S. security interests and allies in the Arab world and helped al Qaeda and Iran gain influence. "Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations, Gen. David Petraeus, the chief of the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel," he added. Meanwhile, Israel and its U.S. supporters ginned up what appears to be a major campaign to blame the ongoing crisis on the administration of President Barack Obama just days before the scheduled arrival here of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Along with Clinton herself, Netanyahu is slated to keynote the annual conference of the "Israel Lobby's" most powerful organisation, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
• Beyond Orwell: The Electronic Police State, 2010
  By Tom Burghardt Global Research, March 16, 2010 A truism perhaps, but before resorting to brute force and open repression to halt the "barbarians at the gates," that would be us, the masters of declining empires (and the chattering classes who polish their boots) regale us with tales of "democracy on the march," "hope" and other banalities before the mailed fist comes crashing down. Putting it another way, as the late, great Situationist malcontent, Guy Debord did decades ago in his relentless call for revolt, The Society of the Spectacle: "The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender 'lonely crowds.' With ever-increasing concreteness the spectacle recreates its own presuppositions." [Surveillance]
• US military targets Israeli 'intransigence'
  By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - The crisis touched off by last week's announcement of Israel's plans to build 1,600 new homes for Jews in Arab East Jerusalem during a high-profile visit by United States Vice President Joseph Biden appears to be escalating rapidly. Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to Washington and a historian who has written widely on ties between the two nations, called the growing contretemps "the worst [bilateral] crisis in 35 years" in a teleconference with other US-based Israeli diplomats on Saturday night, according to a number of published accounts.
  In an important elaboration on these remarks posted on the foreignpolicy.com website on Saturday, Mark Perry, a writer with long-standing and close ties to the military brass, reported that Biden's private comments reflected the collective view of top US military commanders throughout the Middle East region. They had been tasked in December by the chief of the US Central Command (CentCom), General David Petraeus, to submit reports to him about the impact of Washington's failure to make progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace on the perceptions of Arab leaders on US standing and influence. The result was a briefing presented to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, in January and subsequently communicated to the White House that underlined the growing conviction in the region that "the US was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CentCom's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing US standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was ... 'too old, too slow ... and too late'."
  "There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA [National Rifle Association], the American Medical Association, the lawyers - and the 'Israel Lobby'," wrote Perry. "But no lobby is as important, or as powerful as the US military."
• Drug Giants Lag Where Sales Boom, Study Says
  By NATASHA SINGER Published: March 16, 2010 The leading drug makers need to move quickly to adapt to a new world order in which some emerging markets are set to overtake some established national markets in pharmaceutical sales, according to a report issued Tuesday. Next year, the report predicted, drug sales in China will outpace those of France and of Germany, while Brazil will be buying more medications than Britain. The report was issued by IMS Health, a research company based in Norwalk, Conn., that tracks prescriptions and other data on drug sales. [pharma]
• Pentagon to investigate intelligence unit that allegedly used contractors
  By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 16, 2010; A04 The Pentagon said Monday that it was looking into allegations that a Defense Department official had set up an intelligence unit staffed by contractors to hunt insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan under the guise of social and cultural information-gathering. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to confirm or deny whether a criminal investigation had been opened into activities by Michael D. Furlong, a former Special Operations officer who now works as a senior civilian officer for the Joint Information Operations Warfare Center at Lackland Air Force Base, Tex. [Privatisation]
• American Police Training and Political Violence: From the Philippines Conquest to the Killing Fields of Afghanistan and Iraq
  Jeremy Kuzmarov “In the police you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos.” - George Orwell, Shooting An Elephant and Other Essays. “The police interrogation rooms smelled of urine and injustice.” – Graham Greene, The Quiet American. As the U.S. expands the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Obama administration has placed a premium on police training programs. The stated aim is to provide security to the population so as to enable local forces to gradually take over from the military in completing the pacification process. A similar strategy has been pursued by the United States in Iraq. In both, American-backed forces have been implicated in sectarian violence, death squad activity and torture. At the same time, the weaponry and equipment that the U.S. provided has frequently found its way into the hands of insurgents, many of whom have infiltrated the state security apparatus, contributing to the long-drawn out nature of both conflicts. Ignored in mainstream media commentary and “think tank” analyses is the fact that the destructive consequences of American strategy in the Middle-East and Central Asia today are consistent with practices honed over more than a century in the poor nations of the periphery. [Imperialism]
• Germany Now World's Third Largest Arms Exporter
  German arms exports more than doubled during the last five years, according to a new report, placing the country behind just the US and Russia on the list of the world's largest weaponry exporters. The opposition in Berlin wants more oversight. When it comes to arms exports, few will be surprised that the US tops the list, with 30 percent of global expenditures on arms going to weaponry from America. Second place is likewise hardly a shocker -- 23 percent of the world's weapons originate in Russia. Third place, though, is raising more eyebrows. According to the 2009 annual report put together by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Germany's weapons exports have more than doubled in the last five years, to 11 percent of the global total. German submarines and tanks, the report makes clear, have gained a number of loyal customers. [Arms sales]
• trends in international arms transfers , 2009
  paul holtom, mark bromley, pieter d. wezeman and siemon t. wezeman March 2010 SUMMARY w The SIPRI Arms Transfers Database now contains information on all international transfers of major conventional weapons from 1950 to the end of 2009. It is the only publicly available resource providing consistent data on international arms transfers for this length of time. This Fact Sheet describes the trends that are revealed by the new data. The volume of international transfers of major conventional weapons for the period 2005– 2009 is 22 per cent higher than for the period 2000–2004. Combat aircraft accounted for 27 per cent of the volume of international arms transfers. These weapon systems are potentially destabilizing, and orders and deliveries have led to arms race concerns in regions of tension in Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and South East Asia. The five biggest arms suppliers for the period 2005– 2009 were the USA, Russia, Germany, France and the UK. The five biggest recipients were China, India, South Korea, the UAE and Greece. The volume of arms transferred to the two largest importers—China and India—decreased by 20 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively, in 2005–2009 in comparison with 2000–2004. Introduction The SIPRI Arms Transfers Database contains information on all international transfers of major conventional weapons to states, international organizations and armed non-state groups since 1950.1 [Arms sales]
• Complexity and Collapse Empires on the Edge of Chaos
  Niall Ferguson
  March/April 2010 Summary: Imperial collapse may come much more suddenly than many historians imagine. A combination of fiscal deficits and military overstretch suggests that the United States may be the next empire on the precipice. NIALL FERGUSON is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His most recent book is The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. [Imperialism] [Decline]
• What to Read on American Primacy
  Peter Liberman March 12, 2009 PETER LIBERMAN is Professor of Political Science at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. [Imperialism] [Decline]
• Barack Obama and America
   Godfrey Hodgson, 12 March 2010 An inspiring candidate has become a failing president. But a comparison with Lyndon B Johnson shows that the reasons for this outcome are more than personal. Change had come to America before Barack Obama got to the White House, says Godfrey Hodgson.
  The conclusion is unavoidable. Barack Obama, for all his integrity and talent, genuine charm and rhetorical brilliance, has - so far - failed as a president. [Obama]
• Russian invasion scare sweeps Georgia after TV hoax
  Imedi TV broadcaster provokes panic with report claiming Russian attack in progress Luke Harding in Moscow guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 March 2010 17.04 GMT Switching on their TV sets at 8pm on Saturday, Georgians were greeted with incredible news – Russia had invaded. The pro-government Imedi TV station reported that Russian tanks were once more trundling into Georgia. Not only that, but the country's pro-western leader Mikheil Saakashvili had been murdered, the station said. For the next half an hour there were scenes of absolute panic, as the mobile network collapsed, Georgians spilled on to the streets, and friends and relatives desperately tried to reach each other and seek out information. In fact, they needn't have bothered. The report, it turned out, was a hoax
  It is no coincidence that Imedi TV's extraordinary broadcast came days after Georgia's opposition leader, Nino Burdzhanadze, held talks in Moscow with Putin, and called for the restoration of ties. Announcing that Russia had bombed Georgian airports and seaports, the 30-minute bulletin said that Burdzhanadze had taken power. The broadcast appears to be an ill-conceived dig at Georgia's opposition, before important elections for a mayor of Tbilisi in late May.
  Imedi TV used to be Georgian's main independent TV station. Saakashvili, however, took the channel off the air after falling out with its owner, the oligarch and opposition presidential candidate Badri Patarkatsishvili. After Patarkatsishvili's death in exile in England in 2008, Sakaashvili handed the station over to a government supporter. It now regularly screens pro-government opinion. [Media] [Democracy]    
• At Afghan outpost, Marines gone rogue or leading the fight against counterinsurgency?
  By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, March 14, 2010 DELARAM, AFGHANISTAN -- Home to a dozen truck stops and a few hundred family farms bounded by miles of foreboding desert, this hamlet in southwestern Afghanistan is far from a strategic priority for senior officers at the international military headquarters in Kabul. One calls Delaram, a day's drive from the nearest city, "the end of the Earth." Another deems the area "unrelated to our core mission" of defeating the Taliban by protecting Afghans in their cities and towns. U.S. Marine commanders have a different view of the dusty, desolate landscape that surrounds Delaram. They see controlling this corner of remote Nimruz province as essential to promoting economic development and defending the more populated parts of southern Afghanistan. The Marines are constructing a vast base on the outskirts of town that will have two airstrips, an advanced combat hospital, a post office, a large convenience store and rows of housing trailers stretching as far as the eye can see. By this summer, more than 3,000 Marines -- one-tenth of the additional troops authorized by President Obama in December -- will be based here. With Obama's July 2011 deadline to begin reducing U.S. forces looming over the horizon, the Marines have opted to wage the war in their own way.
  The Marine approach -- creative, aggressive and, at times, unorthodox -- has won many admirers within the military. The Marine emphasis on patrolling by foot and interacting with the population, which has helped to turn former insurgent strongholds along the Helmand River valley into reasonably stable communities with thriving bazaars and functioning schools (sic), is hailed as a model of how U.S. forces should implement counterinsurgency strategy.
• Northeast Asia – A Major Global Challenge for the New Decade
  By James Goodby and Markku Heiskanen March 9th, 2010 James Goodby, nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and former US Ambassador to Finland, and Markku Heiskanen, Senior Expert Associate at NIAS-Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Copenhagen, write, “Energy cooperation between China, Japan, North and South Korea and Russia could be a first step towards building broad international and institutionalized cooperation between these countries. The United States and the European Union should be fully participating members of an energy community in Northeast Asia.”
• Full speed ahead into the quicksand!
  NZ Blindly Follows US Into Obama’s War In Afghanistan
  Peace Researcher 39 – January 2010 - Murray Horton
  There was a certain inevitability about the December 2009 announcement by President Obama that, instead of getting out of his predecessor’s war in Afghanistan (which has dragged on since 2001, longer than the US involvement in World War 2), he has instead decided to copy George Bush’s tactic in Iraq and mount a “surge” of 30,000 more troops.
  In addition there are countries outside NATO who have troops in Afghanistan (such as Australia and New Zealand, who are known as Contact Countries) and they are have also been armtwisted into committing more troops. Waihopai NZ’s Most Important Contribution To US War If Obama’s decision to plunge America further into the Afghan morass was no surprise, neither was the August 09 decision by Prime Minister John Key to send 70 NZ Special Air Service (SAS) personnel to Afghanistan in three rotations, lasting 18 months. They join the 130 NZ troops already there, working in “safe” parts of the country on hearts and minds projects such as provincial reconstruction. No New Zealanders have been killed so far. That may be about to change. Previous SAS deployments have been in remote rural areas. This one is different – they will be used in close quarter fighting in urban areas, including Kabul, with a greatly enhanced risk of casualties. When Key announced the latest SAS deployment he said that NZ troops are likely to stay in Afghanistan for another five years, making it this country’s longest war (the Malayan Emergency, in which NZ was fighting Communist guerrillas, lasted from 1948-60). [Continuity] [Tribute]
• Facing new sanctions, Iran admits oil shortages
  By Reuters A senior Iranian oil official said Sunday that increased gasoline rationing imposed late last year has failed to reduce domestic demand, an acknowledgment that reflects the OPEC nation's economic struggles as it faces possible new sanctions. Farid Ameri, the head of Iran's National Distribution Oil Products Company, said gasoline consumption had remained unchanged this year despite a 20 percent cut in fuel rations since December. "To meet the shortage, we need to import 22 million liters per day of gasoline and nine million liters of gasoil per day," Ameri was quoted as saying on Shana, the Oil Ministry's Web site. Advertisement The remarks highlight the challenges confronting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hard-line government as it struggles to rein in soaring fuel costs while also grappling with the possibility of new sanctions that could further hammer the country's faltering economy. [Sanctions]
• U.S. Tightens Missile Shield Encirclement Of China And Russia
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, March 4, 2010 So far this year the United States has succeeded in inflaming tensions with China and indefinitely holding up a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia through its relentless pursuit of global interceptor missile deployments. On January 29 the White House confirmed the completion of a nearly $6.5 billion weapons transfer to Taiwan which includes 200 advanced Patriot anti-ballistic missiles. Earlier in the same month it was reported that Washington is also to provide Taiwan with eight frigates which Taipei intends to equip with the Aegis Combat System that includes the capacity for ship-based Standard Missile-3 interceptors. [Missile defense] [China confrontation] [Arms sales]
• An AfPak star over Central Asia
  By M K Bhadrakumar United States AfPak special representative Richard Holbrooke enjoys a fabulous reputation, no matter the current prospects of the Afghan war. The Eurasian space knew him as a potential Nobel winner who evicted Russia from the Balkans. The world at large expects him to take over if and when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton steps down to enter the US presidential election ring in 2012. Holbrooke's tours abroad inevitably get noticed. His maiden tour of Central Asia and the Caucasus last week was no exception. [US global strategy]
• Marjah's residents wary (sic) of U.S. after Taliban ouster  
  By Dion Nissenbaum | McClatchy Newspapers MARJAH, Afghanistan — One by one, the men of Marjah tentatively approached the high-ranking Afghan official with their complaints. [Media] [Imperialism] [In denial]
• Extradition of Taliban From Pakistan Blocked
  Posted by Farhan Bokhari (CBS) A provincial high court in Pakistan's Punjab province on Friday blocked the Pakistani government from extraditing recently-arrested Taliban leaders — notably military chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (left) — to the United States, Afghanistan, or any other country until the matter is heard further in court. The court's intervention (in response to a petition from an individual campaigning against Pakistan's ties with the U.S.) immediately cast doubt on a case seen as an example of Pakistan's growing support of Washington's hunt for Taliban militants within their borders. [Extraterritoriality]
• With Marja Largely Won, Marines Try to Win Trust (sic)
  Tyler Hicks/The New York Times By C. J. CHIVERS SEMITAY BAZAAR, Afghanistan — After the declaration this weekend that the battle for the Taliban enclave of Marja had been won, for the Marines standing behind sandbags and walking patrols, the more complicated work has begun. With it will be a test of the strategy selected by President Obama and the generals now running the Afghan war. After months of preparation for the largest offensive in Afghanistan since 2001, and two weeks of fighting and moving forces around a sprawling desert battlefield, the last pieces of the campaign’s opening push into a Taliban enclave had come together by the weekend. Marine units were finishing sweeps of contested ground, clearing the last stretches of roads of hidden bombs, and reinforcing hastily erected patrol bases and outposts. More Afghan government forces were arriving, increasing the manpower to counter the Taliban fighters engaged in the guerrillas’ routine of emplacing booby traps and challenging Marine patrols with hit-and-run fights. [Media] [Imperialism]
• 21st Century Strategy: Militarized Europe, Globalized NATO
  Friday, 26 February 2010 13:52 Written by Rick Rozoff With the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms expiring last December 5 and its successor held up almost three months in large part because of U.S. missile shield provocations in recent weeks, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is forging ahead with the formulation and implementation of a new Strategic Concept. On February 5 Russia unveiled its new military doctrine, which identified further NATO expansion eastward to its frontier and American and NATO interceptor missile deployments on and near its borders as the "main external threats of war." [1] [Imperialism]
• AP Enterprise: How nuclear equipment reached Iran
  By PETER ENAV and DEBBY WU The Associated Press Sunday, February 28, 2010; 7:48 PM TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Early last year, a Chinese company placed an order with a Taiwanese agent for 108 nuclear-related pressure gauges. But something happened along the way. Paperwork was backdated. Plans were rerouted, orders reconfigured, shipping redirected. And the gauges ended up in a very different place: Iran.
  Taiwanese companies have been caught exporting sensitive items before. In January, a freight forwarder employee was indicted for helping Taipei-based Axiomtek Co. move industrial computers to Iran. In 2008 a court convicted Taipei-based Trans Merits Co. Ltd. of exporting proscribed computing equipment to North Korea. [Sanctions] [UNUS]
• Legislative Action Message: January 28, 2010
  Cut the Pentagon, Not Real Security Take ActionContact Congress Today Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama said that the government should address the jobs crisis, fix our broken health care system, and take urgent steps to address global warming. Exactly right. Yet hidden in the president's budget proposals is a line that could undermine all of these efforts. [Militarisation] [Pentagon]
• An Undisciplined Defense Understanding the $2 Trillion Surge in US Defense Spending
  Carl Conetta
  The rise in US defense spending since 1998 has no precedent in all the years since the Korean war. It most readily compares with two earlier, but lesser spending surges: the 1958-1968 surge of 43% and the 1975-1985 surge of 57%. The post-Cold War retrenchment of the US military reached its limit in 1998 with DoD’s budget settling at an ebb point of $361.5 billion (2010 USD). If we treat the 1998 budget level as a “baseline” and project it forward to 2010 (adjusting for inflation), we find that the total amount of funds that have been given to DoD above this level during the years 1999-2010 is $2.15 trillion (in 2010 dollars). This figure constitutes what we call the post-1998 spending [Pentagon] [Military industrial complex]
• Firms from Emerging Economies Become Global
  Powerhouses Major changes have occurred in terms of the global rankings of multinational companies over the last 10 years during which the world has seen the bursting of the dot.com bubble, global financial crisis and rise of emerging economies. Banks, automakers, chipmakers and other major industries in China, Korea, India and other emerging economies beat their rivals in the world's advanced countries to rank among the world's top 10 businesses in these areas. According to a survey by the Chosun Ilbo and Daewoo Securities on the world's top 10 companies in terms of market capitalization over the past 10 years in the banking, automotive, steelmaking, semiconductor and Internet sectors, 14 new businesses entered the global top 10. Six of them were Chinese, two each Korean and American and one each Indian, Spanish and Canadian. [Realignment] [China rising]
• Frustrated Strivers in Pakistan Turn to Jihad
  By SABRINA TAVERNISE and WAQAR GILLANI Published: February 27, 2010 LAHORE, Pakistan — Umar Kundi was his parents’ pride, an ambitious young man from a small town who made it to medical school in the big city. It seemed like a story of working-class success, living proof in this unequal society that a telephone operator’s son could become a doctor. But things went wrong along the way. On campus Mr. Kundi fell in with a hard-line Islamic group. His degree did not get him a job, and he drifted in the urban crush of young people looking for work. His early radicalization helped channel his ambitions in a grander, more sinister way. Instead of healing the sick, Mr. Kundi went on to become one of Pakistan’s most accomplished militants. Working under a handler from Al Qaeda, he was part of a network that carried out some of the boldest attacks against the Pakistani state and its people last year, the police here say. Months of hunting him ended on Feb. 19, when he was killed in a shootout with the police at the age of 29. Mr. Kundi and members of his circle — educated strivers who come from the lower middle class — are part of a new generation that has made militant networks in Pakistan more sophisticated and deadly. Al Qaeda has harnessed their aimless ambition and anger at Pakistan’s alliance with the United States, their generation’s most electrifying enemy. [Global insurgency]
• Mike McConnell on how to win the cyber-war we're losing
  By Mike McConnell Sunday, February 28, 2010 The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing. It's that simple. As the most wired nation on Earth, we offer the most targets of significance, yet our cyber-defenses are woefully lacking. [Cyberwar] [Decline]

• US attack on Iran may lead to US collapse: Russian Gen
  Juan Cole It appears that, the International Atomic Energy Agency is at least allowing for the possibility that documents allegedly found on a laptop some years ago-but discounted by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency as of dubious provenance and incompatible with other intelligence gathered in Iran-point to a nuclear weapons program that no one has been able to locate. Some close observers have concluded that the laptop documents are forgeries. A new IAEA report that declines to dismiss the alleged documents will certainly cause the war lobby in the United States to redouble its efforts to get up an attack on Iran.
  But Russia's General of the Army Nikolay Makarov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, warned that an American attack on Iran now, when the US is bogged down in two wars, might well lead to the collapse of the United States. He said that such an attack would roil the region and have negative consequences for Russia (a neighbor of Iran via the Caspian Sea). And, he said, the Russian military is taking steps to forestall such an American strike on Iran. Makarov made the remarks in Vzglyad on Friday, February 19, 2010, and they were translated or paraphrased by the USG Open Source Center: 'Makarov also commented on the recent rumors about the possibility of an attack upon Iran by the United States. In his opinion, this would be complete madness on the part of the American military. He said: "Admiral Michael McMullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said that, in the United States, there is a plan for carrying out strikes against Iran but the United States clearly understands that now, when it is conducting two military campaigns, one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan, a third campaign against Iran would simply lead to a collapse. It would not be able to withstand the strain." [Decline]
• U.S. Sells Arms to South Asian Rivals
  Washington Increases Weapons Transfers to India and Pakistan to Maintain Neutrality, Aid Industry
  By YOCHI J. DREAZEN And AMOL SHARMA The Obama administration is sharply expanding American weapons transfers to both India and Pakistan, longtime rivals about to sit down for peace talks Thursday. The U.S. has sought to remain neutral in the thorny relationship between the nuclear-armed neighbors. But Washington hasn't been shy about pursuing weapons deals in the region, which officials say will lead to closer ties with each country while creating new opportunities for American defense firms.
  The Obama administration, which sees India as a valuable counterweight to China, is negotiating new export control and communications security agreements with New Delhi that would make it easier for American firms to sell more arms and high-technology equipment to India. [Arms sales] [Spin] [Imperialism] [China confrontation] [Continuity] [Fragmentation]
• Poll shows concern about American influence waning as China's grows  
  By John Pomfret and Jon Cohen Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, February 25, 2010 Facing high unemployment and a difficult economy, most Americans think the United States will have a smaller role in the world economy in the coming years, and many believe that while the 20th century may have been the "American Century," the 21st century will belong to China. These results come from a new Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted during a time of significant tension between Washington and Beijing. [China rising] [Decline]
• America’s Global Weapons Monopoly Don’t Call It “the Global Arms Trade”
  By Frida Berrigan
  On the relatively rare occasions when the media turns its attention to U.S. weapons sales abroad and shines its not-so-bright spotlight on the latest set of facts and figures, it invariably speaks of “the global arms trade.” [Arms sales]
• Defence Security Cooperation Agency
  [Arms sales]
• DSCA Facts Book 2008
  The Historical Facts Book is an annual publication that is usually published by the end of the summer. With each edition, prior year’s information is updated to reflect current data and to correct any erroneous information that may have been reported. Prior editions are not available. [Arms sales]
• Despite Slump, U.S. Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows
  By THOM SHANKER Published: September 6, 2009 WASHINGTON — Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study. The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before. [Arms sales]
• Taiwan: Major U.S. Arms Sales Since 1990
  Shirley A. Kan Specialist in Asian Security Affairs December 2, 2009 Congressional Research Service 7-5700 www.crs.gov RL30957 [Arms sales] [China confrontation]
• U.S. Arms Sales: Agreements with and Deliveries to Major Clients, 2001-2008
  Richard F. Grimmett Specialist in International Security December 2, 2009 Congressional Research Service 7-5700 www.crs.gov R40959 [Arms sales]
• Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2001-2008
  Richard F. Grimmett Specialist in International Security September 4, 2009 Congressional Research Service 7-5700 www.crs.gov R40796 [Arms sales]
• How long can the U.S. dollar defy gravity?
  10:00am EST By Steven C. Johnson, Kristina Cooke and David Lawder NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The only time the U.S. dollar ever took a serious shellacking in the marketplace, the wounds were almost entirely self-inflicted. Facing mounting inflation and the escalating cost of the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon, on August 15, 1971, took the United States off the gold standard, which had been in place since 1944 and required that the Federal Reserve back all dollars in circulation with gold. The move amounted to a made-in-America double-digit devaluation, shocking the country's foreign creditors.
  Nearly 40 years later, the dollar still dominates world trade. At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, investors fled to the dollar as a temporary safe haven. But the dollar has been falling steadily since 2002, and as the world economy recovered last year, dollar selling resumed, reviving doubts about how long it could remain the world's unrivaled reserve currency. [Reserve]
• The New Rules of War
  The visionary who first saw the age of "netwar" coming warns that the U.S. military is getting it wrong all over again. Here's his plan to make conflict cheaper, smaller, and smarter. BY JOHN ARQUILLA | MARCH/APRIL 2010 Every day, the U.S. military spends $1.75 billion, much of it on big ships, big guns, and big battalions that are not only not needed to win the wars of the present, but are sure to be the wrong approach to waging the wars of the future. [US military] [Asymmetry]
• Obama and Latin America: The Curse of Domestic Politics
  By Juan Gabriel Tokatlian Monday, February 22, 2010 The former speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington, “Tip” O’Neill, captured the reality of daily political life in the United States — and everywhere else — in a phrase that justly became famous: “All politics is local.” When applied on too great a canvas, however — perhaps according to the principle “all foreign policy is domestic politics” — it is a perilous guide. Washington’s approach to Latin America, under Barack Obama as much as his predecessor George W. Bush, is a case in point. It is evident that external and internal politics are intertwined and that today most issues are “intermestic”; that is, simultaneously international and domestic in ways that link multiple official and non-governmental actors with different power-attributes and power-interests. Yet the “over-primacy” of domestic politics is a major mistake that affects essential global aims, commitments and responsibilities. President Obama’s first year at the White House has been, in terms of US-Latin America relations, a vivid example of that excessive emphasis. None of Obama’s key policies towards the region has been able to overcome the overriding influence of domestic politics [Domestic]
• The New American Way of War
  Max Boot July/August 2003
  Summary: "The American way of war" refers to the grinding strategy of attrition that U.S. generals traditionally employed to prevail in combat. But that was then. Spurred by dramatic advances in information technology, the new American way of war relies on speed, maneuver, flexibility, and surprise. This approach was put on display in the invasion of Iraq and should reshape what the military looks like.
  That the United States and its allies won anyway -- and won so quickly -- must rank as one of the signal achievements in military history. Previously, the gold standard of operational excellence had been the German blitzkrieg through the Low Countries and France in 1940. The Germans managed to conquer France, the Netherlands, and Belgium in just 44 days, at a cost of "only" 27,000 dead soldiers. The United States and Britain took just 26 days to conquer Iraq (a country 80 percent of the size of France), at a cost of 161 dead, making fabled generals such as Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison. [Imperialism] [Arrogance] [US military]
• The Utility of Assassination
  February 22, 2010 | 2052 GMT By George Friedman The apparent Israeli assassination of a Hamas operative in the United Arab Emirates turned into a bizarre event replete with numerous fraudulent passports, alleged Israeli operatives caught on videotape and international outrage (much of it feigned), more over the use of fraudulent passports than over the operative’s death. If we are to believe the media, it took nearly 20 people and an international incident to kill him. STRATFOR has written on the details of the killing as we have learned of them, but we see this as an occasion to address a broader question: the role of assassination in international politics.
• Alexander Haig, 85; soldier-statesman managed Nixon resignation
  Alexander Haig, a retired Army general and adviser to three presidents, died Saturday of complications from an infection. He was 85. By James Hohmann Special to The Washington Post Sunday, February 21, 2010 Retired Army Gen. Alexander Haig, who held influential positions in the U.S. military and government and who as White House chief of staff shepherded Richard M. Nixon toward peacefully resigning the presidency, died Saturday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore of complications from an infection. He was 85.
  From a young age, he aspired to a career in the military. He graduated in 1947 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and graduated 214th in a class of 310. Nevertheless, he advanced far more rapidly than his academic record might have suggested. After college, he went to Japan to help with the post-World War II occupation. While playing football, he caught the eye of Patricia Fox, the attractive daughter of a general on Gen. Douglas MacArthur's staff. He married Fox and earned a spot on MacArthur's staff, though not working directly for his father-in-law.
  Gen. Haig was working as MacArthur's staff duty officer on Jun. 25, 1950, when the North Koreans surged across the 38th parallel. He later claimed that during the Korean War, he carried MacArthur's sleeping bag ashore during the landing at Inchon. The young officer was in Korea for both the advance to the Yalu River and the withdrawal that followed when the Chinese crossed it.
  As his military career progressed, Gen. Haig picked up a master's degree in international relations from Georgetown University in 1962, and he continued to attract a powerful series of mentors. Then-Army Secretary Cyrus Vance chose Gen. Haig as his military assistant. Joseph Califano, a special assistant to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, then tapped Gen. Haig as his deputy.
• Get FIT: Public Policy, the Smart State and the Next Energy-Environmental Revolution
  Andrew DeWit Shi Zhengrong, founder and chief-executive of China’s Suntech Power, now the largest crystalline silicon solar module producer in the world, tells us that “policy is the only leading force for climate change.”1
  And the January 31, 2010 New York Times warns, in tones reminiscent of the 1957 Sputnik shock, that China’s policy-driven efforts “to dominate the global manufacture of renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West (sic) may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.”2
  After nearly three decades of neoliberals re-engineering the state into an almost invisible hand, robust, strategic public policy is returning to the agenda.
  I want to show at the outset that a revolution, increasingly being deemed a full-fledged industrial revolution,4 is underway and centers on using renewable energy technologies to generate power. Germany, China, Spain and myriad other examples illustrate that ramping up renewable energy capacity offers not only cleaner power generation, but also the prospect of cheaper power whose production is distributed throughout the community. This pattern of distributed power production (and hence diffusion of economic opportunity) is the reverse of the 20th century centralization of power production in large facilities owned by monopolies or oligopolies. And that deep threat to vested interests is why the revolution moves erratically in specific national contexts: emergent and incumbent industries are battling with unprecedented ferocity. [Climate change] [China rising] [Democracy]
• The French Connection Vietnam lessons the U.S. might have learned at Dien Bien Phu
  Agence France- BOOKSHELF FEBRUARY 20, 2010 In November 1953, France was in its eighth year of war for control over Indochina. Things were going poorly—Vietnamese guerrillas, or Vietminh, held the upper hand—and at a strategy session in Saigon the French commander, Gen. Henri Navarre, outlined his latest plan. "I'm thinking of occupying the basin of Dien Bien Phu," he began. "The goal of this risky operation will be to defend Laos." He went on to argue that the move would draw the Vietminh into a battle they could not win. France had the advantage of air power. A base at Dien Bien Phu—in the northwest corner of Vietnam, near the Laos border—could be resupplied by air, while guerrilla leader Ho Chi Minh's cadres would be forced to move huge numbers of men and matériel through miles of mountain jungle
• What Ever Happened to Candidate Obama? Subject to Debate
  By Katha Pollitt This article appeared in the March 8, 2010 edition of The Nation. February 18, 2010 How disappointed are the Obama warriors of 2008? "May your love for me not fade as quickly as your love for Obama," read one pale pink e-card making the rounds on Valentine's Day. Obama himself addressed the topic of a one-term presidency in a recent interview with Diane Sawyer, albeit in a noble, idealistic, theoretical way ("I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president"). Well, OK, who wouldn't rather be really good for four years than mediocre for eight; but how many really good one-term presidents have there been? (Only one--James K. Polk--according to a New York Times op-ed by Robert W. Merry, publisher of Stratfor and author of a biography of, well, James K. Polk.) I'm still glad I supported Obama over Hillary Clinton. If Hillary had won the election, every single day would be a festival of misogyny. [Obama] [Continuity]
• Black sites in the empire of bases
  By Nick Turse In the 19th century, it was a fort used by British forces. In the 20th century, Soviet troops moved into the crumbling facilities. In December 2009, at this site in the Shinwar district of Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, United States troops joined members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) in preparing the way for the next round of foreign occupation. On its grounds, a new military base is expected to rise, one of hundreds of camps and outposts scattered across the country.
  Counting the remaining bases in Iraq - as many as 50 are slated to be operating after President Barack Obama's August 31, 2010, deadline to remove all US "combat troops" from the country - and those in Afghanistan, as well as black sites like Al-Udeid, the total number of US bases overseas now must significantly exceed 1,000. Just exactly how many US military bases (and allied facilities used by US forces) are scattered across the globe may never be publicly known. What we do know - from the experience of bases in Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea - is that, once built, they have a tendency toward permanency that a cessation of hostilities, or even outright peace, has a way of not altering. [Imperialism] [US military]
• Israel and the Dubai Murder Mystery
  By RONEN BERGMAN Israelis woke up Wednesday morning to pictures of 11 individuals plastered on the front page of every newspaper. The familiar guessing game began immediately: Don't I know him? Didn't we serve in the same army unit? Isn't that guy my geeky neighbor, the one who says he's an accountant? An acquaintance of mine swore she had dated one of the men. "He behaved exactly like you'd expect a killer to behave," she said. Nearly everyone believes that the 11 alleged members of the hit squad that killed Hamas leader Muhammad al-Mabhouh last week in Dubai are Mossad agents. Seven of the 11 identities used were stolen from other Israelis with dual European citizenship. The Dubai police chief has stated "with 99% certainty" that the Mossad is responsible and has promised to reveal additional evidence to prove it. The methods—including the use of false European passports—are certainly reminiscent of previous Mossad operations. The mission was technically successful. The target was eliminated—allegedly smothered by a pillow in his hotel room—and the operatives left the country within hours. But it has turned into a diplomatic nightmare for Israel. The sovereignty of Dubai was violated, and the passports of four European countries were used for the purpose of committing a crime. Several rows Israel can ill-afford are currently brewing with England, Germany and France.
• Dutch Pull-Out From War Expected After Government Collapse
  By Nicholas Kulish BERLIN — A day after his government collapsed, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Sunday that he expected Dutch troops to come home from Afghanistan before the end of the year. A last-ditch effort by Mr. Balkenende to keep Dutch soldiers in the dangerous southern Afghan province of Oruzgan instead saw the Labor Party quit the government in the Netherlands early Saturday, immediately raising fears that the Western military coalition fighting the war was increasingly at risk. Even as the allied offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Marja continued, it appeared almost certain that most of the 2,000 Dutch troops would be gone from Afghanistan by the end of the year. The question plaguing military planners was whether a Dutch departure would embolden the war’s critics in other allied countries, where debate over deployment is continuing, and hasten the withdrawal of their troops as well.
• Iran, China, and the Natural Gas Game
  Thursday, February 18, 2010 I have an article up at Asia Times on Iran’s natural gas diplomacy entitled Iran aims for an energy breakout. Iran is having good success in enticing Chinese and Indian energy companies to take blocks (known as “phases”) of the offshore South Pars gas fields. Just as Secretary Clinton was jawboning the Saudis to give China energy assurances in return for Beijing's OK on sanctions, China National Petroleum Corporation reportedly finalized its $4 billion+ deal to develop South Pars Phase 11 and will begin exploratory drilling in March. Iran is finding less success in getting a natural gas pipeline built to its east—the long-gestating Iran-Pakistan-India a.k.a. IPI or “Peace” pipeline--despite the fact that, from an economic point of view, the project is an absolute slam dunk. India has effectively scuttled the project, citing security and transit cost concerns, but the real reason is probably its acquiescence to the United States’ implacable determination to deny Iran the economic, security, and diplomatic leverage a pipeline would provide. [Fragmentation]
• Former IAEA Head Hans Blix: 'Iran Won't Simply Sit There and Accept an Attack'
  by Bernhard Zand Global Research, February 17, 2010 Spiegel - 2010-02-15 Hans Blix is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and also worked as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He talks to SPIEGEL about whether Iran really has the ability to enrich uranium and if economic sanctions can ever be effective. SPIEGEL: Tehran has announced that it has enriched a "first batch" of uranium from 3.5 to 20 percent. Does this mean that we now face a new stage in the escalation of the conflict with Iran? Hans Blix: The government in Tehran originally declared that it only intended to enrich uranium to 3.5 percent, to produce fuel for nuclear reactors. But now it needs uranium enriched to about 20 percent for its research reactor, in order to produce isotopes for medical use. Tehran had the same problem once before, in the early 1980s. The United States had built a research reactor for Tehran, Iran had ordered nuclear fuel and had even paid for it, but then came the mullahs' revolution, and America refused to deliver the fuel. The West has faced a dilemma since then: If we (sic) don't supply them with the fuel, Iran has a reason to produce it itself. That's what led to the compromise proposal of enriching Iranian fuel abroad. [IAEA] [UNUS] [Softpower]
• Chaos as an Everyday Thing
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 275, Feb. 15, 2010 You know you're living in a chaotic situation when (1) the mainstream media are constantly surprised by what is happening; (2) short-term predictions by various pundits go in radically different directions and are stated with many reserves; (3) the Establishment dares to say things or use words that were previously taboo; (4) ordinary people are frightened and angry but very unsure what to do. This is a good description of the past two years throughout the world, or at least in most parts of the world. Consider the recent enormous "surprises" - the election of a Republican senator in Massachusetts; the financial collapse of Dubai; the near bankruptcy of various large states within the United States and four or five of the member states of the European Union; severe world currency fluctuations. These "surprises" are commented on each day in the world press and by leading politicians. They don't agree at all about what is happening, and even less about what one should do to improve the situation. [Crisis] [Decline]
• The winner takes all in Afghanistan
  By M K Bhadrakumar The Nobel Peace Prize has a tradition. In the entire period from 1901 to 2009, it has never been awarded twice to any of its 97 individual recipients. United States President Barack Obama is thus unlikely to win a second Nobel. Yet, in an historical perspective, Afghanistan promises to become the first country in which Islamists will have been ushered into power on the wave of America's newfound smart power. That too may only be the beginning. "Of course Afghanistan is not an island. There is no solution just within its borders," North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a security conference in Munich last weekend. NATO eyes Central Asia The international community has been led to believe that the India-Pakistan faultline is the pivotal concern in the US's diplomatic strategy in Afghanistan. However, it is a mere subplot. The US's principal protagonist is China, while India and Pakistan - and increasingly Russia - are more like jesters in forming the confusion and the humor in an Elizabethan drama. The main plot is about the expansion of NATO into Central Asia. [US global strategy]
• Russia and Iran’s Afghan Heroin Nightmare
  I have an article up in the Counterpunch print edition about the impact of Afghan opium production on Iran and Russia. The colossal spike in Afghan opium production has had a direct and deleterious influence on Russia, Iran, and the Central Asian stans that lie on the smuggling routes to Europe. Addiction rates have increased by as much as 100% since 2001, creating a major public health burden, particularly in Russia. Well-armed and financed gangs kill, corrupt, and erode social order throughout the region. Both Iran and Russia have mounted massive efforts to interdict the flow of Afghan drugs. Iran has spent almost a billion dollars militarizing its eastern border and has had over a thousand border guards die in engagements with drug smugglers.
  Both countries bitterly reproach the United States for its dismal and equivocal efforts to control the drug trade. The United States has clearly tolerated and perhaps even expedited the Afghan opium industry since so many of its allies inside Afghanistan deal drugs. [Intelligent design] [Drugs] [AfPak]
• Photographer films his own 'anti-terror' arrest
  Man held in police station for eight hours after taking pictures of Christmas celebrations in Accrington
  Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 February 2010 23.55 GMT Article history Link to this video Police questioned an amateur photographer under anti-terrorist legislation and later arrested him, claiming pictures he was taking in a Lancashire town were "suspicious" and constituted "antisocial behaviour". Footage recorded on a video camera by Bob Patefield, a former paramedic, shows how police approached him and a fellow photography enthusiast in Accrington town centre. They were told they were being questioned under the Terrorism Act. [Bizarre] [Surveillance]
• The winner takes all in Afghanistan
  By M K Bhadrakumar The Nobel Peace Prize has a tradition. In the entire period from 1901 to 2009, it has never been awarded twice to any of its 97 individual recipients. United States President Barack Obama is thus unlikely to win a second Nobel. Yet, in an historical perspective, Afghanistan promises to become the first country in which Islamists will have been ushered into power on the wave of America's newfound smart power. That too may only be the beginning. "Of course Afghanistan is not an island. There is no solution just within its borders," North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a security conference in Munich last weekend. NATO eyes Central Asia The international community has been led to believe that the India-Pakistan faultline is the pivotal concern in the US's diplomatic strategy in Afghanistan. However, it is a mere subplot. The US's principal protagonist is China, while India and Pakistan - and increasingly Russia - are more like jesters in forming the confusion and the humor in an Elizabethan drama. [China confrontation] [US global strategy]
• NATOs Role In The Military Encirclement Of Iran
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, February 11, 2010 Stop NATO - 2010-02-10 Following on the heels of identifying himself as the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars and moreover the head of state of no less than the worlds sole military superpower [1] while being presented with what is still curiously called the Nobel Peace Prize, U.S. President Barack Obama in his first State of the Union address on January 27 asserted the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated and threatened: As Irans leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: Theywill face growing consequences. That is a promise. Two days later his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, delivered an address at a major French military academy, revealingly enough, and while there she coupled excoriation of Iran with an anything but diplomatic dressing down of China, stating China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing impact that a nuclear-armed Iran would have in the [Persian] Gulf. [2] Pressure from Washington, of course. On the very day of Clintons speech in Paris the White House confirmed the completion of a $6.4 billion weapons transfer to Taiwan. On February 9 U.S. Department of Defense spokesman Geoff Morrell told the press that his boss, Pentagon chief Robert Gates, wants the United Nations to impose sanctions on Iran within weeks, not months and clearly thinks time is of the essence. [3] During the First World War Austrian journalist and dramatist Karl Kraus lamented: What mythological confusion is this? Since when has Mars been the god of commerce and Mercury the god of war? If he were alive today he would be equally bemused by the U.S.s top diplomat delivering an address at a military academy (and condescendingly admonishing the worlds most populous nation) and its defense chief pressuring the world to impose punitive sanctions against a country that has not attacked any other in centuries. [US global strategy] [Imperialism]
• Hard Mideast Truths
  By Roger Cohen NEW YORK — For over a century now, Zionism and Arab nationalism have failed to find an accommodation in the Holy Land. Both movements attempted to fill the space left by collapsed empire, and it has been left to the quasi-empire, the United States, to try to coax them to peaceful coexistence. The attempt has failed. President Barack Obama came to office more than a year ago promising new thinking, outreach to the Muslim world, and relentless focus on Israel-Palestine. But nice speeches have given way to sullen stalemate. I am told Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have a zero-chemistry relationship. Domestic U.S. politics constrain innovative thought — even open debate — on the process without end that is the peace search. As Aaron David Miller, who long labored in the trenches of that process, once observed, the United States ends up as “Israel’s lawyer” rather than an honest broker. The upside for an American congressman in speaking out for Palestine is nonexistent. I don’t see these constraints shifting much, but the need for Obama to honor his election promise grows. The conflict gnaws at U.S. security, eats away at whatever remote possibility of a two-state solution is left, clouds Israel’s future, scatters Palestinians and devours every attempt to bridge the West and Islam. Here’s what I believe. Centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust created a moral imperative for a Jewish homeland, Israel, and demand of America that it safeguard that nation in the breach. But past persecution of the Jews cannot be a license to subjugate another people, the Palestinians. Nor can the solemn U.S. promise to stand by Israel be a blank check to the Jewish state when its policies undermine stated American aims.
• New Model for Afghan War: ‘Population Is the Prize’
  By Dexter Filkins KABUL, Afghanistan — For all the fighting that lies ahead over the next several days, no one doubts that the American and Afghan troops who will swarm into the Taliban redoubt of Marja will ultimately clear it of insurgents. And that’s when the real test will begin. For much of the past eight years, American and NATO forces have mounted other large military operations to clear towns and cities of Taliban insurgents. And then, almost invariably, they have cleared out, never leaving behind enough soldiers or police to hold the place on their own. And so, almost always, the Taliban returned — and, after a time, so did the American and NATO troops, to clear the place all over again. “Mowing the grass,” the soldiers and Marines derisively call it. Now American and Afghan troops are poised to take Marja, a Taliban-held town in southern Helmand province. It is not clear when the battle will begin, but this time commanders say they will do something they have never done before: bring in an Afghan government and police force behind them. American and British troops will stay on to support them. “We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in,” said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander here. Indeed, Marja is intended to serve as a prototype for a new type of military operation, based on the counter-insurgency thinking propounded by General McChrystal in the run-up to President Obama’s decision in December to boost the number of American troops here to nearly 100,000. More than at any time since 2001, American and NATO soldiers will focus less on killing Taliban insurgents than on sparing Afghan civilians and building an Afghan state. “The population is not the enemy (sic),” Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the commander of the Marines in southern Afghanistan, told a group of troops this week. “The population is the prize — they are why we are going in.” [Imperialism] [In denial] [Spin]
• Afghanistan: propaganda of the deed
  Paul Rogers, 11 February 2010 The deluge of publicity about a large-scale military operation against the Taliban must be set against Afghan realities that tell a different story. The military campaign now being waged in the Afghan province of Helmand is being described in much of the world’s media as the biggest such operation since the one which secured “regime-change” in Kabul in October-November 2001. A coordinated military assault involving 15,000 troops - from the United States, Britain and Afghanistan itself - aims to seize the town of Marjah and surrounding areas, which are described as the Taliban’s last stronghold in Helmand. Operation Moshtarak (the word means “together” in the Dari language), even before its launch, has been the subject of a series of high-profile news stories with an almost uniformly positive “spin”. Their consistent core is that the operation’s purpose is to curb Taliban influence over Helmand as a whole; that the province is, alongside neighbouring Kandahar, the pivot of Taliban power in Afghanistan; and, therefore, that victory would be likely to turn the whole course of the war in Afghanistan in favour of the Nato/Isaf project. The herald of success The task of reaching an accurate assessment of the real state of the conflict must look beyond such public-relations campaigns from military sources. The starting-point here is to acknowledge that after a long process of internal deliberation the Barack Obama administration has embarked on a policy markedly different from its predecessor. Washington’s new approach combines a readiness to negotiate and compromise (even with significant elements of the Taliban leadership) in order to end the war with a belief that it needs to do so from a position of clear military strength. Operation Moshtarak is the first major step in this military-diplomatic process.
  But it has always to be remembered is that the official representation of Afghanistan’s condition is just one part of a much wider picture; and that any worthwhile assessment of what is happening in the country must take into account many other factors. In this respect, the dismaying outcome of the Kajaki operation may be a more accurate reflection of Afghan realities than the publicity accompanying Operation Moshtarak. [Decline] [AfPak] [Imperialism] [Spin]
• The American political system: ruin and reform
  Godfrey Hodgson, 11 February 2010 The Supreme Court has just made even harder the effort to limit the degradation of American politics by money, says Godfrey Hodgson. For many years now, many informed observers - journalists, academics, even practitioners with tender consciences - have agreed that American politics is being ruined by money: by the abundance of money from special interests sloshing around Washington, and by the avidity with which all too many politicians pursue it, first to ensure their re-election, then for themselves. Such different judges as Elizabeth Drew, the liberal columnist, and Jeffrey Birnbaum, an experienced investigative reporter and broadcaster, have powerfully argued this case. Robert G Kaiser, the recently retired number two at the Washington Post, supplies a impeccably researched account of how lobbying works in Washington in his book, So Damn Much Money - whose title quotes a remark from Bob Strauss, the ultimate insider’s insider in Washington, lawyer-lobbyist, politico and former Democratic Party chairman (see So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government [Random House, 2010]). Now Lawrence Lessig, a professor the Harvard Law School and former colleague of President Obama at the University of Chicago, has written a long and agonised article blaming the president’s frustration on the corruption of American politics by money, and suggesting two devices that might clean up the stables (see “How to Get Our Democracy Back”, Agence Global, 5 February 2010). Lessig’s article is worth reading in full, though some brief extracts give a flavour:
  A year ago, many people in the United States, and even more around the world, hoped that Barack Obama’s victory would rescue American democracy from a conservative ascendancy that was dong it grave damage in financial and foreign policy and in its contempt for the constitutional tradition and the rule of law. Now the court, the institution that in Bush vs Gore handed the 2000 election to the people who were to respond so disastrously to the atrocity of 2001 and the financial crisis of 2007-08, has made it less likely than ever that the corruption of American politics can be reversed. [Democracy] [Decline] [Corruption]
• Yulia Tymoshenko to appeal against Ukraine election results
  Current prime minister (sic) and pro-European presidential hopeful believes Viktor Yanukovych's 3.5% lead caused by vote rigging (sic) Luke Harding in Moscow guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 February 2010 16.14 GMT Article history Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's prime minister, came second in the presidential vote. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP Yulia Tymoshenko has spoken in public for the first time since her defeat in Ukraine's presidential elections a week ago, alleging that the poll was rigged and declaring that she intends to appeal in court. [Democracy] [Media]
• Under Obama, more targeted killings than captures in counterterrorism efforts
  By Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 14, 2010 When a window of opportunity opened to strike the leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa last September, U.S. Special Operations forces prepared several options. They could obliterate his vehicle with an airstrike as he drove through southern Somalia. Or they could fire from helicopters that could land at the scene to confirm the kill. Or they could try to take him alive. The White House authorized the second option [Imperialism] [Continuity] [War crimes]
• Obama's Corporate Messaging
  In a wide-ranging Oval Office interview, President Barack Obama takes aim at the perception that he and his Administration are anti-business Obama: "We want and need more input from the corporate community" February 22, 2010 Two things troubled President Barack Obama as he greeted Bloomberg BusinessWeek on Feb. 9 for a wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office. First was the snowstorm that had crippled Washington. "I can't believe I have to shut down the federal government for a week for this," said the President, gazing outside in mock condescension before reminiscing about his years in Chicago, a city that takes heavy weather in stride. Obama's second concern is more frustrating and far less likely to melt away: the impression that his Administration—and he personally—is anti-business. [Continuity] [Obama]
• America Is Not Yet Lost
  By Paul Krugman February 8, 2010 Op-Ed Columnist We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic. What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland. [Incompetence]
• The Jihadist CBRN Threat
  February 10, 2010 | 1913 GMT By Scott Stewart In an interview aired Feb. 7 on CNN, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she considers weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the hands of an international terrorist group to be the largest threat faced by the United States today, even bigger than the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran (sic). “The biggest nightmare that many of us have is that one of these terrorist member organizations within this syndicate of terror will get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction,” Clinton said. In referring to the al Qaeda network, Clinton noted that it is “unfortunately a very committed, clever, diabolical group of terrorists who are always looking for weaknesses and openings.” [Global insurgency] [WMD] [cbw] [Imperialism]
• How we learned to love Photoshop
  Photoshop, the ubiquitous photo manipulation program that is 20 years old, is now so popular it's a verb in common usage Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 February 2010 21.00 GMT Article history You're browsing the online catalogue for Heine, the German interiors-and-­everything-else shop, when a "secretary table" catches your eye. The white one looks hideous, but there's a brown one – so you click the picture to see it in more detail. It looks nice, but there's something unsettling about the picture. The table looks fine, but the chair behind it somehow manages also to have a leg in front of the table. It's ­interior design, as done by MC Escher. Except this isn't the fine artwork of Escher – it's lousy gruntwork by someone using Photoshop, the image ­manipulation program that turns 20 next Friday. The image is just one of a whole stream that have been sent to the ­Photoshop Disasters blog since it started in March 2008. An eerily ­unreal, doll-like Ashlee Simpson graced its first post.
• Texas GOP candidate loses Glenn Beck with 9/11 answer
  By Aman Batheja | Fort Worth Star-Telegram Fox News pundit Glenn Beck threw a wrench into Debra Medina's Texas gubernatorial campaign Thursday when he asked her about her opinion on whether the 9/11 terrorist attack was an inside job. Medina, who's challenging incumbent Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the GOP primary, was a guest on Beck's radio program. Beck asked her, "Do you believe the government was any way involved with the bringing down of the World Trade Centers on 9/11?" [Media]
• Iran’s Two-Edged Bomb
  By Adam B. Lowther Published: February 8, 2010 With Iran having notified the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency that it is now enriching its stockpile of uranium to a higher level, we should admit that Washington’s approach to countering the Islamic Republic is leading nowhere. What’s needed, however, may be less of a change of plan than a change in how we view the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Believe it or not, there are some potential benefits to the United States should Iran build a bomb. [US Global strategy] [Military industrial complex] [Threat]
• Will the US Meet Its Waterloo in Afghanistan and Iraq?
  2nd Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Lecture by Dr. Jan Myrdal Global Research, February 9, 2010 - 2010-02-06
  But that the US and its empire in the longer run is doomed to failure is evident. No tree grows up into heaven. The US is a paper tiger, as Mao put it. It will follow the road of other world empires. The Roman and Spanish - and British. But that is a very general statement, it does not say when and how that empire will come to its end. But if it does so by meeting a Waterloo is another question., It is of course possible that its end will be of the Waterloo kind; a defeat like that of Napoleon by a coalition of powers. That is possible. Washington is after all waging its present wars on credit. [Imperialism] [Decline]
• Wars Sending U.S. Into Ruin
  Obama the peace president is fighting battles his country cannot afford
  by Eric Margolis Global Research, February 9, 2010 Toronto Sun - 2010-02-05 U.S. President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America’s economic health. In fact, it’s another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug — debt. More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks. [Imperialism] [Decline] [Militarisation]
• US Maritime Security Priorities in East Asia
  By Mark Valencia February 9th, 2010 Mark Valencia, a Visiting Senior Fellow with the Maritime Institute of Malaysia and Nautilus Institute Senior Associate, writes, “It seems inevitable that warships, submarines and military aircraft of the two will increasingly confront each other in and over the South and East China Seas. Needed urgently is at least an Incidents at Sea Agreement if not an informal set of agreed guidelines regarding the operations of US military vessels and aircraft in China’s claimed waters. Otherwise, the seas of East Asia may become increasingly dangerous for all concerned –both politically and otherwise.” [China confrontation] [US global strategy]
• Pakistan Is Said to Pursue Role in Afghan Talks With U.S
  February 10, 2010 . By Jane Perlez ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan has told the United States it wants a central role in resolving the Afghan war and has offered to mediate with Taliban factions who use its territory and have long served as its allies, American and Pakistani officials said. The offer, aimed at preserving Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan once the Americans leave, could both help and hurt American interests as Washington debates reconciling (sic) with the Taliban. [US global strategy] [AfPak]
• The Myth of the Good War: America in World War II
  60 Years Ago, February 13-14, 1945: Why was Dresden Destroyed By Jacques R. Pauwels Global Research, February 9, 2010 In the night of February 13-14, 1945, the ancient and beautiful capital of Saxony, Dresden, was attacked three times, twice by the RAF and once by the USAAF, the United States Army Air Force, in an operation involving well over 1,000 bombers. The consequences were catastrophic, as the historical city centre was incinerated and between 25,000 and 40,000 people lost their lives
  The bombing of Dresden had little or nothing to do with the war against Nazi Germany: it was an American British message for Stalin, a message that cost the lives of tens of thousands of people. Later that same year, two more similarly coded yet not very subtle messages would follow, involving even more victims, but this time Japanese cities were targeted, and the idea was to direct Stalins attention to the lethality of Americas terrible new weapon, the atomic bomb.[27] Dresden had little or nothing to do with the war against Nazi Germany; it had much, if not everything, to do with a new conflict in which the enemy was to be the Soviet Union. In the horrible heat of the infernos of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cold War was born. [Nuclear weapons] [US global strategy]
• China, S.Korea Flex Naval Muscle as U.S. Wanes
  China and South Korea are expanding their submarine fleets as the U.S. Navy shrinks its own. The conservative Heritage Foundation in a report last Tuesday said that by 2025 the number of U.S. submarines in the Pacific Ocean will fall from 30 to 27 while China will have 78 submarines and South Korea 26. Mackenzie Eaglen and Jon Rodeback, who prepared the report titled "Submarine Arms Race in the Pacific" among a flurry of such papers issuing from the think tank, said the military strength of the U.S. and Russia is waning while China and South Korea's capabilities are rising and India and Australia also aspire to bolster their naval capabilities. In
  Pacifist Japan (sic) and North Korea with its fleet of rusting vessels are unlikely to flex much naval muscle in the region. [Decline] [Military balance] [China confrontation] [Thinktank] [military balance]
• U.S. military power-when is enough enough?
  Fri Feb 5, 2010 8:25pm IST (Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own) By Bernd Debusmann WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The numbers tell the story of a superpower addicted to overwhelming military might: the United States accounts for five percent of the world's population, around 23 percent of its economic output and more than 40 percent of its military spending. America spends as much on its soldiers and weapons as the next 18 countries put together. Why such a huge margin? The question is rarely asked although there is spirited debate over specific big-ticket weapons systems whose conception dates back to the days when the United States was not the only superpower and large-scale conventional war against the other superpower, the Soviet Union, was an ever-present possibility. Those days are over. [Imperialism] [Pentagon] [Soft power] [Military balance]
• The Planning of War Behind Closed Doors
  Brussels, London, Istanbul: A Week Of Western War Councils By Rick Rozoff Global Research, February 5, 2010 Stop NATO The defense chiefs of all 28 NATO nations and an undisclosed number of counterparts from non-Alliance partners gathered in Istanbul, Turkey on February 4 to begin two days of meetings focused on the war in Afghanistan, the withdrawal of military forces from Kosovo in the course of transferring control of security operations to the breakaway province's embryonic army (the Kosovo Security Force) and "the transformation efforts required to best conduct the full range of NATOs agreed missions." [1]
  Condemnations, tirades and threats issued by the U.S. secretary of state and ambassador to the United Nations may as well be presented in triplicate. Permanent Security Council members Russia and China may occasionally - all too occasionally - block hostile Western actions against defenseless third parties in the United Nations, but Washington always walks away with a mandate and the final say in the selection of viceroys to complement U.S. and NATO military forces on the ground in subjugated nations. As a recent example, during the second day of the NATO Military Committee meetings in Brussels and the day before the Afghan conference in London, an "international" conference on Yemen was also held in London which "Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for...in response to the failed bomb attack on an airliner over Detroit on December 25." [5] That bears repeating. The apprehension in the U.S. of a Nigerian national alleged to have been trained in Yemen led the head of state of the United Kingdom to summon representatives of the Group of Eight (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the U.S.), the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), Egypt, Jordan - but not the Arab League - Turkey and the European Union, United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund "to bolster Yemen's fight against al Qaeda...." [7] Soon 50,000 non-American NATO troops will be bogged down in Afghanistan because the bloc invoked its Article 5 collective defense provision in 2001...to fight against al-Qaeda. Ever-compliant UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lent legitimacy to this American and British charade, as he did the following day's Afghan conference where he delivered a speech in the presence of 28 NATO and perhaps dozens of its International Security Assistance Force non-member states foreign ministers. Yemen has joined the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq as a target for Western "assistance and stabilization." NATO will conduct more planning sessions with scores of military chiefs and defense and foreign ministers and not only for the war in Afghanistan. [Imperialism] [UNUS] [Ban Ki-moon]
• Changing Security Situation Needs Urgent Attention
  U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that U.S. ground forces may not be able to arrive in South Korea in time in case of an emergency in North Korea because of America's heavy commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Certainly initially we would be especially dependent on the Navy and the Air Force," he said, but added, "That's not to say they [Army units] wouldn't get there." According to an operational plan for such contingencies, the U.S. is required to dispatch 160 naval vessels, including five air craft carrier squadrons, 2,500 fighter planes and 690,000 Army and Marine troops to the Korean Peninsula within 90 days after a North Korean provocation (sic) escalates into a full-fledged war. [Takeover] [Threat] [Inversion]
• U.S. Military Equipment 'Outdated'
  It is doubtful if an "old and impoverished eagle" can defend the U.S., the rightwing Heritage Foundation says in a report bemoaning aging equipment in the American military. Army M-113 armored personnel carriers that carry infantrymen into battle are 27 years old. UH-1 Huey helicopters that transport supplies are 35 years old, and KC-135 tankers, which are used to re-fuel aircraft during flight, have been in service for 44 years. According to the New York Times, the average age of U.S. servicemen in Iraq is between 23 and 24, meaning that U.S. soldiers are fighting enemies with equipment that is much older than they. In a report entitled "The State of the U.S. Military," the conservative Heritage Foundation said, "The collective decisions by Congress and both Democratic and Republican Presidents over the past 15 years have left the U.S. military using equipment that is extremely old and, in many cases, outdated." [US military] [Military balance] [Spin] [Militarisation]
• Pakistani scientist found guilty of attempted murder of US agents
  A neuroscientist trained at an elite American university has been found guilty of two charges of attempted murder after she tried to kill US agents in Afghanistan in 2008 A Pakistani neuroscientist trained at an elite American university has been found guilty of two charges of attempted murder after she tried to kill US agents in Afghanistan in 2008. The conviction, which could see Aafia Siddiqui sentenced to life in prison, is the latest chapter in a life story that has baffled observers and divided legal opinion. The scientist has been accused of being an al-Qaida sympathiser, but has claimed that she was kidnapped and held in secret detention by the US for five years before her arrest. [Legality] [Global insurgency]
• Soldier Deaths Draw Focus to U.S. in Pakistan
  By JANE PERLEZ Published: February 3, 2010 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The deaths of three American soldiers in a Taliban suicide attack on Wednesday lifted the veil on United States military assistance to Pakistan that the authorities here would like to keep quiet and the Americans, as the donors, chafe at not receiving credit for. A suicide attack in Lower Dir killed three Americans. The soldiers were among at least 60 to 100 members of a Special Operations team that trains Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps in counterinsurgency techniques, including intelligence gathering and development assistance. The American service members are from the Special Operations Command of Adm. Eric T. Olson. [AfPak]
• Behind Clinton's tough talk on Iran
  The goal of Hillary Clinton's rhetoric seems to be to promote conflict and convince Americans Iran is a threat to their security Mark Weisbrot guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 February 2010 23.51 GMT Article history In a visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia this week, Hillary Clinton said that Iran "is moving toward a military dictatorship," and continued the administration's campaign for tougher sanctions against that country. What could America's top diplomat hope to accomplish with this kind of inflammatory rhetoric?
  So what is the purpose of a speech like this? The most obvious conclusion is that it is to promote conflict, and to convince Americans that Iran is an actual threat to their security. Americans generally have to be prepared and persuaded for years if they are to accept that they must go to war. The groundwork for the Iraq war was laid during the Clinton presidency. President Clinton imposed sanctions on the country that devastated the civilian population, carried out bombings, and publicly declared that Washington's intention was to overthrow the government. Although, as we now know, Iraq never posed any significant security threat to the US, President Clinton spent years trying to convince Americans that it did. [Threat] [Imperialism]
• U.S. Military Equipment 'Outdated'
  It is doubtful if an "old and impoverished eagle" can defend the U.S., the rightwing Heritage Foundation says in a report bemoaning aging equipment in the American military. Army M-113 armored personnel carriers that carry infantrymen into battle are 27 years old. UH-1 Huey helicopters that transport supplies are 35 years old, and KC-135 tankers, which are used to re-fuel aircraft during flight, have been in service for 44 years. According to the New York Times, the average age of U.S. servicemen in Iraq is between 23 and 24, meaning that U.S. soldiers are fighting enemies with equipment that is much older than they. In a report entitled "The State of the U.S. Military," the conservative Heritage Foundation said, "The collective decisions by Congress and both Democratic and Republican Presidents over the past 15 years have left the U.S. military using equipment that is extremely old and, in many cases, outdated." [US military] [Military balance] [Spin] [Militarisation]
• Pakistani scientist found guilty of attempted murder of US agents
  A neuroscientist trained at an elite American university has been found guilty of two charges of attempted murder after she tried to kill US agents in Afghanistan in 2008 A Pakistani neuroscientist trained at an elite American university has been found guilty of two charges of attempted murder after she tried to kill US agents in Afghanistan in 2008. The conviction, which could see Aafia Siddiqui sentenced to life in prison, is the latest chapter in a life story that has baffled observers and divided legal opinion. The scientist has been accused of being an al-Qaida sympathiser, but has claimed that she was kidnapped and held in secret detention by the US for five years before her arrest. [Legality] [Global insurgency]
• Soldier Deaths Draw Focus to U.S. in Pakistan
  By JANE PERLEZ Published: February 3, 2010 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The deaths of three American soldiers in a Taliban suicide attack on Wednesday lifted the veil on United States military assistance to Pakistan that the authorities here would like to keep quiet and the Americans, as the donors, chafe at not receiving credit for. A suicide attack in Lower Dir killed three Americans. The soldiers were among at least 60 to 100 members of a Special Operations team that trains Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps in counterinsurgency techniques, including intelligence gathering and development assistance. The American service members are from the Special Operations Command of Adm. Eric T. Olson. [AfPak]
• Clare Short: Blair misled us and took UK into an illegal war
  Former minister says government was a 'lunatic asylum' in runup to attack with Gordon Brown also 'unhappy and marginalised' Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 February 2010 19.52 GMT Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, his attorney general, misled parliament and the cabinet before Britain, to its "eternal shame", joined the US-led invasion of Iraq, Clare Short told the Chilcot inquiry today. During nearly three hours of testimony, the then international development secretary, who resigned soon after the March 2003 invasion as a result of what she called broken promises, described the atmosphere within the government during the runup to war. It was chaotic and fraught, she said, adding: "We were in a bit of a lunatic asylum." Short described how she used to meet Gordon Brown in the weeks before the invasion. "I had various cups of coffee with Gordon," she said. "He was very unhappy and marginalised." She said Brown, then chancellor, told her: "Tony Blair is obsessed with his legacy and he thinks he can have a quick war and then a reshuffle."
  There was a lot of misleading parliament by the prime minister of the day … I'm not saying he was insincere. I think he was willing to be deceitful about it because he thought it was right."
  She was clapped by the audience after finishing her testimony. The only other witness applauded has been Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office, who resigned in protest against the invasion.
• Obama's Iraq policy must be focused on more than withdrawal
  By Henry Kissinger Wednesday, February 3, 2010 In a 71-minute State of the Union address, President Obama managed no more than 101 perfunctory words about Iraq. Throughout its term, the administration has recoiled from discussing Iraq's geostrategic significance and especially America's relation to it. Yet while Iraq is being exorcised from our debate, its reality is bound to obtrude on our consciousness. The U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq will not alter the geostrategic importance of the country even as it alters that context. [US global strategy]
• On Heels of Failed Intercept Test, Missile Defense Leader Excoriates Contractors
  Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010 By Elaine M. Grossman Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON -- Just one day after the Missile Defense Agency failed to achieve an intercept in a major flight test of its Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, its executive director took broad aim at defense contractors for chronic quality-control lapses (see GSN, Feb. 1). (Feb. 2) - A U.S. missile interceptor is lowered into a silo at Fort Greely, Alaska, in 2004. A top Pentagon missile defense official yesterday criticized the quality-control efforts of contractors responsible for building missile defense equipment (U.S. Missile Defense Agency photo). "I'm not going to name names today, but I'm going to tell you we continue to be disappointed in the quality that we are receiving from our prime contractors and their subs -- very, very disappointed," David Altwegg, the MDA executive director, told reporters at a budget briefing yesterday. He stopped short of blaming quality control for the problems during Sunday's flight test, which began at about 3:40 p.m. local time when a dummy target missile was launched from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Roughly six minutes later, a silo-based interceptor was fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but it failed to hit the target. The agency said both the interceptor and target missile "performed nominally after launch" and instead identified a radar system as having malfunctioned. A Missile Defense Agency spokesman said this week the target missile was intended to mimic the kind of technology that a nation like North Korea or Iran could develop that might someday threaten the United States. [Missile defense]
• Obama losing control of Iran policy
  By Ali Gharib html WASHINGTON - In a surprisingly swift move last Thursday night that could have wide-ranging implications, the United States Senate passed a bill containing broad unilateral sanctions to punish foreign companies that export gasoline to Iran or help expand its domestic refinery capabilities. The voice vote came at the eleventh hour before the chamber recessed so legislators could go home to campaign. The bill cannot come before the president to be signed into law until a conference procedure combines it with a similar house bill, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, passed in October. The senate move reveals an administration losing control of even its own party in foreign policy dealings, as US President Barack Obama has tried to maintain engagement with Iran aimed at curbing its nuclear program, which the Islamic Republic insists is for peaceful purposes. [Obama] [US global strategy] [Strategic incoherence] [Dissension]
• A tribunal of mercy
  As I face Alzheimer's, I want to die at a time of my choosing. We need a better way of assisting loved ones who wish the same
  And so I have vowed that rather than let Alzheimer's take me, I would take it. I would live my life as ever to the full and die, before the disease mounted its last attack, in my own home, in a chair on the lawn, with a brandy in my hand to wash down whatever modern version of the Brompton Cocktail some helpful medic could supply. And with Thomas Tallis on my iPod, I would shake hands with Death.
• Huge Deficits May Alter U.S. Politics and Global Power
  By DAVID E. SANGER Published: February 1, 2010 WASHINGTON — In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power.
  According to the 2011 budget, the projected deficit in the coming year is nearly 11 percent of the country's entire economic output. The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated. But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water. [Decline]
• Seven Days in January
  How the Pentagon Counts Coups in Washington By Tom Engelhardt
  Sometimes it pays to read a news story to the last paragraph where a reporter can slip in that little gem for the news jockeys, or maybe just for the hell of it. You know, the irresistible bit that doesn’t fit comfortably into the larger news frame, but that can be packed away in the place most of your readers will never get near, where your editor is likely to give you a free pass.
  His final message delivered, he relaxed on the 14-hour trip home by watching ‘Seven Days in May,’ the cold war-era film about an attempted military coup in the United States.”
  Hollywood loves remakes, but a word of advice to those who admire the Secretary of Defense’s movie tastes: do as he did and get the old Seven Days in May from Netflix. Unlike Star Trek, James Bond, Bewitched, and other sixties “classics,” Seven Days isn’t likely to come back, not even if Matt Damon were available to play the Marine colonel who saves the country from a military takeover, because these days there’s little left to save -- and every week is the Pentagon’s week in Washington. [Pentagon] [Militarisation]
• The United States Misreads Brazil's World Policy
  by Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 274, Feb. 1, 2010 When the United States first realized circa 1970 that its hegemonic dominance was being threatened by the growing economic (and hence geopolitical) strength of western Europe and Japan, it changed its posture, seeking to prevent western Europe and Japan from taking too independent a position in world affairs. The United States said in effect, although not in words: Up to now, we have been treating you as satellites, required to follow our lead without question on the world scene. But you are stronger now. So we invite you to be partners, junior partners, who will share in the collective decision-making, provided only you don't stray too far on your own. This new U.S. policy was institutionalized in multiple ways - notably the creation of the G-7, the establishment of the Trilateral Commission, and the invention of the World Economic Forum of Davos as a meeting-ground of the "friendly" world elite. The main U.S. objective was to slow down the decline of its geopolitical power. The new policy worked for perhaps twenty years. It was finally undone by two successive events. The first was the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1989-1991, which removed the major argument the United States had used with its "partners" that they should not be too "independent" on the world scene. And the second was the self-defeating unilateral macho militarism of the Bush regime. Instead of restoring U.S. hegemony, it resulted in the devastating failure of the United States in 2003 to get U.N. Security Council endorsement of its invasion of Iraq. Bush's neocon policies had backfired entirely, turning a slow decline in U.S. geopolitical power into a precipitate decline. Today, almost everyone recognizes that the United States no longer has the clout it once had. One would have thought the United States might have learned some lessons from the errors of the Bush regime. But it seems it is trying to repeat the same scenario with Brazil today. It will not take twenty years for this attempt to unravel. [Imperialism] [Decline]
• The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti
  by F. William Engdahl
  Global Research, January 30, 2010 Behind the smoke, rubble and unending drama of human tragedy in the hapless Caribbean country, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world’s richest zones for hydrocarbons-oil and gas outside the Middle East, possibly orders of magnitude greater than that of nearby Venezuela.
  Evidence that the US Administration may well have more in mind for Haiti than the improvement of the lot of the devastated Haitian people can be found in nearby waters off Cuba, directly across from Port-au-Prince. In October 2008 a consortium of oil companies led by Spain’s Repsol, together with Cuba's state oil company, Cubapetroleo, announced discovery of one of the world’s largest oilfields in the deep water off Cuba. It is what oil geologists call a ‘Super-giant’ field. Estimates are that the Cuban field contains as much as 20 billion barrels of oil, making it the twelfth Super-giant oilfield discovered since 1996. The discovery also likely makes Cuba a new high-priority target for Pentagon destabilization and other nasty operations. No doubt to the dismay of Washington, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev flew to Havana one month after the Cuban giant oil find to sign an agreement with acting-President Raul Castro for Russian oil companies to explore and develop Cuban oil.[2] Medvedev’s Russia-Cuba oil agreements came only a week after the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to meet the recuperating Fidel Castro and his brother Raul. The Chinese President signed an agreement to modernize Cuban ports and discussed Chinese purchase of Cuban raw materials. No doubt the mammoth new Cuban oil discovery was high on the Chinese agenda with Cuba.[3] On November 5, 2008, just prior to the Chinese President’s trip to Cuba and other Latin American countries, the Chinese government issued their first ever policy paper on the future of China’s relations with Latin America and Caribbean nations, elevating these bilateral relations to a new level of strategic importance. [4]
  The remarkable geography of Haiti and Cuba and the discovery of world-class oil reserves in the waters off Cuba lend credence to anecdotal accounts of major oil discoveries in several parts of Haitian territory. It also could explain why two Bush Presidents and now special UN Haiti Envoy Bill Clinton have made Haiti such a priority. As well, it could explain why Washington and its NGOs moved so quickly to remove-- twice-- the democratically elected President Aristide, whose economic program for Haiti included, among other items, proposals for developing Haitian natural resources for the benefit of the Haitian people. [Oil] [Imperialism] [US global strategy]
• U.S. Reportedly Beefing Up Defenses (sic) in Persian Gulf
  U.S. media reports say the United States is speeding up the deployment of anti-missile defenses in four Persian Gulf nations as it continues to confront Iran over its nuclear program. [Imperialism] [Spin]
• An Electric Boost for Bicyclists
  By J. DAVID GOODMAN Published: January 31, 2010 SHANGHAI — Jiang Ruming, a marketing manager, owns a van, but for many errands, he hops on a futuristic-looking contraption that lets him weave rapidly through Shanghai’s messy traffic. He rides an electric bicycle. Half a world away, in San Francisco, the president of that city’s board of supervisors, David Chiu, uses an electric bike to get to meetings without sweating through his suit. And in the Netherlands, Jessy Wijzenbeek-Voet recently rode an electric bicycle on a long trip that, at 71, she would not have been able to make on a standard bike. Detroit may be introducing electric car designs and China may be pushing forward with a big expansion of its highways and trains. But people like Mr. Jiang, Ms. Wijzenbeek-Voet and Mr. Chiu — as well as delivery workers in New York, postal employees in Germany and commuters from Canada to Japan — are among the millions taking part in a more accidental transportation upheaval. It began in China, where an estimated 120 million electric bicycles now hum along the roads, up from a few thousand in the 1990s.
  India had virtually no sales until two years ago, but its nascent market is fast expanding and could eclipse Europe’s in the next year. [Green] [Transport]
• As food distribution improves, Haitians want U.S to 'take over'
  By Peter Slevin Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 1, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- International relief organizations backed by American soldiers delivered hundreds of tons of rice to homeless residents of the Haitian capital Sunday, laboring to ease a food shortage that has left countless thousands struggling to find enough to eat. But even as food-aid workers enjoyed their most successful day since the Jan. 12 earthquake, the increasingly prominent role of U.S. troops and civilians in the capital is creating high expectations that the Obama administration is struggling to contain. The needs are extraordinary, and the common refrain is that the Americans will provide. "I want the Americans to take over the country. The Haitian government can't do anything for us," said Jean-Louis Geffrard, a laborer who lives under a tarp in the crowded square. "When we tell the government we're hungry, the government says, 'We're hungry, too.' " Added Canga Matthieu, a medical student whose school was destroyed: "The American government should take care of us." "They're well organized. The United States is the richest country in the world, and they can help." [Aid weapon] [Media]
• Media Notes: Jon Stewart's Obama barbs on 'The Daily Show' are creating buzz
  By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 1, 2010 Days before the 2008 election, Jon Stewart jokingly asked Barack Obama whether his "white half" would have trouble making a decision in the voting booth. "Yeah," the candidate said, "I've been going through therapy to make sure that I vote properly." Last week, though, the president was the punch line. After showing video of Obama speaking to schoolkids, the "Daily Show" host said in amazement: "You set up a presidential podium and a teleprompter in a sixth-grade classroom? . . . I'm not a political adviser, campaign strategist, et cetera, but that's not a great photo op in a middle school classroom."
  None of these jokes are particularly cutting, but what's telling is that they're being told at all. During the campaign, Lichter says, comedians made far more jokes about George W. Bush and John McCain than about Obama. [Obama]
• Gates orders Air Force and Navy to study joint weapons system
  By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 1, 2010 Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has ordered the Air Force and Navy to study what future joint weapons system, available 20 years from now, will be able to surveil an enemy target, survive any electronic interference, and then deliver precision strikes from platforms that either penetrate the foe's defenses or are launched from a distance. That study's results will help Gates shape the Pentagon's [US global strategy] [US military]
• The Battle of the Titans: JP Morgan Versus Goldman Sachs
  Or Why the Market Was Down for 7 Days in a Row By Ellen Brown Global Research, January 29, 2010 We are witnessing an epic battle between two banking giants, JPMorgan Chase (Paul Volcker) and Goldman Sachs (Geithner/Summers/Rubin). Left strewn on the battleground could be your pension fund and 401K. The late Libertarian economist Murray Rothbard wrote that U.S. politics since 1900, when William Jennings Bryan narrowly lost the presidency, has been a struggle between two competing banking giants, the Morgans and the Rockefellers. The parties would sometimes change hands, but the puppeteers pulling the strings were always one of these two big-money players. No popular third party candidate had a real chance at winning, because the bankers had the exclusive power to create the national money supply and therefore held the winning cards.
• U.S. speeding up arms sales, defenses with Gulf allies
  By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, January 30, 2010; 3:32 PM DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES -- The Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales and rapidly upgrade defenses for oil terminals and other key infrastructure in a bid to thwart future military attacks by Iran, according to former and current U.S. and Middle Eastern government officials. The initiatives, including a U.S.-backed plan to triple the size of a 10,000-man protection force in Saudi Arabia, are part of a broader push that includes unprecedented coordination of air defenses and expanded joint exercises between the U.S. and Arab militaries, the officials said. All appear to be aimed at increasing pressure on Tehran. [Arms sales] [Imperialism] [Tribute]
• "I wanted to shout out. 'Blair, look at me, you have brought shame on yourself.' I wish I had spoken out"
  When Tony Blair appeared at the Chilcot inquiry last week, the families of some of the British soldiers killed in Iraq were there to hear him defend his decision to go to war. Here Reg Keys, whose son was one of six military policemen brutally killed in 2003, writes about the mix of fierce anger and deep sadness he felt as he watched the former Prime Minister Blair strode confidently to his chair, sat down, adjusted his microphone, said good morning to the committee and opened his well-prepared pages. This was the moment that I had waited for six-and-a-half years since Tom's death. I was not anticipating any revelations and expected a cool calm delivery of his evidence, and my expectations were met. His first 10 minutes did appear to be a little nervy and shaky, but he soon got into his professional stride. I felt he already had the measure of the panel and could easily cope with its level of questioning. Indeed at times it was somewhat reminiscent of him delivering his rhetoric from the dispatch box at prime minister's questions, with gesticulating arms and all the aplomb of an accomplished orator He'd become really confident now, and was in his stride, flowing easily. I wondered if he was arrogant enough to believe he could have this panel for breakfast. It appeared he had them where he wanted them and could take them off on a tangent, and return as he so desired.
  Again the afternoon session was reduced to the sound of Blair delivering his evidence, punctuated with the repetitive phrases, "I believe" and "my judgment". Where this became particularly significant for me was on the intelligence issue, when he was challenged on his delivery of the "intelligence, as assessed beyond doubt, of Saddam's WMD capability". By the nature of its being assessed, it cannot be beyond doubt. I thought, "They're going to get him here. How is he going to wriggle out of this one?" In his reply he stated that he did believe beyond doubt the assessed intelligence. In his judgment, he believed it. So it's a bit like questioning somebody's faith. I might believe beyond doubt that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, but that doesn't make it true. But that's how he got out of it. I cannot describe my frustration that he was able to dodge his misrepresentation of the truth so easily.
  Blair was then questioned on the death toll, which he agreed was in excess of a hundred thousand Iraqis. His trite response was: "Well, it isn't us that's killing them, it's the insurgency." I gasped — I couldn't believe it.
  was with no sense of irony that Blair called Saddam a monster, and that says it all really. He never questions his own humanity or rather lack of it, but even so there can't be a lot of joy in his household. Maintaining that level of denial it must be very strange being him. I mean when he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror, what does he see? [Imperialism] [Self delusion] [Spin]
• Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000
  By David Brown Washington Post Staff Writer
  Wednesday, October 11, 2006
  A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred. The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government. It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.
• Why FW de Klerk let Nelson Mandela out of prison
  On 11 February 1990, the then president of South Africa, FW de Klerk, took the fateful decision to release Nelson Mandela, the charismatic hero of the struggle against apartheid. Twenty years on, he talks about the circumstances that led him to set the world's most famous political prisoner free, launching a new era in a divided country
  After 26 years in captivity, Nelson Mandela did not want to be set free straight away. Two days before his release, the world's most famous political prisoner was taken to see President FW de Klerk in his Cape Town office. The president got a surprise
  "Later, during the negotiations, it became clear that there was a big divide. On the economic side, the ANC was fundamentally socialistic, the influence of the Communist party was pervasive and they wanted nationalisation. They also wanted to create an unelected government of national unity which would organise elections. We insisted on governing until a new constitution had been negotiated and adopted by parliament." De Klerk's successive negotiated victories potentially saved South Africa from the post-colonial governance void suffered by many other countries on the continent. They also entrenched minority rights constitutionally and set the country on a capitalist path. "The government that came into power after the April 1994 elections was going to need a budget. It was drafted by our finance minister, Derek Keys, and he convinced them of the necessity to stay within the free-market principles that had been in force in South Africa for decades. The ANC has stuck to these principles and that is one of the great positives."
  If we had not changed in the manner we did, South Africa would be completely isolated. The majority of people in the world would be intent on overthrowing the government. Our economy would be non-existent – we would not be exporting a single case of wine and South African planes would not be allowed to land anywhere. Internally, we would have the equivalent of civil war."

• Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims
  By SHAILA DEWAN Published: January 29, 2010 MIAMI — The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday. The military flights, usually C-130s carrying Haitians with spinal cord injuries, burns and other serious wounds, ended on Wednesday after Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida formally asked the federal government to shoulder some of the cost of the care. [Incompetence]
• Bases, Missiles, Wars: U.S. Consolidates Global Military Network
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, January 27, 2010 Afghanistan is occupying center stage at the moment, but in the wings are complementary maneuvers to expand a string of new military bases and missile shield facilities throughout Eurasia and the Middle East. The advanced Patriot theater anti-ballistic missile batteries in place or soon to be in Egypt, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates describe an arc stretching from the Baltic Sea through Southeast Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Caucasus and beyond to East Asia. A semicircle that begins on Russia's northwest and ends on China's northeast. Over the past decade the United States has steadily (though to much of the world imperceptibly) extended its military reach to most all parts of the world. From subordinating almost all of Europe to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization through the latter's expansion into Eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union, to arbitrarily setting up a regional command that takes in the African continent (and all but one of its 53 nations). From invading and establishing military bases in the Middle East and Central and South Asia to operating a satellite surveillance base in Australia and taking charge of seven military installations in South America. In the vacuum left in much of the world by the demise of the Cold War and the former bipolar world, the U.S. rushed in to insert its military in various parts of the world that had been off limits to it before. And this while Washington cannot even credibly pretend that it is threatened by any other nation on earth. [Imperialism] [US global strategy] [Tribute]
• Responsibility but no regrets, says Blair
  By Alex Barker, Political Correspondent Published: January 29 2010 11:46 | Last updated: January 29 2010 22:28 Demonstrators hoping to confront Tony Blair, former prime minister, outside the Chilcot Inquiry in central London were disappointed when he was driven in via a side entrance An unrepentant Tony Blair told the Iraq inquiry on Friday that he would, “frankly, do it all again” as he defended his decision to topple Saddam Hussein and urged world leaders to take “a very hard line” on Iran. The former prime minister faced heckles of “murderer” as he concluded six hours of defiant testimony in which he expressed “not a regret” for removing a dictator who, in his view, could today have posed a nuclear threat. After overcoming a rare bout of nerves, which had left his hand shaking, Mr Blair delivered a characteristically assured and unapologetic performance covering five years of British engagement (sic) in Iraq. [Imperialism] [Chutzpah]
• Photos of drinking, grinning aid mission doctors cause uproar
  January 30, 2010 -- Updated 0210 GMT (1010 HKT) San Juan, Puerto Rico (CNN) -- A humanitarian mission to aid Haitian earthquake victims turned into a major embarrassment in Puerto Rico on Friday as pictures emerged of doctors drinking, mugging for cameras and brandishing firearms amid the victims' suffering. [Militarisation] [Media]
• Righteous, responsible but no regrets: Tony Blair's day in the dock
  Former PM gives no substantial ground on why he sent troops to Iraq to disarm Saddam of weapons he did not possess Patrick Wintour and Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 19.52 GMT Article history Link to this video Tony Blair ended an epic six-hour inquisition by the Chilcot inquiry last night by insisting he had "no regrets" over toppling Saddam Hussein, arguing that the world was more secure and that Iraq has replaced "the certainty of suppression" with "the uncertainty of democratic politics". The former prime minister blamed "the very near failure of the Iraqi occupation" on Iranian interference, misplaced assumptions and a lack of US troops. During the long-awaited cross-examination, he gave no substantial ground over why he sent 40,000 UK troops to war to disarm Saddam of weapons he did not possess, arguing that if the west had backed off Saddam would have reassembled them, as he had the intent and ability to do so. "I had to take this decision as prime minister. It was a huge responsibility then and there is not a single day that passes by that I do not think about that responsibility, and so I should," Blair said. Faced with the charge that 100,000 Iraqi civilians had lost their lives owing to cavalier planning (sic), he said: "I genuinely believe that if we had left Saddam in power, even with what we know now, we would still have had to deal with him in circumstances when the threat was worse, and possibly when it was hard to mobilise any support for dealing with that threat. [Imperialism] [Chutzpah] {media]
• Citing 9/11, Blair Defends Legacy at Iraq Inquiry
  By JOHN F. BURNS and ALAN COWELL Published: January 29, 2010 LONDON — Almost seven years after he ordered British troops to join the American-led invasion of Iraq, former Prime Minister Tony Blair mounted an unwavering defense of his actions on Friday, saying he would take the same steps again to counter what he depicted as a threat from Saddam Hussein that had assumed far greater dimensions after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. [Imperialism] [Media]
• Ex-British prime minister Tony Blair: The world is safer without Saddam Hussein
  By Karla Adam Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, January 30, 2010 LONDON -- Former prime minister Tony Blair on Friday unequivocally defended the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, telling a panel investigating Britain's role in the war that the world was made "a safer place" by the removal of Saddam Hussein. "I think he was a monster. I believe he threatened not just the region, but the world," Blair said. "If I'm asked if I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better with Saddam and his two sons out of power . . . then I believe indeed we are." At the end of six hours of intense questioning in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Center next to the Houses of Parliament, Blair was asked twice whether he had regrets about his actions. When he did not express remorse, James Sandry, one of the 80 members of the public who won a public ballot to sit a few feet from Blair during his testimony Friday, shouted, "Ah, come on!" Blair's testimony has been widely billed as the highlight of the government-commissioned inquiry launched in July to investigate Britain's role before, during and after the invasion of Iraq. The five-member panel, which is not a court, is expected to issue a report at the end of the year. Confident and articulate, the man once known as Teflon Tony told the panel that Sept. 11, 2001, changed the "calculus of risk" with respect to Iraq and other countries including Libya, North Korea and Iran. It also changed estimates of what could happen if rogue states possessed weapons of mass destruction, he said. [Imperialism] [Chutzpah]
• Afghanistan: the politics of war
  Paul Rogers, 29 January 2010 The American-led effort to map Afghanistan’s future neglects the role of the country’s neighbours – and could yet be derailed by events over Iran. The international summit on Afghanistan’s future held in London on 28 January 2010 produced three main outcomes: a very clear willingness to negotiate with the insurgents, the provision of substantial funding ($140 million) to lure elements of the insurgency from their campaign, and a focus on more rapid training of Afghan security forces. At the same time, it is reported that elements of the Taliban are already engaged in informal talks with United Nations officials. These proposals represent a remarkable change from the policy of the George W Bush administration, driven by a search for clear military victory in Afghanistan. Barack Obama and his team take a different view: they recognising that the war cannot be won and that compromise is essential. They also make a concession to the Bush approach in believing that a position of military strength is route to securing the best compromise possible - hence the military “surge” that is currently under way. There remains a large question over the effectiveness of this approach; the infusion of more foreign troops could provoke increased resistance by Afghans who see them as occupiers. [UN Global strategy] [AfPak]
• Rumble in the Junta
  This year's elections in Myanmar won't be free and fair -- but they will be more significant than you think. BY DREW THOMPSON | JANUARY 28, 2010 Walking through the streets of Yangon this January, I saw the futility of U.S. sanctions on every corner. Commerce thrives on steamy streets and markets, and billboards advertising Japanese, South Korean, and European brands are everywhere. Meanwhile, junta leaders targeted by sanctions that prevent their families' travel have contented themselves with retirement in splendid homes, while their grandchildren, denied visas to visit the United States, simply go to college in Europe and Australia. Sanctions have only served to isolate the United States. This is especially unfortunate at a time when the United States should be carefully watching, and even influencing, what might be the most important political year in Myanmar's recent history. The date is not set, but the tiny handful of generals who have a monopoly on political power have declared elections will take place in 2010, and no one doubts they will happen before the year's end. Most Burmese citizens are nonplussed, and no one can blame them for assuming that the military junta that runs the country from the isolated capital of Naypyidaw has rigged the process. But the truth is that the elections will bring change: perhaps not a sudden end to the military junta, but important and underappreciated change nonetheless. And the United States should be fully engaged. This year's elections will be hotly contested by opposition politicians eager to gain a parliamentary seat. [Imperialism] [Democracy] [Sanctions]
• Religion in Twenty-First Century Britain
  Lord Sacks of Aldgate 2009 Annual Theos Lecture 4 November 2009
• Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks: Islam must separate religion from power
  The Chief Rabbi has called on Muslims to get used to living as a minority in Britain and to learn to separate religion from power. Lord Sacks said that neither Muslims nor Christians had yet learnt the lessons inflicted on the Jewish people by the Babylonian exile. “One of the great advantages of being Jewish is you know how to sing in the minor key,” he said. “We have had 26 centuries of experience ever since the Babylonian exile of living as a minority in the midst of a culture that does not share our views. Christianity and Islam have not had that experience.” He said that Christianity had learnt toleration but only after 100 years of “knocking the hell out of each other all over Europe”. “I have no doubt that Islam will work its way through to the essential situation that Judaism arrived at and Christianity, namely the substantive separation of religion from power. But there’s no quick way of getting there. It is quite a difficult and painful process within religion. [Chutzpah] [In denial] [Islam] [Israel] [Religion]
• The Jihadist Next Door
  By ANDREA ELLIOTT Published: January 27, 2010 ON A WARM, cloudy day in the fall of 1999, the town of Daphne, Ala., stirred to life. The high-school band came pounding down Main Street, past the post office and the library and Christ the King Church. Trumpeters in gold-tasseled coats tipped their horns to the sky, heralding the arrival of teenage demigods. The star quarterback and his teammates came first in the parade, followed by the homecoming queen and her court. Behind them, on a float bearing leaders of the student government, a giddy mop-haired kid tossed candy to the crowd.
  These cases have sent intelligence analysts scurrying for answers. The American suspects come from different backgrounds and socioeconomic strata, but they share much in common with Europe’s militants: they tend to be highly motivated, even gifted people who were reared in the West with one foot in the Muslim world [Global insurgency] [In denial]
• Tony Blair and the imperial temptation in Britain and America
  Thomas Ash, 27 January 2010 Why did Tony Blair decide to go along with, and even cheerlead for, the invasion of Iraq almost seven years ago? I don't pretend to know the full explanation. But ahead of his testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday - which I would guess is more likely to devolve into a media circus than to provide a truly satisfying answer to this question - it is worth considering one factor many informed commentators consider key. I have in mind the imperial temptation in British politics - the desire to "punch above our weight", reshape the shaken kaleidoscope of the world, or whatever description you favour (there is no shortage of purple prose to choose from). In his illuminating history of twentieth century UK politics, Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career Of British Democracy, David Marquand illustrates how leader after leader has fallen prey to this temptation, Blair included. [Imperialism] [Spin] [Self delusion]
• Airline bomb plot: At war with the world
  Editorial The Guardian, Monday 28 December 2009 Ever since 9/11, the west has been haunted by the spectre of a repeat. On Christmas Day, the date surely not chosen at random, that second attack very nearly succeeded. Only the combination of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's fumbling and the bravery of the passengers and crew of Northwest 253 foiled the attempt to bring down the Airbus A330 and its 278 passengers on the descent into Detroit. If the bomber had succeeded, he would have achieved the sum of all post-9/11 fears. The consequences would have been prodigious. Those on board NW253 are not the only ones who have had a very narrow escape indeed.
  When he was overpowered, Abdulmutallab was said by witnesses to be "screaming about Afghanistan". Yet it would be a too convenient simplification to see this attack as some sort of act of revenge for that war. Abdulmutallab's life history, as it is now emerging, seems to be much more driven by exposure to manichean radical Islamism in Nigeria, Britain and, in particular, Yemen. The explosive chemicals and the syringe which he used on NW253 were sewn into his underclothing in Yemen. The methods used in Friday's attempted attack have echoes of a failed Yemeni-based suicide attack on Prince Muhammad, the head of Saudi counterterrorism operations, in August. The Christmas airliner bomb plot did not take place because of western policy in Afghanistan. The west could withdraw tomorrow from Afghanistan and the continuing danger from jihadist terrorists would still be as great as it is today. [Imperialism] [Spin] [Global insurgency] [Self delusion]
• Text: Obama’s State of the Union Address
  Published: January 27, 2010 Following is the transcript of President Obama's State of the Union address, delivered Jan. 27, 2010, as released by the White House: Madam Speaker, Vice President Biden, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:
  And at April's Nuclear Security Summit, we will bring 44 nations together here in Washington, D.C. behind a clear goal: securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years, so that they never fall into the hands of terrorists. (Applause.)
  Now, these diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of nuclear weapons. That's why North Korea now faces increased isolation, and stronger sanctions –- sanctions that are being vigorously enforced. That's why the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran's leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise. (Applause.) [US NK policy] [Inversion] [Continuity]
• 'People's History' author Howard Zinn dies at 87
  By HILLEL ITALIE The Associated Press Wednesday, January 27, 2010; 9:33 PM -- Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A People's History of the United States" became a million-selling alternative to mainstream texts and a favorite of such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck, died Wednesday. He was 87.
  One of Zinn's last public writings was a brief essay, published last week in The Nation, about the first year of the Obama administration. "I've been searching hard for a highlight," he wrote, adding that he wasn't disappointed because he never expected a lot from Obama. "I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president - which means, in our time, a dangerous president - unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction
• Wars may end but spending on them doesn’t
  November 13, 2009 There are fundamental flaws in the way the press deals with the costs of war, says Linda Bilmes. She, along with her colleague Joseph Stiglitz, put the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan at more than $3 trillion — an enormous drag on the economy — in addition to the personal loss to families and communities of injured and dead troops. (Part of our series on "Reporting the Economic Collapse") By John Hanrahan hanrahan@niemanwatchdog “There is no free lunch, and there are no free wars. In one way or another, we will pay these bills,” wrote Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard Professor Linda J. Bilmes in their 2008 book, “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” about the current and long-term costs of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Militarisation]
• Pope John Paul II regularly whipped himself, book says
  Claim of self-flagellation boosts case for elevating late pontiff to status of saint
• Hutton inquiry closed David Kelly medical reports for 70 years
  • Doctors trying to see files consider legal challenge • Doubt grows over suicide verdict on Iraq expert * guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 January 2010 19.57 GMT Dr David Kelly Lord Hutton's decision to classify documents about the death of Dr David Kelly is likely to face a legal challenge amid claims by experts that there are increasing grounds to question the inquiry's verdict of suicide. The Hutton inquiry, which reported in 2004 that Kelly's death was suicide after he cut an artery in his wrist, has come under scrutiny from doctors who claim the medical account is improbable. Five doctors who made an application to the Oxford coroner to have the inquest reopened have been told Lord Hutton made a ruling in 2003 to keep medical reports and photographs closed for 70 years. "This is a revelation," said Michael Powers QC, a former assistant coroner and expert in coronial law. "I can't think of anything that would justify these documents being treated any differently."
• Huttonise history: the verdict
  Hutton on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ: "I am satisfied that the decision to crucify Jesus Christ was one that was made after an independent and rigorous trial by Pontius Pilate. I am further satisfied that Pilate's questioning of him was appropriate and that the Jewish and Roman authorities fully exercised their duty of care towards him. From the evidence I have heard, I conclude that Pilate acted impartially throughout, although I cannot entirely rule out the possibility that he was subconsciously influenced by thousands of people - led by the Jewish elders - shouting: "Crucify him, crucify him." The issues of whether the trial before the Jewish elders was fair, whether Jesus Christ is the son of God, and whether he deserved to die fall outside my remit, and I therefore wash my hands of them."
• Arrest Blair for crimes against peace
  This site offers a reward to people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former British prime minister, Tony Blair, for crimes against peace. ArrestBlair was founded by George Monbiot.
• Foreign Policy: C-
  By John Feffer, January 14, 2010 In his first year in office, Barack Obama gave several exceptional speeches on foreign policy. In Prague, he endorsed nuclear disarmament. In Cairo, he called for a new engagement with the Islamic world. In Oslo, he repudiated torture. At these moments, the new president firmly broke with the policies of his predecessor and provided a glimpse of what a new, cooperative, just U.S. foreign policy could be. But Obama the exceptional speaker also remained anchored in an exceptionalist tradition. In other words, he is the president of a country that has historically considered itself an exception to the rules and realities governing other countries. [US global strategy] [Obama] [Exceptionalism]
• He Wasn’t The One We’ve Been Waiting For
  Paul Krugman January 20, 2010, 7:18 pm Health care reform — which is crucial for millions of Americans — hangs in the balance. Progressives are desperately in need of leadership; more specifically, House Democrats need to be told to pass the Senate bill, which isn’t what they wanted but is vastly better than nothing. And what we get from the great progressive hope, the man who was offering hope and change, is this:
  But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in. [Obama]
• Pakistan's former spymaster: U.S. must talk to Mullah Omar
  By Saeed Shah and Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — The U.S. must negotiate a political settlement to the Afghanistan war directly with Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar because any bid to split the insurgency through defections will fail, said the Pakistani former intelligence officer who trained the insurgent chief. Omar is open to such talks, asserted retired Brigadier Sultan Amir Tarar, a former operative of Pakistan's premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. He is popularly known as Colonel Imam, whose exploits have gained him near-legendary status in central Asia. "If a sincere message comes from the Americans, these people (the Taliban) are very big-hearted. They will listen. But if you try to divide the Taliban, you'll fail. Anyone who leaves Mullah Omar is no more Taliban. Such people are just trying to deceive," said Tarar, a tall, imposing man with a long gray beard and white turban, in an interview with McClatchy.
  Tarar, 65, a key player in Afghanistan from the 1979-89 Soviet occupation until 2001, said he trained Omar after he graduated from an Islamic seminary in 1985 to fight as a guerrilla against the Soviet forces. At the time, the ISI was running secret camps for "mujahedin" fighters along the Afghan border with U.S. funding. Tarar, who worked closely with the CIA and was schooled in guerrilla warfare at Fort Bragg, N.C., arranged for Omar's medical treatment after he was injured. They met again in 1994 after the Pakistani official was posted in the western Afghan city of Herat and "got closer to each other," Tarar said.
• In Digital Combat, U.S. Finds No Easy Deterrent
  By JOHN MARKOFF, DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER Published: January 25, 2010 This article was reported by John Markoff, David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker, and written by Mr. Sanger. Cyberwar Developing a Strategy Computers, indispensable in peace, are becoming ever more important in political conflicts and open warfare. This series examines the growing use of computer power as a weapon. Previous Articles in the Series » Multimedia WASHINGTON — On a Monday morning earlier this month, top Pentagon leaders gathered to simulate how they would respond to a sophisticated cyberattack aimed at paralyzing the nation’s power grids, its communications systems or its financial networks. The results were dispiriting. The enemy had all the advantages: stealth, anonymity and unpredictability. No one could pinpoint the country from which the attack came, so there was no effective way to deter further damage by threatening retaliation. What’s more, the military commanders noted that they even lacked the legal authority to respond — especially because it was never clear if the attack was an act of vandalism, an attempt at commercial theft or a state-sponsored effort to cripple the United States, perhaps as a prelude to a conventional war. What some participants in the simulation knew — and others did not — was that a version of their nightmare had just played out in real life, not at the Pentagon where they were meeting, but in the far less formal war rooms at Google Inc. Computers at Google and more than 30 other companies had been penetrated, and Google’s software engineers quickly tracked the source of the attack to seven servers in Taiwan, with footprints back to the Chinese mainland. [Cyberwar] [Asymmetry] [China confrontation]
• U.S. Envoy’s Cables Show Concerns on Afghan War Plans
  By ERIC SCHMITT Published: January 25, 2010 WASHINGTON — The United States ambassador in Kabul warned his superiors here in November that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan “is not an adequate strategic partner” and “continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden,” according to a classified cable that offers a much bleaker accounting of the risks of sending additional American troops to Afghanistan than was previously known. The broad outlines of two cables from the ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, became public within days after he sent them, and they were portrayed as having been the source of significant discussion in the White House, heightening tensions between diplomats and senior military officers, who supported an increase of 30,000 American troops.
• Court won't block extradition of former Panamanian leader Noriega
  By Robert Barnes Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, January 26, 2010 The Supreme Court on Monday refused the request of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to block his extradition to France, where he faces drug charges similar to those that have kept him in a U.S. prison. The court gave no reason for turning down the appeal, and Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia objected. They said the case of Noriega, the only person being held as a prisoner of war (sic) by the United States, raises important questions about how the courts should handle cases arising from the government's attempt to prosecute terrorists. [Legality]
• Passenger train goes into operation Tuesday at Dulles airport
  By Lisa Rein Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, January 26, 2010 Passengers at Dulles International Airport on Tuesday will join air travelers from Atlanta to Singapore who are whisked to their gates on sleek, spacious and speedy underground trains. [Decline]
• Dangerous Crossroads: U.S. Moves Missiles And Troops To Russian Border Nuclear and Conventional Arms Pacts Stalled
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, January 23, 2010 2010 is proceeding in a manner more befitting the third month of the year, named after the Roman god of war, than the first whose name is derived from a pacific deity. On January 13 the Associated Press reported that the White House will submit its Quadrennial Defense Review to Congress on February 1 and request a record-high $708 billion for the Pentagon. That figure is the highest in absolute and in inflation-adjusted, constant (for any year) dollars since 1946, the year after the Second World War ended. Adding non-Pentagon defense-related spending, the total may exceed $1 trillion.
  But this month has brought even more dramatic and dangerous news. The Pentagon has authorized the completion of a $6.5 billion arms deal with Taiwan with an agreement to deliver 200 Patriot Advanced Capability anti-ballistic missiles. The People's Republic of China is infuriated, as Washington would be if the situation were reversed and Beijing provided a comparable arsenal of weapons to, for example, an independent Puerto Rico. [5] As though that action was not provocative enough however, on January 20 the Polish Defense Ministry announced that a U.S. Patriot missile battery, and the 100 American soldiers who will operate it, would not be based on the outskirts of the capital of Warsaw as previously announced but in the Baltic Sea city of Morag, 35 miles [6] from Poland's border with Russia. [Pentagon] [US global strategy] [Continuity] [Straits] [China confrontation]
• Jack London, Asian Wars and the “Yellow Peril”
  Daniel A. Métraux Novelist Jack London (1876-1916), by far the most popular American writer a century ago, is these days remembered for his novels and short stories on the Yukon. The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and To Build a Fire have retained much of their early popularity, but his visits to Japan, Korea and Manchuria, his brilliant coverage of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), his short stories based in Japan and China, his essays predicting the rise of the Pacific Rim, and his call for mutual respect and better contact between Americans and Japanese are long forgotten. London deserves to be remembered, however, as a writer on Asia and the Pacific who directly confronted Western racism against Asians, denounced such concepts as “The Yellow Peril” and showed great sympathy for Japanese and Chinese in his literature.
  We understand the Chinese mind no more than we do the Japanese. What if these two races, as homogenous as we, should embark on some vast race-adventure? There have been no race adventures in the past. We English-speaking peoples are just now in the midst of our own great adventure. We are dreaming as all race-adventurers have dreamed. And who will dare to say that in the Japanese mind is not burning some colossal Napoleonic dream? And what if the dreams clash? [China rising] [Racialism] [cbw]
• UK 'using obscure legal principle' to dismiss torture claims in colonial Kenya
  Foreign Office says it is 'not liable for acts and omissions' of administration after alleged abuse of Mau Mau suspects The government is invoking an obscure legal principle to dismiss claims of torture and rape by the British colonial administration in Kenya, campaigners claimed. The Foreign Office has said four elderly Kenyans alleging that they suffered serious physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the British during the Kenyan "emergency" of 1952 to 1960 should not be allowed to proceed with their claim because of the law of state succession. The government argues it is "not liable for the acts and omissions of the Kenyan colonial administration", claiming the Kenyan government was now responsible for events that took place while Kenya was a British colony. [Victim] [War crimes] [Chutzpah]
• Details of arrest of bombing suspect disclosed
  By Devlin Barrett Sunday, January 24, 2010 Badly burned and bleeding, the suspect in the attempted bombing of the Christmas Day flight to Detroit tried one last gambit as he was led away: He said there was another bomb hidden on board, officials said.
  The interview lasted about 50 minutes. Before they began questioning Abdulmutallab, the FBI agents decided not to give him his Miranda warning providing his right to remain silent. Although the Miranda warning, based on a 1966 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, is a bedrock principle of the U.S. justice system, there is a major exception that could apply in Abdulmutallab's case. Investigators are allowed to question a suspect without providing a Miranda warning if they are trying to end a threat to public safety. [Legality] [Global insurgency]
• Cuban Doctors in Haiti — Are They There? Can American Media See Them?
  Posted by Michael Miner on Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 3:24 PM "Guantanamo is just 200 miles from Port-au-Prince," notes Jonathan Hansen in Sunday's New York Times. "Even as the United States works to close the prison, it should use the base for humanitarian intervention." What Hansen didn't note — and I didn't think about when I read his piece — is that if Guantanamo is that close to Haiti's devastated capital, so is Cuba, on whose eastern tip the naval base sits. So why haven't we heard of relief efforts from that country?
  But I'll give you that the Cuban contribution hasn't gotten much attention. My friend Bruce Calder, a professor emeritus of Latin American history at UIC, gave me the head's up of Lindorff's piece, and he commented in email that he'd been thinking it "very strange that, according to the U.S. media, Cuba didn't seem to be involved in the medical aid effort to Haiti (and that those dealing with the disaster hadn't thought of obvious things like evacuating some victims to nearby Cuban hospitals)." After all, everyone else was getting credit — "I even heard New Zealanders interviewed today!" [Media]
• US aims for Kabul talks with Taliban
  By Daniel Dombey in Islamabad Published: January 22 2010 06:55 | Last updated: January 22 2010 06:55 The US would welcome Taliban participation in Afghanistan’s government – as long as the group gave up violence and recognised the country’s legitimate rulers (sic) , Robert Gates, US defence secretary, said on Friday.
• Study Points to Disease as Main Killer in Darfur
  By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Published: January 22, 2010 With violence in Darfur in an extended lull, a new study assessing dozens of mortality estimates for the six years of fighting there has concluded that about 300,000 people died, but that disease, rather than violence, killed at least 80 percent of them. That was not true at first, the study said. Violence, it said, was the main cause in 2004, the year after the rebellion in the Darfur region of western Sudan began, setting off a brutal repression by janjaweed militias burning down villages and government jets flying bombing runs. But far more people fled before the marauders than were hacked or shot to death by them, and 2.7 million ended up in camps for displaced people. While some fell prey to bandits who waylaid them as they fetched water and wood, far more died of diarrhea spread by filthy water, pneumonia picked up in swirls of desert dust and fire smoke, malaria carried into their tents by mosquitoes and other maladies from years of rough living. The new study was done by researchers at the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, paid for by the State Department and the British Department for International Development, and published Friday by the medical journal The Lancet.
• The Turkish Incident
  By Uri Avnery I TRIED to resist the temptation to tell the same classical Jewish joke a second time, but circumstances delivered a plausible excuse.
  Almost every Jew knows the sentence “Kill a Turk and rest.” The whole story goes like this: In Czarist Russia, a Jewish boy is called up for the war against the Turks. His tearful mother takes leave of him at the railway station and implores him: “Don’t overexert yourself! Kill a Turk and rest. Kill another Turk and rest again…” “But mother!” the boy interrupts her. “What if the Turk kills me?” “Kills you?!” the mother exclaims in sheer disbelief, “But why? What have you done to him?” [Imperialism] [Agency] Jewish jokes reflect Jewish reality. So this joke became true this week.
• Americans Prove Generosity Once Again
  By Jay Ambrose Scripps Howard News Service Be proud Americans, because it is time for generosity, for heartfelt giving to the misery-plagued people of Haiti, and no one is better at this than we are. [Aid] [Exceptionalism] [Spin]
• In Shift, U.S. Lifts Visa Curbs on Professor
  By SARAH LYALL Published: January 20, 2010 LONDON — Six years after using the Patriot Act to revoke the visa of a prominent Muslim academic, the United States State Department reversed itself and said Wednesday that it would no longer bar the scholar from entering the United States. The decision came in the form of an order signed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. It paves the way for the scholar, Prof. Tariq Ramadan, to apply for a new visa free of the authorities’ former accusation that he had contributed money to a charity connected to terrorism. “I am very happy and hopeful that I will be able to visit the United States very soon and to once again engage in an open, critical and constructive dialogue with American scholars and intellectuals,” Professor Ramadan said in a statement. Professor Ramadan, who is Swiss and is a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, had often visited the United States and in 2004 planned to travel there to take up a position as a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame. But the Bush administration revoked his visa, and denied him a new one in 2006, citing a provision of the Patriot Act that allows the barring of foreigners who “use a position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.” At first, the government refused to give its reason. But eventually it pointed to evidence that from 1998 to 2002 Professor Ramadan had donated about $1,300 to a Swiss-based charity that in turn provided money to Hamas, the militant Palestinian group. [Islam] [Sanctions] [Imperialism]
• F.B.I. Charges Arms Sellers With Bribes for Foreign Deals
  By DIANA B. HENRIQUES Published: January 20, 2010 Sometimes the proposition was delivered in a quiet corner of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Miami. Sometimes the setting was the elegant Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a few blocks from the White House. The topic might be grenade launchers, rifles, handguns, ammunition or bulletproof vests — components of the basic Warlord Starter Kit. But the question put to a succession of arms industry executives last May was always the same: Would you pay bribes to get a piece of a $15 million contract to equip the presidential guard of an African country?
  All of the defendants work at, or run, small companies that supply the staples of military and law enforcement life everywhere — small arms, uniforms, bullets — and that jockey for deals at a level well below military industry giants like Lockheed or Boeing. [Arms sales] [Corruption] [Double standards]
• Americans' bias against Jews, Muslims linked, poll says
  By Michelle Boorstein Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, January 21, 2010 A poll about Americans' views on Islam concludes that the strongest predictor of prejudice against Muslims is whether a person holds similar feelings about Jews.
• Haiti: An Unwelcome Katrina Redux
  By Cynthia McKinney Global Research, January 19, 2010 President Obama's response to the tragedy in Haiti has been robust in military deployment and puny in what the Haitians need most: food; first responders and their specialized equipment; doctors and medical facilities and equipment; and engineers, heavy equipment, and heavy movers. Sadly, President Obama is dispatching Presidents Bush and Clinton, and thousands of Marines and U.S. soldiers. By contrast, Cuba has over 400 doctors on the ground and is sending in more; Cubans, Argentinians, Icelanders, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and many others are already on the ground working--saving lives and treating the injured. Senegal has offered land to Haitians willing to relocate to Africa. The United States, on the day after the tragedy struck, confirmed that an entire Marine Expeditionary Force was being considered "to help restore order," when the "disorder" had been caused by an earthquake striking Haiti; not since 1751, 1770, 1842, 1860, and 1887 had Haiti experienced an earthquake. But, I remember the bogus reports of chaos and violence the led to the deployment of military assets, including Blackwater, in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One Katrina survivor noted that the people needed food and shelter and the U.S. government sent men with guns. Much to my disquiet, it seems, here we go again. From the very beginning, U.S. assistance to Haiti has looked to me more like an invasion than a humanitarian relief operation.
• U.S. Troops Patrol Haiti, Filling a Void
  By MARC LACEY Published: January 19, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — American military helicopters landed on Tuesday at Haiti’s wrecked National Palace, and troops began rolling through the capital’s battered streets, signs of the growing international relief operation here. But the troops’ presence underscored the rising complaints that the Haitian government had all but disappeared in the week since a huge earthquake struck.
  Haiti’s long history of foreign intervention, including an American occupation, normally makes the influx of foreigners a delicate issue. [Imperialism] [Militarisation]
• After Afghan Attack, Some See U.S. Role
  By ALISSA J. RUBIN Published: January 19, 2010 KABUL, Afghanistan — Twenty-four hours after seven insurgents stormed a shopping center in downtown Kabul and immobilized the city, the shoemakers who ply their trade in front of the mall were back in business on Tuesday. Nearby, shopkeepers returned to hawk tapes of Madonna alongside recordings of Afghan and Bollywood stars, and a crowd of men joked with a man wearing a large shawl, because that was the same outfit the attackers wore on Monday to hide their guns. Stoic about the assault, convinced that it would happen again and lacking faith in the government’s ability to stop such attacks, those who work near the sites that were attacked were most interested in the question of why the insurgents had not killed more civilians. “They could have slaughtered everyone in Faroshga,” said Mohammed Essa, 35, a shoemaker, referring to the shopping center that two suicide bombers entered Monday morning and left a shell. But the gun battle there with Afghan security forces, which lasted for hours, killed only five people — two civilians and three members of the security forces. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks. “It does impress us,” Mr. Essa said. “If they wanted to, they could have killed everyone.”
  Some Kabul residents speculated that Monday’s attack had been engineered by the United States to justify staying longer in Afghanistan. “Maybe the Americans are behind it,” said Zia-ul Haq, 22, who works in a stationery store a few feet from the site of a second major attack on Monday, in which a militant driving an ambulance blew himself up. “Otherwise, how could they have come through all these security checkpoints?”
• Street Heat and Foreign Policy
  By John Feffer, January 12, 2010 Without sufficient street-heat, according to the new conventional wisdom, President Obama is not going to implement progressive policies. His health care package reeks of insurance company influence. His bailouts favor Wall Street. Climate-change legislation rewards polluters through the shell game of "cap-and-trade." Without strong social movements pulling Obama to the left, the new administration's reforms resemble the pale liberalism of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, rather than the robust and transformative domestic change promoted by Lyndon Johnson and FDR. As falls domestic policy, so falls foreign policy. [US global strategy] [Continuity]
• Barely Making the Grade: Obama's First Year
  January 14, 2010 After the first 100 days of the Obama administration, the Institute for Policy Studies introduced our Change Index to evaluate the policies and performance of the new president. Did the candidate who promised change deliver on his promises? [US global strategy] [Continuity]
• Sexy term that helps to focus attention
  January 18, 2010 10:16am by Martin Wolf The invention of the Brics by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs was a stroke of marketing genius. But does it have analytical relevance? My answer is: no and yes. No, because the four countries have next to nothing in common, apart from the fact that none is a high-income country. Yes, because the notion captures a reality of our era, which is sustained “catch-up” growth across large parts of the developing world. [Realignment] [China rising]
• Obama gets an 'incomplete' in foreign policy for first year
  By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — A year after he took office to global acclaim, President Barack Obama has yet to translate his mantra of "change" into foreign policy success or to define how he'll use America's clout to advance its security, economic and political interests. Both Democratic and Republican foreign policy veterans give Obama high marks for dispersing the toxic cloud of anti-Americanism that gathered during the Bush years, particularly in the Muslim world. However, they say, it remains to be seen whether and how he'll employ the diplomatic sticks that are needed to defeat Islamic extremism, advance Middle East peace, back Iran off its nuclear program, handle a rising China and navigate the inevitable unforeseen crises.
  Presidents have been trying to make Middle East peace for nearly four decades, and have been frustrated by North Korea's nuclear program for two. [Obama] [Continuity][Inversion]
• After Dubai
  Editorial Published: January 17, 2010 When it looked as if Dubai would go bust last month, making global financial markets swoon, its wealthy neighboring emirate stepped in and bailed it out with a $10 billion loan. Unfortunately Dubai isn’t the only one teetering on the brink. Greece is also in trouble; so is Ireland. Others could follow. Unless the world’s richest nations come to the rescue of weakened states, the global financial crisis might sprout another leg and stop the nascent recovery in its tracks. [Crisis]
• US accused of annexing airport as squabbling hinders aid effort in Haiti
  Priority landing for Americans forces flights carrying emergency supplies to divert to Dominican Republic Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent, and Daniel Nasaw in Washington guardian.co.uk, Sunday 17 January 2010 21.56 GMT Article history The US military's takeover of emergency operations in Haiti has triggered a diplomatic row with countries and aid agencies furious at having flights redirected. Brazil and France lodged an official protest with Washington after US military aircraft were given priority at Port-au-Prince's congested airport, forcing many non-US flights to divert to the Dominican Republic. Brasilia warned it would not relinquish command of UN forces in Haiti, and Paris complained the airport had become a US "annexe", exposing a brewing power struggle amid the global relief effort. The Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières also complained about diverted flights.
• International Students and U.S. Global Power in the Long 20th Century
  Paul A. Kramer my own, historiographic one: that the history of foreign student migration ought to be explored as U. S. international history, that is, as related to the question of U. S. power in its transnational and global extensions.3 In this sense, my argument here is topical: that historians of U. S. foreign relations might profitably study international students and, in the process, bring to the fore intersections between “student exchange” and geopolitics. [Imperialism] [Education] [Softpower]
• Big Brother: Obama Calls for the Integration of State and Federal Military Forces
  Executive Order Seeks to "Synchronize and Integrate"
  By Tom Burghardt Global Research, January 17, 2010 Antifascist Calling... - 2010-01-16 In the wake of the Flight 253 provocation, over-hyped terrorism panics, and last year's Big Pharma and media-engineered hysteria over the H1N1 flu pandemic, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13528 on January 11. Among other things, the Executive Order (EO) established a Council of Governors, an "advisory panel" chosen by the President that will rubber-stamp long-sought-after Pentagon contingency plans to seize control of state National Guard forces in the event of a "national emergency." According to the White House press release, the ten member, bipartisan Council was created "to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards." "When appointed" the announcement continues, "the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities." Clearly designed to weaken the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which bars the use of the military for civilian law enforcement, EO 13528 is the latest in a series of maneuvers by previous administrations to wrest control of armed forces historically under the democratic control of elected state officials, and a modicum of public accountability. [Militarisation]
• Obama at One
  By Various Contributors This article appeared in the February 1, 2010 edition of The Nation. January 13, 2010 Looking back at President Obama's first year in office, what do you think the high point has been? And what has been your sharpest moment of disappointment? On this occasion, that's what The Nation asked members of our community, and beyond. Now we want to know what you think. Share your take on Obama's highest and lowest moments in the form provided here . President Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009, ignited the hopes of millions of Americans seeking real change. One year later, many progressives are worried that the Obama administration's commitment to change is not as strong as it should be. Some of his stalwart supporters feel anguish at what they see as a betrayal or delay of his campaign's promises, while many of his longtime critics feel vindicated in their initial skepticism. Other progressives, however, take stock of the advances that have been made in Washington and urge the left against making definitive pronouncements on his presidency so soon. Here at The Nation, Obama's politics and policies have been at the center of vigorous, persistent discussion and debate among our writers, editors and contributors. How one views Obama's first year is no doubt guided by one's political beliefs, but also by sensibility and intuition. On this occasion, we canvassed an array of opinions from our community--and beyond. We asked the simple question: Looking back at President Obama's first year in office, what do you think the high point has been? And what has been your sharpest moment of disappointment? The answers appear below... from:
  Adolph Reed Jr. Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania In January 1996 I wrote the following about Barack Obama in my Village Voice column: "In Chicago, we've gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program--the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics." In 2007 Matt Taibbi described him as "an ingeniously crafted human cipher, a man without race, ideology, geographic allegiances, or, indeed, sharp edges of any kind. You can't run against him on the issues because you can't even find him on the ideological spectrum." In 2006 Ken Silverstein noted Obama's deep financial industry connections. Glen Ford, Paul Street and many others have stressed those and other disturbing connections, including his penchant for supporting more conservative Democratic candidates against more liberal ones. Obama indicated no later than the summer of 2007 that he intended, if elected, to extend the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan. The only surprise about his presidency is how many ersatz leftists cling to the fiction that he's anything other than a superficially articulate neoliberal Democrat in the Clinton mold and that his administration would act in any other way. [Obama] [Continuity]
• Change Won't Come Easy
  By Katrina vanden Heuvel & Robert L. Borosage This article appeared in the February 1, 2010 edition of The Nation. January 14, 2010 President Obama hailed the healthcare reform bill coming out of the Senate as the "most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s." Former Democratic Party chair Howard Dean denounced it as a "giveaway to insurance companies." Larry Summers, Obama's lead economic adviser, described the $780 billion recovery plan as the largest stimulus plan in the country's history. Economists like Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz warned from the beginning that it was too small to lift us out of the Great Recession.
  The discordant reality of these times is that these conflicting statements are all essentially true. "I want you to be ready," Bill Clinton warned bloggers about healthcare reform at the Netroots Conference in August, to "accept less than a full loaf." He could easily have been talking about the Obama presidency itself. Progressives must determine how to respond now that the fierce resistance to change has revealed itself. The euphoria of a year ago is dissipating. [Obama] [Continuity]
• Comparative Connections 4th Quarter (October-December) 2009
  Vol. 11, No.4 January 2010
• 'Even Charles Manson could beat him now'
  One year after his election, Barack Obama's approval rating is lower at this stage than for any US president since Eisenhower. So why has the optimism surrounding his victory disappeared so suddenly? Buzz up! Digg it Gary Younge in Prestonsburg The Guardian, Saturday 16 January 2010 Barack Obama's 'rightwing dissenters may be eccentric and racially exclusive but they have also proved highly effective.' Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images Every Wednesday at 4.30pm they come: a small steady human trickle rolling down a ravine in Prestonsburg, western Kentucky towards the Town Branch church. They come in pick-ups, on foot, alone and with families. Some stop for just a few minutes. Others linger. They come for food and warm second-hand clothes. They come because desperation in this part of America has become a routine part of life. [Obama]
• Sunni candidates ban threatens Iraq election
  • Sectarian tension grows after 400 nominees barred • Move justified as a push against Saddam loyalists Buzz up! Digg it Martin Chulov in Baghdad guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 January 2010 19.12 GMT Article historyLeading Sunni politicians tonight warned that Iraq was sliding towards a "dark unknown" in the wake of a decision to ban more than 400 Sunni candidates from contesting the upcoming general election. The move is increasingly being seen as a test of the poll's legitimacy and a direct threat to the Shia-led government's attempts at reconciling the country's warring militant and political factions. On Thursday the country's independent electoral commission banned about 500 candidates from running in the 7 March poll. But more than 80% were today revealed to be Sunni nominees who had been courted to take part in a bid to prevent a re-run of the 2005 election, which saw a Sunni boycott and a subsequent slide towards sectarian war.
  Mutlak has been banned by the Accountability and Justice Commission, an organisation that emerged from the once omnipotent De-Ba'athification Commission. The new body is directed by Ali Faisal al-Lami, a close aide to former deputy prime minister and one-time American ally, Ahmed Chalabi, who is again a candidate in the upcoming poll.
  Another Sunni politician, Osama al-Najafi, said there was now a serious threat to the election, which is being hailed by the US as a democratic breakthrough that will lead to the withdrawal of the 125,000 US forces remaining in Iraq. "There has been a drastic change in the political situation in Iraq," Najafi said. "There will be a severe public backlash to this, reconciliation will end, and the election will fail. Any results will clearly be seen as illegitimate." [Democracy]
• One year out: President Obama's fall
  By Charles Krauthammer Friday, January 15, 2010 What went wrong? A year ago, he was king of the world. Now President Obama's approval rating, according to CBS, has dropped to 46 percent -- and his disapproval rating is the highest ever recorded by Gallup at the beginning of an (elected) president's second year. A year ago, he was leader of a liberal ascendancy that would last 40 years (James Carville). A year ago, conservatism was dead (Sam Tanenhaus). Now the race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in bluest of blue Massachusetts is surprisingly close, with a virtually unknown state senator bursting on the scene by turning the election into a mini-referendum on Obama and his agenda, most particularly health-care reform. A year ago, Obama was the most charismatic politician on Earth. Today the thrill is gone, the doubts growing -- even among erstwhile believers. Liberals try to attribute Obama's political decline to matters of style. He's too cool, detached, uninvolved. He's not tough, angry or aggressive enough with opponents. He's contracted out too much of his agenda to Congress. These stylistic and tactical complaints may be true, but they miss the major point: The reason for today's vast discontent, presaged by spontaneous national Tea Party opposition, is not that Obama is too cool or compliant but that he's too left. It's not about style; it's about substance. About which Obama has been admirably candid. This out-of-nowhere, least-known of presidents dropped the veil most dramatically in the single most important political event of 2009, his Feb. 24 first address to Congress. With remarkable political honesty and courage, Obama unveiled the most radical (in American terms) ideological agenda since the New Deal: the fundamental restructuring of three pillars of American society -- health care, education and energy. [Obama] [Continuity] [Bizarre]
• System Failure
  By Christopher Hayes This article appeared in the February 1, 2010 edition of The Nation. January 14, 2010 There is a widespread consensus that the decade we've just brought to a close was singularly disastrous for the country: the list of scandals, crises and crimes is so long that events that in another context would stand out as genuine lowlights--Enron and Arthur Andersen's collapse, the 2003 Northeast blackout, the unsolved(!) anthrax attacks--are mere afterthoughts.
  American progressives were the first to identify that something was deeply wrong with the direction the country was heading in and the first to provide a working hypothesis for the cause: George W. Bush
  We changed the independent variable (the party and people in power) and can observe the results. It is hard, I think, to come to any conclusion but that the former hypothesis was insufficient. [Continuity] [Democracy] [Obama]
• Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List
  By LIZETTE ALVAREZ Published: January 13, 2010 The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public. Michael Hicks, 8, a Cub Scout in Clifton, N.J., has the same name as a suspicious person. “Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.” Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled. The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.
  Mario Labbé, a frequent-flying Canadian record-company executive, started having problems at airports shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, with lengthy delays at checkpoints and mysterious questions about Japan. By 2005, he stopped flying to the United States from Canada, instead meeting American clients in France. Then a forced rerouting to Miami in 2008 led to six hours of questions. “What’s the name of your mother? Your father? When were you last in Japan?” Mr. Labbé recalled being asked. “Always the same questions in different order. And sometimes, it’s quite aggressive, not funny at all.” Fed up, in the summer of 2008, he changed his name to François Mario Labbé. The problem vanished. [Surveillance] [Bizarre]
• U.S. Companies Race Join on Iraqi Oil Bonanza
  By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS Published: January 13, 2010 BAGHDAD — A wave of American companies have been arriving in Iraq in recent months to pursue what is expected to be a multibillion-dollar bonanza of projects to revive the country’s stagnant petroleum industry, as Iraq seeks to establish itself as a rival to Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer. Since the 2003 American-led invasion, nearly all of the biggest reconstruction projects in Iraq have been controlled by the United States. But many rebuilding contracts are expected to be awarded as soon as this month for drilling hundreds of new wells, repairing thousands of miles of pipeline and building several giant floating oil terminals in the Persian Gulf, and possibly a new port.
• U.S. faces long odds in improved relations with Asia
  By John Pomfret Thursday, January 14, 2010 HONOLULU -- In her first year as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton went to East Asia three times -- more than any other part of the world. It was her first destination, and until the earthquake in Haiti, she was set to return to the region this week on the lead-off trip of her sophomore year. Clinton's advisers are fond of proclaiming that the United States is "back" in Asia. The secretary herself got into the act Tuesday, saying that America is not only "back in Asia," but "back to stay." But the Obama administration faces tough odds as it seeks to improve the standing of the United States in a vast region that does more trade with America than any other and that is the home to the biggest U.S. airbase outside the United States. On one hand, Asians want the United States "back" as well. But on the other, analysts say, it's unclear whether Washington is wielding the right tools to build a new foundation in the area. It's also unclear whether the Obama administration has sufficient leverage or enough trust from its key partners to get the job done. [US global strategy]
• Pat Robertson: Haiti 'cursed' by pact with devil
  The Associated Press Wednesday, January 13, 2010; 6:13 PM VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson says Haiti has been "cursed" because of what he called a "pact with the devil" in its history. His spokesman said the Wednesday comments were based on Voodoo rituals carried out before a slave rebellion against French colonists in 1791. Spokesman Chris Roslan says Robertson never stated that Tuesday's earthquake was God's wrath. He says Robertson's Operation Blessing group is sending millions of dollars in medication and relief workers to the country. Robertson has angered opponents many times before with comments on current events and criticism of other faiths. He once said American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. [Religion] [Bizarre]
• Israel-Turkey rift resurfaces over TV show
  Israeli government publicly reprimands Turkish ambassador after television drama depicts Israeli forces kidnapping children Buzz up! Digg it Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 January 2010 18.40 GMT Article historyA new diplomatic row has broken out between Israel and Turkey after the Turkish ambassador appeared to be publicly humiliated by Israeli government officials. The countries have in the past had close relations, and even military co-operation, but since the war in Gaza last year their relationship has been strained. The latest dispute came when Israel summoned the Turkish ambassador, Ahmet Çelikkol, to complain about a Turkish television drama that depicted Israeli security forces kidnapping children and shooting elderly men. Last night the ambassador was called to the Knesset office of the Israeli deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon. With television cameras filming, Çelikkol was seated on a low sofa before the Israeli officials who sat on higher, upright chairs. There was no handshake or refreshments, only an Israeli flag on the table between them. Ayalon turned to the Israeli television journalists and photographers and said in Hebrew: "The important thing is that people see that he's low and we're high and that there is one flag here." When journalists asked Ayalon to shake hands with the ambassador, he said: "No. That's the point." Turkey summoned the Israeli ambassador today to express its "unease" over the incident.
  The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been particularly critical of Israel's three-week war in Gaza a year ago, in which 13 Israelis and nearly 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
• Clinton Tries to Defuse Asian Tension
  By MARK LANDLER Published: January 12, 2010 HONOLULU — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton kicked off her travels this year, as she did last year, by flying across the Pacific rather than the Atlantic. But this time, her itinerary is more urgent. With tensions rising between the United States and both Japan and China, Asia has emerged as a diplomatic hornet’s nest, even beyond the perennial threat of North Korea (sic). [Media] [Spin]
• Palin disputes book saying she was unprepared for '08 campaign
  By Scott Butterworth and Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R) said Tuesday night that it was "a lie" that she didn't know the difference between North Korea and South Korea during the 2008 presidential campaign. Palin dismissed that and other assertions in a new book that reviews the presidential race as "gossipy anonymous accusations."
• Lobster 58
  Winter 2009/10 John Booth: Arnhem 65 years on Phil Chamberlain: The construction industry blacklist: how the Economic League lived on ‘a consultant’ reviews Alpha Dogs Robert Henderson: Laissez faire as religion Solomon Hughes: The curious case of Prospect Simon Matthews: The life and times of Simon Dee Robin Ramsay: The miners and the secret state The economic crisis Subservience to America Dr. T. P. Wilkinson: Superstition and Farce: the survival of the Inquisition in American political culture [Disinformation]
• Never Mind the Facts, Let's Have a War...
  By Finian Cunningham Global Research, January 8, 2010 Gulf Daily News - 2009-12-23 A missile test-fired by Iran last week was reported on the BBC World Service as being “capable of striking Israel”. The choice of words was not unusual. On previous occasions when Iran has test-fired a long-range rocket, the BBC and other western news media dutifully inform us that the said device is “capable of striking Israel”. The well-worn phrase is so reliably heard in these news bulletins that its use betrays a coded script. The not-too subliminal implications are that Iran is: a) a hostile state; b) doing something illegal in test-firing a long-range missile; and c) gearing up to deliver on its alleged threat to wipe out the state of Israel. Within hours of these reports last week, the US government weighed in with the pious accusation that the test-firing “undermines Iran's claims of peaceful intentions”. This is a propaganda system at work: the choice of words and framework of logic designed to condition people into accepting certain options. In this case, the pre-determined option is a unilateral military strike on Iran either by the US or Israel. In that event, it will of course be reported by the BBC and other western media as a “pre-emptive” military measure to “prevent” Iran from attacking western interests in the region. Reported too, no doubt, will be the “collateral damage” of civilian casualties – unfortunate victims in an otherwise “just cause” to bring a “hardline regime” to abide by “international norms”. This is classic thought engineering that British political essayist George Orwell exposed so brilliantly – the official use of sanitised words to cover the sordid truth. [Media] [Spin]
• Democracies Do Not Make War on One Another. ...or Do They?
  by Matthew White I've witnessed this debate on Usenet several times, and it always follows the same pattern: 1. Somebody casually brings up the old factoid about how no two democracies have ever gone to war with one another. 2. Somebody jumps in and lists a dozen or so wars which have been fought between democracies. 3. Somebody else points out that those countries weren't democratic, not really. 4. Everybody gets into arguments over who was or was not democratic. 5. The argument fizzles out except for two guys continuing to argue over whether the American Civil War was about slavery. In any case, here is the traditional list of wars which may or may not have been fought between democracies: [Spin] [Democracy]
• Extremist Islamist groups to be banned under new terror laws
  Membership of either al-Muhajiroun or Islam4UK would become punishable by 10-year prison term under proposed law
  Alan Travis, home affairs editor guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 January 2010 18.26 GMT Article history The Islamist group Islam4UK, which planned a march through Wootton Bassett, and its "parent" organisation, al-Muhajiroun, are to be banned under new legislation outlawing the "glorification" of terrorism. The home secretary, Alan Johnson, is expected to sign off a parliamentary order later this week proposing the ban, based on months of monitoring the output of websites and comments by senior figures. The decision to proscribe the two organisations, which will have to be endorsed by parliament, will make it a criminal offence punishable by a prison term of up to 10 years to be a member of either organisation, or to attend or address their meetings. Al-Muhajiroun was founded by Omar Bakri Muhammad and Anjem Choudary, and has been operating in Britain since the mid-1980s. [Human rights] [Islam]
• The Shadow War
  By Tom Engelhardt & Nick Turse January 11, 2010 It was a Christmas and New Year's from hell for American intelligence, that $75 billion labyrinth of at least 16 major agencies and a handful of minor ones. As the old year was preparing to be rung out, so were our intelligence agencies, which managed not to connect every obvious clue to a (literally) seat-of-the-pants al-Qaeda operation. It hardly mattered that the underwear bomber's case -- except for the placement of the bomb material -- almost exactly, even outrageously, replicated the infamous, and equally inept, "shoe bomber" plot of eight years ago. Share this article That would have been bad enough, but the New Year brought worse. Army Major General Michael Flynn, U.S. and NATO forces deputy chief of staff for intelligence in Afghanistan, released a report in which he labeled military intelligence in the war zone -- but by implication U.S. intelligence operatives generally -- "clueless." They were, he wrote, "ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced... and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers... Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy." [Intelligence] [Media] [Privatisation]
• Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age
  A quiet revolution has been occurring in post-World War II Europe. A world power has emerged across the Atlantic that is recrafting the rules for how a modern society should provide economic security, environmental sustainability, and global stability. For a decade Steven Hill traveled widely to understand this uniquely European way of life. In Europe's Promise, he explains Europe's bold new vision. [Decline] [Realignment]
• Crisis and war ahead
  Saturday, 09 January 2010 Resolution adopted by the International Assembly of the Anti-imperialist Camp, Italy, December 6, 2009
  The historical systemic crisis of capitalism, new geo-political conflicts and the Anti-imperialist Camp’s tasks a) The collapse of the world economy following the financial crash which erupted in the USA on September 2008 (a crash which had been announced by several creaks in the previous decade) is not one of those cyclical recessions followed by a recovery. It is more of an alarm bell pointing at a historical systemic crisis of western capitalism, in the first instance at a crisis of those imperialist countries which constituted, after World War II, the gravitational centre of global capitalism and which, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has dominated the world despite some resistance here and there. [Capitalism] [Crisis]
• 5 myths about who becomes a terrorist
  By Jessica Stern Sunday, January 10, 2010 By now, more than eight years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, we should be better at plucking a terrorist out of an airport security line. After all, we have some idea of what he'll be like: young, socially alienated and deeply religious. And he'll come from a country like Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria or Yemen. (Under new Transportation Security Administration rules announced last weekend, people bearing passports from these 14 countries will undergo special scrutiny before boarding a plane.) This Story Al-Qaeda has a new strategy. Obama needs one, too. Q&A, Mon., 4 p.m.: Outlook: Al-Qaeda's grand new strategy 5 Myths about who becomes a terrorist Or will he? What if he comes from Northern Virginia, like the five young men who were arrested in Pakistan on Dec. 8 and who have been accused of planning "terrorist activities," according to Pakistani newspaper reports? The bottom line is that we can no longer assume that terrorists will come from any particular country or fit any particular profile. The more we learn about what makes people vulnerable to recruitment by terrorist organizations, the less any of the old generalizations hold up. [Global insurgency] [Agency]
• U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, January 8, 2010 Stop NATO In parallel with the escalation of the war in South Asia - counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and drone missile attacks in Pakistan - the United States and its NATO allies have laid the groundwork for increased naval, air and ground operations in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden. During the past month the U.S. has carried out deadly military strikes in Yemen: Bombing raids in the north and cruise missile attacks in the south of the nation. Washington has been accused of killing scores of civilians in the attacks in both parts of the country, executed before the December 25 Northwest Airlines incident that has been used to justify the earlier U.S. actions ex post facto. And, ominously, that has been exploited to pound a steady drumbeat of demands for expanded and even more direct military intervention. The Pentagon's publicly disclosed military and security program for Yemen grew from $4.6 million in 2006 to $67 million last year. "That figure does not include covert, classified assistance that the United States has provided." [1] In addition, "Under a new classified cooperation agreement, the U.S. would be able to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets or unmanned armed drones against targets in the country, but would remain publicly silent on its role in the airstrikes." [2] On January 1 General David Petraeus, the chief of the Pentagon's Central Command, in charge of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as operations in Yemen and Pakistan, was in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and said of deepening military involvement in Yemen, "We have, it's well known, about $70 million in security assistance last year. That will more than double this coming year." [3] The following day Petraeus was in the capital of Yemen where he met with the country's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to discuss "continued U.S. support in rooting out the terrorist cells." [4] White House counterterrorism adviser (Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism) John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama on Petraeus' visit to Washington's new war theater and afterward stated "We have made Yemen a priority over the course of this year, and this is the latest in that effort." [5] The alleged terrorist cells in question are identified by U.S. and other Western governments as being affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). However, on January 4 CNN reported that "A senior U.S. official cited a rebellion by Huti [Houthi] tribes in the north, and secessionist activity in the southern tribal areas" as of concern to Washington. [6] The Houthis' confessional background is Shi'a and not Sunni Islam and the opposition forces in the south are led by the Yemeni Socialist Party, so attempts to link either with al-Qaeda are inaccurate, self-serving and dishonest. [US global strategy]
• The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint
  By F. William Engdahl Global Research, January 5, 2010 On December 25 US authorities arrested a Nigerian named Abdulmutallab aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on charges of having tried to blow up the plane with smuggled explosives. Since then reports have been broadcast from CNN, the New York Times and other sources that he was "suspected" of having been trained in Yemen for his terror mission. What the world has been subjected to since is the emergence of a new target for the US ‘War on Terror,' namely a desolate state on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen. A closer look at the background suggests the Pentagon and US intelligence have a hidden agenda in Yemen.
  An excuse for a US or NATO militarization of the waters around Bab el-Mandab would give Washington another major link in its pursuit of control of the seven most critical oil chokepoints around the world, a major part of any future US strategy aimed at denying oil flows to China, the EU or any region or country that opposes US policy. Given that significant flows of Saudi oil pass through Bab el-Mandab, a US military control there would serve to deter the Saudi Kingdom from becoming serious about transacting future oil sales with China or others no longer in dollars, as was recently reported by UK Independent journalist Robert Fisk. It would also be in a position to threaten China's oil transport from Port Sudan on the Red Sea just north of Bab el-Mandab, a major lifeline in China's national energy needs. In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world's greatest untapped oil reserves [US global strategy] [Reserve]
• Iraq seeks Israel raid compensation
  Iraq is seeking compensation from Israel over the 1981 bombing of a nuclear reactor it was building, according to an Iraqi MP. Mohammed Naji Mohammed, an MP from the United Iraqi Alliance coalition, told the al-Sabah newspaper on Tuesday that the cabinet had approved a plan to seek redress through diplomatic channels including the United Nations. "Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the ministry of foreign affairs petitioned the United Nations and the UN Security Council to demand that Israel pay compensation ... for the 1981 bombing an [Iraqi] nuclear reactor," he was quoted as saying. [Unintended consequences]
• Obama and the Permanent War Budget
  By William D. Hartung, December 22, 2009 It's been a good decade for the Pentagon. The most recent numbers from Capitol Hill indicate that Pentagon spending (counting Iraq and Afghanistan) will reach over $630 billion in 2010. And that doesn’t even include the billions set aside for building new military facilities and sustaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal. [Pentagon] [Military industrial complex] [Militarisation]
• The Foreign Policy of Optimism
  By Rubrick Biegon. Edited by John Feffer, December 29, 2009 Times are trying for American exceptionalism, that peculiar notion that the United States is unique in its attributes and qualitatively different from the rest of the international community. For many Americans, the Great Recession, set against the military quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, has clouded their view of the United States as a beacon of progress and anchor of stability in a turbulent world. Historically, however, the myth of American exceptionalism has shown incredible resilience, in part because, like most myths, it contains some elements of truth. For good or ill, it has colored perceptions of U.S. foreign policy all the way back to the country’s founding, and it is unlikely to wither completely in the near future. [Exceptionalism] [US global strategy]
• Science, defence and strategy
  Adam Elkus, 6 January 2010 Without strategy, the science of war overtakes the art of war. War has always been such a tremendously complex undertaking that every force waging it has sought to simplify and standardize. At the same time, this simplification and standardization is usually inimical to the kind of creativity needed to win. Finding a balance between the art and science of war has always been difficult, especially in an era thoroughly dominated by science in all major areas of everyday life. Some critics charge that counterinsurgency has become a new “progressive” science of war rooted in an application of social sciences to conflict. While this charge has some truth, the real issue is that science is being substituted for strategy. Without guiding strategic direction, the temptation to elevate pat formulas and simplistic doctrines becomes overwhelming.
  Of course, a golden age of American strategy never really existed. The very structure of divided American government and fractious politics prevents the kind of centralized strategymaking seen in Bismarck’s Germany, the wet dream of many nostalgic devotees of realpolitik. Instead of Prince Metternich and the Congress of Vienna, America has Ultimate Fighting Championship. The cable-TV screaming matches that dominate American political discourse are more important than careful policy papers in determining the future direction of American strategy. [Domestic] [US global strategy]
• Suicide bomber who attacked CIA post in Afghanistan was trusted informant from Jordan
  By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, January 5, 2010 The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan last week was a Jordanian informant who lured intelligence officers into a trap by promising new information about al-Qaeda's top leadership, former U.S. government officials said Monday. The attacker, a physician-turned-mole, had been recruited to infiltrate al-Qaeda's senior circles and had gained the trust of his CIA and Jordanian handlers with a stream of useful intelligence leads, according to two former senior officials briefed on the agency's internal investigation. His track record as an informant apparently allowed him to enter a key CIA post without a thorough search, the sources said. The bomber, identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was standing just outside an agency building on the base Wednesday when he exploded a bomb hidden under his clothes, killing the seven Americans along with a Jordanian officer who had been assigned to work with him. Six CIA operatives were wounded. [Global insurgency]
• The New Global Dominance of Asian Businesses
  Asian companies have become the winners of the global financial crisis. European and U.S. firms ruled the global business world for more than 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, but not for much longer. Once Asian companies, with their cheap labor forces, were the factories of Western corporations, but now they lead the global business world based on their massive domestic markets.
• America is losing the free world
  By Gideon Rachman Published: January 4 2010 20:11 | Last updated: January 4 2010 20:11 Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the “free world”. But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world – Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey – are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy. Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers such as China and Iran. [Decline] [US global strategy]
• U.S. Concerns: First Germany, Now Japan?
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 272, Jan. 1, 2010 The geopolitical strategy of the United States after 1945 was based on what seemed to be a solid rock - control over its two defeated enemies in the Second World War, Germany and Japan. For a long time, each country was governed by a single conservative party - the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan. The two parties pursued a policy of close alliance with the United States and faithful support of its geopolitical positions. The unbreakable support began to break down first in Germany. For one thing, the CDU began to alternate power in 1969 with the Social-Democratic Party whose Chancellor, Willy Brandt, launched the Ostpolitik, seeking some sort of détente with the Soviet Union. The weakening of German links with the United States progressed slowly until the significant break in 2003 when Germany allied itself with France and Russia to defeat the U.S.-supported resolution in the U.N. Security Council that would have constituted an endorsement of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nothing similar happened for a long time in Japan, until Aug. 31, 2009, when the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), led by Yukio Hatoyama, swept the LDP out of office on a platform that included rethinking Japan's "subservient" relationship with the United States. Hatoyama had published an article in 1996 in which he described the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty as "a Cold War relic" and called for weaning away Japan from "excessive dependence" on the United States.
  It is presently thought that the existing conservative government of South Korea shares this U.S. view about Japan. However, South Korea's own distancing from the United States started long ago, and initially under the leadership of the very same conservative party now again in power. In 2003, the South Korean government admitted that it had been enriching uranium and plutonium in secret for two decades. This process went much further in the process of creating nuclear weapons in violation of the Safeguards Agreement than anything Iran is accused of doing. This was never referred to the U.N. Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but does reveal a degree of autonomy from dependence on the United States. If one combines what is happening in Japan and South Korea with China's increasing geopolitical assertiveness, it seems quite probable that the next decade will see considerable movement towards the creation of Hatoyama's East Asian Community. As Germany (and France) move closer to Russia, and Japan (and South Korea) move closer to China, the United States can no longer count in any way on the two solid rocks on which it built its geopolitical strategy as the (erstwhile) hegemonic power of the world-system. [Realignment] [Decline]
• NZ's cyber spies win new powers
  By NICKY HAGER - Sunday Star Times Last updated 09:10 03/01/2010SharePrint Text Size Relevant offers New cyber-monitoring measures have been quietly introduced giving police and Security Intelligence Service officers the power to monitor all aspects of someone's online life. The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand. In preparation, technicians have been installing specialist spying devices and software inside all telephone exchanges, internet companies and even fibre-optic data networks between cities and towns, providing police and spy agencies with the capability to monitor almost all communications.
  Official papers obtained by the Star-Times show that, despite government claims that it was done for domestic reasons, the new New Zealand spying capabilities are part of a push by United States agencies to have standardised surveillance capabilities available for their use from governments worldwide. Ad Feedback While US civil liberties groups unsuccessfully fought these surveillance capabilities being used on US citizens, the FBI was lobbying other governments to adopt them. FBI Director Robert Mueller III told a senate committee in March last year that the FBI needs "global reach" to fight cyber-crime and terrorism and that co-operation with "law enforcement partners" gives it "the means to leverage the collective resources of many countries". Auckland lawyer Tim McBride, author of the forthcoming New Zealand Civil Rights Handbook, says our politicians had let down New Zealanders when they yielded to the foreign pressure and imported US-style surveillance into New Zealand. [Surveillance]
• Refighting the Last War: Afghanistan and the Vietnam Template
  Source : Military Review // United States Army Combined Arms Center Date Added: 5-Nov-2009 Publication Date : 4-Nov-2009 URL : http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/MILREVIEW_AfghanistanVie tnamTemplate.pdf Abstract : It is an oft-cited maxim that in all the conflicts of the past century, the United States has refought its last war. A number of analysts and journalists have mentioned the war in Vietnam recently in connection with Afghanistan. Perhaps fearful of taking this analogy too far, most have backed away from it. They should not—the Vietnam War is less a metaphor for the conflict in Afghanistan than it is a template. For eight years, the United States has engaged in an almost exact political and military reenactment of the Vietnam War, and the lack of self-awareness of the repetition of events 50 years ago is deeply disturbing. The Obama Administration deliberately took ownership of the Afghanistan war in its first days in office by sending more troops and ordering multiple strategic reviews. In October, as this article is being written, the Obama Administration is engaged in a very public strategic review following both a grim assessment from the President’s hand picked theatre commander, General Stanley McChrystal, and an embarrassing election fiasco in Afghanistan. President Obama certainly knows, as Presidents Johnson and Nixon did in similar circumstances, that the choice of alternatives now is between bad and worse. There is general agreement today, as indeed there was before the Diem Coup in 1963, that the war is going badly. [US global strategy]
• Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones
  $26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected By SIOBHAN GORMAN, YOCHI J. DREAZEN and AUGUST COLE WASHINGTON -- Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations. Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter. .U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America's enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.
  The stolen video feeds also indicate that U.S. adversaries continue to find simple ways of counteracting sophisticated American military technologies.
  The Air Force has staked its future on unmanned aerial vehicles. Drones account for 36% of the planes in the service's proposed 2010 budget. [Cyberwar] [Asymmetry]
• How some retired military officers became well-paid consultants
  By Tom Vanden Brook, Ken Dilanian and Ray Locker, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — Six months after Marine Lt. Gen. Gary McKissock retired in 2002, he did what many other ex-military leaders do: He joined the board of directors of a defense contractor, a company doing business with his former service. McKissock also had a second job. The Marines brought him back as an adviser, at double the rate of pay he made on active duty. Since 2005, the Marines have awarded McKissock contracts worth $1.2 million, in addition to his military pension of about $119,000 a year. McKissock is one of at least 158 retired admirals and generals the Pentagon has hired to offer advice under an unusual arrangement. Most of the retired officers, one to four stars in rank, have been paid hundreds of dollars an hour by the military even as they worked for companies seeking Defense Department contracts, a USA TODAY investigation found. That's in addition to pensions of $100,000 to $200,000 a year for officers with 30 or more years of service. [Military industrial complex] [Corruption]
• Hackable Drones, Crumbling Empire
  By Tom Burghardt Global Research, January 1, 2010 Antifascist Calling... On the eve of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, historian Chalmers Johnson observed in The Sorrows of Empire: "At this late date ... it is difficult to imagine how Congress, much like the Roman senate in the last days of the republic, could be brought back to life and cleansed of its endemic corruption." Drawing striking analogies between the fall of the Roman republic and America's decline as a global capitalist power, Johnson wrote: "Failing such a reform, Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us." Judging by the fragile state of American sociopolitical life, that meeting may not be as far off as most of us think.
  But what happens when global resistance forces get a handle on the game America and their allies are playing and begin leveraging the weaknesses of such systems, not of least of which are the ideological blind spots plaguing their developers, into a wholly subversive high-tech détournement in a bid to level the playing field? This is no idle speculation, but rather a possible glimpse into the future of what has been called by military theorists "asymmetric warfare." The classic examples of this type of uneven combat between states and insurgent forces are the various communist guerrilla armies that toppled colonial or neocolonial governments backed by the United States, e.g. China, Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua.
  Barring a dramatic transformation of American economic, political and social relations, not the ersatz "change" promised by the current regime, a rank mendacity that amounts to little more than a band-aid over gangrene, "Nemesis stalks our life as a free nation." [Imperialism] [Asymmetry] [Military industrial complex] [Arrogance]
• U.S. and U.K. Shut Embassies in Yemen Over Qaeda Threats
  By STEVEN ERLANGER Published: January 3, 2010 SANA, Yemen — The United States and Britain shut their embassies in the Yemen capital on Sunday, with the Americans citing unspecified but “ongoing threats by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” the regional branch responsible for the failed Christmas Day effort to blow up a U.S. airliner headed to Detroit. [Decline] [Global insurgency]
• California's scary sneak preview
  By Ezra Klein Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 3, 2010 We Californians pride ourselves on the crystal-ball quality of our state. Auto emissions regulations, the tech boom and bust, Ronald Reagan, Hispanic immigration, the anti-tax revolt, the mortgage bubble, the struggle for gay rights, most movies, the popularity of Richard Nixon, the unpopularity of Richard Nixon, plastic surgery, and Tiger Woods's marital problems were all tested in the Golden State before being released to audiences nationwide. The next likely item on that list is not a happy one, however. California is in a total fiscal crisis. It's had to slash state services to the bone and will have to cut further. It's gutted the University of California and lost its credit rating. David Paterson, the governor of New York, casually mentioned that he thinks California might default on its debt. That's bad enough, as it could drag down the national recovery. But what's worse is that this picture is probably coming to a theater near, well, all of us.
  The lesson of California is that a political system too dysfunctional to avert crisis is also too dysfunctional to respond to it. The difficulty is not economic so much as it is political; solving our fiscal problem is a mixture of easy arithmetic and hard choices, but until we solve our political problem, both are out of reach. And we can't assume that an emergency, or the prospect of one, will solve the political problem for us. If you want to see how that movie ends, just look west, as we have so many times before. [Decline] [Incompetence]
• 2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World
  By Rick Rozoff URL of this article: Global Research, December 31, 2009 Stop NATO January 1 will usher in the last year of the first decade of a new millennium and ten consecutive years of the United States conducting war in the Greater Middle East. Beginning with the October 7, 2001 missile and bomb attacks on Afghanistan, American combat operations abroad have not ceased for a year, a month, a week or a day in the 21st century. The Afghan war, the U.S.'s first air and ground conflict in Asia since the disastrous wars in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's first land war and Asian campaign, began during the end of the 2001 war in Macedonia launched from NATO-occupied Kosovo, one in which the role of U.S. military personnel is still to be properly exposed [1] and addressed and which led to the displacement of almost 10 percent of the nation's population. In the first case Washington invaded a nation in the name of combating terrorism; in the second it abetted cross-border terrorism. Similarly, in 1991 the U.S. and its Western allies attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait and launched devastating and deadly cruise missile attacks and bombing sorties inside Iraq in the name of preserving the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kuwait, and in 1999 waged a 78-day bombing assault against Yugoslavia to override and fatally undermine the principles of territorial integrity and national sovereignty in the name of the casus belli of the day, so-called humanitarian intervention. Two years later humanitarian war, as abhorrent an oxymoron as the world has ever witnessed, gave way to the global war on terror(ism), with the U.S. and its NATO allies again reversing course but continuing to wage wars of aggression and "wars of opportunity" as they saw fit, contradictions and logic, precedents and international law notwithstanding. [Imperialism]
• Hmong leaders seek help from Obama
  National Hmong leaders in Fresno are asking President Barack Obama to intervene on behalf of 4,500 Hmong who were forcibly repatriated from Thailand to Laos this week. In a letter to Obama, the Fresno-based Lao Veterans of America Institute, which calls itself the nation's largest Hmong and Lao veterans organization, accuses the Thai military of brutalizing refugees who objected to the repatriation. [Imperialism]
• The 'coalition of the willing' in Iraq becomes an army of one
  BAGHDAD, Iraq — The British said cheerio back in July, around the same time the Romanians cleared out "Camp Dracula," their compound on a U.S. base in southern Iraq. Tonga and Kazakhstan left ages ago, and no one seems to remember if any Icelandic forces ever made it to Iraq. It doesn't matter now, anyway, because as of Friday, former president George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" formally ceased to exist, leaving only the U.S. military's 130,000 or so forces to shepherd their Iraqi counterparts through a volatile election season before a full American troop withdrawal that's expected by the end of 2011. U.S. commanders officially disbanded the Multinational Force Iraq, or MNF-I, and introduce the USF-I, or U.S. Force Iraq, at a ceremony Friday in Baghdad. American soldiers and officers said the transition is largely a formality because they've been going it alone since the summer. Iraqis also said the change barely registers. To them, there's never been a question that Americans were in charge for these tumultuous past six years. "There's no difference, even if they change the name," said Mohammed Abdul Jabar, 40, a furniture salesman in Baghdad. "The main enemy, the ones who destroyed the country, who disbanded our military, it's the Americans. If I see a fighter jet loaded with missiles, do I wonder whose it is? No, it's always been the Americans." [Imperialism]
• Iraqis Angered as Blackwater Charges Are Dropped
  By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS Published: January 1, 2010 BAGHDAD — Iraqis on Friday reacted with disbelief, anger and bitter resignation to news that criminal charges in the United States had been dismissed against Blackwater Worldwide security guards who opened fire on unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007. Skip to next paragraph Though the shooting, which took place on Sept. 16, 2007, in a crowded central Baghdad traffic circle, is regarded here as a signal event of the war, many victims had not been aware of the decision of a Federal District Court judge in Washington because the ruling was made public in Baghdad a few hours after the start of the new year. [War crimes]