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'

• With $30 Billion Arms Deal, U.S. Bolsters Saudi Ties
  By MARK LANDLER and STEVEN LEE MYERS Published: December 29, 2011 HONOLULU — Fortifying one of its key allies in the Persian Gulf, the Obama administration announced a weapons deal with Saudi Arabia on Thursday, saying it had agreed to sell F-15 fighter jets valued at nearly $30 billion to the Royal Saudi Air Force.
• Softening Up Iran for the Final Attack
  Wayne MADSEN (USA) | 30.12.2011 | 00:00 In many ways, America's and Israel's much-anticipated war against Iran has already begun. It is not the type of war that was expected -- an Israeli textbook style surprise and swift attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, followed by a sustained U.S. and NATO air campaign -- but a covert war with quite an unexpected feature. The covert war, which has seen increased U.S. drone activity over Iranian skies and an increase in suspicious explosions at Iranian military facilities, has been coupled with American support for destabilization efforts against all of Iran's allies and friends, including Syria, Russia, China, North Korea, and Venezuela… [Subcritical] [US global strategy] [Iran]
• Egyptian security forces raid offices of U.S., other democracy groups
  Mohammed Asad/AP - Egyptian soldiers and police stormed non-governmental organization offices throughout the country on Thursday, banning employees inside from leaving while they interrogated them and searched through computer files, an activist and security official said. By Leila Fadel and Joby Warrick, Friday, December 30, 5:29 AM CAIRO — Egyptian authorities stormed the offices of three U.S. democracy-building organizations and at least three other nonprofit groups Thursday in a dramatic escalation of a crackdown by the military-led government that could imperil its relations with the United States. The move represented the most definitive sign to date that Egypt’s military intends to run the country’s post-revolutionary transition on its own terms and without interference from Washington, its biggest benefactor. The Obama administration demanded an immediate explanation from Egyptian officials and said the computers and other items taken during the raids ought to be returned promptly. Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the State Department, warned that economic aid could be withheld if Cairo’s leaders do not respond appropriately. [NGO] [Client] [Subversion]
• U.S. touts Saudi Arabia fighter jet deal as a foreign policy, security and economic boon
  By Joby Warrick and Jason Ukman, Friday, December 30, 2:56 PM The Obama administration on Thursday hailed a new $30 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia as both a hedge against Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf and an economic windfall that could create thousands of U.S. jobs over the next decade. The agreement to sell 84 top-of-the line F-15SA fighter jets to the Saudi air force also provided a needed boost to U.S. relations with the oil-rich kingdom after months of strain over the White House’s response to the Arab Spring uprisings, U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said. [Arms sales]
• IRAN-DRONEGATE: Empires Don't Apologize: Iran in the Imperial Crosshairs
  by Tom Burghardt Global Research, December 18, 2011 Antifascist Calling... After first denying that the Iranian military had captured the CIA's RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone, and then reluctantly acknowledging the fact only after PressTV aired footage of the killer bot, the Associated Press reported that "the Obama administration said Monday it has delivered a formal request to Iran" that they return it. "We have asked for it back," Obama said. "We'll see how the Iranians respond." A huge embarrassment to the CIA and the Pentagon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters during a State Department briefing: "We submitted a formal request for the return of our lost equipment as we would in any situation to any government around the world." Cheekily, Clinton said although the U.S. government has little prospect of getting their $6 million toy back because of "recent Iranian behavior," she then threatened the Islamic Republic saying, "the path that Iran seems to be going down is a dangerous one for themselves and the region." In Washington's bizarro world where war is peace the United States, which has Iran surrounded with a string of military bases and where nuclear-armed aircraft carrier battle groups and submarines ply the waters of the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, the aggressor is magically transformed into the aggrieved party. The Secretary said, "given Iran's behavior to date we do not expect them to comply but we are dealing with all of these provocations and concerning actions taken by Iran in close concert with our closest allies and partners." (emphasis added) Talk about chutzpah! [Inversion] [UAV] [Espionage]
• Secrecy defines Obama’s drone war
  (THIR KHAN/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES ) - Pakistani tribesmen carry the coffin of a person allegedly killed in a U.S. drone attack, claiming that innocent civilians were killed during a June 15 strike in the North Waziristan village of Tapi. Around 300 tribesmen gathered at the demonstration. CAPTIONFULLSCREEN Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Karen DeYoung, Published: December 20 Since September, at least 60 people have died in 14 reported CIA drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions. The Obama administration has named only one of the dead, hailing the elimination of Janbaz Zadran, a top official in the Haqqani insurgent network, as a counterterrorism victory. The identities of the rest remain classified, as does the existence of the drone program itself. Because the names of the dead and the threat they were believed to pose are secret, it is impossible for anyone without access to U.S. intelligence to assess whether the deaths were justified. [UAV] [Casualties]
• 'No clashes' seen in Homs
  Global Times | December 28, 2011 23:55 By Agencies Share Arab League monitors checking if Syria is ending a military crackdown on popular unrest said they saw "nothing frightening" in an initial visit to the protest hotbed of Homs. "Some places looked a bit of a mess but there was nothing frightening," Sudanese General Mustafa Dabi, chief of the monitoring contingent, told Reuters by telephone from Damascus. "The situation seemed reassuring so far," he said yesterday after his team's foray into the city of 1 million people, the epicenter of anti-government upheaval inspired by the fall of several other Arab autocrats in uprisings this year. [Syria] [Disinformation]
• Israel Cannot Wage a War against Iran without a "Green Light" from the US
  Preparing for a Confrontation with Iran: Beefing Up Israel's Missile Defense by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, December 23, 2011 Turning point in the Structure of Israel's Air Defense System In late December 2008, coinciding with the onslaught of Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" directed against Gaza, the Pentagon dispatched some 100 military personnel to Israel from US European Command (EUCOM) to assist Israel in setting up a new sophisticated X-band early warning radar system as part of a new and integrated air defense system. (See defense.gov/news/, December 30, 2011). The project had been approved by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in September 2008. With media attention focussing on Gaza, this crucial military initiative in the area of US-Israel Air Defense passed virtually unnoticed. The official story was that Tel Aviv had requested this aid "to help defend against a potential missile attack from Iran". What was at stake, however, was a new threshold, a fundamental turning point in the structure of Israel's Air Defense system and its relationship to the US global missile detection system. Casually heralded as "military aid", the project consisted in strengthening the integration of Israel's air defense system into that of the US, with the Pentagon rather than Israel calling the shots: [Missile defense]
• F-35 production a troubling example of Pentagon spending
  By Walter Pincus, Published: December 27 There are 56 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters being assembled at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Fort Worth. But because only 20 percent of the testing for the most advanced fighter-bomber in U.S. history is completed, each will probably have to get million-dollar-or-more fixes later. The F-35 is already the most costly U.S. weapons program underway at about $385 billion. But that figure may go higher with overrun of the per-plane contract price for the 56 craft being assembled — along with the future multimillion-dollar fixes likely to be required for them — and the 15 F-35s completed but not yet delivered to the military services. [military expenditure] [MISCOM]
• Empire and the Lies of the Corporate Media: Are we Living in a Fool's Paradise?
  by William Bowles Global Research, December 21, 2011 williambowles.info Well 2011 has been nothing if not eventful but frankly, in spite of all the #Occupy this and #Occupy that, it's not been a good year for us progresssives or the planet. The Empire acts with increasing, not decreasing impunity, desperate now to try and keep ahead of events lest events take control of it. Are we living in a fool's paradise? A question keeps nagging at me: Are all of us, including the left, reacting to an entirely engineered reality, fed to us via an all-embracing media? We get blown this way and that, all of it being determined by whatever 'event' the globalized media decides to feed us with. Then, just as 'mysteriously', the 'event' disappears to be replaced by yet another 'event'. The old Anarchist cry of 'Do not adjust your mind, there's a fault in reality' takes on an entirely new kind of import given the power of the media to determine what's 'real' for us. What this means is that the media effectively acts as an agent provocateur for the state and big business as it decides for us what is actually going on in the world. In turn, progressives make decisions based not on what needs to be done, but as a reaction to the 'news' in a weird political version of the Heisenberg Effect. [Media]
• Britain's imperial echoes have led it to a ruinous decade of wars
  The UK has been belligerent to the Muslim world – while not being threatened by any state
  Simon Jenkins guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 December 2011 19.10 GMT Article history British and Afghan forces on patrol in Afghanistan's Helmand province. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian What do Britons "want" in the coming year? An ambassador to Washington was once asked the question on radio and replied, "That's very kind of you, a box of candied fruits would do." Such humble responses are now out of date. As the season of goodwill slithers into that of New Year's resolution, the urge to tell the world how to behave seems uncontrollable. We can suppress a yawn at David Cameron's sermon on Christian values and Ed Miliband claiming the Helmand army is making Britain "secure, peaceful and happy". More troubling is the foreign secretary, William Hague's, declaration on Facebook of a Christmas ambition to increase "international pressure on Syria … push Burma in the right direction … improve the situation in Somalia … and protect women's rights in the Middle East" among other uplifting goals. The phraseology may seem in place beneath portraits of Pitt and Palmerston, but how must it play with its intended recipients? Imagine the Indian foreign minister sending Britons a Christmas message deploring their addiction to knife crime, or Japan's expressing his dismay at Britain's broken homes, or Pakistan's decrying Ulster sectarianism as "unacceptable". I am sure Hague would tell them to mind their own business. [Imperialism]
• Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing
  U.S. Air Force/GETTY IMAGES - A crew chief from the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron completes post-flight inspections of the RQ-1 Predator after one of its sorties in Balad Air Base, Iraq. The RQ-1is a medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle. By Greg Miller, Wednesday, December 28, 1:17 PM The Obama administration’s counterterrorism accomplishments are most apparent in what it has been able to dismantle, including CIA prisons and entire tiers of al-Qaeda’s leadership. But what the administration has assembled, hidden from public view, may be equally consequential. In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force­ ­cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents. The emergence of hunter-killer and surveillance drones as revolutionary new weapons in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in counterterrorism operations in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, has spawned a multibillion-dollar industry. Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals. [Assassination] [Obama] [UAV]
• Growing wealth widens distance between lawmakers and constituents
  The median net worth of a member of the House in 2009 was more than 2 1 / 2 times greater than it was in 1984 — $725,00 vs. $280,000 — when adjusted for inflation, according to an analysis of financial disclosures. Meanwhile, the median net worth of Americans, as a whole, actually declined slightly over the same period. By Peter Whoriskey, Tuesday, December 27, 8:54 AM BUTLER, Pa. — One day after his shift at the steel mill, Gary Myers drove home in his 10-year-old Pontiac and told his wife he was going to run for Congress. The odds were long. At 34, ­Myers was the shift foreman at the “hot mill” of the Armco plant here. He had no political experience and little or no money, and he was a Republican in a district that tilted Democratic. .But standing in the dining room, still in his work clothes, he said he felt voters deserved a better choice. Three years later, he won. When Myers entered Congress, in 1975, it wasn’t nearly so unusual for a person with few assets besides a home to win and serve in Congress. Though lawmakers on Capitol Hill have long been more prosperous than other Americans, others of that time included a barber, a pipe fitter and a house painter. A handful had even organized into what was called the “Blue Collar Caucus.” But the financial gap between Americans and their representatives in Congress has widened considerably since then, according to an analysis of financial disclosures by The Washington Post. [Inequality]
• Imran Khan draws more than 100,000 to rally in Karachi
  Cricketer-turned-politician hits home with anti-corruption, anti-US message at rally in Pakistan's largest city Associated Press in Karachi guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 December 2011 15.29 GMT Article history Imran Khan with supporters at the rally in Karachi. Photograph: Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images More than 100,000 people have rallied in support of the Pakistani cricket legend and opposition politician Imran Khan in the country's biggest city, Karachi, further cementing his status as a rising force in politics. His message of cracking down on corruption and standing up to the US has found fresh resonance at a time when Pakistanis are fed up with the country's chronic insecurity and economic malaise. Khan, 59, entered politics 15 years ago when he founded Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or the Movement for Justice party, but has struggled to translate his fame into votes. His political fortunes shifted in October when he drew more than 100,000 people to a rally in the eastern city of Lahore. [Corruption] [Anti-Americanism]
• Thud of the Jackboot
  by ALEXANDER COCKBURN Too bad Kim Jong-il kicked the bucket last weekend. If the divine hand that laid low the North Korean leader had held off for a week or so, Kim would have been sustained by the news that President Obama is signing into law a bill that puts the United States not immeasurably far from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in contempt of constitutional protections for its citizens, or constitutional restraints upon criminal behavior sanctioned by the state. At least the DPRK doesn’t trumpet its status as the last best sanctuary of liberty. American politicians, starting with the president, do little else. A couple of months ago came a mile marker in America’s steady slide downhill towards the status of a Banana Republic, with Obama’s assertion that he has the right as president to order secretly the assassination, without trial, of a US citizen he deems to be working with terrorists. This followed his betrayal in 2009 of his pledge to end the indefinite imprisonment without charges or trial of prisoners in Guantanamo. [Liberal] [KJI_death]
• Attacks on Syrian government buildings seem to strike the heart of state security apparatus
  Courtesy of SANA/Reuters - Two booby-trapped cars blew up at security sites in Damascus on Friday, killing a number of civilians and soldiers, state television said, in the worst violence to hit Syria's capital during nine months of unrest against President Bashar al-Assad. By Alice Fordham and Joby Warrick, Saturday, December 24, 12:50 AM BEIRUT — Twin car bombs ripped through the morning calm of Damascus on Friday, killing at least 40 people and casting doubt on the ability of a newly arrived team of Arab League monitors to stem Syria’s growing violence. The explosions shattered two government buildings used by Syrian intelligence and security commanders and ushered in what some analysts feared is a new stage in the nine-month-old uprising. The Syrian government blamed al-Qaeda for the blasts, a claim that drew skepticism from Syrian opposition groups as well as Western governments and intelligence agencies. .But regardless of who carried out the bombings, the attacks marked a grim zenith in what was already the bloodiest week of the uprising. They were also a slap to international monitors from the Arab League, who began arriving this week to put pressure on Syrian authorities to halt attacks on opposition forces. [Terrorism] [Double standards] [Spin]
• Libyan scramble for £100bn in assets fractures the peace at Tripoli airport
  Militias and army clash over control of runways after UN decides to fly newly printed currency into the capital Chris Stephen in Tripoli guardian.co.uk, Saturday 17 December 2011 17.39 GMT Article history Protesters in Benghazi on Friday demand to know the membership of Libya’s National Transitional Council. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters The unfreezing of £100bn in Libyan assets by the UN this weekend has fired the starting gun for a fierce battle for influence being waged by the country's militias, in which the frontline is set to be Tripoli's international airport. The glittering prize immediately in prospect is a consignment of several billion dinars, printed in Germany, which is due to be flown into Libya on board five cargo planes. Whoever controls the airport when the cash arrives will be able to levy a hefty security fee for delivering it to the country's central bank. But the fight to control the airport is part of a far wider battle for political and economic dominance in the new Libya; one that pits the various factions who united to overthrow the Gaddafi regime against each other, as well as remnants of the dictator's defeated military. In theory the decision on Friday by the UN Sanctions Committee and the US to release frozen assets marks, in the words of British foreign secretary William Hague, "another significant moment in Libya's transition". Those sentiments were echoed on Saturday by Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, on a visit to Tripoli. But the reality is considerably more complicated. [Libya] [UNUS] [Fragmentation]
• Fallujah's "Martyr's Cemetery,"
  At Fallujah's "Martyr's Cemetery," photographs of young "martyrs" in the battle against U.S. troops are displayed on a makeshift bulletin board. [Casualties] [Civilian] [Iraq]
• Libya’s Civilian Toll From Strikes, Denied by NATO
  Tyler Hicks/The New York Times When NATO bombs hit an apartment building in Surt, Libya, on Sept. 16, Mahmoud Zarog Massoud's wife was killed. More Photos » By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT Published: December 17, 2011 TRIPOLI, Libya — NATO’s seven-month air campaign in Libya, hailed by the alliance and many Libyans for blunting a lethal crackdown by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and helping to push him from power, came with an unrecognized toll: scores of civilian casualties the alliance has long refused to acknowledge or investigate. [Casualties] [Civilian] [Libya]
• Farewell to C.H.
  by ALEXANDER COCKBURN I can’t count the times, down the years, that after some new outrage friends would call me and ask, “What happened to Christopher Hitchens?” – the inquiry premised on some supposed change in Hitchens, often presumed to have started in the period he tried to put his close friend Blumenthal behind bars for imputed perjury. My answer was that Christopher had been pretty much the same package since the beginning — always allowing for the ravages of entropy as the years passed. As so often with friends and former friends, it’s a matter of what you’re prepared to put up with and for how long. I met him in New York in the early 1980s and all the long-term political and indeed personal traits were visible enough. I never thought of him as at all radical. He craved to be an insider, a trait which achieved ripest expression when he elected to be sworn in as a U.S. citizen by Bush’s director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff. In basic philosophical take he always seemed to me to hold as his central premise a profound belief in the therapeutic properties of capitalism and empire. He was an instinctive flagwagger and remained so. He wrote some really awful stuff in the early 90s about how indigenous peoples — Indians in the Americas — were inevitably going to be rolled over by the wheels of Progress and should not be mourned.
• With Friends Like These Gingrich, Israel and the Palestinians
  by URI AVNERY What a bizarre lot these Republican aspirants for the US presidency are! What a sorry bunch of ignoramuses and downright crazies. Or, at best, what a bunch of cheats and cynics! (With the possible exception of the good doctor Ron Paul)”. Is this the best a great and proud nation can produce? How frightening the thought that one of them may actually become the most powerful person in the world, with a finger on the biggest nuclear button! BUT LET’S concentrate on the present front-runner. (Republicans seem to change front-runners like a fastidious beau changes socks.) It’s Newt Gingrich. Remember him? The Speaker of the House who had an extra-marital affair with an intern while at the same time leading the campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton for having an affair with an intern. But that’s not the point. The point is that this intellectual giant – named after Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist ever – has discovered a great historical truth. The original Newton discovered the Law of Gravity. Newton Leroy Gingrich has discovered something no less earth-shaking: there is an “invented” people around, referring to the Palestinians. To which a humble Israeli like me might answer, in the best Hebrew slang: “Good morning, Eliyahu!” Thus we honor people who have made a great discovery which, unfortunately, has been discovered by others long before. [Governance]
• FBI considered a sting aimed at Newt Gingrich in 1997
  By James V. Grimaldi, Friday, December 16, 3:37 PM It is a curious case in the annals of the FBI: The bureau considered a sting operation against then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich after sifting through allegations from a notorious arms dealer that a $10 million bribe might get Congress to lift the Iraqi arms embargo. The FBI ended up calling off the operation in June 1997. It decided there was no evidence that Gingrich knew anything about the conversations the arms dealer was secretly recording with a man who said he was acting on behalf of Gingrich’s then-wife, Marianne, according to people with knowledge of the investigation. [Sting] [Corruption]
• Did We Win the Iraq War? It’s over. Was it worth it?
  By Fred Kaplan, New America Foundation December 16, 2011 | Slate As the last American troops leave Iraq (a remarkable phrase, which many once doubted would ever be uttered), two questions come to mind: Was the war worth it? And did we, in any sense, win? The two questions, of course, are related: The first concerns cost, the second benefits. But however you do the calculation, it's clear that the decision to invade Iraq was a major strategic blunder—and that the policies we pursued in the early months of the occupation tipped the blunder into a catastrophe.
• Iran Hacked GPS Signals To Capture U.S. Drone
  Exploit of well-known bug in drone's software made it think it was landing at an American airfield, not 140 miles inside Iran. By Mathew J. Schwartz InformationWeek December 16, 2011 12:30 PM Iran recently captured a CIA batwing stealth drone by spoofing the GPS signals it received, fooling the drone into thinking it was landing at its home base. The Christian Science Monitor, broke that news Thursday, after interviewing an Iranian engineer who's been reviewing the systems of the captured RQ-170 Sentinel drone, which was downed by Iranian forces on December 4 near Kashmar, which is about 140 miles inside northeast Iran. [Cyberwar] [UAV] [Asymmetry]
• An Unstable, Divided Land
  By REIDAR VISSER Noordwijk, the Netherlands WHEN the last remaining American forces withdraw from Iraq at the end of this month, they will be leaving behind a country that is politically unstable, increasingly volatile, and at risk of descending into the sort of sectarian fighting that killed thousands in 2006 and 2007. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has overseen a consolidation of military force, but the core of his government is remarkably unrepresentative: it is made up of mostly pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists. The secular Iraqiya Party, which won a plurality of votes in the March 2010 parliamentary elections, has been marginalized within the cabinet and was not represented when Mr. Maliki visited Washington on Monday. This Shiite Islamist government bodes ill for the country’s future. And unfortunately, it is a direct product of America’s misguided thinking about Iraq since the 2003 invasion — an approach that stressed proportional sectarian representation rather than national unity and moderate Islamism. This flawed policy has been more important in shaping today’s Iraq than the size of the original force that occupied the country in 2003, the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal in 2004 or the “surge” of 2007. And it is to blame for the precarious condition in which the United States is leaving Iraq today. In the 1990s, America envisaged post-Saddam Hussein Iraq as a federation of Arabs and Kurds. At the time, Kurds focused on their own autonomy; Shiite Islamists rejected federalism south of Kurdistan; and many other Shiites explicitly ruled out an Iranian model of government for fear that it might alienate secularists and the Sunni minority. The fateful change in American thinking came in 2002 as the Bush administration was preparing for war. At conferences with exiled Iraqi opposition leaders, Americans argued that new political institutions should reflect Iraq’s ethno-sectarian groups proportionally. Crucially, the focus moved beyond the primary Arab-Kurdish cleavage to include notions of separate quotas for Shiites and Sunnis. [Sectarianism] [Fragmentation]
• HALF of all Americans are struggling to get by on 'poor or on low income', figures reveal
  Low-income threshold is $45,000 Housing and childcare costs absorb half of income Cutback states Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina worst-hit By Rebecca Seales Last updated at 5:18 PM on 15th December 2011 Coping with recession: 49.1million Americans come from poor or low-income households, latest census figures estimate A record number of Americans - nearly one-in-two - have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low-income, according to new figures. The latest census data reveals a middle class that is shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's economic safety net frays. And experts have warned that if stagnant wages and government cuts persist, many more workers and families will be affected in the future. [Inequality]
• Marines promoted inflated story for Medal of Honor recipient
  View Photo Gallery — President Obama awards Medal of Honor to former Marine. Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy McClatchy Newspapers, Published: December 15 WASHINGTON — With Dakota Meyer standing at attention in his dress uniform, sweat glistening on his forehead under the television lights, President Barack Obama extolled the former Marine corporal for the “extraordinary actions” that had earned him the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor. Obama told the audience in the White House East Room on Sept. 15 that Meyer had driven into the heart of a savage ambush in eastern Afghanistan against orders. He’d killed insurgents at near-point-blank range, twice leapt from his gun turret to rescue two dozen Afghan soldiers and saved the lives of 13 U.S. service members as he fought to recover the bodies of four comrades, the president said. .But there’s a problem with this account: Crucial parts that the Marine Corps publicized and Obama described are untrue, unsubstantiated or exaggerated, according to dozens of military documents McClatchy Newspapers examined. [Militarisation]
• France's Jacques Chirac convicted of corruption
  Updated 14m ago Comments PARIS (AP) – As French president, Jacques Chirac was called all sorts of names, not the least for his vociferous opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Now, he has a moniker that will stick: convicted criminal. [Corruption]
• The United States versus Everybody
  Commentary No. 319, Dec. 15, 2011 Once upon a time, the United States had many friends, or at least relatively obedient followers. These days, it seems to have nothing but adversaries, of all political colorations. What is more, it seems not to be doing too well in its adversarial encounters. Take what has been happening in November of 2011 and the first half of December. It has had confrontations with China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, Germany, and Latin America. One can't say that it has gotten the better part of any of these controversies.
• America, Israel, Iran: war in focus
  Paul Rogers, 15 December 2011 The tensions over Iran's presumed nuclear ambitions continue in the last weeks of 2011. A number of events, and public interventions by influential figures, have raised the level of concern. In the first category are the huge explosion at a missile facility in Iran, which fuels suspicions that a covert war has already started; the loss of a CIA surveillance-drone flying over Iran, no doubt part of a major programme of United States intelligence-gathering; and the ongoing violence in Syria, whose ruling and now threatened regime is an important regional ally of Tehran.
• Israeli Action Against Iran: The Need for Greater Legal Scrutiny
  JURIST Guest Columnist Bryan Bullock of the Law Offices of Bryan K. Bullock, LLC argues that the media's uncritical acceptance of Israel's potential aggression towards Iran ignores international legal standards, and highlights a disturbing trend away from the provisions of the UN Charter... The media accounts of Israel's public musings of whether it should attack Iran never discuss the legality of such an attack. There are never any discussions of the role of the UN and the Security Council in authorizing an act of aggression. Seldom is there any analysis of the law of humanitarian armed conflict or just war theory. The term "existential threat" is thrown out as if this term, whatever it means, justifies an attack on a sovereign nation. In effect, the media reports the story as if it is legal, permissible and natural for Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. This is not the case. The law of armed conflict under international law deals with the circumstances under which a state may use military force against another nation. The UN Charter requires that states first resort to peaceful means to settle disputes. It is difficult to understand what Israel's "dispute" is with Iran. It is probably the same as the US's dispute, namely, that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. This does not appear to be a legitimate dispute. [Legality] [UNUS]
• Grim picture for European defense spending
  Published: Dec. 14, 2011 at 7:28 AM NEWTOWN, Conn., Dec. 14 (UPI) -- Total European defense expenditures will total about $280 billion by 2015 as a result of the continent's economic troubles, a report says. The prediction by market intelligence and analysis firm Forecast International said with governments trying to rein in debt, defense budgets are prime targets for cost cutting. "As dueling obligations force EU-NATO members to make financial choices between meeting EU Stability and Growth Pact deficit rules or minimum defense investment standards, invariably governments opt for the former requirement, with Denmark and Poland the only two dual members to refrain from shrinking their defense budgets over the past two years," it said. "Little in the near-term environment lends hope that a rethink toward defense prioritization is in the offing. Austerity programs are draining government ministries of funding and any reversals of this trend will first be felt in areas outside defense. "The end result of the ongoing decline and flattening of already-limited defense allocations will be armies that struggle to project power, conduct training exercises, maintain combat readiness and entice new recruits. Modernization programs will be postponed or forsaken entirely," it said. The forecast said NATO's campaign to support rebel forces in Libya this year highlighted the alliance's shortcomings in defense capabilities. This was particularly so in the area of operational support, which saw heavy reliance on the United States. [Military expenditure][MISCOM] [US domination]
• Iraq war draws to a quiet close
  By Liz Sly and Craig Whitlock, Published: December 15 | Updated: Friday, December 16, 1:15 PM BAGHDAD — The American war in Iraq came to an unspectacular end Thursday at a simple ceremony held on the edge of Baghdad’s international airport, not far from the highway along which U.S. troops first fought their way into the capital more than eight years ago. There were speeches paying tribute to the fallen, promises that the United States would not abandon Iraq, vague declarations of “success” and warnings of challenges ahead. A brass band played, and the flag that had flown over the headquarters of the U.S. mission here was lowered for the last time and folded away. .And that was it. No pronouncements of victory, no cheers or jubilation — only a profound sense that the war’s real reckoning is yet to come, even as the American part in it draws to a close. No senior Iraqi government officials showed up for the event, though the name tags attached to two chairs in the front row indicated American hopes that they might. One was labeled for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the other for President Jalal Talabani. [Decline] [Iraq]
• Obama Toward Military Confrontation on Frontiers of China & Russia
  : Prof. James Petras | Friday, December 9, 2011, 10:36 Beijing544 After suffering major military and political defeats in bloody ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, failing to buttress long-standing clients in Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia and witnessing the disintegration of puppet regimes in Somalia and South Sudan, the Obama regime has learned nothing: Instead he has turned toward greater military confrontation with global powers, namely Russia and China. Obama has adopted a provocative offensive military strategy right on the frontiers of both China and Russia. [US global strategy] [China confrontation] [NCW]
• Premier’s Actions in Iraq Raise U.S. Concerns
  By JACK HEALY, TIM ARANGO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has moved swiftly to consolidate power in advance of the American military withdrawal, offering a glimpse of how Iraq’s post-American identity may take shape, by rounding up hundreds of former Baath Party members and evicting Western companies from the heavily fortified Green Zone. As Mr. Maliki met with President Obama in Washington on Monday to discuss Iraq’s future after the end of a painful nearly nine-year war, his aggressive actions back home raised new concerns in the West, where officials have long been uneasy with the prime minister’s authoritarian tendencies. The actions also underscored the many lingering questions about America’s uncertain ally, a prime minister who once found refuge in Syria and Iran and who will now help write the epitaph to the American invasion. “There are two dominant narratives in Washington about Maliki,” said Ramzy Mardini, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington who recently published a report on the arrests. “Some say he is a nationalist; others say he is a puppet of Iran.” Both are oversimplifications, he said: “Maliki is a Maliki-ist. His religion is the church of survivability.”
• THE CLOCK IS TICKING: "Shadow War" Heating Up. War With Iran: A Provocation Away?
  by Tom Burghardt Global Research, December 5, 2011 Antifascist Calling... Amid conflicting reports that a huge explosion at Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan occurred last week, speculation was rife that Israel and the United States were stepping-up covert attacks against defense and nuclear installations. The Isfahan complex transforms mined uranium into uranium fluoride gas which is then "spun" by centrifuges that enrich it into usable products for medical research and for Iran's civilian nuclear energy program. While Iranian officials sought to distance themselves from initial reporting by the semi-official Fars news agency that a "loud explosion" was heard across the city, but that "the sound of the explosion was from [a] military exercise," has been contradicted by several sources. Indeed, some Iranian officials have denied that an explosion even took place. On Tuesday however, The Times reported that "satellite imagery ... confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran." "The images," Times reporter Sheera Frenkel averred, "clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was 'no doubt' that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was 'no accident'." Despite clear evidence that Israel and the United States have stepped-up their shadow war against the Islamic Republic, Defense Minister Ehud Barak "played down speculation on Saturday that Israel and U.S.-led allies were waging clandestine war on Iran, saying sanctions and the threat of military strikes were still the way to curb its nuclear program," Reuters reported. Proverbial "facts on the ground" however, tell a different tale. [Iran]
• Syrian rebels gun down eight soldiers in retaliation after civilian deaths
  Men described as defectors from the armed forces ambush a convoy of four jeeps on the outskirts of Hama Ian Black guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 December 2011 18.27 GMT Article history Demonstrators against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad gather in Homs on Tuesday. Photograph: Handout/REUTERS Eight Syrian soldiers have been gunned down in an apparent revenge attack after security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed five civilians. In an incident that was seen as further evidence of Syria's downward spiral into permanent insurgency, the soldiers were ambushed while driving in a convoy of four jeeps on the outskirts of Hama, by men described as defectors from the armed forces. The Syrian Observatory for Human rights, the UK-based opposition group, posted the details on its website and said the attack was retaliation for the killing of five civilians by security forces in nearby Khattab. Witnesses said their vehicle was hit by a tank or mortar shell.
• Revealed: huge increase in executive pay for America's top bosses
  Exclusive survey shows America's CEOs enjoyed pay hikes of up to 40% last year – with one chief executive earning $145m Dominic Rushe in New York guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 December 2011 18.55 GMT Article history John Hammergren, CEO of healthcare provider McKesson, earned $145m last year. Photograph: George Nikitin/AP Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation. [Inequality]
• Syrians go to the polls as unrest continues
  Local elections take place amid continuing strikes and protests against the government Ian Black, Middle East editor guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 December 2011 20.23 GMT Article history Assad supporters hold a rally in Damascus. Photograph: News Pictures/Rex Features Syrians voted in local elections amid continuing strikes and protests against the government as its forces fought armed rebels in the north and south. Opposition sources reported army operations in the southern province of Deraa, near the Jordanian border. Sana, the state news agency, said three members of the security forces were killed in a clash with what they described as a "terrorist gang". Four terrorists were also killed, it said
• Newburgh Four: poor, black, and jailed under FBI 'entrapment' tactics
  In June, four men were jailed for 25 years over a US terror plot. The FBI painted them as dedicated fanatics, but were they lured by the promise of cash from a fake informant? Paul Harris in New York guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 December 2011 16.39 GMT Imam Salahuddin Muhammad could hardly miss Shahed Hussain when he first appeared three years ago at his mosque in the dilapidated town of Newburgh, just 60 miles up the Hudson River from New York. Hussain was flash, drove expensive cars and treated people to gifts of cash and food. He also had radical opinions that stood out in a mosque that welcomed Shia and Sunni followers and had good relations with local Jewish and Christian communities. "This guy said women should not be heard, not be seen. I thought that was strange," Muhammad told the Guardian as he sat in his office inside Newburgh's mosque." Muhammad, who is a black American convert, had no idea how strange things would get. Hussain would make Newburgh's Muslim community famous when earlier this year four other black Newburgh Muslims were jailed for 25 years for a 2009 plot to fire a Stinger missile at US military planes. They also planted car bombs, packed with lethal ball bearings, outside Jewish targets in the wealthy New York suburb of Riverdale. Prosecutors painted them as America-hating terrorists bent on slaughter. All four followed the instructions of Hussain, who meticulously organised the scheme: from getting the missile and bombs, to reconnaissance missions, to teaching the tenets of radical Islam. The "Newburgh Four" now languish in jail. Hussain does not. For Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling mosques in hope of picking up radicals. [Sting]
• Posted on Monday, December 12, 2011Modified Monday, December 12, 2011 Cuba shows U.S. its response plans in case of oil spill
  Erika Bolstad McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — As Cuba prepares to embark on a new round of exploratory offshore drilling, U.S. officials are slightly more enlightened about the island nation's plans in the event of a catastrophic oil spill on the scale of last year's Deepwater Horizon explosion. Several Caribbean countries — including the United States and Cuba — met last week in the Bahamas to talk about response plans. U.S. officials got an opportunity to see the Cuban disaster-response plans; Cuba already has participated in a mock response drill in Trinidad with the Spanish oil company that's doing the first round of drilling. That company, Repsol, also agreed to allow U.S. inspectors from the Interior Department to look at the rig that will be doing the drilling
• Study: Gingrich tax plan would give lion's share to the rich
  Posted on Monday, December 12, 2011Modified Monday, December 12, 2011 Steven Thomma McClatchy Newspapers DES MOINES, Iowa — Newt Gingrich's proposed overhaul of the tax code would cut taxes for all American taxpayers, particularly the wealthy, according to an analysis released Monday by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. Gingrich's plan would provide small tax cuts to those at the bottom of the income ladder, giving those making less than $10,000 an average cut of $222 under one scenario, the analysis found. The Tax Policy Center is a joint project of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, two respected think tanks in Washington. [Inequality] [US_election12] [Decline] [Governance]
• Huge numbers of Iraqis still adrift within the country
  David Enders McClatchy Newspapers MOSUL, Iraq — Of all the problems that the U.S. troop withdrawal won't affect in Iraq, what to do about the number of internally displaced people looms the largest. As many as 2 million Iraqis — nearly 6 percent of the country's estimated more than 31 million population — are thought to have been forced from the cities and towns where they once lived and are housed in circumstances that feel temporary and makeshift. More than 500,000 of those are "squatters in slum areas with no assistance or legal right to the properties they occupy," according to Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group. Most can't go home: Either their homes have been destroyed or hostile ethnic and sectarian groups now control their neighborhoods. [War crimes]
• Meet the likely architect of the new Libya
  By Marc Fisher, Published: December 10 TRIPOLI, LIBYA As Ali Sallabi walked through the lobby of Tripoli’s Radisson hotel — a 1980s concrete tower separated from the Mediterranean coast by the soft lines of a whitewashed 16th-century mosque — the Muslim cleric couldn’t take two steps without being approached by fawning Libyans, eager Western journalists and glad-handing representatives of foreign aid organizations. People slipped him bits of paper with their phone numbers. Armed rebels — teenagers, most of them — asked him to pose for photos on their cellphones. Women sought his blessings. A short time ago, hardly anyone in the West knew or cared who Sallabi was. But the 47-year-old cleric has quickly transformed himself from longtime spiritual leader of the anti-Gaddafi opposition — albeit from self-imposed exile in Qatar and other gulf states — to chief architect of Libya’s most likely next government, an Islam-based democracy whose shape and leanings remain wholly unclear. [Islamist] [Qatar] [Libya]
• Romney’s claim that Obama is an apologist for U.S. is based on distortions
  By Glenn Kessler, Published: December 11 “He went around the world and apologized for America.” — Mitt Romney, Sept. 22 The Washington Post's resident fact checker, Glenn Kessler, examines Mitt Romney's frequent claim that President Obama went on a tour apologizing for the United States. Romney likes to say that President Obama apologized overseas for the United States. He even titled his campaign book “No Apology.” Even more, Romney suggests, Obama does not believe in American strength and greatness. The assertion feeds into a subterranean narrative that Obama, with his exotic, mixed-race background, is not really American in the first place. [US_election12] [Exceptionalism]
• Obama’s Iran policy shifts to containment
  By Michael Makovsky and Blaise Misztal, Published: December 10 As recent events underscore the growing Iranian nuclear threat, the Obama administration appears to be pivoting toward a policy of containment. The emphasis of its rhetoric has shifted from preventing an “unacceptable” nuclear Iran to “isolating” it. When coupled with recent weaker action against Iran, we fear it signals a tacit policy change. A few days after his election, President Obama called a nuclear Iran “unacceptable.” In February 2009, he pledged “to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.” By the next year, after a first round of negotiations with Iran had failed and the United Nations and Congress passed tougher sanctions, that pledge had softened. “The United States,” Obama said in July 2010, is “determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” [US global strategy] [Obama] [Iran] [Sanctions] [Strategic paralysis][Hardliner]
• Drones: A deeply unsettling future
  The rapid expansion of a drone arms race has emerged both domestically and abroad, leaving everyone vulnerable. Trevor Timm Last Modified: 07 Dec 2011 11:54 At least 50 countries already have unmanned aerial fleets - and that number is rising every month [EPA] San Francisco, California - On Sunday, Iran claimed to have taken down a US drone in Iranian airspace - not by shooting it out the sky, but with its cyber warfare team. Reports confirm that the US believes Iran is now in possession of "one of the more sensitive surveillance platforms in the CIA's fleet", but deny Iran's involvement. Of course, Iran’s claim of overtaking the drone with its cyber warfare team should be tempered with a serious dose of scepticism, as cyber security experts say the facts may not add up. But this is just the latest story in a series of incidents that raises worrying questions about security problems caused by drones. And given the coming proliferation of drone technology both domestically and abroad, this should be a concern to citizens all over the world. [UAV] [Cyberwar] [Asymmetry]
• Debt and Democracy: Has the Link been Broken?
  by Prof. Michael Hudson Global Research, December 6, 2011 *This article was first published in German in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, December 2, 2011. Book V of Aristotle’s Politics describes the eternal transition of oligarchies making themselves into hereditary aristocracies – which end up being overthrown by tyrants or develop internal rivalries as some families decide to “take the multitude into their camp” and usher in democracy, within which an oligarchy emerges once again, followed by aristocracy, democracy, and so on throughout history. Debt has been the main dynamic driving these shifts – always with new twists and turns. It polarizes wealth to create a creditor class, whose oligarchic rule is ended as new leaders (“tyrants” to Aristotle) win popular support by cancelling the debts and redistributing property or taking its usufruct for the state. Since the Renaissance, however, bankers have shifted their political support to democracies.
• Bear nettles the eagle, dragon smiles
  By M K Bhadrakumar From an apparently impromptu remark on Monday, the United States has elevated the Russian parliamentary election held on December 5 to a core issue of US-Russia ties. The dramatic escalation of rhetoric scatters the continued pretences over the Barack Obama administration's "reset" of relations. In a swift move, Beijing has also stepped forward to express understanding for Moscow. The faultlines will impact on the regional and international situation on a host of issues in the coming period. [NCW] [Elections]
• Karzai Says Foreigners Are Responsible for Corruption
  By ALISSA J. RUBIN Published: December 11, 2011 KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan blamed foreigners on Sunday for the corruption of Afghan officials and demanded that the United States extradite the former chief of the Afghan Central Bank in connection with the collapse of Kabul Bank, the country’s largest financial institution. [Corruption]
• Dutch Apologize for Indonesian Massacre
  The Netherlands has formally apologized to the families of those killed in a 1947 massacre by Dutch troops on Indonesia's Java Island. Activists say the landmark move sets an important precedent, but also highlights the hypocrisy of the Indonesian government in dealing with human rights abuses committed at home. The Dutch ambassador to Indonesia, Tjeerd de Zwan, issued the official apology Friday in the village of Rawagede, where Dutch troops rounded up and executed up to 430 men in 1947, during Indonesia's bitter struggle for independence.
• Rape in the US military: America's dirty little secret
  A female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire Lucy Broadbent guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 December 2011 17.59 GMT Article history Maricella Guzman: 'It was the middle of the night. He pulled me into this dark space. The door shut and he grabbed my throat.' Photograph: Evan Hurd "It was eight years before I was able to say the word that describes what happened to me," says Maricella Guzman. "I hadn't even been in the Navy a month. I was so young. I tried to report it. But instead of being taken seriously, I was forced to do push-ups." "I can't sleep without drugs," says Kate Weber. "But even then, I often wake up in the middle of the night, crying, my mind racing. And I lie there awake in the dark, reliving the rape, looking for a second chance for it to end with a different outcome, but he always wins." Rape within the US military has become so widespread that it is estimated that a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.
• A bleak look at America’s future
  By David Ignatius, Saturday, December 10, 2:17 PM Is American power in decline, relative to the rest of the world? That question is at the center of a provocative study by the U.S. intelligence community exploring what the world might look like in 2030. The answer, judging by comments from a panel convened to discuss the topic, is that America faces serious trouble: The U.S. economy is slowing, relative to its Asian competitors, which will make it harder for the country to assert its traditional leadership role in decades ahead. That, in turn, could make for a less stable world. [Decline]
• Upheaval Across the Middle East
  What is happening in the Middle East now will determine the future of democracy in the region, and also its independence, says Alain Gresh. Middle East Online “The lion doesn’t like it if a stranger enters his house. The lion doesn’t want his children to be taken away in the night; the lion won’t let it happen. They should not interfere in the lion’s house.” The strangers Hamid Karzai spoke of are International Security Assistance Force soldiers who violate the sanctity of homes in their search for suspects. The Afghan president was applauded loudly, although he is hardly the king of the beasts. The US installed him in 2001, and keeps him in power; his August 2009 election was rigged with the connivance of the “international community.” This nationalist speech was a preparation for post-2014, when most of the US troops and their auxiliaries will leave Afghanistan. But such oratory is unlikely to save him from the usual fate of collaborators. The United States is engaged in one of the most complex operations for the repatriation of equipment (and troops) in its history. By the end of this year, only a few hundred advisors will remain in Iraq, its other invasion zone. To the last minute, the United States tried to persuade the Iraqi government to allow troops to stay on, but the popular protests within Iraq were so great that even NATO’s political allies rejected the demand.
• Drone Crash in Iran Reveals Secret U.S. Surveillance Effort
  By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID E. SANGER Published: December 7, 2011 WASHINGTON — The stealth C.I.A. drone that crashed deep inside Iranian territory last week was part of a stepped-up surveillance program that has frequently sent the United States’ most hard-to-detect drone into the country to map suspected nuclear sites, according to foreign officials and American experts who have been briefed on the effort. [UAV] [Intelligence]
• Obama’s economic speech shifts the focus from deficits
  By Fareed Zakaria, Published: December 8 With his speech in Kansas, President Obama has begun a national conversation about the economy and the role of government. In presenting his view, Obama shifted the economic conversation from deficits to the crucial issue of growth. After all, deficits matter because they could have a harmful effect on growth. The question we should all ask is: What would make this economy grow? One theory heard a lot these days is that the economy is burdened by excessive government regulation, interference and taxes. All these pressures on business, especially small business, are keeping the economy down. Cut them, the Republican candidates all say, and the economy will be unleashed. It’s a compelling picture, but the data simply do not support it. [Investment] [Decline]
• War drums are beating for Iran. But who's playing them?
  Just like the taxpayers of medieval Italian cities, we're having our money siphoned off to pay for a a greedy military machine Terry Jones guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 December 2011 16.06 GMT Dwight D Eisenhower: in 1961 the retiring president warned fellow Americans of the danger in allowing too close a relationship between politicians and the defence industry. Photograph: W. Eugene Smith/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image In the 14th century there were two pandemics. One was the Black Death, the other was the commercialisation of warfare. Mercenaries had always existed, but under Edward III they became the mainstay of the English army for the first 20 years of what became the Hundred Years war. Then, when Edward signed the treaty of Brétigny in 1360 and told his soldiers to stop fighting and go home, many of them didn't have any homes to go to. They were used to fighting, and that's how they made their money. So they simply formed themselves into freelance armies, aptly called "free companies", that proceeded around France pillaging, killing and raping. [MISCOM]
• President of Côte d'Ivoire to Stand Trial in the International Criminal Court
  06.12.2011 Dr. Alexander Mezyaev, International Law Department, Governance Academy (Kazan`) President of Côte d'Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo who had been displaced as a result of the French intervention appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Hague on December 5. With several other country leaders already facing ICC charges, the fresh case could fit into a steady trend apart from a significant circumstance – unprecedentedly, Gbagbo was taken into custody based on a secret indictment. In contrast, indictments were released prior to all previous ICC probes. It became known recently that an arrest warrant for Gbagbo had been issued already on November 23, but the ousted president of Côte d'Ivoire was extradited to the Hague only on November 30 despite having been held in his home country for over nine months. Gbagbo faced the ICC pre-trial chamber headed by Argentinian judge Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi. The panel also includes Elizabeth Odio Benito from Costa Rica, the country's former vice president who also served as a judge with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and Adrian Fulford from Great Britain. Asked about his living conditions in custody, Gbagbo replied that the conditions were decent but stressed that the circumstances of his arrest had been abnormal. He said he was seized under fire from French tanks, with the shellings continuing for weeks, a death toll rising, and the presidential palace being left in ruins. Gbagbo also mentioned witnessing how his government's minister of the interior was killed. Gbagbo's account of his transfer to the Hague similarly highlighted the legal irregularities abundantly present in the case. [Imperialism] [Legality]
• After a Break to Run Somalia, Back at His Cubicle
  By JOHN LELAND Published: December 6, 2011 BUFFALO — At his cubicle at the State Transportation Department building here, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed recounted what he did during a recent leave of absence. He trimmed the size of the federal government. He instituted regular paychecks for the military. He campaigned against corruption. And he avoided being shot. Mr. Mohamed, who has lived in the United States since 1985, said he had no plan to join the Somali government when friends helped him arrange a meeting with the country’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, in September 2010 during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Mr. Mohamed said he talked to the president about how factions in government might cooperate, drawing on his own experience working with difficult contractors in Erie County. At the time, the president had just dismissed his previous prime minister. [Diaspora] [Outsourcing] [Media]
• Obama invokes Teddy Roosevelt in speech attacking GOP policies
  By David Nakamura, Wednesday, December 7, 3:38 PM OSAWATOMIE, Kan. — President Obama came to this tiny middle American town Tuesday to invoke the spirit of a long-ago Republican president in a speech that laid out, in his sharpest language yet, the economic and social arguments he will probably use against Republicans in 2012. Obama called for a return to modest, middle-class values and said the recent rise in populist anger — from the tea party movement to the Occupy Wall Street protests — was evidence of the need to remedy the growing economic inequality in American life. [Inequality] [US_election12]
• The Constitution Is Dead: The Gradual Transition towards an Orwellian Police State
  Americans denied their First and Third amendment rights... by Devon DB Global Research, December 3, 2011 Many in America still believe that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and that politicians, both Republican and Democrat alike, still hold that view and ensure that any and all legislation passed does not violate it. However, in today’s America, the Constitution is effectively a null and void document, nothing more than a symbol politicians pay lip service to. The destruction of the Constitution began soon after 9/11 when the Patriot Act was pushed through Congress. In the heat of the moment it seemed as if the legislation was meant to protect us from terrorism, however it was later revealed that certain provisions blatantly violated the First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendments. [1] Interestingly enough, however, this didn’t stop the Senate from to extending the Patriot Act earlier this year [2]. In doing this, the government revealed just how much they respect the Constitution. The next unconstitutional act to take place was under President Obama. Despite his “hope and change” rhetoric during the campaign, the only thing Obama changed was to further erode the Constitution and the power of checks and balances in government. Obama argued that the UN mandate gave him the right to bombard Libya, however the mandate has nothing to do with the fact that such an action was unconstitutional [3] as the power to declare war in held solely by Congress, not to mention the fact that it violated the War Powers Act. In carrying out this action, Obama did even more to expand the imperial presidency and showed his blatant hypocrisy as in 2007 he clearly stated that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” [4] (emphasis added) However, in later months he would take this disregard of the Constitution to the extreme. [Legality]
• U.S. breach with Pakistan shows imbalance between diplomatic, security goals
  By Karen DeYoung and Karin Brulliard, Published: December 5 Nonstop crises between the United States and Pakistan this year have fueled tensions within the Obama administration over what kind of relationship the two countries should have and who should be in charge of it. The State Department has long smarted over the preeminence of military and intelligence priorities, which seems to leave diplomacy in a distant third place. [Militarisation]
• In race for campaign funds from billionaires, Romney outpaces Obama
  By T.W. Farnam, Tuesday, December 6, 2:16 PM The Republican presidential primary contest isn’t over, but in the race to line up the richest donors, it’s Mitt Romney vs. President Obama. Romney has drawn the most support from billionaires, with at least 42 donating to his campaign. Obama is not far behind, with at least 30 billionaire supporters. Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman Jr. follow with 20 and 12, respectively, according to donor rolls and the current Forbes magazine list of 412 American billionaires. Very wealthy donors are likely to play a greater role in this election cycle in the wake of recent court decisions that have loosened rules for campaign contributions. That will only heighten one of the dominant narratives of the 2012 campaign: the nation’s rising income inequality and the outsize political influence of the super-wealthy. [US_Election12] [Democracy] [Inequality]
• Drone belonged to CIA, officials say
  By Greg Miller, Tuesday, December 6, 5:16 PM The unmanned surveillance plane lost by the United States in Iran was a stealth aircraft being used for secret missions by the CIA, U.S. officials said Monday. The officials said Iran’s military appears to be in possession of one of the more sensitive surveillance platforms in the CIA’s fleet, an aircraft that was shaped and designed to evade enemy defenses. The mission of the downed drone remains unclear. Iran, a longtime adversary of the United States, is believed by U.S. intelligence agencies to be pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon and is also accused of providing support to anti-coalition elements in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The RQ-170 has been used by the CIA for highly sensitive missions into other nations’ airspace, including months of surveillance of the compound in Pakistan in which Osama bin Laden was hiding before he was killed in a May raid by Special Operations forces. [Intelligence]
• OECD report cites rising income inequality
  By Michael A. Fletcher, Tuesday, December 6, 12:26 PM Income inequality is increasing across much of the developed world, a trend that will continue unless governments move aggressively to arrest it, according to a report released Monday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The widening gap between rich and poor is being driven in part by a growing disparity in wages, as skilled workers command a disproportionate share of the bounty made possible by technological progress, the report said. In addition, a surge in foreign direct investment and a looser regulatory regime that has reduced employee protections have led to a wage premium for high-skill financial jobs and fewer rewards for workers at the bottom, the report said. [Inequality] [Globalisation] [Labour]
• Puncturing the U.S. Base Myths
  December 02, 2011 By Rep. J. Randy ForbesinShare.14 Military bases overseas are a vital part of American security, says U.S. Rep. J. Randy Forbes. Without them, crucial alliances in Asia could suffer. As Washington continues to debate the consequences of defense cuts, one line of popular thinking is that we can save tax dollars without sacrificing security if we close down our overseas bases and bring our forces home. Why do we still have bases in Europe? Shouldn’t the Japanese just defend themselves? [Bases] [US global strategy]
• Why Moscow does not Trust Washington on Missile Defense. Towards a Pre-emptive Nuclear War?
  by F. William Engdahl Global Research, December 2, 2011 Most in the civilized world are blissfully unaware that we are marching ineluctably towards an increasingly likely pre-emptive nuclear war. No, it's not at all about Iran and Israel. It's about the decision of Washington and the Pentagon to push Moscow up against the wall with what is euphemistically called Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). [US global strategy] [Missile defense]
• Vietnam-Style Exit: Russia Could Deliver Death Blow To NATO in Af-Pak War Theater
  Global Research, December 1, 2011 Russia could deliver death blow to Nato, say analysts ISLAMABAD: With the Russian threat to cut land routes for supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Afghan battleground may turn into a cold death trap for NATO, defence analysts believe. They say that Pakistan should utilise the opportunity for a peaceful and prosperous Pakistan by pulling it out of the American war. Russia has threatened to cut off NATO supply routes to Afghanistan if the alliance doesn’t compromise on its missile defence plans. “If NATO doesn’t give a serious response, we have to address matters in relations in other areas,” Russian news services reported. Russia’s cooperation on Afghanistan may be an area for review, the news services reported. Pakistan has already cut NATO supply routes after the Mohmand Agency attack by NATO troops that killed twenty-six Pakistani soldiers. Lt General (retd) Hameed Gul, while talking to The News, said that Russia would utilise every option to take revenge on the Americans and the time has come for the Russians to do this. He said that Russia wants to join hands with Pakistan and Pakistan should re-consider its policy towards Russia. “Americans and NATO troops have been strangled in Afghanistan and the time has come for Pakistan to avail itself of the opportunity that it missed on 9/11 to regain respect and sovereignty”, Gul said.
• Rioters say anger with police fuelled summer unrest
  Guardian-LSE study of riots – involving hundreds of interviews with participants – reveals deep antipathy towards officers Paul Lewis, Tim Newburn and Matthew Taylor guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 December 2011 Article history Our team collected more than 1.3m words of first-person accounts of the English riots. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters Widespread anger and frustration at the way police engage with communities was a significant cause of the summer riots in every major city where disorder took place, the biggest study into their cause has found. Hundreds of interviews with people who took part in the disturbances which spread across England in August revealed deep-seated and sometimes visceral antipathy towards police. In a unique collaboration, the Guardian and London School of Economics (LSE) interviewed 270 people who rioted in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Manchester and Salford.
• Top British commander says west must see the job through in Afghanistan
  General James Bucknall calls on UK not to betray its 'investment in blood' and stresses Taliban cannot assassinate its way to power Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 December 2011 16.00 GMT Article history Lieutenant General James Bucknall: 'If I didn't think we could do this I would take a very different view.' Photograph: ISAF The most senior British commander in Afghanistan says the Taliban cannot "assassinate their way to power" and too many lives have been lost over the last 10 years for the west to flinch in its campaign against the insurgents. In an interview with the Guardian, Lieutenant General James Bucknall said the UK had made "an investment in blood" and that now was not the time for western nations to turn their back on the country. He claimed that the Taliban had been pushed back everywhere and that relentless special forces operations are killing 130 to140 insurgent leaders every month. [Assassination] [Inversion] [Special forces]
• Iran shoots down US drone
  Iranian military official quoted as warning of crushing response after unmanned spy plane is shot down Agencies guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 December 2011 17.14 GMT Article history Iran's military said it had shot down the US drone near the country's eastern border. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images Iran's armed forces have shot down an unmanned US spy plane that violated Iranian airspace along its eastern border. An unidentified military official quoted by the official Irna news agency on Sunday warned of a crushing response to any violations of Iranian airspace by US drone aircraft. "An advanced RQ170 unmanned American spy plane was shot down by Iran's armed forces. It suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran's armed forces," Irna quoted the official as saying. [UAV]
• Russian democracy receives little applause
  Global Times | December 05, 2011 00:59 United Russia, chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has emerged to be the biggest winner in the 2011 election of Russia's State Duma. However, this victory has drawn fire from some Western media outlets, because the outcome was too predictable. Being accused of being undemocratic can be uncomfortable, but only if the Russians care. Russia's transition to democracy has cost it dearly. Shock therapy to its economy and politics didn't bring Russia desired prosperity. The brutal wars in Chechnya and terror attacks in Moscow meant suffering for ordinary people. And this suffering didn't bring relief from condemnation from the West. The Russians certainly want democracy. Otherwise, we wouldn't find them voting in a Western-style election with a multi-party system and undergoing the privatization of their media groups. The former communist state has at least adopted the form of a democratic system. Yet the country is still unique compared to its peers. Its unforgettable past as the headquarters for opposing the West, and its unyielding ambition to be a superpower both distance it from the West. [Democracy]
• Iran says it downed U.S. stealth drone; Pentagon acknowledges aircraft downing
  By Greg Jaffe and Thomas Erdbrink, Monday, December 5, 2:53 PM A secret U.S. surveillance drone that went missing last week in western Afghanistan appears to have crashed in Iran, in what may be the first case of such an aircraft ending up in the hands of an adversary. Iran’s news agencies asserted that the nation’s defense forces brought down the drone, which the Iranian reports said was an RQ-170 stealth aircraft. It is designed to penetrate enemy air defenses that could see and possibly shoot down less-sophisticated Predator and Reaper drones. .A stealthy RQ-170 drone played a critical role in surveilling the compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was hiding in the months before the raid in which he was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in May. U.S. officials acknowledged Sunday that a drone had been lost near the Iranian border, but they declined to say what kind of aircraft was missing. The Iranian government has not released any pictures of the recovered aircraft, which they said was downed by defense forces after it flew across the border and into the country’s airspace. An unnamed Iranian defense official said in one report that a cyber­attack caused the drone to crash. U.S. officials cast doubt on this and other Iranian assertions. “We have no indication that it was brought down by hostile fire,” said a senior Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive surveillance activity. If an RQ-170 drone crashed in Iran, it would mark a significant setback for the U.S. military. The United States has lost less-sophisticated unmanned aircraft in recent years over Iran, but a nearly intact RQ-170 could offer a potential windfall of useful intelligence for the Iranians and their allies. The aircraft has special coatings and a batwing-like shape that is designed to evade detection by enemy radar. The aircraft could help the Iranians better understand the vulnerabilities of U.S. stealth technology and provide them with clues on how to spot other aircraft, U.S. officials said. [UAV]
• Russia election widens crack in Putin’s power
  View Photo Gallery — Putin's Ascent in Russia:?Since taking the office in 2000, Vladimir Putin has expanded the powers of Russia's presidency, consolidating authority in the Kremlin and weakening other democratic institutions. By Kathy Lally, Published: December 3MOSCOW — A fissure in the foundation of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s political fortress that developed, barely visible, in September has widened noticeably on the eve of Sunday’s parliamentary elections. Political scientists say a too-heavy Kremlin hand has not only alienated ordinary citizens but also threatened the country’s stability, which depends on Putin’s popularity rather than poorly developed national institutions. The dissonance has been amplified by Russia’s spirited Internet, which provides a forum for opposition that the authorities have found difficult to manage.
• The Lady’ of Burma faces difficult choices
  By Ben Bland in Rangoon AFP The tightly orchestrated press conference featuring Hillary Clinton and Aung San Suu Kyi at the Burmese opposition leader’s lakeside residence on Friday had an unmistakably presidential feel. After lengthy talks, the two women went for a stroll in the garden before emerging to face the media from the veranda of the house where Ms Suu Kyi was detained by Burma’s military dictators for 15 years until her release last November. The political theatre was to be expected given that both women were once close to assuming the leadership of their respective countries. But while Mrs Clinton is thought unlikely to seek the presidential nomination again, Ms Suu Kyi is re-entering the rough and tumble of politics after a long, enforced hiatus. [Myanmar] [China confrontation] [US global strategy]
• Iran's Economy Can Take the Pressure—for Now
  New sanctions on Iran may hurt, but with its oil money, the country is still a few steps away from a crisis By Indira Lakshmanan Just after 3 p.m. on Nov. 29, about 200 demonstrators ransacked the British Embassy in Tehran, chanting “Death to England,” setting fire to the Union Jack, carting off a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, and detaining staff as Iranian security officers stood by. It bore all the marks of a state-orchestrated provocation. What aroused Iranian leaders’ ire were stiff financial penalties imposed on Nov. 21 by the U.K., the U.S., and Canada. The European Union was also expected on Dec. 1 to impose trade and travel bans on almost 200 Iranian individuals and companies. The sanctions punish Iran for clandestine nuclear weapons work and follow dozens of earlier measures intended to make leaders choose between prosperity and the bomb. [Sanctions]
• Obama's Foreign Policy Doctrine Finally Emerges with 'Offshore Balancing'
  By Peter Beinart, New America Foundation November 28, 2011 | The Daily Beast Offshore balancing reemerges when the money and bravado have run out.What does America's disastrous bombing of Pakistani soldiers this week have to do with President Obama's much-ballyhooed trip to East Asia last week? Between them, they suggest that the Obama administration may be, finally, edging toward a foreign-policy doctrine. First, Pakistan. The bombing was a mistake, but it comes after a series of very conscious decisions—most significantly the assassination of Osama bin Laden—in which Obama put killing al Qaeda terrorists ahead of America's relationship with Pakistan. That's not the tradeoff many expected when Obama came into office determined to eschew unilateralism, reinvigorate diplomacy and improve America's relationships with the Muslim world. But it makes sense when you realize that the Obama administration has largely given up on trying to remake Pakistan and Afghanistan. [US global strategy] [Outsourcing]
• Can the American Empire Fight Back?
  The problem today — amid fears of U.S. decline — is that we are so concerned about losing global dominance that we've lost sight of the maverick qualities that made us preeminent in the first place. By Gregory Rodriguez,New America Foundation November 21, 2011 | The Los Angeles Times The Redcoats are coming! The Redcoats are coming! Remember what your elementary school teacher taught you about the War of Independence? The British wore scarlet coats, which made them easy marks and symbolized institutional pomposity, adherence to status over efficiency and an out-of-touch empire bent on doing things the old way. The rebellious American colonists, on the other hand, wore whatever; they were nimble, unencumbered by institutional baggage and not too proud to employ guerrilla tactics. [Decline]
• Why Iranians Hate the British
  by Robert Fisk It’s a weird irony that Iranians know the history of Anglo-Persian relations better than the Brits. When the newly installed Ministry of Islamic Guidance asked Harvey Morris, Reuters’ man in post-revolutionary Iran, for a history of his news agency, he asked his London office to send him a biography of Baron von Reuter – and was appalled to discover the founder of the world’s greatest news agency had built Persia’s railways at an immense profit. “How can I show this to the ministry?” he shouted. “It turns out that the Baron was worse than the fucking Shah!” Of which, of course, the ministry was well aware. Britain staged a joint invasion of Iran with Soviet forces when the Shah’s predecessor got a bit too close to the Nazis in World War Two and then helped the Americans overthrow the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 after he nationalised Britain’s oil possessions in the country. This was not a myth but a real, down-to-earth conspiracy.
• Israeli Military Strike on Iran Would Lead to a Protracted War and Wouldn’t Solve Nuclear Crisis
  Oxford Research Group November 2011 London, 9 November 2011: At a time of renewed media speculation about the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iran over its nuclear programme and ahead of today’s IAEA report, Oxford Research Group (ORG) is publishing its briefing 'The Long-term Consequences of an Israeli Attack on Iran'. The briefing by ORG’s Global Security Consultant, Professor Paul Rogers, builds on his widely quoted report, 'Military Action Against Iran: Impact and Effects' from July 2010.* Paul Rogers argues in this briefing 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 briefing outlines the likely shape of an Israeli strike, stating:
• THE LONG-TERM CONSEQUENCES OF AN ISRAELI ATTACK ON IRAN
  Paul Rogers Oxford Research Group Briefing Paper – November 2011 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This briefing paper, based on the earlier Oxford Research Group report Military Action against Iran: Impacts and Effects (July 2010), concludes that military action against Iran should be ruled out as a means of responding to its possible nuclear weapons ambitions. The consequences of such an attack would lead to a sustained conflict and regional instability that would be unlikely to prevent the eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran and might even encourage it.
• The Syrian Revolution Hijacked
  The Syrian revolution—a broad-based, non-sectarian, democratic anti-despot national movement—has failed. Mass demonstrations never materialized in Damascus and Aleppo. The military and security forces didn’t crack. The Alawite on Sunni crackdown (Alawites form the backbone of the army/security forces/irregular goon squads) fomented sectarian divisions, with most non-Sunnis minorities cleaving desperately to the Assad regime. Prosperous Sunnis have presumably been hedging their bets by donating to the anti-government cause in recent days but have not explicitly abandoned the regime.
• The Under-Examined Story of Fallujah
  By Hannah Gurman, November 23, 2011 Seven years after the U.S. invasion of Fallujah, there are reports of an alarming rise in the rates of birth defects and cancer. But the crisis, and its possible connection to weapons deployed by the United States during the war, remains woefully under-examined. On November 8, 2004, U.S. military forces launched Operation Phantom Fury 50 miles west of Baghdad in Fallujah, a city of 350,000 people known for its opposition to the Saddam regime.
• Occupy Foreign Affairs
  By John Feffer, November 29, 2011 It's not the topic of George Packer’s latest essay that's particularly surprising. Inequality, he writes, is undermining democracy. Progressives have been hammering home this message for years if not decades. Nor is the choice of publication necessarily a shocker. Foreign Affairs is the flagship publication of the elite that runs American foreign policy. But it is no longer the exclusively center-right publication of the Cold War years. After all, it has published the likes of former Institute for Policy Studies staffers Michael Klare and Julia Sweig as well as my predecessor at Foreign Policy In Focus John Gershman. No, it’s the prominent placement of the Packer essay that merits attention. It's the lead article of the November/December issue. And it comes with the bold headline, “Is America Over?"
• Greater Competitiveness Does Not Have to Mean Greater Inequality
  Richard FloridaOct 11, 2011 Last week, I discussed how the nations of the world stack up in terms of innovation, the Creative Class, and a new overall measure of creativity and competitiveness, the Global Creativity Index (GCI). Today, I look at the bigger picture of economic prosperity, examining the connections (or lack of connections) between competitiveness and happiness, socioeconomic inequality and overall social and economic progress. Let’s start with a basic question: Do more creative and innovative economies gain an edge in economic development and competitiveness? The short answer is yes. [Inequality]
• Preparing the Chessboard for the "Clash of Civilizations": Divide, Conquer and Rule the "New Middle East"
  by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research, November 26, 2011 The name "Arab Spring" is a catch phrase concocted in distant offices in Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels by individuals and groups who, other than having some superficial knowledge of the region, know very little about the Arabs. What is unfolding amongst the Arab peoples is naturally a mixed package. Insurgency is part of this package as is opportunism. Where there is revolution, there is always counter-revolution. The upheavals in the Arab World are not an Arab "awakening" either; such a term implies that the Arabs have always been sleeping while dictatorship and injustice has been surrounding them. In reality the Arab World, which is part of the broader Turko-Arabo-Iranic World, has been filled with frequent revolts that have been put down by the Arab dictators in coordination with countries like the United States, Britain, and France. It has been the interference of these powers that has always acted as a counter-balance to democracy and it will continue to do so.
• Turkey is ready to invade Syria
  Turkey and its western allies are transferring the Libyan fighters whom they trained and armed to depose Muammar Gaddafi to Syria. Around 600 Libyan ‘volunteers’ have entered Syria. Daily Telegraph reported that secret meetings were held on Friday in Istanbul between the Turkish officials and the Syrian opposition representatives and the Libyan fighters. Large-scale infiltration of weapons from Turkey and Jordan have been going on for months to create civil-war conditions in Syria, but this is the first move to introduce ‘volunteers’. The move is necessitated by the failure to induce defections form the Syrian armed forces, except a mere handful
• Seeing the US Everywhere
  November 16, 2011 By Stephen Gowans The New York Times ran an article today about Washington’s plans to strengthen its military presence in Australia. Australia is to be used by the US military “as a new center of operations in Asia” from which the United States will seek “to reassert itself in the region and grapple with China’s rise.” The problem for policy planners in Washington is that “China has become the largest trading partner with most of the countries in the region, undercutting American economic influence.” And so the United States will beef up its presence in the Pacific to prove that “it intends to remain a crucial military and economic power” in Asia. In simple language this means that China has secured export and investment opportunities in its own backyard and that US corporations, banks and investors want them for themselves. So Washington will use its military to take them away from the Chinese. For obvious reasons, China thinks this smacks of old-fashioned gun-boat imperialism.
• The US navy fostered globalisation: we still need it
  By Robert Kaplan The financial world is obsessed with stock market gyrations and bond yields. But the numbers that matter in the long run are those of US warships. Asia has been at the centre of the world economy for decades because security there can be taken for granted, and that is only because of the dominance of the US navy and air force in the western Pacific. Because 90 per cent of all commercial goods traded between continents travel by sea, the US navy, which does more than any other entity to protect these lines of communication, is responsible for globalisation as we know it.
• How much defense is enough in the Asia-Pacific region?
  By Walter Pincus, Published: November 29 We need more transparency about the post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan Defense Department that can accept budget cuts over the next 10 years of $460 billion. And if the sequester of an additional $600 billion or more takes place beginning in fiscal 2013, would it “hollow out the force” and create “risks” because of threats we won’t be able to deter? More sensible than much of the rhetoric was Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s Nov. 14 plea attached to a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for flexibility rather than across-the-board reductions, which are part of the sequestration law. For now, let’s focus on the so-called pivot to the Asia-Pacific area. For the past two months the area has been the center of attention for President Obama, Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. [China confrontation] [Military balance] [Military expenditure]

• Target Iran: Washington's Countdown to War
  by Tom Burghardt Global Research, November 25, 2011 Antifascist Calling... The Iranian people know what it means to earn the enmity of the global godfather. As William Blum documented in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 1953's CIA-organized coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, guilty of the "crime" of nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, may have "saved" Iran from a nonexistent "Red Menace," but it left that oil-rich nation in proverbial "safe hands"--those of the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Similarly today, a nonexistent "nuclear threat" is the pretext being used by Washington to install a "friendly" regime in Tehran and undercut geopolitical rivals China and Russia in the process, thereby "securing" the country's vast petrochemical wealth for American multinationals. As the U.S. and Israel ramp-up covert operations against Iran, the Pentagon "has laid out its most explicit cyberwarfare policy to date, stating that if directed by the president, it will launch 'offensive cyber operations' in response to hostile acts," according to The Washington Post. [Iran] [Subcritical] [Cyberwar]
• That rocky road to Damascus
  By Pepe Escobar The trillion-dollar question in the "Arab Winter" is who will blink first in the West's screenplay of slouching towards Tehran via Damascus. As they examine the regional chessboard and the formidable array of forces aligned against them, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat in Tehran must face, simultaneously, superpower Washington, bomb-happy North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members, nuclear power Israel, all Sunni Arab absolute monarchies, and even Sunni-majority, secular Turkey. [Outsourcing]
• Sirhan lawyers: Bullet was switched and he was hypnotized before Robert Kennedy assassination
  By Associated Press, Tuesday, November 29, 12:18 PM LOS ANGELES — Lawyers representing convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan argue in newly filed court documents that a bullet was switched in evidence at his trial and new forensic details show he is innocent of the 1968 killing of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. In the latest of many appeals filed on behalf of Sirhan, the attorneys are seeking to overturn his conviction. They repeated a previous assertion and presented reports from experts who said Sirhan was programmed through hypnosis to fire shots as a diversion for the real killer.
• NATO airstrike strains U.S.-Pakistan relations
  By Karin Brulliard and Joshua Partlow, Monday, November 28, 2:53 PM ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — U.S. efforts to enlist Pakistani cooperation for peace talks with the Taliban were in limbo Sunday, as the circumstances surrounding a NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers remained in dispute and Pakistan threatened to boycott an international conference on Afghanistan’s future. The military coalition in Kabul said it was still investigating the Saturday morning incident, but a spokesman suggested a joint U.S.-Afghan operation had called in the NATO helicopters for support after coming under fire. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasumussen called it a “tragic unintended accident.” But Pakistani officials maintained that the air assault was unprovoked, sustained and continued even after the Pakistani military informed its coalition counterparts at two joint border centers that an official checkpost was under attack. [AfPak]
• The Roads To War And Economic Collapse
  by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, November 24, 2011 November 23, 2011: The day before the Thanksgiving holiday brought three extraordinary news items. One was the report on the Republican presidential campaign debate. One was the Russian President’s statement about his country’s response to Washington’s missile bases surrounding his country. And one was the failure of a German government bond auction. As the presstitute media will not inform us of what any of this means, let me try. With the exception of Ron Paul, the only candidate in either party qualified to be the president of the US, the rest of the Republican candidates are even worse than Obama, a president who had the country behind him but sold out the American people to special interests. No newly elected president in memory, neither John F. Kennedy nor Ronald Reagan, had the extraordinary response to his election as Barack Obama. A record-breaking number of people braved the cold to witness his swearing in ceremony. The mall was filled for miles distant from the Capitol with Americans who could not see the ceremony except as televised on giant screens. Obama had convinced the electorate that he would end the wars, stop the violation of law by the US government, end the regime of illegal torture, close the torture prison of Guantanamo, and attend to the real needs of the American people rather than stuff the pockets of the military/security complex with taxpayers’ money. Once in office, Obama renewed and extended the Bush/Cheney/neoconservative wars. [Continuity][Governance]
• The “Left” and Libya
  by Alexander Cockburn The last time we met Michael Bérubé on this site was back in 2007, and he was up to his neck in a rubbish dump, where I’d placed him, in the company of other promoters of the 2003 war on Iraq: where, I asked, are those parlor warriors now? Had any of them reconsidered their illusions… “… that all it would take was a brisk invasion and a new constitution, to put Iraq to rights? Have any of them, from Makiya through Hitchens to Berman and Bérubé had dark nights, asking themselves just how much responsibility they have for the heaps of dead in Iraq, for a plundered nation, for the American soldiers who died or were crippled in Iraq at their urging ? Sometimes I dream of them… like characters in a Beckett play, buried up to their necks in a rubbish dump on the edge of Baghdad, reciting their columns to each other as the local women turn over the corpses to see if one of them is her husband or her son.” Who’s this Bérubé, you ask. Well, for starters he’s the Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University. Penn State’s website informs us that “named professorships provide support for a focused area and are funded by gifts from individual donors,” which means that Bérubé has long been on Joe Paterno’s payroll – as things have turned out an ironic status for someone who’s spent a fair slice of his time barking and snapping his jaws at “the left” for innumerable failures stemming from moral equivocation and blindness to reality. Now that famed football coach Joe Paterno has been fired from Penn State for protecting one of his assistants, Jerry Sandusky, suspected of raping a ten-year old boy, amidst many other suspected assaults on youths under Sandusky’s supervision, we must await Bérubé’s assessment of how it feels to have been the kept man of this fallen idol. Does the title “Paterno Family Professor” remain ensconced on Bérubé’s formal letterhead? [Libya] [Media]
• Libya and the Left Benghazi and After
  by Michael Berube In late March of 2011, a massacre was averted—not just any ordinary massacre, mind you. For had Qaddafi and his forces managed to crush the Libyan rebellion in what was then its stronghold, Benghazi, the aftershocks would have reverberated well beyond eastern Libya. As Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch wrote, “Qaddafi’s victory—alongside Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s fall—would have signaled to other authoritarian governments from Syria to Saudi Arabia to China that if you negotiate with protesters you lose, but if you kill them you win.” Qaddafi’s defeat seemed to send a message to American politicians and media instead. Contrasting Obama’s handling of Libya with Clinton’s handling of the Balkans, Malinowski observed that “Presidents get more credit for stopping atrocities after they begin than for preventing them before they get out of hand.”
• A Reply to Michael Bérubé: The “Decent Left” and the Libya Intervention
  by David N. Gibbs Even as NATO celebrates its victory over the Gaddafi dictatorship, there is growing unease about the operation. The Libyan intervention was supposed to be a model of legality, but ended up exceeding the terms set forth in Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized a no fly zone but not regime change. US involvement violated the War Powers Resolution. The intervention was presented as a truly international operation, but ended up being directed by Britain and France, the two main powers from the heyday of colonialism, thus adding to the unsavory appearance of the whole enterprise. The intervention was supposed to prevent a massacre in Benghazi, but ended up enabling one in Sirte, where there have been numerous executions of pro-Gaddafi loyalists. It was supposed to dissuade other tyrants from oppressing their own people, but in reality had no such effect.[1] Political repression in Syria actually increased after the intervention. The intervention has generated significant dangers to global security: The character of Western policy toward the Libyan despot – by first persuading Gaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons development program and then overthrowing him – has discouraged other countries from abandoning their own nuclear weapons programs. The intervention thus constitutes a setback for international efforts to curb nuclear proliferation. In addition, vast stocks of anti-aircraft missiles have been looted from Gaddafi’s warehouses in the course of the intervention; these have likely filtered into the world-wide arms market. And even the most hardened observers must be chilled at the fate of Gaddafi himself, who was apparently sodomized before he was killed. This was certainly not the “clean” overthrow it was supposed to be. In this context, supporters of the intervention seek to shift discussion away from the embarrassing facts and lash out against those who disagree with their views. Michael Bérubé has created a stir recently with his article “Libya and the Left,” [please add link] soon to appear in print in The Point Magazine. This article defends the intervention, while it attacks writers who oppose it, with a special emphasis on attacking left-wing opponents of the intervention. Both Juan Cole and Brad DeLong recommend this article on their blog sites, while the online edition of The Economist also praises it. Bérubé condemns what he terms the “addled left” and their “popular shibboleths about the war,” which includes the supposedly widespread view that “Gaddafi was a progressive in domestic or foreign policy” who was “justified in sending out the military to crush the protesters.” There is a strong insinuation throughout the article that most opponents of the NATO intervention were friends of the Gaddafi dictatorship. On his own blog, Cole agrees with Bérubé and extols the merits of his analysis which, according to Cole, exposes the left’s “Woolly thinking, outrageous lies, moon-eyed Gaddafi-worship,” among other sins. [Libya]
• The Good, the Bizarre and the Ugly
  AF-PAK Sitrep by Franklin C. Spinney It is becoming increasingly clear that the AF-PAK war will end in yet another grand strategic defeat for the United States. To date, President Obama, has been able to distract attention from this issue, but given the stakes in 2012, that dodge is unlikely to last. Get ready for an ugly debate over “who lost the Afghan War.” To those readers who disagree with my opening line, I urge you to study Anthony Cordersman’s most recent situation report on the AF-PAK War, THE AFGHANISTAN- PAKISTAN WAR AT THE END OF 2011: Strategic Failure? Talk Without Hope? Tactical Success? Spend Not Build (And Then Stop Spending)? It was issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on November 15. Reading the report is heavy slogging but I urge readers to download and examine it — at the very least, take a few minutes to read the executive summary. Now compare Cordesman’s systematic, detailed, and workmanlike analysis to the bizarre obscurantism peddled one week later, on 22 November, co-authored by Michael O’Hanlon (Brookings Institution) and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (American Enterprise Institute) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, entitled Defining Victory in Afghanistan. O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz posit the bizarre thesis that the admittedly less than successful outcome against the FARC guerrillas in Columbia is a favorable model for justifying continuing business as usual in Afghanistan. Viewed through the refractions of their Columbian lens, O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz conclude, “Our current exit strategy of reducing American troops to 68,000 by the end of next summer and transferring full security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014 is working. In a war where the U.S. has demonstrated remarkable strategic patience, we need to stay patient and resolute.” Are O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz living on the same planet as Cordesman or do they live in some kind of parallel universe? I submit it is latter. Here’s why - [AfPak] [Paradigm]
• Ex-Ambassador Exposes Government Cover-Up: Is Britain Plotting With Israel to Attack Iran?
  by Jonathan Cook Last February Britain’s then defense minister Liam Fox attended a dinner in Tel Aviv with a group described as senior Israelis. Alongside him sat Adam Werritty, a lobbyist whose “improper relations” with the minister would lead eight months later to Fox’s hurried resignation. According to several reports in the British media the Israelis in attendance at the dinner were representatives of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, while Fox and Werritty were accompanied by Matthew Gould, Britain’s ambassador to Israel. A former British diplomat has now claimed that the topic of discussion that evening was a secret plot to attack Iran. The official inquiry castigating the UK’s former defence secretary for what has come to be known as a “cash-for-access” scandal appears to have only scratched the surface of what Fox and accomplice Adam Werritty may have been up to when they met for dinner in Tel Aviv. Little was made of the dinner in the 10-page inquiry report published last month by Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet’s top civil servant. Instead O’Donnell concentrated on other aspects of Werritty’s behaviour: the 33-year-old friend of Fox’s had presented himself as the minister’s official adviser and jetted around the world with him arranging meetings with businessmen. The former minister’s allies, seeking to dismiss the gravity of the case against him, have described Werritty as a harmless dreamer. Following his resignation, Fox himself claimed O’Donnell’s report had exonerated him of putting national security at risk. However, a spate of new concerns raised in the wake of the inquiry challenge both of these assumptions. These include questions about the transparency of the O’Donnell investigation, the extent of Fox and Werritty’s ties to Israel and the unexplained role of Gould.
• Nato air attack on Pakistani troops was self-defence, says senior western official
  US-Pakistan relations strained further after attack allegedly kills up to 28 and prompts ban on Nato trucks crossing Afghan border Jon Boone in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Saturday 26 November 2011 20.58 GMT An attack by Nato aircraft on Pakistani troops that allegedly killed as many as 28 soldiers and looks set to further poison relations between the US and Pakistan was an act of self-defence, a senior western official has claimed. According to the Kabul-based official, a joint US-Afghan force operating in the mountainous Afghan frontier province of Kunar was the first to come under attack in the early hours of Saturday morning, forcing them to return fire. [AfPak]
• Greetings to Sam and David Cameron, the Earl and Countess of Witney
  Tory MPs say prime minister is so attached to the aristocracy he will want to become the Earl of Witney when he retires David and Samantha Cameron will want to become the Earl and Countess of Witney when they leave No 10, according to some Tories. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images David and Samantha Cameron have worked hard to play down their aristocratic backgrounds. Sam Cam has affected a Dido-style "mockney" accent which means hardly anyone would guess she is the daughter of a major landowner, Sir Reginald Adrian Berkeley Sheffield, the 8th Baronet. The prime minister laughed off his membership of the Tory aristo club, White's, saying he paid his subs to keep his late father happy. Cameron has to look a little further to find a title in his family. His mother, Mary, is the daughter of the late Sir William Mount, the 2nd Baronet. Some Tories believe that Cameron's attachment to the nobility will resurface when he no longer has to face the electorate. They believe that when he eventually stands down Cameron will revive the tradition of granting an earldom to a former prime minister. The Camerons would become the Earl and Countess of Witney, the name of his Oxfordshire constituency.
• Pakistani officials say alleged NATO attack kills at least 24
  By Karin Brulliard, Published: November 26 | Updated: Sunday, November 27, 1:30 AM ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani military on Saturday accused NATO helicopters and fighter jets of firing on two Pakistani border checkposts and killing 24 soldiers, an incident that sent the two nations’ uneasy alliance into new crisis and fanned domestic criticism of Pakistan’s unpopular cooperation with the troubled American war effort in Afghanistan.
• Moderate Americans Elect group hoping to add third candidate to 2012 election ballot
  Louis Lanzano/AP - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks to the media at a City Hall news conference with Police commissioner Raymond Kelly, right, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011, in New York. By Krissah Thompson, Friday, November 25, 2:34 PM The restless political middle — emboldened by the recent inability of a special congressional committee to agree on a debt-reduction deal — is staking out a controversial plan to insert itself into the 2012 election. A bipartisan group of political strategists and donors known as Americans Elect has raised $22 million and is likely to place a third presidential candidate on the ballot in every state next year. The goal is to provide an alternative to President Obama and the GOP nominee and break the tradition of a Democrat-vs.-Republican lineup. [US_election12] [Governance]
• U.S. intensifies its proxy fight against al-Shabab in Somalia
  By Craig Whitlock, Friday, November 25, 12:56 PM The Obama administration is intensifying its campaign against an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia by boosting the number of proxy forces in the war-torn country, expanding drone operations and strengthening military partnerships throughout the region. In many ways, the American role in the long-running conflict in Somalia is shaping up as the opposite of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: relatively inexpensive, with limited or hidden U.S. footprints. [Outsourcing]
• Burma pursued nuclear weapons with North Korea, U.S. senator says
  (J. Scott Applewhite/AP) - Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said the Senate Foreign Relations Committee received information roughly five years ago that the Burmese government intended to develop nuclear weapons with the help of North Korea. By William Wan, Friday, November 25, 12:54 PM The Senate Foreign Relations Committee received information roughly five years ago that the Burmese government intended to develop nuclear weapons with the help of North Korea, according to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.). The committee at the time relayed the details to U.S. officials but did not release the information publicly, according to Keith Luse, a committee staff member. .Lugar’s statement, to be released Friday, comes ahead of a trip to Burma by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will be the first of her rank to travel to the isolated and authoritarian country in half a century. “With the upcoming visit, Senator Lugar wanted to throw a spotlight on this issue and make sure it’s on the table in our talks with the Burmese government,” Luse said. Lugar is the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.
• Droning On
  By John Feffer, November 22, 2011 Someday soon, you'll be checking your new Clear Skies app as a routine part of your preparations to go out for the evening. First, you'll look at your smart gizmo to read your latest email to make sure there hasn't been any change in plans. A quick glance at Facebook lets you see who’ll be joining your group of friends at the bar. Weather and traffic apps inform you of what to wear and what route to take. Twitter will tell you about any major news developments you should be retweeting to your tweeps to prime the conversational pump over drinks. And your new Clear Skies app will let you know if any unmanned drones are hovering 12 miles up in the stratosphere with your head in their sights. Sound like science fiction? Isn't drone surveillance and remote kills a problem just for people in the undeveloped regions of the world where life is cheap, collateral damage a daily hazard, and violations of national sovereignty the norm rather than the exception? [UAV] [War crimes] [Casualties]
• Four civilians reported killed in latest CIA drone strike
  October 31st, 2011 | by Chris Woods A CIA drone strike in North Waziristan on Sunday is reported to have killed four local chromite miners – the first claims of civilian deaths in the ongoing US campaign since August 22. Initial reports said that up to six alleged militants were killed when a vehicle was struck at around noon on Sunday. A nearby house was also damaged in the attack by up to four US Reaper drones. But concern soon emerged that those killed were in fact civilians, with the Nation describing the deceased as ‘peaceful tribesmen.’ [UAV][Casualties]
• Winds of war start blowing toward Iran
  Global Times | November 09, 2011 02:04 By Global Times Share The last few days have seen tensions over Iran take a sharp turn for the worse. Some feel that the US and Israel should combine to strike at Iranian nuclear facilities. This is reminiscent of those who encouraged NATO to hit Syria a few weeks ago. Other countries that take an anti-Western stance, like North Korea, have also faced similar threats before. Even with bigger countries like China and Russia, elements in the US have also clamored for an attack to eliminate their nuclear power once and for all. It seems that Cold War victories entrenched a "bomb first, ask questions later" attitude to international problem-solving for the Allies. [Militarisation] [Iran]
• U.S. Arms Persian Gulf Allies For Conflict With Iran
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, November 18, 2011 Stop NATO Rumors and reports of, speculation over and scenarios for attacks against Iran’s civilian nuclear power facilities and military sites by the United States, Israel or both have flared up periodically over the past several years, especially since early 2005. However, recent statements by among others the president and defense minister of Israel and a leading candidate for the American presidency in next year’s election – Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Mitt Romney respectively – before and after the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear program manifest a more stark and menacing tone that has been heard in a long time. Standing U.S. head of state Barack Obama recently stated, “We are not taking any options off the table.” The above threats and others of the same tenor have been noted in the capitals of countries around the world. [US global strategy] [Arms sales]
• U.S. military presence will continue in Iraq
  By Walter Pincus, Published: November 22 The last 24,000 U.S. troops are scheduled to leave Iraq in the next few weeks so that most can be home before Christmas. The departure is required by the 2008 Iraq-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement signed by Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and then-President George W. Bush and approved by the Iraqi parliament, giving it the status of law. .Meanwhile, don’t believe those agonized voices on Capitol Hill complaining that “having won the war” President Obama is “about to lose the peace” because he didn’t negotiate well enough with Maliki to allow 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops to remain. There will be a U.S. military presence. The Office of Security Cooperation (OSC), operating under the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, will have several hundred military personnel, and at least an equal number or more U.S. contractors, who will work with Iraqi security forces. Ongoing negotiations with Iraq about OSC activities will determine exact staffing numbers. [Iraq] [Bases] [Arms sales]
• Libyan Leader Seeks to Unite Factions With Cabinet
  By CLIFFORD KRAUSS Published: November 22, 2011 TRIPOLI, Libya — Bowing to pressure from a local militia holding one of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s sons as a prisoner, Prime Minister Abdel Rahim el-Keeb on Tuesday appointed the militia’s commander to be the new defense minister. .The appointment came as the prime minister named a new cabinet after weeks of bargaining among the competing cities, tribes and militias that formed the loose coalition that overthrew the Qaddafi government but are now struggling to share power. The selection of Osama al-Juwali, the head of the military council in Zintan, to lead the Defense Ministry, perhaps the most critical post in the government, did not come as a surprise, but it underscored the weakness of the interim government. [Libya] [Fragmentation]
• Al-Qaeda targets dwindle as group shrinks
  By Greg Miller, Wednesday, November 23, 1:20 PM The leadership ranks of the main al-Qaeda terrorist network, once expansive enough to supervise the plot for Sept. 11, 2001, have been reduced to just two figures whose demise would mean the group’s defeat, U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence officials said. Ayman al-Zawahiri and his second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, are the last remaining “high-value” targets of the CIA’s drone campaign against al-Qaeda in Pakistan, U.S. officials said, although lower-level fighters and other insurgent groups remain a focus of Predator surveillance and strikes. Al-Qaeda's new leader Ayman Al-Zawahri is calling on Libyan fighters who overthrew Moammar Gaddafi to set up an Islamic state and urges Algerians to revolt against their longtime leader in remarks in a new Internet video. (Oct. 12) .Al-Qaeda’s contraction comes amid indications that the group has considered relocating in recent years but that it ruled out other destinations as either unreachable or offering no greater security than their missile-pocked territory in Pakistan, U.S. officials said. [Global insurgency] [UAV]
• War Is a Force That Pays the 1 Percent: Occupying American Foreign Policy
  Monday 14 November 2011 by: J.A. Myerson, Truthout | News Analysis The man on the left served with the Marines in Southern Afghanistan from 2001-2006. The man on the right is now a public school teacher who served with the Army from 1986-1989. (Photo: pfarnac1) If the last decade was the era of occupations that everyone called liberations, then the 99 percent movement is seeking to make this the era of liberations everyone calls occupations. [MISCOM]
• The Doomsday Project and Deep Events: JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11
  Peter Dale Scott I would like to discuss four major and badly understood events – the John F. Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11. I will analyze these deep events as part of a deeper political process linking them, a process that has helped build up repressive power in America at the expense of democracy. In recent years I have been talking about a dark force behind these events -- a force which, for want of a better term, I have clumsily called a “deep state,” operating both within and outside the public state. Today for the first time I want to identify part of that dark force, a part which has operated for five decades or more at the edge of the public state. This part of the dark force has a name not invented by me: the Doomsday Project, the Pentagon’s name for the emergency planning “to keep the White House and Pentagon running during and after a nuclear war or some other major crisis.”1 My point is a simple and important one: to show that the Doomsday Project of the 1980s, and the earlier emergency planning that developed into it, have played a role in the background of all the deep events I shall discuss.
• Revolutionary road: Among the Syrian opposition
  Posted By Voices IISS at 15/11/2011 11:34:15 By Emile Hokayem, Senior Fellow for Regional Security, IISS-Middle East After meeting with Assad loyalists and opponents in Lebanon last week, it is clear that the Syrian uprising’s third phase will be not only more violent but could be a decisive one. Free Syrian Army (FSA) commanders told me that they are gearing up for direct confrontation in coming months with the forces loyal to President Assad, regardless of whether they have the support of a foreign intervention. They say defections are increasing, and a FSA officer boasted to me that men at arms number 17,000 across the country (most go north to the Turkish border, while an estimated 500 are coalescing at the border with Lebanon). Until regional conditions improve to their benefit, FSA commanders told me they are advising sympathisers to delay their defection. [Syria]
• Is the U.S. Empire Coming to an End?
  Han Sung-joo Several signs suggest that the global power of the U.S. is waning, fueling debate about the decline of the American empire. In August, the U.S. government narrowly avoided bankruptcy over the issue of expanding its debt ceiling, and the country's sovereign credit rating was downgraded for the first time. U.S. opposition also could not prevent UNESCO from admitting Palestine as a regular member by 107 votes in favor and just 14 against. At the G20 Summit in early November, the U.S. had no solutions to present for the European fiscal crisis, and the leaders of other countries turned to China for assistance instead. Moreover, the U.S. has yet to present an effective game plan after the IAEA raised suspicions over Iran's nuclear development. [Decline]
• Huge Stakes in Syria
  by PATRICK COCKBURN President Bashar al-Assad’s enemies are closing in for the kill. The Arab League is suspending Syria, and Turkey, once a close ally, is leading the pack in seeking to displace the government that has ruled for 40 years. Arab leaders are talking to West European states about deploying the same mix of political, military and economic sanctions against Syria that was used in Libya. This final assault is already producing convulsions across the Middle East and beyond, because the outcome of the struggle will have an explosive impact on the entire region. By comparison, the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was a marginal event. Complex though these developments are, the media’s coverage has been misleadingly simple-minded and one-dimensional, giving the impression that all we are witnessing is a heroic uprising by the Syrian masses against a brutal Baathist police state. This is certainly one aspect of the crisis. Brutal repression is continuous. Death squads roam the streets. Foreign journalists, banned from Syria and reliant on information from the opposition, report this. But manipulation of the media by the opposition is also made easy by the lack of information from the country. Opposition claims, such as one last week that an air force intelligence centre near Damascus had been stormed, are credulously accepted and published, although other accounts suggest that all that happened was that the building was hit by rocket-propelled grenades that scorched its paintwork. The line-up of the Syrian government’s opponents should make it clear to anybody that there is more at stake here than Arab and international concern for human rights. The lead is being taken by Saudi Arabia – its repressive regime one of the few absolute monarchies left on the planet.
• Egypt's turmoil plunges the restive nation toward crisis
  A protester throws a gas canister towards Egyptian riot police near the interior ministry during clashes in downtown Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011. | ASSOCIATED PRESS Hannah Allam and Mohannad Sabry McClatchy Newspapers CAIRO — Egypt plunged deeper into political crisis a week before elections with security forces attacking protesters and torching their tents Sunday amid unrest that appears to be heading toward a second uprising, this time against Egypt’s military rulers.
• Balancing U.S. Policy on an Ally in Transition
  By SCOTT SHANE Published: November 20, 2011 For the United States, the weekend clashes in Cairo crystallized the defining policy quandary of the Arab Spring: how to square contradictory American impulses that include support for democratic change, a desire for stability and wariness of Islamists who have become a potent political force.
• Asia-Pacific: US Ramps Up Global War Agenda
  by Finian Cunningham Global Research, November 17, 2011 Like a schoolyard bully, President Barack Obama is flexing American military muscle as he currently sweeps through the Asia-Pacific region. The nominal impetus for the tour was the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held in Hawaii last week. But rather than discussing “economics” (the E in APEC), the salient focus for Obama and his entourage appears to be “war” – and in particular laying down battle lines to China. Testy relations with China is nothing new for Washington given recent months of US haranguing over trade and finance, but what Obama’s bombast signals is a sinister ramping up of the militarist agenda towards Beijing. As if bouncing underlings and lackeys into his gang, the American president has moved on from Honolulu with stopovers in Australia, Indonesia and elsewhere. Given the primary economic power of China in the hemisphere, it might be thought appropriate for Obama to make a cordial visit to Beijing to discuss partnerships and policies to revive the global economy. But no. The omission of China on this major US tour seems to be a deliberate snub to Beijing and a message to the region: that China is to be isolated and ringfenced. This is the stuff of warmongering writ large. [China confrontation]
• Nuclear Madness: Iran, Kuwait or the IAEA?
  by Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research, November 15, 2011 .“The Public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.” (Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775.) As the sabre rattling against Iran becomes more deafening, week on week, with threats of the nuclear insanity of potentially, deliberately, creating a few Chenobyls or a Fukushima, by bombing working nuclear power plants, another potential nuclear madness is planned, geographically “next door.” The IAEA appears to be behaving in as partisan, shameless way regarding Iran, as it did with Iraq. Then, accusations, with considerable justification, were that the inspection teams were more about spying that neutral observation. “The way back to (the UN) was via Tel Aviv”, remarked one former inspector, memorably. [Territorial disputes] [Iraq] [Kuwait]
• Two dead, hundreds injured as protests rock Egypt
  Egyptian riot police beat a protester during clashes in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Nov. 19, 2011. | AP Hannah Allam and Mohannad Sabry McClatchy Newspapers CAIRO — Anger at Egypt’s ruling military council exploded into hours of fierce clashes in downtown Cairo and other cities Saturday that left two protesters dead and 750 wounded in violence that threatens the landmark elections scheduled to begin in nine days. The battle for the iconic Tahrir Square began mid-morning when security services forcibly cleared the area of activists who tried to camp there in protest of the military council, which critics say is trying to expand its powers and delay the transfer of power to a civilian authority. The protesters had lingered from the previous day, when tens of thousands of Egyptians flooded the square in a peaceful anti-military rally that was dominated by Islamist factions. On Saturday, some Islamist leaders and youth movements sent reinforcements to defend the mostly liberal and leftist protesters after live TV footage showed security personnel firing on them with birdshot and tear-gas canisters.
• Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam faces uncertain future
  View Photo Gallery — ?The former Libyan leader’s favored son was caught on the Niger border as supporters tried to smuggle him out of the country, a Libyan commander said Saturday. By Ayman al-Kekly and Alice Fordham, Updated: Sunday, November 20, 10:53 AM TRIPOLI — Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the favored son of former Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, was arrested on the border with Niger and taken to a mountain city, where he awaits an uncertain fate, militia leaders said Saturday.
• Little enthusiasm ahead of Spanish vote
  By Michael Birnbaum, Published: November 19 | Updated: Sunday, November 20, 12:30 AM MADRID — Spanish voters are set on Sunday to deal historic losses to the ruling Socialists, punishing their leaders for high unemployment and the painful austerity measures that much of Europe has been forced to take. The beneficiaries, Spain’s conservatives, have vowed to pursue the same policies, only more vigorously. [Democracy]
• Isolated Myanmar first pariah state to take up Obama engagement offer; Clinton to visit soon
  By Associated Press, Published: November 19 WASHINGTON — Focusing on Asia and an increasingly assertive China, President Barack Obama finally found a taker Friday for his Inauguration offer to extend a hand to rogue states “if you are willing to unclench your fist.” [China confrontation] [Inversion] [US global strategy]
• The Current Account Surplus Watch
  The Current Account Surplus Watch is a watch list of economies that have consistently large current account surpluses and that do not take adequate measures to reduce their surpluses by stimulating domestic demand or otherwise offset their surpluses with other constructive policies, such as international development assistance. These economies are deemed to pose a threat to the functioning of the global economy, because they subtract demand out of the world economy at a time of weak global aggregate demand and because they pose an obstacle to the adjustment policies deficit economies must undertake to avoid or to get out of financial crises [Decline] [Blame]
• “Everyone Says We are Rich. Then Why Do We Feel So Poor?”
  Bad Moon Rising Over Great Sirte Bay by FRANKLIN LAMB CounterPunch Exclusive Report Sirte, Libya This observer, with his sandaled feet comfortably dug into the sand of a chilly Mediterranean beach and huddled next to a camp fire with a congenial and bright group of still heavily armed “NATO rebels,” is learning that the past eight months’ experiences for many Libyans who fought with or for NATO were rather different from what the western mainstream media portrayed. And what many of us who spent last summer in the Western Libya Gadhafi stronghold were inclined to believe about them. [Libya]
• Egypt Islamists Demand the End of Military Rule
  Amr Nabil/Associated Press Thousands of Egyptians protested in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday against what they say are attempts by the country's military council to hold onto power. More Photos » By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Published: November 18, 2011 CAIRO — Tens of thousands of Islamists jammed Tahrir Square on Friday, demanding the swift exit of Egypt’s interim military rulers in the most significant challenge to their authority since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak nine months ago. The huge turnout was the first time that Egypt’s Islamists had so openly and aggressively challenged military rule, ending an uneasy truce that had prevailed as long as the military appeared willing to allow the Islamists as much of a say in Egypt’s future as they could win at the ballot box. [Media]
• Huge crowds back in Egypt's Tahrir Square to protest military rule
  Mohannad Sabry McClatchy Newspapers CAIRO — Tens of thousands of Egyptians chanting anti-military slogans flooded downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to protest the ruling military council's attempts to expand its powers and prolong the transition to civilian rule. Islamists dominated the demonstration, one of the biggest since the 18-day uprising that brought down longtime President Hosni Mubarak. But the push to curb the army's broad powers also brought out thousands of adherents to secular parties in a rare display of opposition unity.
• Pakistani ambassador offers resignation
  By Karen DeYoung, Published: November 17 | Updated: Friday, November 18, 12:10 AM Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, has offered his resignation to defuse a growing controversy at home that threatens to aggravate already precarious relations between that country’s powerful military and its civilian government. In a letter sent Wednesday to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Haqqani said in an interview, he wrote that “I do not want to be a distraction from the major challenges facing our country and our government.” .The Pakistani government issued no immediate response. Zardari had ordered Haqqani to return home this week for consultations following media reports that his government had asked for American intervention to prevent a military coup after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in May.
• Menu for Today’s Tricky Planet: Use Your Head
  by GABRIEL KOLKO We live in an enigmatic age, far more complex as the years go by and certainly since the disappearance of the Soviet Union in 1991. With the failure of so many reformers avoidance of cynicism about all causes is now an overwhelming challenge. In a sense, it is the refusal to abandon the future to a seemingly inexorable and dismal fate that alone justifies trying to change the world as it is, but we must be aware of past failures and the reasons for them. All this is a starting point [Decline] [Socialism] [Hegemony]
• Pakistan roiled by claims of civilian move against military leaders
  Saeed Shah McClatchy Newspapers KARACHI, Pakistan — Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Washington on Thursday amid a growing clamor here over claims that Pakistan's civilian president had sought U.S. backing against senior military leaders in the wake of the discovery that al Qaida founder Osama bin Laden had been living in Pakistan. The allegations were made last month by a Florida-born businessman and one-time Fox News Channel commentator in an opinion article that appeared in Britain's Financial Times.
• Clinton to become first U.S. secretary of state to visit Burma in 50 years
  By David Nakamura, Friday, November 18, 7:37 PM BALI, Indonesia — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will visit Burma next month, in a thawing of diplomatic ties between the United States and the Southeast Asian nation whose strong-arm government has outraged the West. It would mark the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state in 50 years. President Obama made the announcement Thursday shortly after he began a series of meetings here with Southeast Asian leaders about regional security, including disaster relief. Obama was scheduled to participate in a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose chairmanship recently was awarded to Burma, also known as Myanmar.
• Defectors from Syrian army attack military facilities
  By Liz Sly, Published: November 17 BEIRUT — A rebel attack against a military compound outside Syria’s capital on Wednesday offered the most tangible evidence yet that the country is sliding into armed conflict as regional powers issued an ultimatum for President Bashar al-Assad’s government to stop killing civilians. Although the attack near Damascus does not appear to have been particularly effective, the target was highly symbolic: a compound of the Air Force Intelligence, which is renowned for its pursuit and torture of activists.
• The Afghanistan-Pakistan War at the End of 2011
  Strategic Failure? Talk Without Hope? Tactical Success? Spend Not Build (And Then Stop Spending)? By Anthony H. Cordesman Nov 15, 2011 The US faces hard decisions in the Afghanistan/Pakistan War that are growing steadily harder as the time before transition runs out, the US faces growing budget pressures, and the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan becomes more unstable. The Burke Chair has prepared a report that assesses the chances for strategic success based on new US government, UN, and NGO reporting. [Decline] [AfPak]
• Pentagon: Cyber offense part of U.S. strategy
  By Ellen Nakashima, Published: November 16 The Pentagon is prepared to launch cyberattacks in response to hostile actions that threaten the government, military or U.S. economy, according to a new policy document submitted to Congress this week. [Cyberwar]
• Why doesn't Britain make things any more?
  In the past 30 years, the UK's manufacturing sector has shrunk by two-thirds, the greatest de-industrialisation of any major nation. It was done in the name of economic modernisation – but what has replaced it? Aditya Chakrabortty guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 November 2011 19.59 GMT Before moving to Yale and becoming a bestselling historian, Paul Kennedy grew up on Tyneside in the 50s and 60s. "A world of great noise and much dirt," is how he remembers it, where the chief industry was building ships and his father and uncles were boilermakers in Wallsend. Last year the academic gave a lecture that reminisced a little about those days. "There was a deep satisfaction about making things," he said. "A deep satisfaction among all of those that had supplied the services, whether it was the local bankers with credit; whether it was the local design firms. When a ship was launched at [Newcastle firm] Swan Hunter all the kids at the local school went to see the thing our fathers had put together and when we looked down from the cross-wired fence, tried to find Uncle Mick, Uncle Jim or your dad, this notion of an integrated, productive community was quite astonishing."
  Yet there's ample evidence that the promised rewards of this post-industrial future haven't materialised. What was sold as economic modernisation has led to industrial decay, with too often nothing to replace it.
  The odd thing is that all this techno-utopianism came from men who would struggle to order a book off Amazon. Alistair Campbell tells a story about how Blair got his first-ever mobile phone after stepping down as prime minister in 2007. His first text to Campbell read: "This is amazing, you can send words on a phone." [Decline]
• Clinton’s convoy targeted by Filipino protesters
  By Joby Warrick Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is known for her frequent travel to exotic locales, but her current 10-day swing through Asia has turned out to be unexpectedly colorful. Take, for instance, Wednesday’s paint-bombing of her motorcade in Manila. Clinton was traveling through the Philippine capital when her procession was pelted by a crowd of youthful demonstrators protesting their government’s military ties to the United States. At least one paint balloon landed on the lead vehicle, splashing red pigment all over the windshield and hood. Other protesters got close enough to the armored cars to kick them, according to images captured by news photographers. [Anti-Americanism] [Bases]
• Obama visits Australia to announce expanded U.S. military presence
  By David Nakamura, Published: November 15 HONOLULU — President Obama will touch down on Australian soil for the first time Wednesday morning for a whirlwind two-day visit that the administration will use to unveil an expanded military presence that is part of its shifting focus on security in the Asian Pacific region. During a stop at a military facility in Darwin, in Australia's remote Northern Territory, Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard are expected to announce a plan to allow U.S. Marines to use local bases for training and amphibious exercises. [Bases] [China confrontation]
• HASC Readiness Chair Pushes Panetta for AirSea Info
  By Colin Clark Published: November 14, 2011 Text Size 121150 Capitol Hill: If you were to boil down a letter from Rep. Randy Forbes to Defense Secretary Leon about AirSea Battle, you might put in three words: Where's the money? In a very polite Nov. 7 letter, Forbes asks Panetta how he planned to "make Congress part of" the process of implementing AirSea Battle. "More specifically, what is the overall fiscal program required to support the basic concept,"wrote Forbes, chair of the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee. Forbes tells Panetta he "would appreciate a brief to better understand" AirSea Battle, a sentiment many outside the Pentagon (and perhaps inside as well) share. While Forbes' epistle doesn't read as if he's very frustrated -- yet -- his letter does begin by carefully noting that no member of Congress has yet been briefed on the AirSea Battle concept "or in any way made part of the process." That sounds similar to complaints from HASC Republicans throughout the Gates' era that they were not getting information from the Pentagon -- especially budget information. If the Pentagon doesn't move soon and brief lawmakers, I bet we'll see this language ratchet up. If AirSea Battle is as important as the senior military leadership seems to think, they would do worse than bringing sympathetic lawmakers on board. [AirSea Battle] [China confrontation]
• Russia's High Stakes Energy Geopolitics
  Nord Stream, the huge Russian-German pipeline project, began delivering gas to the EU by F. William Engdahl Global Research, November 14, 2011 engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net On November 7 the first of two pipelines for Nord Stream, the huge Russian-German gas pipeline project, began delivery of gas. The event was no minor affair. German Chancellor Merkel and Russian President Medvedev along with the prime ministers of France and the Netherlands and the EU Energy Commissioner formally opened the first of two 1224-kilometre pipelines at Lubmin in northern Germany, beginning delivery of the first gas direct from Russia’s Yuzhno-Russkoye gas field in Siberia to Germany. Nord Stream was not cheap. It cost a total of more than $12 billion for the complex 760 mile long undersea pipeline through the Baltic Sea from Vyborg near Russia's St Petersburg to north eastern Germany. It was laid in remarkable time and with extraordinary environmental precautions to insure protection of sea life, a precondition set by several EU Baltic countries. When the second pipeline is finished in late 2012, Nord Stream will be able to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas a year, almost ten percent the entire EU annual gas consumption, or roughly one third the entire current gas consumption of China.
• Is Iraq edging closer toward partition?
  Jaffar Al-Rikabi, 15 November 2011 Just as the final U.S. troops are withdrawing, and just as the world’s attention is diverted on Syria and elsewhere, Iraq may steal the limelight a final time and bow and declare: before long, she may not be anymore. About the authorEducated at Oxford and Georgetown Universities, Jaffar Al-Rikabi is a researcher in Middle East politics and economicsIn recent years, it has not been custom for Iraq to be left in the shadows. A controversial U.S.-led war in 2003, and tumultuous years of post-war transition and strife kept Iraq at the top of the Middle East’s news agenda for a remarkable number of years. But as Iraqi security improved from 2008 onwards, and as foreign direct investment began to pour in from 2010, a Tunisian street vendor by the name of Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight. A wave of revolutions outside Iraq was hence born, dominating 2011 headlines. With dramatic protests calling for freedom and democracy being brutally oppressed nearby, much smaller Iraqi ones calling on elected politicians to provide better services and less sleaze seemed tame in comparison. Almost overnight, Iraq appeared as one of the more stable countries in the region. But appearances are often deceptive, and while events in Syria dominated this weekend’s headlines, Iraq’s relegation from the limelight might yet prove temporary. [Iraq] [Fragmentation]
• The Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis Back Again
  Commentary No. 317, Nov. 15, 2011 It always amazes me how the world's politicians and media spend most of their energy debating geopolitical prospects that are not going to happen, while ignoring major developments that are happening. Here is a list of the most important coming non-events that we have been loudly debating and analyzing: Israel is not going to bomb Iran. The euro is not going to disappear. Outside powers are not going to engage in military action inside Syria. The upsurge of worldwide popular unrest is not going to fade away. Meanwhile, to minimal serious coverage in the media and on the internet, the Nord Stream was inaugurated in Lubmin on Germany's Baltic Coast on Nov. 8 in the presence of Pres. Medvedev of Russia and the prime ministers of Germany, France, and the Netherlands, plus the director of Gazprom, Russia's gas exporter, and the European Union's Energy Commissioner. This is a geopolitical game-changer, unlike all the widely discussed non-events that are not going to happen. What is Nord Stream? Very simply, it is a gas pipeline that has been laid in the Baltic Sea, going from Vyborg near St. Petersburg in Russia to Lubmin near the Polish border in Germany without passing through any other country. From Germany, it can proceed to France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Great Britain, and other eager buyers of Russia's gas. Nord Stream is an arrangement between private enterprises with the blessing of their respective governments. Russia's Gazprom owns 51%, two German companies 31%, and 9% each for one French and one Dutch company. The proportional investments (and the potential profits) are all private. The key element in this arrangement is that the pipeline does not pass through Poland or any Baltic state or Belorussia or Ukraine. So, all these countries not only lose whatever transit fees they could charge but cannot use their intermediary location to hold up supplies of gas to western Europe while they negotiate deals with Russia.
• The contradictions of the Arab Spring
  The spirit of 1968 flows through Arab Spring and Occupy movement - as its counter-current attempts to suppress uprising. Immanuel Wallerstein Last Modified: 14 Nov 2011 13:08 The turmoil in Arab countries that is called the Arab Spring is conventionally said to have been sparked by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in a small village of Tunisia on December 17, 2010. The massive sympathy this act aroused led, in a relatively short time, to the destitution of Tunisia's president and then to that of Egypt's president. In very quick order thereafter, the turmoil spread to virtually every Arab state and is still continuing. Most of the analyses we read in the media or on the internet neglect the fundamental contradiction of this phenomenon - that the so-called Arab Spring is composed of two quite different currents, going in radically different directions. One current is the heir of the world-revolution of 1968. The "1968 current" might better be called the "second Arab revolt".
• Australia could be caught in Sino-US crossfire
  (Global Times)09:15, November 16, 2011 US President Barack Obama arrived in Australia today for a long-delayed visit. It is reported that Obama is going to announce an expanded US military presence in Australia. The move is widely seen as a renewal of the US-Australia alliance to keep China in check. It is also interpreted as a choice made by Australia between the US and China, the two largest Asia-Pacific powers. Prime Minister Julia Gillard refuted the interpretation Tuesday, saying that "it is well and truly possible for us, in this growing region of the world, to have an ally in the US and to have deep friendships in our region, including with China." Nevertheless, both Chinese and Australian media outlets know that this is merely diplomatic parlance. Some Australians worry that this unfriendly move will harm their country's relationship with China, its largest trade partner. [China confrontation] [Subordinate]
• Prison for ex-U.N. official Scott Ritter in Monroe sex sting case
  Former weapons inspector gets up to 5½ years By Andrew Scott Pocono Record Writer October 27, 2011 "Hold your head up high," Marina Ritter told her husband, Scott Ritter, as he stood to address the court Wednesday shortly before being sentenced to 18 to 66 months in state prison. "I stand before you as a man," said the former United Nations chief weapons inspector, convicted by a jury in April of illegally contacting what appeared to be a 15-year-old girl in an online adult chat room and then exposing himself on a webcam. Deemed a sexually violent predator by the Pennsylvania Sexual Offender Assessment Board, Ritter, 50, of Delmar, N.Y., stood tall with his hands folded in front of him and paused to collect his thoughts before addressing the court
• Only Washington Remains Clueless: The Passing of the Postwar Era
  by ANDREW BACEVICH In every aspect of human existence, change is a constant. Yet change that actually matters occurs only rarely. Even then, except in retrospect, genuinely transformative change is difficult to identify. By attributing cosmic significance to every novelty and declaring every unexpected event a revolution, self-assigned interpreters of the contemporary scene — politicians and pundits above all — exacerbate the problem of distinguishing between the trivial and the non-trivial. Did 9/11 “change everything”? For a brief period after September 2001, the answer to that question seemed self-evident: of course it did, with massive and irrevocable implications. A mere decade later, the verdict appears less clear. Today, the vast majority of Americans live their lives as if the events of 9/11 had never occurred. When it comes to leaving a mark on the American way of life, the likes of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have long since eclipsed Osama bin Laden. (Whether the legacies of Jobs and Zuckerberg will prove other than transitory also remains to be seen.) Anyone claiming to divine the existence of genuinely Big Change Happening Now should, therefore, do so with a sense of modesty and circumspection, recognizing the possibility that unfolding events may reveal a different story. All that said, the present moment is arguably one in which the international order is, in fact, undergoing a fundamental transformation. The “postwar world” brought into existence as a consequence of World War II is coming to an end. A major redistribution of global power is underway. Arrangements that once conferred immense prerogatives upon the United States, hugely benefiting the American people, are coming undone. In Washington, meanwhile, a hidebound governing class pretends that none of this is happening, stubbornly insisting that it’s still 1945 with the so-called American Century destined to continue for several centuries more (reflecting, of course, God’s express intentions). [Decline] [Governance] [US_Election12]
• Iranian missile architect dies in blast. But was explosion a Mossad mission?
  Tehran says blast that killed 17 and rattled windows 30 miles away was an accident Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 November 2011 21.14 GMT Article history Iranians carry honorary coffins and pictures of Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the Revolutionary Guards commander killed in the military base blast. Photograph: Reuters The blast at the Alghadir missile base at Bid Ganeh was so powerful it rattled windows 30 miles away in Tehran. Witnesses said it sounded like a huge bomb had been dropped. Seventeen of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were killed, among them a man described his peers as the "architect" of the country's missile programme, Major General Hassan Moghaddam. The dead were buried with full state honours yesterday, and in a reflection of the extent of Iran's loss, the funeral was attended by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The official account insisted the blast was an accident, but a source with close links to Iran's clerical regime blamed it on an operation by the Mossad, bolstering other reports of involvement by Israel's intelligence and special operations organisation that were attributed to western intelligence services. [Assassination] [Subcritical]
• US rule may crumple under its own weight
  Global Times | November 15, 2011 02:05 By Global Times Public opinion in the US concerns every detail of the Obama administration's China policy, including its "tough" stance that has seemingly become political mainstream. In fact, a deliberately "tough" US is unnecessary since China has never doubted the country's power. Instead, it is Americans and Europeans that seem to believe more in the decline of the US. The national strength of the US will remain first and foremost for a long time. However, this has led to over-confidence since the Cold War. Some in the US have forgotten that no empire lasts forever, and believe that superior firepower, a strong economy and unmatched soft power will lead to perpetual dominance status. US never express the intention to "rule the world," but its desire to be the world leader is obvious. US public opinion cannot bear any small country going against Washington's will. The stronger it becomes, the more obscure the line between "leading the world" and "ruling the world" becomes. [Decline] [Agency]
• Violence Is Not Solution to Crisis of Capitalism: KCNA Commentary
  Pyongyang, November 14 (KCNA) -- The way of capitalist countries countering the worldwide anti-Wall Street demos is not in accordance with common sense. The United States, styling itself model of "freedom" and "democracy", and other capitalist countries treat with violence the protest actions of the working masses who have turned out in demonstrations for their vital rights. In the U.S. alone, the police violently cracked down upon the protestors and took away a lot of them in Columbia Special District, Chicago, Huston, Oregon and Texas. [Capitalism]
• Florida Sen. Nelson denies taking political donation from Israel critic
  Mark Caputo McClatchy Newspapers In a sign of the fight for the Jewish vote, Sen. Bill Nelson’s campaign is embroiled in a whodunit over a political contribution made by an Islamic activist who has branded Israel a “terrorist state.” Nelson’s campaign says it rejected a $500 donation made at an Oct. 22 fundraiser by activist Ahmed Bedier due to his strident criticisms of Israel. But Bedier said he never gave the contribution in the first place. So nothing was rejected. The host of the event, Ocala pharmacist Manal Fakhoury, said Bedier is telling the truth. “He did not give money,” said Fakhoury, who held the fundraiser for 60 people at her home. “I saw the list’’ of donors. Regardless of who’s telling the truth, the controversy exposes the tightrope politicians walk when they even appear with Islamic activists in a state with a strong and influential Jewish population, which leans heavily Democratic. Republicans have been feverishly trying to turn more Jewish support to the GOP, claiming Democrats are too soft (sic) on Israel. [US_election12] [Israel]
• Gathering at the Wake for Western Dominance
  Niall Ferguson, the Harvard history and business professor. By MICHIKO KAKUTANI Published: November 14, 2011 In his 2003 book, “Empire,” which was published here in the immediate wake of the United States-led invasion of Iraq, the popular British historian Niall Ferguson argued that the United States was “an empire in denial” and was “capable of playing an imperial role” in the world today, much the way Britain once did, in the 19th century. [Decline]
• On Libya, Herman Cain has his own ‘oops’ moment
  By Krissah Thompson and Aaron C. Davis, This time the subject was Libya. The candidate was Herman Cain. The question was whether he agreed with the way President Obama handled the matter. The answer, drawn out over more than five awkward minutes, produced another “oops” moment in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. When asked the question by the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling, closed his eyes and said, “Okay, Libya.” He then searched his thoughts for 11 seconds before asking whether Obama supported the removal of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, who was captured and killed in October, seven months after Obama made the decision to try to oust him. Cain said he did not “agree with the way he handled it for the following reason.” “Um, nope that’s a different one,” he then said, waving away his thought. Cain fidgeted in his chair, searched the ceiling again and adjusted his suit jacket before allowing, “I gotta go back, see, got all this stuff twirling around in my head.” His answer, which was videotaped and went viral online and on cable TV almost immediately, was reminiscent of the painfully long 53 seconds that Texas Gov. Rick Perry spent at a candidates debate last week trying to remember the name of a federal agency he would eliminate if elected. Perry, unable to pull the Energy Department from his mind, gave up with an “oops.” [Decline] [Governance] [US_election12]
• New Libyan army members deployed to settle tribal feud
  Text Size PrintE-mailReprints By Rami Al-Shaheibi, Tuesday, November 15, 4:58 PM TRIPOLI, Libya — Hundreds of uniformed men described as members of a new Libyan army have been deployed for the first time to settle a bloody feud between rival militias, officials said Monday. The soldiers, wearing beige camouflage uniforms and ID badges, were sent to serve as a buffer between gunmen from the city of Zawiya and the nearby tribal area of Warshefana. Four days of fighting, the most sustained since the capture and killing of Moammar Gadhafi last month, had claimed at least 13 lives. The violence raised questions about the ability of Libya’s interim leaders to restore order after eight months of civil war. [Libya] [Fragmentation][Pacification]
• Thinking outside the Cold War nuclear box
  By Walter Pincus, Tuesday, November 15, 1:25 PM Further reductions in nuclear weapons beyond those agreed to in the New START agreement with Russia are being discussed within the Obama administration as part of the Defense Department review of future spending. Maybe it is time for thinking outside what is still a Cold War nuclear box, which focuses on the United States having enough secure nuclear weapons to deter some other country from using theirs against America or its allies, today or in the future. [Nuclear weapons] [US global strategy]
• Huge blast kills 17 at Iran's Revolutionary Guards base
  Global Times | November 14, 2011 02:04 A massive explosion at a military arms depot near the Iranian capital Tehran on Saturday killed 17 Revolutionary Guards and wounded 15, a spokesman for the elite fighting force told the semi-official Fars News Agency. [Subcritical]
• Fact checking the South Carolina debate
  By Glenn Kessler View Photo Gallery:?The leading GOP candidates for president accused President Obama of not being forceful enough to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. The GOP candidates met for a debate Saturday night sponsored by CBS and the National Journal, with a specific focus on foreign policy and national security. In foreign policy, there is often no right or wrong answer; the results of a policy are often ambiguous and its effectiveness is usually only determined by history. Still, there were a number of statements made by the candidates that were factually challenged, exaggerated or lacking context. [US election] [Exceptionalism]
• Five myths about J. Edgar Hoover
  By Kenneth D. Ackerman, Published: November 10 Dead almost 40 years, J. Edgar Hoover returns to the spotlight as the Clint Eastwood biopic “J. Edgar” opens in theaters this week. Hoover served as director of the FBI for 48 years, holding the job under eight presidents from Calvin Coolidge to Richard M. Nixon. But ask most people about J. Edgar Hoover, and the subject turns to sex. Let’s separate fact from fiction in Hoover’s legacy.
• Egypt’s military guards its own power
  By Leila Fadel, Published: November 13 CAIRO — Two weeks before parliamentary elections billed as a first big step toward democracy, there are new signs that the generals ruling Egypt are trying to steer the transition to preserve their vast political and economic power. A widening circle of critics say that new proposals from Egypt’s ruling military council suggest that the generals are backing away from a pledge to quickly hand over authority to elected leaders. They note that guidelines put in place by the generals have prolonged the transition to democracy, allowing them to stay in place as de facto rulers until after presidential elections that could be held as late as 2013.
• Armed clashes intensify in divided Tripoli
  By Alice Fordham, Published: November 13 TRIPOLI, Libya — Escalating clashes between militia groups near Tripoli have killed several fighters over three days, amid growing concerns about rivalries between the heavily armed rebels who control overlapping areas in and around the Libyan capital. “There is a big fight now, a new front,” said a fighter from the western city of Zawiyah, who was positioning a rocket on a flatbed truck at the side of the main road 16 miles west of Tripoli. “We are fighting the Wershifanna tribe. There are remnants of Gaddafi people among them.” [Fragmentation]
• Israel vs Iran: the regional blowback
  Paul Rogers, 11 November 2011 The prospect of an Israeli military assault on Iran's nuclear assets is growing. The scale and impact of any attack would be far greater than most observers expect. The pre-publication hype surrounding the new report on Iran's nuclear ambitions from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) indicated that the conclusions would be definitive. In light of it, the document - released on 9 November 2011 - is rather cautious. It does claim that Iran has made sustained efforts to develop nuclear-warhead technology, though many of these occurred in the early 2000s and there is little hard evidence of what is happening now. It is the link between the weapons research and two other factors that makes the case for revisiting Iran's nuclear ambitions.
• The New Progressive Movement
  By JEFFREY D. SACHS OCCUPY WALL STREET and its allied movements around the country are more than a walk in the park. They are most likely the start of a new era in America. Historians have noted that American politics moves in long swings. We are at the end of the 30-year Reagan era, a period that has culminated in soaring income for the top 1 percent and crushing unemployment or income stagnation for much of the rest. The overarching challenge of the coming years is to restore prosperity and power for the 99 percent. Thirty years ago, a newly elected Ronald Reagan made a fateful judgment: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” Taxes for the rich were slashed, as were outlays on public services and investments as a share of national income. Only the military and a few big transfer programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ benefits were exempted from the squeeze. Reagan’s was a fateful misdiagnosis. He completely overlooked the real issue — the rise of global competition in the information age — and fought a bogeyman, the government. Decades on, America pays the price of that misdiagnosis, with a nation singularly unprepared to face the global economic, energy and environmental challenges of our time. [Decline] [Governance]
• Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal
  A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist. The U.S. searched Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, including smallpox, after the 2003 invasion. None were found. But fears that other rogue states might hold smallpox are part of the reason the U.S. entered into a $433-million contract for an experimental drug. (Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times / November 13, 2011) Reporting from Washington— Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor. When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company's financial demands, senior officials replaced the government's lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show. When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing. [Corruption] [cbw]
• The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen
  Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt George Monbiot guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 November 2011 20.30 GMT Illustration by Daniel Pudles If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes. [Inequality]
• Obama’s Influential Mideast Envoy to Resign
  By MARK LANDLER WASHINGTON — Dennis B. Ross, a seasoned diplomat who has been one of President Obama’s most influential advisers on Iran and the Middle East, announced Thursday that he would leave the White House, at a time when Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are frozen and tensions over Iran are flaring up anew. Mr. Ross, who disclosed his departure at a lunch with Jewish leaders, said he promised his wife that he would leave the government after two years. He joined the State Department in February 2009 as a senior adviser on Iran before moving to the National Security Council that June. “Even by Middle Eastern terms, when you say two years and you’re heading into four, that’s a stretch,” Mr. Ross said in an interview. His resignation, six months after that of Mr. Obama’s special envoy, George J. Mitchell, leaves the White House with a much-diminished bench on the Middle East, symbolizing how much the peace process has faded since the president proclaimed it would be one of his chief foreign policy goals. [Middle East] [US global strategy] [Strategic paralysis]
• US embassy cables: New UN chief is 'director general of all states, but in agreement with us'
  reddit this guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 December 2010 20.48 GMT Article history Friday, 16 October 2009, 16:12 C O N F I D E N T I A L UNVIE VIENNA 000478 SIPDIS FOR T, IO, ISN, EAP, AND INR/B DOE FOR NA-20, NE-6 NSC FOR SAMORE, SCHEINMAN, HOLGATE, CONNERY NRC FOR OIP TOKYO FOR PEKO EO 12958 DECL: 10/15/2019 TAGS AORC, PREL, KNNP, IAEA SUBJECT: IAEA: AMANO READY FOR PRIME TIME REF: A. STATE 91301 B. UNVIE 472 C. UNVIE 476 Classified By: Ambassador Glyn Davies, reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) Summary The incoming head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assures the US that he agrees with the US on "every key strategic decision", including Iran. Key passages highlighted in yellow Read related article 1. (SBU) In several meetings with USG officials before he departed Vienna at the end of the IAEA General Conference, DG-designate Amano displayed remarkable congruence of views with us on conducting the Agency's missions in safeguards verification, nuclear security, and promoting peaceful uses of the atom as well as on reforming Agency management. Latest information from the Japanese Mission is that Amano will return to Vienna in late November and occupy an office in the IAEA during his final, intensive preparation to assume office December 1. This report responds directly to instruction ref A. End Summary. DG of All States, But in Agreement with Us [UNUS] [IAEA]
• He’s No Bill Clinton!
  by ALEXANDER COCKBURN As he prepares to follow Gov. Rick Perry into the oubliette of campaign history Herman Cain can at least console himself that as an alleged harasser of women, his was certainly a classier act than that of a man who not only got elected president in 1992 but was triumphantly reelected in 1996, each time by about 45 million Americans armed with the knowledge that if you left your wife at the next table to Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas in Macdonald’s, by the time you got back from ordering more fries Bill would be ensconced in your seat, his hand already hovering above your wife’s thigh. [US elections] [Corruption]
• Failed Afghan road project shows difficulties of U.S. rebuilding effort
  In this July 2009 photograph, an Afghan construction crew works on a planned 17.5-mile, U.S.-funded road in Ghazni province. After only two-thirds of a mile was paved in three years, U.S. officials terminated the contract in October 2011, having spent $4 million. | U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team, Ghazni/MCT Shashank Bengali McClatchy Newspapers GHAZNI, Afghanistan — Heading back from a remote section of Ghazni province in September, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Tristan Rizzi radioed his base in eastern Afghanistan and said he wanted to take a slight detour. Rizzi had his Chinook helicopter fly over the site of a long-stalled, U.S.-financed road project on which the Afghan contractors had pledged repeatedly to resume work. From the air, Rizzi saw a vacant site and no sign of the contractors. Once on the ground, he dialed one of them from a cellphone and asked where they were. The contractor said they were working on the road — to which Rizzi replied, "No, you're not." Two weeks later, alleging corruption and theft, U.S. officials in Ghazni terminated the $10 million road contract, pulling the plug on a closely watched infrastructure project in this strategic province and putting themselves at odds with a powerful governor who coalition forces had hoped would be a key ally. [Decline] [AfPak] [Corruption] [Incompetence]
• Russia slams IAEA report on Iran as ‘biased’
  Moscow lashed out at the IAEA’s latest report on Iran Wednesday, saying it undermines the international effort to defuse tensions around the Islamic republic’s nuclear program and holds it guilty without cause. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report does not contain any new data but is “a compilation of known facts that have been purposely twisted and given a political slant,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on its website. “The authors juggle the facts to create the impression that Iran’s nuclear program has a military component,” the statement said. “This approach can hardly be called professional and unbiased.” [IAEA] [Iran] [UNUS]
• The Pentagon's Secret Plans to Secure Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal
  Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011 By Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder By hiding its nuclear weapons from Washington, Pakistan has made them much more vulnerable to jihadists. In response, the Pentagon has devised secret plans to secure the Pakistani arsenal -- by force if necessary (see GSN, Nov. 8). (Nov. 9) - A Pakistani nuclear-capable Ghauri missile lifts off in a 2008 trial. The United States has developed an undisclosed blueprint for securing Pakistan's nuclear weapons against extremists, potentially by force (AP Photo/Interservices Public Relations). Shortly after Navy SEALs raided the Pakistani city of Abbottabad in May and killed Osama bin Laden, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani chief of army staff, spoke with Khalid Kidwai, the retired lieutenant general in charge of securing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Kidwai, who commands a security apparatus called [Seizure]
• Leveraging hip hop in US foreign policy
  Diplomats and officials use the music of the oppressed to connect with disaffected Muslim youth. Hishaam Aidi Last Modified: 07 Nov 2011 17:42 The US government wants to improve its tarnished image abroad by sending out 'hip hop envoys' [GALLO/GETTY] In April 2010, the US State Department sent a rap group named Chen Lo and The Liberation Family to perform in Damascus, Syria. Following Chen Lo's performance, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton was asked by CBS News about US diplomacy's recent embrace of hip hop. "Hip hop is America," she said, noting that rap and other musical forms could help "rebuild the image" of the United States. "You know it may be a little bit hopeful, because I can't point to a change in Syrian policy because Chen Lo and the Liberation Family showed up. But I think we have to use every tool at our disposal." The State Department began using hiphop as a tool in the mid-2000s, when, in the wake of Abu Ghraib and the resurgence of the Taliban, Karen Hughes, then undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, launched an initiative called Rhythm Road. The programme was modelled on the jazz diplomacy initiative of the Cold War era, except that in the "War on Terror", hip hop would play the central role of countering "poor perceptions" of the US. In 2005, the State Department began sending "hip hop envoys" - rappers, dancers, DJs - to perform and speak in different parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The tours have since covered the broad arc of the Muslim world, with performances taking place in Senegal and Ivory Coast, across North Africa, the Levant and Middle East, and extending to Mongolia, Pakistan and Indonesia. The artists stage performances and hold workshops; those hip hop ambassadors who are Muslims talk to local media about being Muslim in the US. The tours aim not only to exhibit the integration of American Muslims, but also, according to planners, to promote democracy and foster dissent.
  Hip hop activists have long been concerned about how to protect their music from corporate power, but now that the music is being used in diplomacy and counterterrorism, the conversation is shifting. The immensely popular "underground" British rapper Lowkey (Kareem Denis) recently articulated the question on many minds: "Hip hop at its best has exposed power, challenged power, it hasn't served power. When the US government loves the same rappers you love, whose interests are those rappers serving?" [Public diplomacy] [Image] [Subversion]
• Who's in favour of sanctioning Iran?
  Washington's attempts to isolate Iran might pave the road to a new conflict in the Middle East. Jasmin Ramsey Last Modified: 09 Nov 2011 11:37 The US alleged that Iran was involved in the plot, despite considerable holes in the evidence presented [EPA] Not two months after the US' highest-ranking military officer repeated calls for diplomacy with Iran, a key congressional committee approved two bills that would impose the severest sanctions that we've seen yet. Among their draconian measures is a last minute revision that would make it illegal for US officials to even speak to Iranian officials unless the president issues a special waiver and provides congress with a 15-day notice. Obstructions to diplomacy and increasingly harsh moves against Iran recall the lead-up to the Iraq war, which was preceded by waves of sanctions and alarmist rhetoric justifying a pre-emptive strike. Not coincidentally, as the war drums in Israel and the US grow louder, "crippling" sanctions against Iran seem like a peaceful alternative. The mainstreaming of this idea has also resulted in less scrutiny of those who have been pushing for sanctions, resulting in a concealed playing field that continues to tilt in favour of the hawks. Now, as the already muted debate about sanctions is shifting to talk of far more militant measures, the balance of power in this tremendously uneven political landscape must be highlighted. [Sanctions] [Iran]
• IAEA's "Soviet Nuclear Scientist" Never Worked on Weapons
  By Gareth Porter* WASHINGTON, Nov 9, 2011 (IPS) - The report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published by a Washington think tank Tuesday repeated the sensational claim previously reported by news media all over the world that a former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist had helped Iran construct a detonation system that could be used for a nuclear weapon. But it turns out that the foreign expert, who is not named in the IAEA report but was identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko, is not a nuclear weapons scientist but one of the top specialists in the world in the production of nanodiamonds by explosives. In fact, Danilenko, a Ukrainian, has worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career and is considered one of the pioneers in the development of nanodiamond technology, as published scientific papers confirm. It now appears that the IAEA and David Albright, the director of the International Institute for Science and Security in Washington, who was the source of the news reports about Danilenko, never bothered to check the accuracy of the original claim by an unnamed "Member State" on which the IAEA based its assertion about his nuclear weapons background. [Disinformation] [Iran]
• Engineer says suspected nuclear site in Syria was built for cotton manufacturing
  By Associated Press, Thursday, November 10, 7:02 AM WASHINGTON — A German engineer says a Syrian industrial complex suspected of being part of a secret nuclear weapons program was not built for anything other than producing textiles. In an interview, Jurgen Grobe detailed his work in the early 1980s as chief engineer on the facility in the Syrian city of Al-Hasakah, which he said was completed in 1981. The Associated Press reported last week that investigators at the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency had asked Syria for information about the facility. .Officials said the complex closely matches plans that the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, A.Q. Khan, sold to Libya. But Grobe’s information suggests that the facility was completed before Khan is believed to have been involved in the nuclear black market. Details from an interview with Grobe by a German journalist were first published on the blog Arms Control Wonk. [Disinformation]
• The Pentagon-Arab Spring love story
  By Pepe Escobar Anyone who hoped the Arab Spring might eventually take over the Persian Gulf and those lands once known as Arabia Felix has enough reason to drown in sadness. The Arab counter-revolution is stronger than ever - led by the House of Saud and its monarchy minions at the Gulf Counter-revolution Club (GCC), officially known as Gulf Cooperation Council. And their most precious ally is the Pentagon.
• U.S. Withdrawal and Defeat in Iraq
  by Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 316, Nov. 1, 2011 It is now official. All uniformed U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011. There are two major ways of describing this. One is by President Obama, who says that he is thereby keeping an electoral promise he made in 2008. The second is by the Republican presidential candidates, who have condemned Obama for not doing what they say the U.S. military wanted, which is to keep some U.S. troops there after Dec. 31 as "trainers" to the Iraqi military. According to Mitt Romney, Obama's decision was either "the result of naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government." Both statements are nonsense, and merely represent self-justifying arguments for the American electorate. Obama tried his hardest, and in total conjunction with the U.S. military commanders and the Pentagon, to keep U.S. troops there after Dec. 31. He failed, not because of ineptitude, but because the Iraqi political leaders forced the U.S. troops to leave. The withdrawal marks the culmination of the U.S. defeat in Iraq, one comparable to the U.S. defeat in Vietnam.
  No one should be surprised if, after the next Iraqi elections, the prime minister will be Muqtada al-Sadr. Neither the United States nor Iran will be overjoyed. [Iraq] [Decline]
• Clinton credited with key role in success of NATO airstrikes, Libyan rebels
  By Joby Warrick, Published: October 31 TRIPOLI, Libya — At 5:45 p.m. on March 19, three hours before the official start of the air campaign over Libya, four French Rafale jet fighters streaked across the Mediterranean coastline to attack a column of tanks heading toward the rebel city of Benghazi. The jets quickly obliterated their targets — and in doing so nearly upended the international alliance coming to Benghazi’s rescue. France’s head start on the air war infuriated Italy’s prime minister, who accused Paris of upstaging NATO. Silvio Berlusconi warned darkly of cutting access to Italian air bases vital to the alliance’s warplanes. .“It nearly broke up the coalition,” said a European diplomat who had a front-row seat to the events and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters between allies. Yet the rift was quickly patched, thanks to a frenzied but largely unseen lobbying effort that kept the coalition from unraveling in its opening hours. “That,” the diplomat said, “was Hillary.” Seven months later, with longtime U.S. nemesis Moammar Gaddafi dead and Libya’s onetime rebels now in charge, the coalition air campaign has emerged as a foreign policy success for the Obama administration and its most famous Cabinet member, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. [Libya] [Imperialism] [Subordinate] [Outsourcing]
• Clinton: Libya showed U.S. leadership to be ‘essential’
  Published: October 31 Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sat down with The Washington Post to reflect on the campaign that helped lead to the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi. Here are some highlights: Clinton’s role:?U.S. officials and key allies are offering a detailed new defense of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s pivotal role in the approach that led to Moammar Gaddafi’s fall — both within a divided Cabinet and a fragile, assembled-on-the-fly international alliance. .On Gaddafi’s defeat as a vindication of Obama administration policy: “I do think that we set into motion a policy that was on the right side of history, on the right side of our values, on the right side of our strategic interests in the region. And it turned out to have brought about the result that we thought it would in a relatively short period of time. .?.?. [Imperialism] [Subordinate] [Libya] [Outsourcing]
• What Will Qaddafi’s Death Teach Our Enemies?
  October 20, 2011 10:50 A.M. By Clifford D. May With Qaddafi gone, will Libyans put down their arms, clear the rubble, organize a decent government, and use the oil wealth that lies under the desert sands to rebuild? One can hope. Few bookmakers would give odds. Qaddafi was not America’s friend, but the vision of U.S. troops pulling Saddam Hussein from a spider hole in Iraq did persuade him that having America as an enemy was not smart. So he gave up his drive to develop nuclear weapons and coughed up useful intelligence on how that project had been organized. He stopped financing terrorism — as far as we’re aware. He did continue oppressing his own people. Both the Bush and the Obama administrations pretty much gave him a pass on that. If the Great Arab Revolt — “Arab Spring” is a hopeful, not descriptive term — ends up only removing Qaddafi and, from neighboring Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, a despot who was, nonetheless, a reasonably pliant client of the U.S., and if Iran’s theocrats remain in power and manage to save the Assad dynasty in Syria while continuing to use Hezbollah to control Lebanon and sponsoring Hamas in Gaza, the lesson will be clear: It is more dangerous to be America’s ally than its enemy. Such a lesson will carry long-term strategic consequences. If there are strategic planners in the current administration, now would be a good time for them to start worrying. [Libya] [Renege] [Client]
• America's Endless Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
  by Jack A. Smith Global Research, October 25, 2011 The 10th anniversary of Washington's invasion, occupation and seemingly endless war in Afghanistan was observed Oct. 7, but despite President Barack Obama's pledge to terminate the U.S. "combat mission" by the end of 2014, American military involvement will continue many years longer. The Afghan war is expanding even further, not only with increasing drone attacks in neighboring Pakistani territory but because of U.S. threats to take far greater unilateral military action within Pakistan unless the Islamabad government roots out "extremists" and cracks down harder on cross-border fighters. Washington's tone was so threatening that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to assure the Pakistani press Oct. 21 that the U.S. did not plan a ground offensive against Pakistan. The next day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai shocked Washington by declaring "God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan.... If Pakistan is attacked and if the people of Pakistan needs Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.” At the same time, Washington has just suffered a spectacular setback in Iraq, where the Obama Administration has been applying extraordinary pressure on the Baghdad government for over a year to permit many thousands of U.S. troops to remain indefinitely after all American forces are supposed to withdraw at the end of this year. President Obama received the Iraqi government's rejection from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki Oct. 21, and promptly issued a public statement intended to completely conceal the fact that a long-sought U.S. goal has just been obliterated, causing considerable disruption to U.S. plans. Obama made a virtue of necessity by stressing that "Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year." This article will first discuss the situation in Afghanistan after 10 years, then take up the Iraq question and what the U.S. may do to compensate for a humiliating and disruptive rebuff. The United States is well aware it will never win a decisive victory in Afghanistan. At this point, the Obama Administration is anxious to convert the military stalemate into a form of permanent truce, if only the Taliban were willing to accept what amounts to a power sharing deal that would allow Washington to claim the semblance of success after a decade of war. [US global strategy] [AfPak] [Bases]
• Politicians' best microphone gaffes
  Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama are the latest politicians embarrassed by a microphone picking up more than it should Luc Torres guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 November 2011 16.42 GMT Article history Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama were overheard discussing Binyamin Netanyahu – in none too flattering terms – at the G20 summit. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/EPA It is the politician's ultimate nightmare: the rude aside meant only for the ears of a colleague or aide caught on an open microphone and broadcast to the assembled press pack. Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama have become the latest high-profile victims of the genre when they were heard discussing the merits of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, in a supposedly private moment at the G20 summit in Cannes last week. "I cannot stand him. He's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama. The US president responded by saying: "You're fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day."
• What will decide the fate of Syria?
  08.11.2011 Dmitri Sedov, political scientist The deeper the crisis in Syria, the more evident it becomes that its former ally, Turkey, has played its part in the process. As the only moderate Islamic NATO member state, Turkey has turned into a springboard for the Syrian opposition. Istanbul announced the creation of a Syrian national council, analogous to the Libyan NTC. Opposition members are actively collaborating with Turkish governmental bodies. Actually, Turkey homes a headquarters of Syrian immigrants who handle all those destructive policies at home. It was Turkey where the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) was formed to comprise Syrian deserters. A group of Syrian military men, who reside in a strictly protected refugee camp, have claimed responsibility for the killing of nine Syrian soldiers and an officer on Syrian territory. There is no doubt that the rebels were working off the debts owed to new bosses. The Turkish authorities say that their relations with the FSA chief Riyad al-Asad and his army are ''purely humanitarian'', while a key task for Ankara there is to ensure security of the FSA members. Turkey's Foreign Ministry seems to ignore the fact that collaboration with the FSA is the way to cause bloodshed in Syria and not ''to allow the army freely express their political views''. The Turkish Foreign Ministry even held a press-conference for the FSA chief Riyad al-Asad, who said that his army was ''the leader of the Syrian nation'' and would ''fight against the regime until stability and peace come''. At the conference al-Asad was accompanied by ten security guards, a sniper among them. When the conference was over, journalists were told that further contacts with the FSA chief were possible only through Turkey`s Foreign Ministry. Isn`t it the best proof of the FSA being a marionette organization? Apart from the FSA, there are dozens of other militant groups traveling across the Turkish-Syrian border and bringing death and chaos in their native countries. Hugh Pope of the International Crisis Group thinks that Turkey has been preparing for a massive interference in Syrian domestic policy. He described the alliance of Turkey and the FSA ''a brand new territory''. Meanwhile, Russia and China have managed to prevent Turkey from interfering into Syria`s home policies. [Syria] [Turkey]
• Sole Military Super-Bloc: NATO Issues Daily Reprieves To The World
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, November 5, 2011 Stop NATO - 2011-11-04 On October 31 North Atlantic Treaty Organization chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen arrived in the Libyan capital of Tripoli at the end of seven full months of the military bloc’s war in the country and effused: “It’s great to be in Libya, free Libya.” Like Scipio Africanus the Younger almost twenty-two centuries earlier in what is now Libya’s western neighbor Tunisia, then Carthage, Rasmussen planted the banner of a conquering power on the soil of North Africa. Perhaps NATO will grant Rasmussen, too, the honorific agnomen Africanus after the military bloc’s first war and first conquest on the continent. While basking in the triumph of what Western commentators have celebrated as NATO’s first complete and uncontested military victory – “the most successful in Nato history” in Rasmussen’s words – in the Libyan capital, the secretary general was questioned by a reporter about plans to replicate the Libyan model in Syria and stated: “My answer is very short. NATO has no intention (to intervene) whatsoever. I can completely rule that out.” However, to belie his claim he immediately added: “Having said that, I strongly condemn the crackdown on the civilian population in Syria. What has happened in Libya sends a clear signal. You cannot neglect the will of the people.” The 227-day war against Libya waged first by U.S. Africa Command from March 19-31 and thereafter by NATO is, according to the NATO chieftain, “a clear signal” to Syria, but “NATO has no intention” to commence military actions against Syria. Scant assurance to the nation’s government and populace alike, to be sure. [NATO] [Imperialism] [Subordinate]
• For Latin America's wealthy elite, investment can buy U.S. residency
  By Melissa Sanchez and Alfonso Chardy | The Miami Herald Every few months, Miami attorney Marisa Casablanca flies to South America to meet with wealthy individuals who want to invest $500,000 for the chance to immigrate legally to the United States. [Diaspora] [Imperialism] [Client] [Migration]
• Gauging the military’s facts behind a ‘daily impact’ assessment
  By Walter Pincus, Tuesday, November 8, 12:46 PM Will the world be more dangerous for the United States after American troops are withdrawn from Iraq by the end of this year and Afghanistan by 2014? You would think so, after reading transcripts or listening to a series of House Armed Services Committee hearings over the past two weeks where senior Pentagon officials and military flag officers, encouraged by panel members, sought to illustrate the dangers that would appear should Defense Department budget cuts over the next 10 years exceed the $465 billion now fixed in law. .There is a long history of Defense Department officials and their Capitol Hill supporters at budget-crunch time talking about new threats. It makes me wonder what facts back up their current claims [Imperialism] [US military] [Threat] [MISCOM]
• Imran Khan predicts 'a revolution' in Pakistani politics
  Former national cricket captain vows to fight corruption and negotiate with the Taliban in address to 100,000 at Lahore rally Declan Walsh in Islamabad guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 November 2011 20.40 GMT Article history Imran Khan waves to supporters during a rally in Lahore which was attened by over 100,000 people. Photograph: K.M. Chaudary/AP At the height of his cricket glory days, Imran Khan would visualise winning – standing on the podium, cup held aloft – and propelling Pakistan to victory. Last weekend, standing before a sea of supporters in Lahore, he had a similar epiphany about his political career. "As I stood there, watching them, I knew the moment had come," Khan, who is the leader of the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insafr party, said. "Now nothing can stop us. This is a revolution, a tsunami. We will not just win the next elections – we will sweep them." Whether the former cricket captain can translate rhetoric into reality is hotly debated. Yet few doubt that last weekend's rally sent shockwaves across Pakistan's moribund political system.
• Carlos the Jackal faces new Paris trial
  Venezuelan revolutionary faces fresh charges over 1980s bomb attacks, but jail has only strengthened his beliefs, brother says Virginia Lopez in Caracas and Tom Phillips guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 November 2011 19.42 GMT Article history Carlos the Jackal, real name Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, pictured in a Paris courtroom in 2000. Photograph: Michel Lipchitz/AP He was the son of a millionaire lawyer who became one of the world's most wanted men: a globe-trotting criminal mastermind and self-styled professional revolutionary said to have been responsible for bombings, hijackings and shootings across the world. They called him Carlos the Jackal. Now, some three decades after he spread terror across the globe, the Jackal, whose real name is Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, is set to face trial in Paris in a case that could decide whether he ever steps outside a prison again. A resident of a Paris jail since his capture in Sudan in 1994, Ramírez is already serving a life sentence for the killings of two French policemen and a suspected informant in 1975. The 62-year-old's latest trial starts on Monday,and will examine his alleged involvement in four bombings in France which left 11 dead and dozens wounded during the early 1980s. It is likely to determine whether he will ever set foot in his native Venezuela again. In an interview with the Guardian, Ramírez's 53-year-old brother, Vladimir Ramírez Sánchez, was adamant that Ramírez, once described as the most dangerous man alive, was innocent of murder. "I am not willing to declare him guilty of something that is considered a heroic act when committed by powerful nations. While these double moral standards continue to exist, I will not accept that my brother is guilty of anything other than opposing the hegemony," said Vladimir, a militant member of the Venezuelan Communist party who described himself as a part-time engineer and full-time defender of his brother [Global insurgency] [Double standards]
• Wall Street’s resurgent prosperity frustrates its claims, and Obama’s
  By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Updated: Monday, November 7, 2:22 PM President Obama has called people who work on Wall Street “fat-cat bankers,” and his reelection campaign has sought to harness public frustration with Wall Street. Financial executives retort that the president’s pursuit of financial regulations is punitive and that new rules may be “holding us back.” But both sides face an inconvenient fact: During Obama’s tenure, Wall Street has roared back, even as the broader economy has struggled. [Decline] [Finance] [Obama]
• Capitalism captures the 99 percent on mugs, T-shirts
  View Photo Gallery — ?The movement, which started Sept. 17 with a few dozen demonstrators who tried to pitch tents in front of the New York Stock Exchange, has spread to cities around the world. Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Paul Elias, Monday, November 7, 12:49 PM SAN FRANCISCO — The revolution will be trademarked and put on T-shirts if an increasing number of entrepreneurs succeed in their attempts to profit from the Occupy demonstrations. A few T-shirts began to appear several days after the first protest began on Sept. 17 with a march through the streets of Lower Manhattan. Now, T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise emblazoned with Occupy locations and slogans are being offered online and amid the camp sites that have sprung up in cities across the country. A number of merchandise vendors, clothing designers and others are making plans to market a wide variety of goods for a wide variety of reasons, even as some protesters decry the business plans as directly counter to the demonstrations’ goals. [Capitalism]
• Libya: victory, tragedy, legacy
  Paul Rogers, 3 November 2011 The western military alliance sees the result of the anti-Gaddafi war as a vindication of its strategy. But the true accounting of Nato’s campaign - including on the ledger of arms companies - tells a different story. [Libya][Arms sales]
• The Ally From Hell
  Pakistan lies. It hosted Osama bin Laden (knowingly or not). Its government is barely functional. It hates the democracy next door. It is home to both radical jihadists and a large and growing nuclear arsenal (which it fears the U.S. will seize). Its intelligence service sponsors terrorists who attack American troops. With a friend like this, who needs enemies? By Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder [AfPak] [Client] [Seizure]
• Oligarchy, American Style
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Inequality is back in the news, largely thanks to Occupy Wall Street, but with an assist from the Congressional Budget Office. And you know what that means: It’s time to roll out the obfuscators! Anyone who has tracked this issue over time knows what I mean. Whenever growing income disparities threaten to come into focus, a reliable set of defenders tries to bring back the blur. Think tanks put out reports claiming that inequality isn’t really rising, or that it doesn’t matter. Pundits try to put a more benign face on the phenomenon, claiming that it’s not really the wealthy few versus the rest, it’s the educated versus the less educated. So what you need to know is that all of these claims are basically attempts to obscure the stark reality: We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only. [Inequality] [Democracy]
• Israel, U.S. to embark on largest joint exercise in allies' history
  U.S. Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro says security relationship with Israel is broader, deeper, more intense than ever before. By Natasha Mozgovaya Tags: US Israel US Latest update 18:39 05.11.11 Israel and the U.S. will embark on the "largest" and "most significant" joint exercise in the allies' history, said Andrew Shapiro, U.S. assistant secretary for political-military affairs, on Saturday. Speaking to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Shapiro said the exercise will involve more than 5,000 U.S. and Israeli forces, and will simulate Israel's ballistic missile defense. "Joint exercises allow us to learn from Israel’s experience in urban warfare and counterterrorism," said Shapiro. [Joint US military] [Israel] [Militarisation] [US global strategy]
• America’s Death Pornography Culture: Celebrating brutal deaths of Qaddafi and Saddam
  by Wayne Madsen Global Research, November 2, 2011 Strategic Culture Foundation The United States government and military revels in death and pornographic intimidation. The videos and photographs of howling Iraqis celebrating the hanging of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein after his U.S.-administered kangaroo court trial in Iraq and the physical abuse, alleged sodomizing, and execution of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi by NATO-armed and directed rebels after his convoy in Sirte was reportedly struck by a U.S. drone-launched missile, exemplify America’s fixation with pornographic death scenes… The George Walker Bush and Barack Hussein Obama administrations share a fascination for displaying the dead bodies of their vanquished enemies. For Bush, it was the gruesome stone-slabbed corpses of Qusay and Uday Hussein, Saddam’s sons, after they were killed in a firefight with U.S. troops in. That was followed by the body of Sadaam after his hanging in. Of course, it did not suit President Obama to broadcast a photograph of Osama Bin Laden, allegedly killed while resisting arrest in Abbotabad, Pakistan. In the case of Bin Laden, there is a strong reason to believe that Osama’s body could not be shown because there was no body of Osama. Whether an Osama Bin Laden look-a-like was killed or not may never be known, but what is certain is that the Obama administration’s explanation for ”Osama’s” burial at sea from a U.S. aircraft carrier appears dubious.
• Back in Monterey, Panetta’s institute honors a Washington crowd
  By Craig Whitlock, Published: November 5 At a black-tie dinner Saturday, former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will receive an award from an outfit especially sympathetic to the rigors of his old job: the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, an academic center co-founded by Gates’s successor at the Pentagon, Leon E. Panetta. Panetta, who took over from Gates in July, has recused himself from direct involvement in the Monterey, Calif.-based institute since 2009, when he returned to government service to lead the CIA. But Panetta is expected to attend the dinner with his wife, Sylvia, who has run the nonprofit institute in his absence. .Also attending the dinner will be a table of guests sponsored by Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest defense contractor, which is donating $8,000 to the Panetta Institute to help sponsor the evening. Also contributing cash for the fundraising dinner are several corporations and boards for which Leon Panetta worked as a paid director before he joined the Obama administration. In interviews, Sylvia Panetta and Pentagon officials said all of the arrangements are in compliance with federal ethics rules. They said the couple has consulted with government lawyers and other officials to ensure that neither they nor the institute trigger any conflicts of interest. The Panetta Institute’s devotion to honoring lawmakers and journalists with whom the Pentagon chief now works highlights the cozy and mutually beneficial relationships that influence how Washington operates. [MISCOM] [Governance]
• U.S. general fired for criticizing Hamid Karzai
  By Joshua Partlow and Greg Jaffe, Published: November 5 FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHARANA, Afghanistan — One of the top American generals responsible for training the Afghan security forces was fired Saturday for criticizing President Hamid Karzai and his government. Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, the deputy commander for programs at the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, based in Kabul, was relieved of his duties by the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen, after comments Fuller made to the news Web site Politico. .In the Thursday interview with Politico, Fuller took issue with Karzai’s recent statements that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a war with the United States, calling Karzai’s statement “erratic.” “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle? You’ve got to be kidding me. .?.?. I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion, and now you’re telling me, ‘I don’t really care?’?” Fuller said. [AfPak] [Client]
• A Silver Lining to America’s Waning Influence
  Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama will travel this week to the Group of 20 summit in France, where he will cajole Europe to fix its economic woes. By HELENE COOPER Published: November 1, 2011 WASHINGTON — President Hu Jintao of China will arrive in Cannes, France, this week pondering a plea from Europe for tens of billions of dollars to help the continent get out of its debt crisis. And President Obama will arrive with a smile, some hearty handshakes, and his own plea: that Greece get its act together and that Europe fix its economic ills, which he has called one of the biggest drags on the United States’ own ailing economy. The two contrasting appearances at the Group of 20 economic meeting are a stark example of waning American influence. Without the spare cash that Mr. Hu has at his disposal — and the power that can come with it — Mr. Obama has struggled to cajole his own allies into taking the steps he believes are necessary to lift the global economy. Yet the relative decline of the United States as an international force also comes with a silver lining. For decades, the United States has been the global rescuer of last resort. It is a role that has brought significant costs, both financial and human. [Decline] [Imperialism] [Inversion]
• A year from Election 2012, a dark mood awaits Obama and GOP rival
  By Dan Balz, Jon Cohen and Chris Cillizza, Sunday, November 6, 5:00 PM One year out from the 2012 election, President Obama faces the most difficult reelection environment of any White House incumbent in two decades, with economic woes at the center of the public’s concerns, an electorate that is deeply pessimistic and sharply polarized, and growing questions about the president’s capacity to lead. Those factors alone portend the possibility that Obama could become the first one-term president since George H.W. Bush, who was defeated by Bill Clinton in 1992 at a time of economic problems and similar anger with the political establishment in Washington. To win a second term, Obama probably will have to overcome the highest rate of unemployment in an election year of any president in the post-World War II era. [Decline] [Governance]
• The Iron Heel and the Resistance
  by ALEXANDER COCKBURN Three years of President Obama, as of today. Count and weep. Just over a year from now Americans will be deciding whether to reelect Barack Obama or… probably Mitt Romney. In the latter case this is to assume that that Mitt, a Mormon and family man – both danger flares — doesn’t get caught up in the minefield known as “charges of sexual harassment,” as has Herman Cain, one of his rivals for the Republican nomination. Study recent photographs of a broken Frenchman named Dominique Strauss-Kahn if you want to be reminded of what such charges can do to a candidate for high office. Do any of the present candidates, Obama included, offer an answer to America’s crisis – one accelerated by forty years of neo-liberal onslaught? No they don’t, because there is no answer available within the terms and boundaries of the present political system. The middle class has – at least two thirds of it – crashed into hard times. Americans’ store of value and savings – the house – is worthless; the always pathetic social safety net has eroded. Thirty million Americans are without work or working part-time. Nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs in the United States have disappeared since 2000, and more than 40,000 factories have closed. African-Americans have endured the greatest loss in collective assets in their history. Hispanics have seen their net worth drop by two-thirds. Millions of whites have been pitchforked into desperation. Students emerge from higher education crushed by debt. This is the mulch that has created the Occupy Wall Street movement. [Capitalism]
• Assassination Blowback
  by ANDREW COCKBURN 2011 has been a banner year for taxpayer-funded assassinations — Osama bin Laden, Anwar Awlaki, five senior Pakistani Taliban commanders in October and many more. Given the crucial U.S. backup role in Libya, and the ringing exhortation for the Libyan leader’s death issued by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton just before the event itself, Uncle Sam can probably take a lot of credit for Moammar Gaddafi ‘s messy end too. Once upon a time, U.S. officials used to claim that they were merely targeting “command and control centers,” rather than specific individuals, as in the hunt for Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Persian Gulf War or the raid on Gaddafi in 1986. Nowadays no one bothers to pretend. Successful assassination missions, whether by elite special forces or remote-controlled drones, are openly celebrated. Clearly, the sentiment prevalent among our leaders is that eliminating particular enemy leaders is bound to have a beneficial effect. Thus in recent wars, the U.S. has made the pursuit of “high-value targets,” the principal objective of so-called human network attacks, a priority. “The platoon’s mission is to kill or capture HVTs,” recalled Matt Cook, a sergeant in the 101st Airborne based in northern Iraq in 2005. “That is all we do.” By 2008, according to a U.S. Strategic Command study, the U.S. military was simultaneously engaged in no fewer than 285 human network attack programs. So, now that assassination is an official tool of U.S. foreign policy, along with trade embargoes and overseas aid, it is surely time for an open debate on whether it is indeed effective. Surprisingly for some, evidence based on hard numbers demonstrates unequivocally that the answer is No. [Assassination] [US global strategy] [Unintended consequences]
• Libya’s Liberation Front Organizing in the Sahel
  by FRANKLIN LAMB On the edge of the Sahel, Niger “Sahel” in Arabic means “coast” or “shoreline”. Unless one was present 5000 years ago when, according to anthropologists, our planets first cultivation of crops began in this then lush, but now semiarid region where temperatures reach 125 degrees F, and only camels and an assortment of creatures can sniff out water sources, it seems an odd geographical name place for this up-to-450 miles wide swatch of baked sand that runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. [Libya] [Pacification]
• U.S. Night Raids Killed Over 1,500 Afghan Civilians in Ten Months
  by GARETH PORTER U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) killed well over 1,500 civilians in night raids in less than 10 months in 2010 and early 2011, analysis of official statistics on the raids released by the U.S.-NATO command reveals. That number would make U.S. night raids by far the largest cause of civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan. The report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan on civilian casualties in 2010 had said the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) by insurgents was the leading cause of civilian deaths, with 904. [Special forces] [Casualties]
• Why Israel Will Not Attack Iran
  by URI AVNERY EVERYBODY KNOWS the scene from school: a small boy quarrels with a bigger boy. “Hold me back!” he shouts to his comrades, “Before I break his bones!” Our government seems to be behaving in this way. Every day, via all channels, it shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of Iran. Iran is about to produce a nuclear bomb. We cannot allow this. So we shall bomb them to smithereens. Binyamin Netanyahu says so in every one of his countless speeches, including his opening speech at the winter session of the Knesset. Ditto Ehud Barak. Every self-respecting commentator (has anyone ever seen a non-self-respecting one?) writes about it. The media amplify the sound and the fury. “Haaretz” splashed its front page with pictures of the seven most important ministers (the “security septet”) showing three in favor of the attack, four against. * * * A GERMAN proverb says: “Revolutions that are announced in advance do not take place.” Same goes for wars
• Crucial plan to reintegrate Afghan insurgents falling flat
  Shashank Bengali/MCT Musa Khan, provincial governor of Ghazni, Afghanistan. U.S. officials learned that Khan and another official had paid men to show up at a ceremony honoring the U.S. ambassador and announce they were quitting the Taliban. | View larger image By Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers Shashank Bengali McClatchy Newspapers GHAZNI, Afghanistan — It must have seemed like a good idea. With then-U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry in town, the newly installed provincial governor arranged for a surprise: Two Taliban insurgents would drop in on a ceremony in Eikenberry's honor, lay down their weapons and pledge to support the government in front of a large crowd of dignitaries. Trouble was, no one informed the huge force of U.S. and Afghan soldiers who were guarding the event at the governor's compound here last December. Afghan security forces seized and held the two men, armed and dressed in black, at a checkpoint a few hundred yards from the event as they were driving to their appearance. Later, it got more embarrassing for the governor, Musa Khan, when U.S. officials learned that he and another official had recruited and paid the men to show up in a bid to curry favor with Eikenberry. The governor's critics suspect that the men were hired flunkies. [AfPak] [Pacification] [Incompetence]
• Syria’s government confident, but country polarized
  By Liz Sly, Published: October 29 DAMASCUS, SYRIA — President Bashar al-Assad’s government is confident that it has weathered the worst of the turmoil sweeping Syria and will soon be able to overcome any remaining challenges to its survival. Whether that confidence is justified — and how broadly it is shared — is in question. Even as the government boasts that it is prevailing over the eight-month-old uprising, the economy is imploding, protests persist in many parts of the country and an armed rebellion is stirring. On the streets of Damascus, the capital, where the revolt has never managed to gain traction and Assad can count on significant support, the outward appearance of normalcy, the bustling streets and the packed cafes mask an undertow of mistrust and fear about where the country is heading. [Syria] [Media] [Agency]
• Who lost Iraq?
  By Charles Krauthammer, Friday, November 4, 1:04 PM Barack Obama was a principled opponent of the Iraq war from its beginning. But when he became president in January 2009, he was handed a war that was won. The surge had succeeded. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had been routed, driven to humiliating defeat by an Anbar Awakening of Sunnis fighting side-by-side with the infidel Americans. Even more remarkably, the Shiite militias had been taken down, with U.S. backing, by the forces of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. They crushed the Sadr militias from Basra to Sadr City. Al-Qaeda decimated. A Shiite prime minister taking a decisively nationalist line. Iraqi Sunnis ready to integrate into a new national government. U.S. casualties at their lowest ebb in the entire war. Elections approaching. Obama was left with but a single task: Negotiate a new status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) to reinforce these gains and create a strategic partnership with the Arab world’s only democracy. .He blew it. [Iraq] [Agency] [Decline]
• Depths Of Bloody Chaos: West's Violent "Democratization" Of Libya May Lead To New, Worse Civil War
  by Vladimir Gladkov Global Research, November 3, 2011 Voice of Russia - 2011-11-02 As could be easily predicted, the NATO-led overthrow of the Libyan government risks to push the country into the depths of bloody chaos. While prominent human rights groups keep reporting severe violations by the rebel forces, it has turned out that many of the local militia leaders are abandoning the promise to give up their weapons even after the death of Col. Gaddafi. According to their claims, militia commanders are intending to preserve their autonomy as “guardians of the revolution”. Without any doubt the presence of such “guardians” will hardly help to bring peace and stability to the troubled region. Once again an attempt of the so-called “democratization” violently conducted by the US and its NATO allies has led to some extremely bitter results. The questionable activities of the Libyan rebels have become a subject of concern of Human Rights groups a long time ago. While the Gaddafi army was the one to blame for severe violations of human rights, the reports of such organizations as Amnesty International managed to break this stereotype. The leaders of Libya’s new government - National Transitional Council are describing their goals as an intention to build a modern democratic state, based on the values of “moderate” Islam. However the documented involvement of the Libyan militia in killings, abductions and torture hardly meets the standards of a democratic state. [Libya]
• 30 companies paid 'less than zero' taxes in recent years
  By Marisa Taylor General Electric made big waves earlier in the year when The New York Times reported that the company paid no taxes in the U.S. in 2010, and in fact claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. How could a company that made $14.2 billion in profits worldwide avoid paying taxes? G.E. wasn’t the only one, according to a new report released on Thursday by the Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The two advocacy groups, which could be fairly described as left-leaning, claim that among the 280 most profitable U.S. companies, 30 of them paid “less than zero” in taxes in the last three years, and 78 of the companies didn’t pay any federal income tax in at least one of the last three years. [Crisis]
• Amnesty International’s Flawed Syrian Hospitals “Investigation”
  by FRANKLIN LAMB This observer counts himself among Amnesty International’s more than 3 million supporters and members in more than 150 countries and territories who also strongly endorse AI’s campaigns to end grave abuses of human rights. I share AI’s vision for every person to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards [NGO] [Syria] [Disinformation]
• UK military steps up plans for Iran attack amid fresh nuclear fears
  British officials consider contingency options to back up a possible US action as fears mount over Tehran's capability Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 November 2011 15.21 GMT Article history Britain's armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran's nuclear enrichment programme, the Guardian has learned. The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government. In anticipation of a potential attack, British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air and sea campaign. [Iran]
• Will Israel really attack Iran?
  By Jackson Diehl Every few months a new flurry of speculation erupts about whether Israel is about to launch a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This week the subject is back again — and the smoke seems thicker than usual. The discussion got started this time in a relatively dramatic way: with a banner-headlined story in one of Israel’s best-read newspapers, under the byline of one the country’s most renowned journalists. Nahum Barnea normally writes a column for the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, but last Friday he produced a bombshell story under the headline “Atomic Pressure.”
  In reality, Israel is unlikely to launch any attack without the support of the United States, which could easily be drawn into the regional conflict an air strike would trigger. Like the Israeli military establishment, the Pentagon opposes any such venture — and it’s hard to imagine President Obama signing on. If he acts in the coming weeks or months, Netanyahu would risk a rupture in the alliance that is the ultimate guarantor of Israeli security. [Iran] [Israel]
• The dangerous debate over cutting military spending
  By Robert J. Samuelson, Published: October 31 We shouldn’t gut defense. A central question of our budget debates is how much we allow growing spending on social programs to crowd out the military and, in effect, force the United States into a dangerous, slow-motion disarmament. People who see military cuts as an easy way to reduce budget deficits forget that this has already occurred. From the late 1980s to 2010, the number of America’s armed forces dropped from 2.1 million men and women to about 1.4 million. The downsizing — the “peace dividend” from the end of the Cold War — was not undone by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1990, the Army had 172 combat battalions, the Navy 546 ships and the Air Force 4,355 fighters; today, those numbers are 100 battalions, 288 ships and 1,990 fighters. .True, Iraq and Afghanistan raised defense budgets. [MISCOM] [Military expenditure]
• Argentina: Depression, Revolt and Recovery Why President Fernandez Wins and Obama Loses
  by Prof. James Petras Global Research, October 30, 2011 Introduction On October 23rd of this year, President Cristina Fernandez won re-election receiving 54% of the vote, 37 percentage points higher than her nearest opponent. The President’s coalition also swept the Congressional, Senatorial, Gubernatorial elections as well as 135 of the 136 municipal councils of Greater Buenos Aires. In sharp contrast President Obama, according to recent polls is trailing leading Republican Presidential candidates and is likely to lose control of both houses of Congress in the upcoming 2012 election. What accounts for the monumental difference in voter preferences of incumbent presidents? A comparative historical discussion of socio-economic and foreign policies as well as responses to profound economic crises is at the center of any explanation of the divergent results. [Decline] [Militarisation]

• Love Fest in the Hindu Kush
  by PAUL FITZGERALD and ELIZABETH GOULD In the wild gyrations surrounding the Obama administration’s AfPak scenario, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent swing from “Blunt Warning,” to Pakistan, to sudden love fest in the Hindu Kush betrays the underlying schism in American foreign policy-thinking that is losing America its “empire” by the minute. Despite the Secretary of State’s recent conciliatory statements on her visit to Islamabad regarding Pakistan’s ISI and their support for the Haqqani Network, U.S. tensions with Pakistan will remain high. In the months since the U.S. Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden, 55 cross border rocket attacks (a substantial increase from the same period a year ago) have been waged on U.S. forces in Afghanistan across what the U.S. military refers to as the Zero line with Pakistan. Afghanistan’s sovereignty has routinely been violated since Pakistan’s creation in 1947. In fact, Pakistan’s sole value as a Cold War ally of the U.S. was to shore up what western military analysts called, “the crescent of crisis” as a strategically pivotal “frontline state” against the Soviet Union. During the Cold War Pakistan gained a reputation for inflating the threat of Soviet subversion as part of the Washington money game and was duly rewarded for playing. Pakistan’s repressive military bedeviled Afghanistan’s moderate government at every turn, saw Moscow’s hand behind every public demonstration and independence movement and used the specter of a grand Soviet design, to suppress them all. The old adage that most countries have a military but Pakistan’s military has a country is perhaps the most useful in understanding the ongoing standoff. Pakistan’s military operates its own business conglomerates which run thousands of businesses. During the 1980s under General Zia Ul Haq, the military employed its own trucking company the National Logistics Cell to ship weapons along with opium to and from the port of Karachi. Had the U.S. vigorously fostered democratic movements in the 1960s, 70s and 80s instead of empowering a succession of ruthless military regimes and radical Islamists in the name of Cold War containment, today’s Pakistan would be a different place. During the 8 years of the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” Pakistan pretended to be an ally and the U.S. pretended to believe them. Now the U.S. pays for its Cold War policy-blindness and Bush-era delusion with the blood of its soldiers and diplomats as well as its tax dollars to service a hopelessly failed policy and a Pakistani military that acts more like an enemy than an ally. [AfPak]
• Nato should stay in Libya, says Jalil
  Interim leader of Libya says Nato should remain in the country for the rest of the year to stop Gaddafi loyalists fleeing Reuters in Doha guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 October 2011 12.11 BST Article history Libya's interim leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil (left), at the 'friends of Libya' group meeting in Qatar. Photograph: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images Nato should remain involved in Libya until the end of the year to help prevent Gaddafi loyalists from leaving the country, interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said at a meeting with the military alliance in Qatar on Wednesday. Nato, whose air strikes backed rebel forces that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in August, is to decide on Friday whether to end its mission following Gaddafi's death and burial in the past week and a declaration by the National Transitional Council (NTC) that Libya had been "liberated". "We look forward to Nato continuing its operations until the end of the year," said Jalil, adding that stopping the flight of Gaddafi supporters to other countries was a priority. "We seek technical and logistics help from neighbouring and friendly countries," he said. [Libya] [Pacification]
• Did Obama engage as U.S.-Iraqi troop talks faltered?
  Roy Gutman McClatchy Newspapers BAGHDAD — Throughout the summer and autumn, as talks on a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq foundered, President Barack Obama and his point man on Iraq, Vice President Joe Biden, remained largely aloof from the process, logs released by the U.S. Embassy here suggest. The omission would be an unusual one, given the high priority U.S. officials had given to achieving an agreement for some sort of residual U.S. presence in Iraq after the Dec. 31 pullout deadline, and the White House labeled the suggestion inaccurate. A spokesman said the logs released by the embassy were incomplete. The listing provided by the embassy — drawn, the embassy said, from the White House website — indicates that Obama had no direct contact with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki between Feb. 13, when he telephoned the prime minister, until Friday, when he called Maliki to tell him U.S. troops would be withdrawn by Dec. 31. [Strategic paralysis] [Iraq] [Bases]
• Nation’s wealthiest 1 percent triple their incomes, according to CBO report
  By Brian Faler, Published: October 25 | Updated: Wednesday, October 26, 2:53 PM Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The nation’s richest citizens almost tripled their incomes between 1979 and 2007 as the inequality of the distribution of wealth in the United States expanded, according to a new government report. The top 1 percent saw their inflation-adjusted, after-tax earnings grow by 275 percent during that period, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. .Those at the other end of the spectrum, whose earnings put them in the bottom 20 percent of incomes, saw an 18 percent increase. The average increase for all households was 62 percent, the report said. “The precise reasons for the rapid growth in income at the top are not well understood,” the report said. “Researchers have offered several potential rationales, including technical innovations that have changed the labor market for superstars (such as actors, athletes and musicians), changes in the governance and structure of executive compensation, increases in firms’ size and complexity, and the increasing scale of financial-sector activities.” [Inequality]
• Herman Cain and the top 10 most bizarre political ads (Video)
  Posted by Aaron Blake at 03:17 PM ET, 10/25/2011 The whole political world is talking about an odd political Web ad released by Herman Cain’s presidential campaign. In it, Cain campaign manager Mark Block riffs on why Cain should be president and then takes a drag off of a cigarette. Cain is shown full-screen for the ad’s final ten seconds — finally cracking a smile. So, yeah, it’s kind of strange. [Bizarre]
• Why does the International Criminal Court keep silence on Gaddafi`s death?
  24.10.2011 Dr. Alexander Mezyaev International Law Department Governance Academy (Kazan`) The alleged killing of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has brought several crucial issues of international law to the forefront. Though it is evident that many pieces of video footage featuring Gaddafi`s last hours are fake, still there are some which may prove real. It is easy to explain why fake videos have been made: they were aimed to suppress courage in the rebels, and – if we suggest that the video showing Gaddafi`s killing are fake – to prevent a new wave of uprising set for the nearest future. But my task now is to analyze the footage showing Gaddafi`s bloodied body from the point of view of international law, no matter whether the videos were fake or real, but relying on the fact that the footage was considered genuine by the global media and NATO leaders. For the past few days we have been shown the footage of a man, who looked much like Gaddafi, being brutally killed. The world`s major political factions have reacted differently. But the reaction of the International Criminal Court deserves special attention. Russia`s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for a thorough investigation in to Gaddafi`s death. Even the world`s leading human rights organization, Amnesty International, commented on the event. Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court keeps silence. Why? At the moment Gaddafi was captured he was still alive. After the capture he was dead – the video footage shows him having a bullet hole in his left temple. This is enough to qualify his killing as a war crime.
  But if Gaddafi was alive and put to trial, he could have testified on a number of very controversial issues, including the Lockerbie bombing, as well as on some other operations carried out by the West against Libya and other countries. Thus, having put Gaddafi on trial, the ICC would have become the least interested in bringing the process to the logical end. [Libya] [Gaddafi] [War crimes] [Legality]
• Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in war with US, says Hamid Karzai
  President says Afghans 'will never betray their brother' in TV interview aired days after Kabul visit by Hillary Clinton Declan Walsh in Islamabad guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 October 2011 11.04 BST Article history Hamid Karzai with Hillary Clinton in Kabul. Photograph: Reuters The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said he would side with Pakistan in the event of war with the US in a surprising political twist that is likely to disconcert his western allies. "If there is war between Pakistan and America, we will stand by Pakistan," Karzai said in a television interview. He put his hand on his heart and described Pakistan as a "brother" country. [AfPak] [Client] [Decline]
• Gaddafi's death: growing revulsion at the treatment of the dictator's body
  As hundreds queue to see the former Libyan leader and his son lying dead in cold storage, the NTC is split on what to do next Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk, Saturday 22 October 2011 20.05 BST Article history The body of the dead former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi lies on a mattress inside a storage freezer in Misrata. Photograph: Mohamed Messara/EPA The international acclaim for the Libyan revolution is being tempered by growing revulsion at the treatment of the bodies of Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mutassim. [Libya]
• Prisoners in Libya languish without charge
  By Mary Beth Sheridan, Published: October 22 MISURATA, Libya — Nearly 7,000 prisoners of war are packed into dingy, makeshift jails around Libya, where they have languished for weeks without charges and have faced abuse and even torture, according to human rights groups and interviews with the detainees. The prisoners will pose an early test of the new government’s ability to rein in powerful militias and break from the cruel legacy of Moammar Gaddafi, who was killed Thursday. Human rights groups have warned that the former dictator’s death — which occurred in captivity after he was punched and kicked by swarming revolutionaries — could constitute a war crime. .Many of Libya’s makeshift prisons are run by local militia groups scarred by the eight-month war and angry at the prisoners, who include Gaddafi fighters and supporters. The new government that is to be named in the next few weeks — after a planned declaration of Libya’s liberation Sunday — will have to deal with both the militias and a crippled national justice system. [Libya] [War crimes]
• Years in Iraq change U.S. military’s understanding of war
  By Greg Jaffe, Sunday, October 23, 12:46 AM The most profound legacy of the American intervention in Iraq may be the way it changed the U.S. military’s understanding of war. President Obama promised Friday that U.S. troops will have vacated the country by Christmas, effectively ending an occupation that claimed more than 4,400 American lives and stretched for nine years. .The Iraq war has long been plagued by its contradictions. It toppled a hostile dictator, but many Americans remain troubled that the conflict was launched on what proved to be the false contention that the country was developing weapons of mass destruction. Even within the U.S. military, there is no broad agreement that the war’s outcome should be judged a victory. [Iraq] [Pacification]
• What’s next for Libya? Paul Bremer says to remember post-Saddam Iraq.
  Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy L. Paul Bremer III, Published: October 21 Moammar Gaddafi is dead, and the Obama administration can take a measure of credit for bringing about regime change in Libya. The dictator’s death came eight months after the start of military operations there — the same length of time it took us to track down Saddam Hussein after U.S. forces liberated Baghdad in 2003. When our CIA station chief told me at 2 a.m. on Dec. 13, 2003, that our forces had captured Hussein, I knew we had achieved an important milestone. [Libya] [Iraq]
• U.S. airstrike that killed American teen in Yemen raises legal, ethical questions
  By Craig Whitlock, Published: October 22 One week after a U.S. military airstrike killed a 16-year-old American citizen in Yemen, no one in the Obama administration, Pentagon or Congress has taken responsibility for his death, or even publicly acknowledged that it happened. The absence of official accountability for the demise of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a Denver native and the son of an al-Qaeda member, deepens the legal and ethical murkiness of the Obama administration’s campaign to kill alleged enemies of the state outside of traditional war zones. Unlike the secretive U.S. airstrikes that have killed hundreds of foreigners in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, this case involved an American teenager. He was killed by the U.S. military in a country with which Washington is not at war. [Legality] [Global insurgency] [War crime]
• Imperial Massacres
  by ALEXANDER COCKBURN Denied post mortem imagery of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, the world now has at its disposal photographs of Muammar Qaddafi, dispatched with a bullet to the head after being wounded by NATO’s ground troops outside Sirte. Did the terminal command, Finish Him Off, come via cell phone from the US State Department whose Secretary, Hillary Clinton, had earlier called for his death, or by dint of local initiative? At all events, since Qaddafi was a prisoner at the time of his execution, it was a war crime and I trust that in the years of her retirement Mrs Clinton will be detained amid some foreign vacation and handed a subpoena. [Libya] [War crimes]
• Qaddafi, From Beginning to End
  by VIJAY PRASHAD On the dusty reaches out of Sirte, a convoy flees a battlefield. A NATO aircraft fires and strikes the cars. The wounded struggle to escape. Armed trucks, with armed fighters, rush to the scene. They find the injured, and among them is the most significant prize: a bloodied Muammar Qaddafi stumbles, is captured, and then is thrown amongst the fighters. One can imagine their exhilaration. A cell-phone traces the events of the next few minutes. A badly injured Qaddafi is pushed around, thrown on a car, and then the video gets blurry. The next images are of a dead Qaddafi. He has a bullet hole on the side of his head. These images go onto youtube almost instantly. They are on television, and in the newspapers. It will be impossible not to see them. The Third Geneva Convention (article 13): “Prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.” [Libya] [Humanitarian intervention] [Double standards] [Legality]
• Will Seif Gaddafi Survive to Have His Day in Court?
  by FRANKLIN LAMB During the late evening of 10/20/11 the White House, the Office of the Secretary of State, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Libyan Embassy in Washington, DC received a faxed communication from an American organized international legal team currently preparing their departure to Libya. The group, whose assistance has been arranged through Gadhafi family members and friends, has accepted the obligation to represent Seif al Islam against charges filed by the International Criminal Court on June 26, 2011 and to represent him in any legal proceedings that the NTC government may bring against him in Libya. This observer is a member of the group of international lawyers who seek justice for their client, Saif al Islam. [Libya] [Legality]
• UN wants probe in Gaddafi death
  Global Times | October 22, 2011 08:23 By Huang Shaojie Share With the world watching the rebirth of a nation, Libya's interim leaders postponed the burial of Muammar Gaddafi on Friday, a day after the ousted leader was captured and killed in Sirte, leaving the oil-rich country at a political and economic crossroads. Libya's governing National Transitional Council (NTC) officials initially said they would bury Gaddafi according to Islamic custom on Friday, but the UN human rights office called for an investigation into the circumstances of his death, AP reported. Following a NATO airstrike that stopped him from fleeing on Thursday, a wounded Gaddafi was reportedly dragged out of a drainage pipe. He was later killed by shots to the head and stomach, according to AP, raising the question as to whether he was executed. "We believe there is a need for an investigation," UN Human Rights Council spokesman Rupert Colville said Friday. Until that is done, Gaddafi's blood-streaked body is stashed in a commercial freezer at a shopping center in the coastal city of Misrata to keep it away from crowds, according to AP. Cellphone footage has also show Gaddafi's son Mutassim captured alive together with him and then killed later, according to the Daily Telegraph. [Libya] [UNUS]
• Gallup: Obama's approval rating hits another low
  Friday, October 21, 2011 By Kim Geiger | McClatchy Tribune Newswire WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's average approval rating sank to a new low of 41 percent in the 11th financial quarter of his term, according to a new analysis of Gallup's daily tracking poll. WASHINGTON - That number is down 6 percentage points from Obama's 10th-quarter average, and is the lowest 11th-quarter average posted by a sitting president since Jimmy Carter, who lost his re-election bid in 1980. (Carter's approval average that quarter was 31 percent.) Obama's average approval rating over his entire term is now 50 percent. Gallup's Jeffrey M. Jones notes that while the 11th quarter was so far Obama's worst, the 12th- and 13th- quarter averages will be better indicators of his re-election prospects. Those averages historically "give a strong indication of whether he will win a second term," Jones wrote in a summary of Gallup's findings. Of 262 presidential quarters in which Gallup has calculated average presidential job approval ratings, the 11th quarter of Obama's term ranks 220th. [Obama] [Public opinion]
• All U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011
  By Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung, Published: October 21 President Obama will withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of the year, ending a long war that deeply divided the country over its origins and the American lives it consumed. In a Friday morning video conference, Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki agreed to a complete U.S. military departure that will fulfill a promise important to Obama’s reelection effort. The decision drew sharp criticism from his Republican rivals, as well as expressions of relieved support from those who believe it is time for the United States to conclude a war Obama once called “dumb.” Speaking from the White House, President Obama says, "After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over." .For months, U.S. and Iraqi officials had been negotiating the terms of an accord that would have kept several thousand U.S. troops in Iraq for special operations and training beyond the year-end deadline set by the George W. Bush administration. But Obama and Maliki, who have never developed much personal chemistry, failed to reach agreement on the legal status of U.S. troops who would stay in Iraq beyond Dec. 31 [Iraq] [Unintended consequences] [Decline] [Client]
• Libyans line up to see Gaddafi’s body on display; groups call for probe into death
  TRIPOLI, Libya — International human rights groups called Friday for an investigation into the death of former Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi as gory new videos showed him being spat at and punched by revolutionaries and as skepticism mounted about official claims that he was shot in crossfire after being captured. [Libya]
• GOP presidential field unified in opposition to Iraq withdrawal
  By Karen DeYoung, Saturday, October 22, 1:52 AM Despite their inability to agree on the economy or much else, Republican presidential candidates spoke with one voice in reaction to President Obama’s announcement of a full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq this year. They were against it. .It was an “astonishing failure” that risked all the gains made “through the blood and sacrifice” of thousands of Americans, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said. Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he was “deeply concerned” that Obama had put “political expediency ahead of sound military and security judgment.” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) cited it as another example of the president’s foreign policy weakness, and Jon Huntsman, Obama’s former ambassador to China, called it a “mistake.” Herman Cain let stand his assessment of last weekend, in which he announced that withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan were “a dumb thing to do.” The agreement to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by Dec. 31 was originally reached with the Iraqi government by the Bush administration in 2008. [Iraq] [Unintended consequences] [Partisan] [Extraterritoriality][Client]
• A war on Iran: the delusive logic
  Paul Rogers, 20 October 2011 The arguments for and against an armed attack on Iran by the United States - or Israel - are sharpening. The increasing tension that surrounds the issue could itself precipitate a conflict that would be far lengthier than its advocates believe. Many doubts still surround the veracity and details of the alleged plot orchestrated by senior figures in Iran to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States. A mix of court hearings and media investigation following the arrest of a chief suspect suggests that action by US federal authorities halted an operation that sought to explode a bomb in a Washington restaurant, killing Adel al-Jubeir (and presumably others). Even in the absence of clinching evidence of what was underway and the degree of involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the assassination "plotline" has developed a life of its own and led to increasingly strident calls for action by Washington against Tehran (see "Iran and America: components of crisis", 13 October 2011). After all, many argue, this would have been an attack on the United States mainland and capital city and thus comparable in terms of intent to 9/11 (even if the scale were to prove much smaller). Moreover, the operation has an added potency in that the notional plan was organised by a state rather than by a sub-state group (albeit those behind 9/11 were harboured by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers). Barack Obama's administration is running with this tough line. [Iran]
• The New Interventionism How Obama is changing the way the United States wages war.
  By Fred Kaplan, New America Foundation October 19, 2011 | Slate The future face of American warfare is very likely on display now in Africa. Libya, the coast off Somalia, and now the borderlands of Uganda—it's a fair bet that these theaters of conflict, far more than Iraq or Afghanistan, foretell the shape of our military adventures. What this suggests is a return to the "advise and assist" missions of the Cold War, with international terrorists (or, on occasion, particularly hideous thugs) replacing international Communism as the predominant threat.
  This isn't to say that the Army should be decimated. There's always North Korea to deter, and some other contingencies that justify staying prepared as a hedge. But it's hard to make a case for a huge land force.
  In the past few years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Special Forces groups have become quite proficient at tracking bad guys, then killing or capturing them. It's a lot easier to do that than to help build a new society. In this case, the society-building won't have to be part of the mission. If it did, my guess is Obama wouldn't be going there. [Imperialism] [Threat] [MISCOM] [Special forces][Outsourcing]
• U.S. launches campaign to track down Libyan missiles
  By Mary Beth Sheridan, Published: October 14 TRIPOLI — The United States is planning to dispatch dozens of former military personnel to Libya to help track down and destroy surface-to-air missiles from Moammar Gaddafi’s stockpiles that U.S. officials worry could be used by terrorists to take down passenger jets. The weapons experts are part of a rapidly expanding $30 million program to secure Libya’s conventional weapons in the wake of the most violent conflict to occur in the Arab Spring, according to State Department officials who provided new details of the effort. As the U.S. Embassy reopened in Libya, the hunt is on for the missiles and rockets that Gaddafi's fleeing forces left behind. A non-profit group is in charge of making sure they don't end up in the wrong hands. (Sept. 22) .Fourteen contractors with military backgrounds have been sent to help Libyan officials, and the U.S. government is looking at sending dozens more. Thousands of pamphlets in Arabic, English and French will be delivered to neighboring countries so border guards can recognize the heat-seeking missiles, the officials said. It could grow to become one of the three biggest U.S. weapons-retrieval program in the world, along with those in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We have not seen any .?.?. attacks with loose missiles coming out of Libya yet,” said Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. But, he added, “We’re working as assiduously as we can to address the threat. It only takes one to make a real difference.” Gaddafi was one of the world’s top purchasers of the shoulder-fired missiles, buying about 20,000 in the 1970s and 1980s, according to U.S. estimates. While the weapons are of limited effectiveness against modern military aircraft, the still pose a threat to commercial passenger planes. Thousands of the missiles were destroyed in NATO bomb attacks on arms depots during the war and hundreds have been recovered by the new government. But an unknown number were carted off by Libyan rebel groups and civilians who swarmed into unguarded storage areas after Gaddafi’s forces were defeated. [Seizure] [Libya] [Sovereignty] [Outsourcing]
• Top General: U.S. Needs Fresh Look at Deterrence, Nuclear Triad
  Thursday, July 14, 2011 By Elaine M. Grossman WASHINGTON -- The nation's second-ranking military officer on Thursday called for a broad reassessment of how to deter significant threats to the United States (see GSN, June 22). (Jul. 14) - Technicians transfer a Minuteman 3 ICBM re-entry system in 1990. The United States should carefully examine the future role of each segment of its nuclear weapons triad in view of other capabilities and anticipated threats, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright said on Thursday (U.S. Defense Department photo). A future national military strategy should strike a balance between fielding conventional weapons and nuclear arms, with the latter viewed as less usable against most threats, said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Fresh planning should also account for the emerging roles played by missile defenses and cyber capabilities, he said. [Military expenditure][Nuclear weapons]
• Pakistan and "The Haqqani Network" : The Latest Orchestrated Threat to America and The End of History
  by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, September 27, 2011 - 2011-09-26 Have you ever before heard of the Haqqanis? I didn’t think so. Like Al Qaeda, about which no one had ever heard prior to 9/11, the “Haqqani Network” has popped up in time of need to justify America’s next war--Pakistan. President Obama’s claim that he had Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden exterminated deflated the threat from that long-serving bogyman. A terror organization that left its leader, unarmed and undefended, a sitting duck for assassination no longer seemed formidable. Time for a new, more threatening, bogyman, the pursuit of which will keep the “war on terror” going. Now America’s “worst enemy” is the Haqqanis. [Threat] [China confrontation] [Conflict]
• Towards a new order in the Arab world
  By Roula Khalaf An email from a Tunisian organisation I’ve never heard of landed in my inbox this week, with a warning about the disastrous consequences of an Islamist success in Sunday’s election in the country which launched the Arab spring and is holding its first democratic poll. A victory for Nahda, the Islamist party, would frighten investors, discourage tourism and throw thousands of Tunisians out of work, warned the “Citizens for a free world,” who signed the document. To illustrate the doomed Nahda-led future, they included a video clip. With a heart-rending melody playing, an elderly Tunisian mourns his life in “frustration and misery” and “the loss of 400 years of civilisation”. Similar scare tactics are likely in Egypt next month, as the country nears its own post-revolution election on November 28. Liberal parties, old and new, are already telling anyone willing to listen of the catastrophic implications of a strong performance by the Muslim Brotherhood. [Islamist]
• Commentary: Don't rush to celebrate post-Gaddafi era
  Xinhua | October 21, 2011 13:37 Resorting to the most violent means to effect a change, the armed forces of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) and NATO have finally taken control of Muammar Gaddafi's last stronghold of Sirte and are embracing the real arrival of the post-Gaddafi era. The Libyan people have paid a costly price for the change. The months-long civil war has completely paralysed the country's national economy, ruined its lifeline oil industry, unleashed tribal forces and left a heavy toll of casualties. With Gaddafi's demise, the Libyan people are stepping into a new era. However, there are reasons to remain cautious, or at least not too optimistic, about the country's future as no one has any illusions about a quick and easy solution to the tremendous difficulties lying ahead. Take a look at Iraq! The Iraqi people, many of whom once were rejoiced at the death of their former leader Saddam Hussein, have now been subject to frequent bomb and suicide attacks as the country has descended into bloody factionalism. The hard fact is that the interim government has to manage the high expectations of the Libyan people and face tremendous tasks such as an underlying power struggle. Currently, the big question is how long the transitional period will last in the crisis-torn North African country now that Gaddafi is gone. The answer to this largely lies with the NTC itself. Since the common goal of toppling Gaddafi's rule in Libya has been achieved, can the NTC maintain its unity, establish a new cause, strike a sustainable power balance and secure a national reconciliation? [Libya]
• Gaddafi's death still shrouded in confusion
  Varying accounts claim Libyan leader was caught in crossfire, died from earlier wounds, or shot in the head at close range Peter Walker and agencies guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 October 2011 09.45 BST Article history Muammar Gaddafi died while in the hands of NTC fighters after being captured in Sirte. Photograph: Saad Shalash/Reuters Muammar Gaddafi is set to be buried on Friday in an undisclosed location as Nato meets to discuss the end of the military campaign which hastened the end of his 42-year rule over Libya. Authorities from the National Transitional Council, the interim authority which led the revolt against Gaddafi and ultimately supplanted him, reportedly remain uncertain where and when the secretive funeral should take place. Gaddafi's death on Thursday – which, according to conflicting reports, ultimately came when he was caught in crossfire, bled to death from earlier wounds or was executed at close range – is likely to bring an imminent end to the Nato aim campaign which decisively turned the military campaign in the NTC's favour. The French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, whose country's planes, operating under the Nato remit, are believed to have attacked Gaddafi's convoy as it fled his besieged home town of Sirte, said on Friday that the operation was over. [Libya] [Imperialism]
• Gadhafi was captured alive; how he died is in dispute
  Osama al Fitory and Hannah Allam McClatchy Newspapers SIRTE, Libya — Former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi asked his captors twice, "What do you want from me?" as they swarmed around him Thursday, according to video footage shot at the scene by a Libyan journalist. By early afternoon, he was dead, but how he died remained in dispute. In one version, recounted by a reporter for the Arabic-language satellite channel al Arabiya, the former dictator was shot moments after his capture by an 18-year-old revolutionary fighter who was hailed as a hero by his comrades in arms. In the other, told by officials of Libya's interim government in Tripoli, Gadhafi died en route to a hospital for treatment of wounds he suffered when the convoy he was riding in was hit by a NATO airstrike that preceded his detention. [Libya] [Imperialism]
• In Libyan Conflict, European Power Was Felt
  By BRIAN KNOWLTON Published: October 20, 2011 WASHINGTON — In Libya, NATO crossed the historical milestone of letting Europeans, basically the British and French, conduct a war in which the U.S. military played a vital but secondary role, and European politicians and generals rejoiced at word that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had been killed in or near his stronghold of Surt. [Imperialism] [Subordinate]
• Moammar Gaddafi is captured, killed as last loyalist holdout in Libya falls
  View Photo Gallery — ?Libyan fighters overran the home town of ousted leader Moammar Gaddafi on Thursday, and officials said he was killed while trying to flee. By Mary Beth Sheridan, Published: October 20 TRIPOLI, Libya — Former Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi was killed Thursday after being seized in a sewage tunnel in his home town — the final triumph for pro-democracy fighters who have struggled for eight months to take control of the country. Gaddafi’s death came on a day of intense military activity in Sirte, the last loyalist holdout in Libya, where his supporters had fended off better-armed revolutionaries for weeks. Before his capture, a U.S. drone and French fighter jets fired on a large, disorganized convoy leaving the city that he appears to have been in. It was not clear whether the airstrikes hit Gaddafi’s vehicles, NATO officials said. WARNING: graphic video. Al-Jazeera TV showed footage of a man resembling Moammar Gaddafi lying dead or severely wounded. The video comes as Libyan leaders have informed the U.S. that Gaddafi is dead. (Oct. 20) .Gaddafi was shot in the head during an exchange of gunfire between his supporters and revolutionaries as he was being whisked away from the tunnel in a truck, according to Mahmoud Jibril, the interim prime minister. But cellphone videos played on Arab-language TV stations showed an already bloodied and dazed Gaddafi being escorted to the truck, raising questions about exactly when he was hit. One of Gaddafi’s sons, Mutassim, and his army chief of staff were also killed, officials said. The taking of Sirte and Gaddafi’s death marked the climax of a war that was backed by an unprecedented NATO air campaign aimed at protecting civilians.(sic) Thursday’s events clear the way for the appointment of a temporary government that is to steer the country toward elections. [Libya] [Spin]
• President Obama points to value of ‘collective action’ in Libya
  By Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung, Friday, October 21, 1:59 AM Like the U.S. military manhunt for Saddam Hussein, the search for the fugitive dictator Moammar Gaddafi took seven months. He finally popped up, like his Iraqi counterpart, from an inglorious hiding place and is now dead. The similarities end there. President Barack Obama says the death of Moammar Gaddafi marks the end of a long and painful chapter for Libya. Obama did not independently confirm Gaddafi's death, and instead cited the fact that Libyan officials have announced his killing. (Oct. 20) .How President Obama helped bring about the end of a long-standing American antagonist in Libya captures in microcosm the vast difference in the way he and his predecessor, George W. Bush, have employed diplomacy and military power against their declared enemies. [Libya] [US global policy] [Obama] [Imperialism] [Subordinate]
• On his first trip to Asia as Pentagon chief, Panetta faces touchy issue of Marines on Okinawa
  By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, October 21, 9:21 AM WASHINGTON — On his first trip to Asia as defense secretary, Leon Panetta intends to stress a U.S. commitment to strengthening ties with key allies and partner countries while keeping a wary eye on China’s military buildup. Panetta was embarking Friday on a weeklong tour, with stops in Indonesia, Japan and Korea. In addition to meetings with government officials, he planned to hold town hall-style sessions with U.S. troops in Japan and Korea, where land, air and naval bases form the core of the U.S. military presence in Asia. [Bases][Okinawa]
• I spy with my little eye something beginning with I…
  Ali Khan, 19 October 2011 Once people talked of reds under the bed but nowadays it seems more à la mode to blame Iranians. About the authorAli Khan is a PhD student in history at the University of Cambridge whose areas of interest are South Asia and the greater Middle East.Recently the White House has claimed that it uncovered a plot to kill the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the US. The Americans must either be desperate to move attention away from their various domestic crises or somehow suddenly the Iranians have decided to outsource their work to amateur drug peddlers and money launderers. It is astonishing that a spook wired $100,000 when today even an illiterate illegal immigrant finds untraceable ways of remitting money home. After the alleged assassination attempt, Obama, of all people, has been more pugnacious and asserted that Iran will “pay the price” for such behaviour. He went on to say that he would “not take any options off the table” and then talked about how even if the Iranian top brass did not know of the operational details of the plot, they would have to be held accountable. Of course this logic will probably never apply to the superiors of the American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who committed all those heinous acts. [Iran] [Double standards]
• Marco Rubio’s compelling family story embellishes facts, documents show
  By Manuel Roig-Franzia, Published: October 20 During his rise to political prominence, Sen. Marco Rubio frequently repeated a compelling version of his family’s history that had special resonance in South Florida. He was the “son of exiles,” he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took power. But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that the Florida Republican’s account embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than 2 1 / 2 years b efore Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959. .The supposed flight of Rubio’s parents has been at the core of the young senator’s political identity, both before and after his stunning tea-party-propelled victory in last year’s Senate election. Rubio — now considered a prospective 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate and a possible future presidential contender — mentions his parents in the second sentence of the official biography on his Senate Web site. It says that Mario and Oriales Rubio “came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover.” And the 40-year-old senator with the boyish smile and prom-king good looks has drawn on the power of that claim to entrance audiences captivated by the rhetorical skills of one of the more dynamic stump speakers in modern American politics. The real story of his parents’ migration appears to be a more conventional immigrant narrative, a couple who came to the United States seeking a better life. [Disinformation] [Diaspora]
• History Repeating Itself: U.S. Hawks Hover Over Iran
  by ­William Echols Global Research, October 18, 2011 RT -Whether calls for war against Iran are meant to placate American allies in the Middle East who cannot stomach its supposed nuclear ambitions, are an attempt to reassert US dominance in the oil rich region, or are the last signs of a flagging empire lashing out in self-denial, those who are longing for it to be morning again in America might very well expedite its imperial twilight. History seems to be repeating itself as the hawks who called for the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein are now rattling their sabers for war against Iran. But why are those who once called for a new American Century hopelessly stuck in a bygone era? ­In a bellicose diatribe published in the latest edition of the Weekly Standard, senior editor William Kristol accuses Iran of having the blood of American soldiers on its hands. Claiming that “force” is the only language the regime understands, he proceeds to call on the US Congress to “consider authorizing the use of force against Iranian entities that facilitate attacks on our troops, against IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) and other regime elements that sponsor terror, and against the regime’s nuclear weapons program.” In an October 17 Foreign Policy initiative (FPI) Bulletin, executive director Jamie Fly toes the same line, proclaiming: “Until now, the president has chosen to be the hapless victim of Iran’s machinations. It is time for President Obama to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors and stand up to tyrants who kill Americans and threaten our interests. "It is time to take military action against the Iranian government elements that support terrorism and its nuclear program. More diplomacy is not an adequate response.” [Iran] [Hardliner]
• Precision Technologies as Possible Alternatives to Nuclear Weapons
  In this study, Steve Lukasik, former director of the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, assesses the potential of emerging, highly precise conventional military technologies to accomplish the missions currently assigned to nuclear weapons. Jul 19, 2010 AUTHOR: Stephen J. Lukasik [Imperialism] [Nuclear weapons] [US military]
• Pentagon lawyer warns of militarized approach to counterterrorism
  By Peter Finn, Published: October 19 The Pentagon’s general counsel warned Tuesday against the “over-militarization” of the country’s approach to counterterrorism and said Congress should avoid micro-managing how terrorist suspects are detained and prosecuted. “There is risk in permitting and expecting the U.S. military to extend its powerful reach into areas traditionally reserved for civilian law enforcement in this country,” Jeh Johnson said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation. “The military should not and cannot be the only answer.” Johnson in particular criticized a series of detention provisions in the House and Senate versions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. [Militarisation] [Global insurgency] [Legality]
• The rise and rise of western covert ops
  Published: October 18 By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Four months ago, Admiral William McRaven commanded the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. Now, as the new head of U.S. special forces, he argues that his shadowy, secretive warriors are increasingly central to how America and its allies fight. When the suntanned, towering SEAL testified to the Congressional House Armed Services Committee in September, just a few weeks after he took over his new role, he used posters detailing the growth of his forces. In the decade since Sept. 11 2001, U.S. Special Operations Command personnel numbers have doubled, its budget tripled and deployments quadrupled. [Special forces]
• Obama, The Son of Africa, Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels
  by John Pilger Global Research, October 20, 2011 On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only "engage" for "self-defence", says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way. Obama’s decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising", even "weird". It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and "protect" Indonesia, which President Nixon called "the region’s richest hoard of natural resources …the greatest prize". Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. Like all America’s subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self defence" or "humanitarian", words long emptied of their dictionary meaning.
  However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. [US global strategy] [Africa] [China confrontation]
• A hundred years of bombing: what has it done to us?
  Paul Gilroy and Les Back, 18 October 2011 November 2011 marks the centenary of a world-historic event. An Italian pilot, Guilio Cavotti dropped the first bombs from an aeroplane on to the oasis of Tagiura outside Tripoli. The development of aerial bombardment was more than just a military revolution. It changed both war and peace. openDemocracy is the media partner for Shock and Awe: a hundred years of bombing from above and this is an invitation to a debate. [Airpower]
• Muammar Gaddafi captured in Sirte: NTC field commander tells Xinhua
  Globaltimes.cn | October 20, 2011 19:45 By Xinhua Share An image captured off a cellphone camera shows the arrest of Moamer Kadhafi in Sirte on October 20. A Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) commander had told AFP that Kadhafi was captured as his hometown Sirte was falling, adding that Kadhafi was badly wounded. Photo: AFP Libya's fallen leader Muammar Gaddafi was injured and captured Thursday by fighters of the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) in Sirte, a NTC field commander told Xinhua. The commander, Momhemed Buras Ali Al-Maknee, said a group of fighters from the western Libyan city of Misrata captured Gaddafi in Sirte, who was severely injured. Gaddafi has been taken away by a military helicopter to an unknown place, he said.
• Moammar Gadhafi reported killed in final battle for Sirte
  By Mohamed Albuaishi and Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers Mohamed Albuaishi and Hannah Allam McClatchy Newspapers TRIPOLI, Libya — Fugitive former leader Moammar Gadhafi was killed today during the final battle for Sirte, his hometown, according to a variety of officials of the interim government in Libya. Members of the National Transitional Council, the interim ruling authority, told McClatchy and other news agencies that Gadhafi had been captured and was wounded in both legs, but Reuters, citing a senior council official, reported that Gadhafi had been killed. “It is confirmed, Gadhafi is captured,” NTC member Mohamed al Sayegh told McClatchy in Tripoli. NTC member Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters that "there was a lot of firing against his group and he died." Earlier, Mlegta had confirmed that Gadhafi was "captured and wounded in both legs at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked," according to Reuters. Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the interim government's military commander in Tripoli, also said that Gadhafi was dead, Al Jazeera reported. The conflicting reports quickly spread via Twitter, with many Libya observers urging caution because of the notorious unreliability of the transitional council, which has issued several erroneous statements alleging the capture or death of Gadhafi’s sons. One Arab analyst tweeted that NTC should stand for “Not Too Credible.” The Getty photo agency and other news sites published a photo that purportedly was taken by a cell-phone camera during Gadhafi's capture. The photo shows a blood-soaked man who strongly resembles Gadhafi being manhandled. No other details were available. Residents of Tripoli, however, didn’t wait for confirmation before unleashing a jubilant volley of gunfire and horn honking. The sounds got louder and the weapons got heavier as the news spread. Former rebels jogged through the streets shouting “God is great!” a rallying cry of the young fighters. After 42 years in power, Gadhafi’s bizarre and brutal regime is so deeply ingrained in society that many Libyans have said only his death or capture would clear the path for a new political order. Another symbolic victory Thursday came with the former rebels’ announcement of the fall of Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte, where regime loyalists fought weeks of pitched battles against the slowly encroaching anti-Gadhafi brigades. Special correspondent Albuaishi reported from Libya; Allam reported from Cairo. [Libya]
• Libyan state TV reports Gaddafi killed after his home town is overrun
  By Mary Beth Sheridan and Michael Birnbaum, Updated: Thursday, October 20, 2:37 PM TRIPOLI, Libya — Revolutionary fighters overran the last major stronghold of Moammar Gaddafi’s loyalists on Thursday, and Libyan state television and top officials of the new government reported that the ousted former Libyan leader was killed. There was no immediate confirmation of the death from independent sources, and conflicting reports circulated that he had been captured or wounded. ?Moammar Gaddafi had ruled Libya for more than 40 years. With the capture of his hometown stronghold of Sirte, the new Libyan government has declared victory over the last major pro-Gaddafi resistance. Timeline: Gaddafi’s 41-year-long rule .The revolutionaries captured the Mediterranean coastal city of Sirte and effectively brought an end to an eight-month war in which NATO intervened militarily to protect a pro-democracy uprising. [Libya]
• In Egypt, corruption cases had an American root
  By James V. Grimaldi and Robert O’Harrow Jr., Thursday, October 20, 1:44 AM CAIRO — Beginning two decades ago, the United States government bankrolled an Egyptian think tank dedicated to economic reform. A different outcome is only now becoming visible in the fallout from Egypt’s Arab Spring. Formed with a $10 million endowment from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies gathered captains of industry in a small circle — with the president’s son Gamal Mubarak at the center. Over time, members of the group would assume top roles in Egypt’s ruling party and government. .Today, Gamal Mubarak and four of those think tank members are in jail, charged with squandering public funds in the sale of public resources, lands and government-run companies as part of a dramatic restructuring. Some have fled the country, pilloried amid the public outrage over insider deals and corruption that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. [Egypt] [Corruption] [Imperialism]
• Services export can boost US job creation: trade expert
  Xinhua | October 19, 2011 11:16 Export from the fast-growing services sector can be a significant propeller for job creation in America, a trade expert said Tuesday. American policy makers have largely overlooked the export potential of the services sector, which could become an abundant source of well-paying jobs for Americans, said J. Bradford Jensen, a senior fellow with Washington-based think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics. "In the past decade employment in services has grown by over 20 percent while manufacturing declined by 20 percent," said Jensen, author of Global Trade in Services: Fear, Facts and Offshoring [Services]
• America’s Secret Empire of Drone Bases
  by NICK TURSE They increasingly dot the planet. There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth at an air base in the United Arab Emirates that almost no one talks about. And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide. Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America’s ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous — until now. [Bases] [UAV]
• America, Iran and the “Plot”
  by DEEPAK TRIPATHI The war is not over yet in Libya after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and the Obama administration has turned its attention to Iran. Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement of a “plot” to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States, and warnings of dire consequences for Iran, mark a new escalation between the two countries. The Obama administration says the offender behind the “plot” is an Iranian-American used-car salesman based in Texas, Mansour Arbabsiar, who believed he was hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for a meager one-and-a-half million dollars. It was a trap set up by federal agents. Not for the first time, it seems, the American law enforcement agencies are responsible for planting ideas into the mind of someone naïve and ordinary and making an arrest as soon as the individual looks interested.
• Clinton arrives in Libya bearing aid and encouragement
  By Joby Warrick, Updated: Tuesday, October 18, 11:30 AM TRIPOLI, Libya — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to the Libyan capital on Tuesday, bringing encouragement and millions of dollars in new U.S. aid to a transitional government struggling to consolidate control over a country ravaged by dictatorship and civil war. Clinton arrived in Tripoli just after noon, becoming the first cabinet-level U.S. official to visit the country since autocratic leader Moammar Gaddafi was driven from the capital nearly two months ago. .She was scheduled to meet with top officials of the transitional government and address a town hall-style gathering during a five-hour visit steeped in both security and symbolism. [Libya]
• Anwar al-Awlaki’s family speaks out against his son’s death in airstrike
  By Peter Finn and Greg Miller, Tuesday, October 18, 2:22 AM In the days before a CIA drone strike killed al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki last month, his 16-year-old son ran away from the family home in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa to try to find him, relatives say. When he, too, was killed in a U.S. airstrike Friday, the Awlaki family decided to speak out for the first time since the attacks. “To kill a teenager is just unbelievable, really, and they claim that he is an al-Qaeda militant. It’s nonsense,” said Nasser al-Awlaki, a former Yemeni agriculture minister who was Anwar al-Awlaki’s father and the boy’s grandfather, speaking in a phone interview from Sanaa on Monday. “They want to justify his killing, that’s all.” .The teenager, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was born in Denver in 1995, and his 17-year-old Yemeni cousin were killed in a U.S. military strike that left nine people dead in southeastern Yemen. [Assassination] [UAV] [War crimes]
• In Mina's death, some see spark for a second revolution
  By Leila Fadel, Tuesday, October 18, 3:40 AM CAIRO — Mina Daniel, a 20-year-old Coptic Christian, protested for more than a year against poverty, human rights abuses and discrimination. He became one of the young leaders of the revolution that toppled Egypt’s president in February. His courage earned him respect from fellow revolutionaries and cost him two bullet wounds. His revolutionary spirit prompted him to grow a beard like Argentine Marxist icon Che Guevara. .On Oct. 9, the 44th anniversary of Guevara’s death, Daniel was facing Egyptian security forces in downtown Cairo when he died like his hero, a bullet apparently fired by a soldier piercing his chest. The death has given a name and a face to what activists describe as the second wind of a revolution. The target is the country’s military leadership, which assumed power after Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down and, in the ensuing months, has resorted to many of the loathed tactics of the police state Egyptians are trying to dismantle. [Egypt]
• U.S. cyberweapons had been considered to disrupt Gaddafi’s air defences
  By Ellen Nakashima, Tuesday, October 18, 2:26 AM Top Pentagon officials considered using their secretive arsenal of cyberweapons to disrupt Libya’s air defenses before deciding that bombs would be the better option for preparing the way for U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. The debate, which officials said did not reach the White House, was aborted when it became clear that there was not enough time for a cyberattack to work. Libyan government forces, led by Moammar Gaddafi, were at the time close to overrunning Benghazi, a rebel stronghold where U.S. officials feared massacre might occur without fast intervention, said current and former officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive policy discussions. .“We just ran out of time,” a former military official said. “It was overcome by events.” That the cyberattack option was raised at all underscores the U.S. military’s growing capabilities in cyberwarfare and the appeal of such weapons as alternatives to conventional military options. But the debate also showed some of the practical limits on using computer code as a weapon. [Libya] [Cyberwar]
• United States needs to reevaluate its assistance to Israel
  By Walter Pincus, Tuesday, October 18, 1:24 AM As the country reviews its spending on defense and foreign assistance, it is time to examine the funding the United States provides to Israel. Let me put it another way: Nine days ago, the Israeli cabinet reacted to months of demonstrations against the high cost of living there and agreed to raise taxes on corporations and people with high incomes ($130,000 a year). It also approved cutting more than $850 million, or about 5 percent, from its roughly $16 billion defense budget in each of the next two years. .If Israel can reduce its defense spending because of its domestic economic problems, shouldn’t the United States — which must cut military costs because of its major budget deficit — consider reducing its aid to Israel? [Israel] [Arms sales]
• Gaddafi home town largely destroyed
  ASMAA WAGUIH/REUTERS - An anti-Gaddafi fighter cries for an injured comrade during heavy clashes with Gaddafi loyalists outside the State Security compound in Sirte October 9, 2011 By Mary Beth Sheridan, Published: October 15 SIRTE, Libya — After weeks of intense fighting, Moammar Gaddafi’s home town appeared Saturday to have been largely destroyed, with most of its population fled and holes the size of manhole covers blown in apartment buildings and the ousted leader’s showcase convention center. Revolutionary forces are now battling to defeat the last of the pro-Gaddafi fighters in the strategically important coastal city 278 miles southeast of Tripoli. On Saturday, the thud of tank rounds and the whine of Katyusha rockets filled the air, and black smoke rose above a contested central neighborhood. But the Gaddafi fighters held on, setting up sniper lairs in a densely packed residential district, revolutionary fighters said. .For Libya’s interim government, capturing the city is paramount and would effectively end the eight-month civil war. But the damage wreaked in Sirte raises the question of whether its residents will go quietly into the post-Gaddafi future — or retain a smoldering anger that could fuel an insurgency. [Libya] [Pacification]
• Poll watcher: Almost half say Iran is “enemy,” and more of today’s top polls
  By Scott Clement
  Iran widely seen as “enemy” — President Obama vowed Thursday to hold Iran accountable for an alleged attempt to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States. Despite skepticism surrounding the seriousness of the case, American public opinion on Iran is largely settled and extraordinarily negative. Almost half the public said Iran was an “enemy” in a CNN poll (pdf) this spring, and another third called the nation “unfriendly.” Ratings of Iran matched views of North Korea and were markedly worse than any of the nine other nations tested in the poll, including Syria (25 percent “enemy”) and Pakistan (24 percent). [Public opinion]
• CNN opinion poll
  Interviews with 1,007 adult Americans conducted by telephone by Opinion Research Corporation on May 24-26, 2011. The margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
• Tiny Kingdom's Huge Role in Libya Draws Concern
  By SAM DAGHER and CHARLES LEVINSON in Tripoli and MARGARET COKER in Doha Three weeks after rebel fighters drove Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi from power in Tripoli, military leaders gathered on the leafy grounds of an Islamic institute to hash out a way to unite the capital's disparate fighting groups. The Tripoli chiefs were nearing a deal on a unified command when two visitors stepped in. .One was Abdel Hakim Belhaj—a former Islamic fighter briefly held in 2004 by the Central Intelligence Agency, who had led one of the militias that marched triumphantly into Tripoli. Now the city's most visible military commander, he accused the local militia leaders of sidelining him, say people briefed on the Sept. 11 meeting. [Libya] [Islamist]
• Losing Their Immunity
  By PAUL KRUGMAN As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement’s targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. (A reader of my blog suggests that we start calling our ruling class the “kvetchocracy.”) The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy? The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation’s economic elite have done for us. And that’s why they’re protesting. [Crisis]
• Afghanistan, "Operation Enduring Slaughter": Ten Bloody Years
  by Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research, October 14, 2011 As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. (W.H. Auden, 1907-1973.) What a murderous, infanticidel, appalling, shameful, ignorant – and arguable, decade-long war crime. “Operation Enduring Freedom”, turned “Operation Enduring Slaughter.” Announcing the assault on Afghanistan on 7th October 2001, George W. Bush said, citing “Enduring Freedom”, that it defended: “… the freedom of people everywhere to live and raise their children free from fear.” Further, that: “If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves, (a) lonely path …” Moreover: “ the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies. As we strike military targets, we’ll also drop food, medicine and supplies, to the starving and suffering men, women and children of Afghanistan.” “We’re a peaceful nation”, the President assured the world. In London, “ally”, the then Prime Minister Blair was reading from the same script: “We are peaceful people. But we know that sometimes to safeguard peace, we have to fight … We only do it if the cause is just. This cause is just.” In persuit of justness, between 7th October and 10th December 2001, 12,000 bombs were dropped in 4,710 sorties, on a population of just 28 million people (Globe and Mail, 19th January 2002) with 42% of the population aged 0-14; children being thus raised in unimaginable terror, rather then “free from fear.” With the bombs, aid parcels were indeed dropped. They were the identical colouring to the accompanying cluster bombs.Resultantly, those who rushed to collect brightly coloured yellow packages, in anticipation - so often children - had limbs blown off at best, or life blown away. Exited anticipation turned terminal. The US belatedly issued warnings.(i) Between October 2001 and early 2002, United States aircraft dropped 1,228 cluster bombs containing 248,056 bomblets, in 232 strikes on locations throughout the country., according to Cluster Munitions Monitor.(ii) It is unclear whether they have been further used. Though Coalition forces have confirmed deploying cluster munitions for possible use.(iii) Lest the indiscriminate carnage of the early days be obscured by that of the subsequent years mass graves and ongoing, frenetic destruction by :“The United States of America, a friend to the Afghan people, and of almost a billion worldwide who practice the Islamic faith”, as also declared by Bush in his 7th October address. [AfPak] [Casualties] [Spin]
• Hospital is a casualty of Libyan war
  By Mary Beth Sheridan, Published: October 17 SIRTE, Libya — Amid a raging battle for this last major Gaddafi stronghold, humanitarian groups in recent days have discovered a tableau of horror in the city’s main hospital. More than 100 patients were lying in the hallways, in urgent need of attention. One man’s wound was swarming with worms. Another, whose legs had been amputated, had no painkillers. The morgue was overflowing. The Ibn Sina hospital offers a glimpse into the desperation in Sirte, home town of fugitive former leader Moammar Gaddafi. Although the autocratic ruler was toppled in August and the world has recognized a new, pro-democracy government, the war isn’t over. Some of the fiercest fighting in the eight-month conflict has been unfolding in recent weeks in this coastal city. [Libya] [Casualties] [False balance]
• Syrian Bloodshed and the West's Abdication of Journalistic Responsibility
  The October 13 BBC headline read: Clashes in Syria leave 19 dead – rights activists. That gives the impression that the brutal Syrian army killed 19 Syrian demonstrators. Not quite. The story continues: The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 people died when government troops attacked the northern town of Banash. In the southern town of Haara, armed men killed at least nine soldiers. That’s nine Syrian government soldiers. According to Syrian government reports, 1100 Syrian government forces have been killed since the uprising began. Anti-government violence by armed groups is one of the inconvenient truths about the Syrian uprising. Democracy activists don’t want to admit it; sympathetic media outlets don’t want to report it. Now that the issue is becoming unavoidable, the new tactic is to excuse it as the response of incensed deserters, while deploring the “slide toward civil war.” Not so. The issue of “armed gangs” has been there from the beginning. It took a willful abdication of journalistic responsibility to suppress it—and to continue to misrepresent it in order to evade responsibility for the simple-minded (and single-minded) pro-democracy media cheerleading that characterized most reporting on Syria. Now that the non-violent anti-government protests are sputtering into futility, center stage is taken by the advocates of violent struggle. For the West and Sunni states to breathe more life into the anti-Assad movement, violence has to be portrayed as inevitable, principled response, not escalating provocation seeking to obscure the failure of a political movement. I expect the media to cover the issue of anti-government violence with same dishonest, guilty evasiveness it has displayed in the past. [Syria] [[Media] [Disinformation]
• How to Spin a Plot: U.S. Officials Peddle False Intel to Support Terror Plot Claims
  by GARETH PORTER October 17, 2011 Officials of the Barack Obama administration have aggressively leaked information supposedly based on classified intelligence in recent days to bolster its allegation that two higher- ranking officials from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were involved in a plot to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir in Washington, D.C. The media stories generated by the leaks helped divert press attention from the fact that there is no verifiable evidence of any official Iranian involvement in the alleged assassination plan, contrary to the broad claim being made by the administration. But the information about the two Iranian officials leaked to NBC News, the Washington Post and Reuters was unambiguously false and misleading, as confirmed by official documents in one case and a former senior intelligence and counterterrorism official in the other. The main target of the official leaks was Abdul Reza Shahlai, who was identified publicly by the Obama administration as a “deputy commander in the Quds Force” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Shahlai had long been regarded by U.S. officials as a key figure in the Quds Force’s relationship to Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Iraq.
• In the chaos of Sirte, anti-Gaddafi fighters are killing each other
  Fight for last uncaptured ground made more deadly by Libyan government forces' rivalries and inexperience Peter Beaumont in Sirte guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 October 2011 18.06 BST Article history Death and injury arrive suddenly and randomly on the Libyan city of Sirte's frontline. Sometimes, however, they come with a gruesome symmetry. On Friday, an rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fired by pro-Gaddafi forces, defending their last pocket of resistance in the city, caused some of the casualties. But it was a mortar fired by the government's own fighters that caused the most. Both incidents occurred within a few seconds. The fighters were bunched near the frontline on Dubai Street on the southern front occupied mainly by fighters from Misrata when the two rounds came in. [Libya]
• Obama sends troops to Africa to track Lord's Resistance Army leader
  Steven Thomma McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — The United States has dispatched a small group of U.S. troops to central Africa to help hunt down the elusive leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, a cultlike force that's been terrorizing Uganda and other nations, President Barack Obama told Congress in a letter Friday. Obama stressed that the U.S. troops, who started arriving in Uganda on Wednesday, will only provide support to African forces who are trying to capture Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and won't engage in combat unless they're attacked. The force will number about 100. [Special forces] [Africa]
• U.S. Sending More Contractors to Secure Libya’s Weapons Stockpile
  By ERIC SCHMITT and KAREEM FAHIM Published: October 14, 2011 WASHINGTON — The State Department is sending dozens of American contractors to Libya to help that country’s fledgling efforts to track down and destroy heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles looted from government stockpiles that could be used against civilian airliners. [Libya] [Privatisation]
• Small U.S. force to deploy to Uganda, aid fight against Lord’s Resistance Army
  By Scott Wilson and Craig Whitlock, Saturday, October 15, 1:32 AM President Obama will send about 100 U.S. troops to Uganda and nearby countries to combat the Lord’s Resistance Army and kill or capture its leader, Joseph Kony, who has been charged with war crimes for a decades-long campaign against civilians in Central Africa. In a letter to Congress on Friday, Obama outlined a strictly advisory role for U.S. forces, whom he said would engage in combat only in self-defense. The initial military contingent numbering about a dozen troops arrived in Uganda on Wednesday, and will grow to full strength in the coming weeks. [Special forces] [Africa]
• Afghan, U.S. forces repel Taliban raid on NATO base
  By Sayed Salahuddin, Saturday, October 15, 8:06 AM KABUL — Afghan and U.S. troops foiled a complex attack by Taliban insurgents against a NATO-led base Saturday in Panjshir Valley in eastern Afghanistan, one of the few secure regions that so far has remained free of militants’ strikes. Armed with hand grenades, anti-tank rockets and assault rifles, a group of five attackers including at least two suicide bombers launched the pre-dawn raid on the base, perched in the foot of a hill near the only main road in the twisting valley. [AfPak]
• ‘Gargantuan large’ investment in infrastructure needed, experts say
  (Dominic Bracco II/The Washington Post) - Rosslyn Metro station. Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Ashley Halsey III and Dana A. Hedgpeth, Saturday, October 15, 2:11 AM The day of President Obama’s inauguration was a record breaker for Washington’s Metro transit system: 1.5 million passengers swarmed aboard its buses and trains. Days such as the one that nearly overwhelmed the system might one day become routine as projected population growth taxes the regional transportation network. .The grim prospect of a transit agency already burdened with a system that has deteriorated after decades of deferred maintenance and yet will face significant new demand was served up Friday as a microcosm of the nation’s dilemma. The U.S. population is forecast to grow by 100 million — a 30 percent increase — before the middle of the 21st century. And right now a nationwide transportation system built in the middle of the 20th century is falling apart. There isn’t enough money to arrest its decline, and the public is largely oblivious to the need. [Decline] [Infrastructure]
• Occam’s Razor Helpless Against Iranian Bomb Plot Horsecrap
  Since everybody else is tiptoeing around the issue, I might as well put my hoof in: The “Iranian bomb plot” smells like BS. The idea that the Iranian regime or Quds Force decided to pull this off should be fourth or fifth down the list of plausible explanations, if not lower. It looks more like a black flag operation by Israel or Saudi Arabia. [False flag] [Iran] [Saudi Arabia]
• If you think Iraq's secure, read this about Wednesday's violence
  By Sahar Issa | McClatchy Newspapers Sahar Issa McClatchy Newspapers Wednesday, October 12, 2011Modified BAGHDAD — A spate of attacks including two parked car bombs and two suicide car bombs driven by suicide bombers targeted police in different districts of Baghdad, Wednesday, killing at least 22 people and wounding around 74 others, security officials said. One suicide bomber slammed into the Alwiyah police station in the central Karrada district, killing 14 people and wounding 25 others. The other suicide attack targeted the police station in the Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 23 others. The greater majority of the casualties were policemen, security officials said. [Iraq] [Pacification] [Global insurgency]
• Libyan rebels abuse, torture prisoners, right groups says
  By Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers Hannah Allam McClatchy Newspapers CAIRO — Libyan revolutionary forces are holding more than 2,500 detainees in makeshift prisons where they're subjected to beatings and languish without charges, the human rights advocacy group Amnesty International said Wednesday. Despite pledges of speedy prosecutions, the National Transitional Council, Libya's provisional authority since the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi, has yet to try any detainees, Amnesty said. [Libya] [Human rights] [War crimes]
• Libya: new leaders, old torture
  12 October 2011 at 23:25 by Niluccio Latest reports are that resistance in the Gaddafi loyalist stronghold of Sirte is "crumbling” after a sustained attack from the National Transitional Council forces (I keep seeing photos of their fighters casually decked out in baseball caps, with heavily-protected Western journalists right next to them. A bizarre juxtaposition …). So what next? Well, fighting in Sirte aside, I get the impression that media attention is already fading fast with Libya. This is a pity and a worry. My understanding of history is that after a revolution you often get horrible reprisal attacks and score-settling. In Libya this is already happening. The uncomfortable truth is that NTC forces - or at least armed groups operating as anti-Gaddafi fighters – have been killing, abducting, and torturing people they identify as Gaddafi’s men. [Libya] [Human rights] [War crimes]
• Libya: New report reveals torture of detainees under NTC
  Posted: 12 October 2011 Captured Gaddafi soldiers, suspected loyalists and alleged mercenaries being tortured into ‘confessing’ to pro-Gaddafi crimes The new authorities in Libya must stamp out arbitrary detention and widespread abuse of detainees, Amnesty International said today (12 October), as it published a new report revealing a pattern of beatings and ill-treatment of captured Gaddafi soldiers, suspected loyalists and alleged mercenaries in western Libya. [Libya] [Human rights] [War crimes]
• Cain's 9-9-9 plan: Good for the rich, bad for the poor
  WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's proposed 9-9-9 tax plan would shift the tax burden in the United States, raising taxes on the poor while cutting taxes for the wealthy.
• U.S. Challenged to Explain Accusations of Iran Plot in the Face of Skepticism
  Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador, was said to be the target of an assassination plot involving a Mexican drug cartel. By ERIC SCHMITT and SCOTT SHANE Published: October 12, 2011 WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday sought to reconcile what it said was solid evidence of an Iranian plot to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States with a wave of puzzlement and skepticism from some foreign leaders and outside experts. Senior American officials themselves were struggling to explain why the Quds Force, an elite international operations unit within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, would orchestrate such a risky attack in so amateurish a manner. [False flag] [Iran]
• Smuggled Libyan weapons flood into Egypt
  By Leila Fadel, Thursday, October 13, 1:10 AM EL ARISH, Egypt — Large caches of weapons from Libya are making their way across the Egyptian border and flooding black markets in Egypt’s already unstable Sinai Peninsula, according to current and former Egyptian military officials and arms traders in the Sinai. Egyptian security officials have intercepted surface-to-air missiles, most of them shoulder-launched, on the road to Sinai and in the smuggling tunnels connecting Egypt to the Gaza Strip since Moammar Gaddafi fell from power in Libya in August, a military official in Cairo said. Arms traders said the weapons available on Sinai’s clandestine market include rockets and antiaircraft guns. [Libya] [Unintended consequences]
• Defense chief Panetta warns lawmakers that cutting military too deeply would be devastating
  By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, October 13, 7:49 PM WASHINGTON — Defense leaders and members of Congress drew a line in the sand Thursday, saying the Pentagon must be spared from any budget cuts beyond an initial plan to slash at least $450 billion over the next 10 years. The military, they said, must not take even deeper cuts — a looming threat if lawmakers fail to agree on $1.2 trillion in federal budget savings by Thanksgiving and instead allow automatic cuts to kick in. .Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said President Barack Obama shares his view that the Pentagon should be shielded from any additional budget cutting. Appearing before the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Panetta and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pounded home their message that further cuts would create national security risks and devastate the military. “I don’t say that as scare tactics, I don’t say it as a threat, it’s a reality,” Panetta said. He said the initial $450 billion reduction will “take us to the edge” but any more than that would hollow out the force and “badly damage our capabilities for the future.”
  Meanwhile, international security issues have grown more complex, Panetta said, noting the United States must be prepared to continue dealing with violent extremists as well as the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, the prospects of cyber attackers who may target American infrastructure, and other threats. [Militarisation] [Threat]
• Nato success against Taliban in Afghanistan 'may be exaggerated'
  Report says kill-or-capture raids are not a surgical tactic as claimed and use of the word 'leader' is suspect Julian Borger, diplomatic editor guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 October 2011 18.05 BST Article history Isaf has given the impression top Afghan Taliban commanders are being killed or captured, says the report. Photograph: EPA The success of one of Nato's principal tactics against the Taliban – targeted night raids aimed at killing or capturing leaders of the insurgency – may have been exaggerated to make the military campaign in Afghanistan look more effective, according to a report published on Wednesday. The study shows that for every "leader" killed in the raids, eight other people also died, although the raids were designed to be a precise weapon aimed at decapitating the Taliban on the battlefield by removing their commanders. The report also notes that in briefings to the US media aggregate claims made for the number of Taliban leaders killed or detained over a given period were sometimes much greater than the numbers recorded in the daily press releases. [Spin][Propaganda] [AfPak] [Assassination]
• Unanswered questions over the alleged Iranian assassination plot
  The alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US does not fit with what is known about the supposed perpetrators Julian Borger guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 October 2011 16.00 BST Article history It appears unlikely that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would approve such a brazen plot. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images It has the ring of a far-fetched Hollywood thriller and even the senior law enforcement official involved in the investigation admitted to journalists that the alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US did not fit with what was known about the methods and practices of the supposed perpetrators, the Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards. But $100,000 was clearly transferred by someone as a downpayment on the assassination. Washington is taking the case seriously enough to make unprecedented allegations against Tehran and threaten further isolation. The affair leaves several questions unanswered: [False flag]
• Iran's alleged Mexican hitman was US drugs informant
  Zeta cartel 'assassin' hired for $1.5m attack on Saudi ambassador to Washington revealed plot to DEA Jo Tuckman in Mexico City guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 October 2011 19.18 BST Article history Weapons seized from the Zetas drug cartel. A gang member recruited to an alleged Iranian plot was a US informant. Photograph: Miguel Tovar/Associated Press The Iranian plot the US government says aimed to murder Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington allegedly fell down because a member of the Mexican Zeta drug cartel hired to carry out the job for $1.5m was actually a US informant. The informant told the Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) in May that he had been contacted by alleged Iranian agent Manssor Arbabsiar. They held several meetings in Mexico which were taped. Methods discussed reportedly included a targeted assassination and a bomb. [False flag]
• Syrians Rally in Support of Assad
  Thousands of people rallied in Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus on Wednesday in support of President Bashar al-Assad. By NADA BAKRI Published: October 12, 2011 BEIRUT, Lebanon – Tens of thousands of Syrians rallied in central Damascus on Wednesday to show support for President Bashar al-Assad, who faces an uprising against his government that has lost momentum but remains resilient. .The turnout in Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus once again underlined the degree of backing that Mr. Assad and his leadership still enjoy among many Syrians, nearly seven months into the popular uprising against his rule. That support is especially pronounced in cities like Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two largest, and among religious minorities fearing chaos and reprisals if he falls. [Syria]
• Investigators initially doubted plot had Iran ties
  By Joby Warrick The plot by alleged Iranian operatives to kill a Saudi diplomat in Washington was so crudely constructed that U.S. investigators initially had trouble believing that Iran was truly behind it, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Although the Justice Department eventually linked the plan to Iran’s elite Quds Force, almost nothing in the case bore the hallmarks of the notorious military unit that has trained and equipped terrorists and assassins around the world, the officials said. Mansour Arbabsiar (CBS News) [False flag]
• Mitt Romney’s defense cult
  By Matt Miller, Wednesday, October 12, 5:56 PM Mitt Romney is part of a cult — the cult of ever higher defense spending. Republican members of this cult believe that the only way in today’s media and political culture to signal you are “strong” on defense is to propose a bigger defense budget than Democrats. .Democratic members of this cult believe that the only way to avoid losing elections to Republicans is to call for as much or more defense spending than the GOP. Guess what happens to the boundaries of debate when this “my defense budget is bigger than yours” mentality dominates official Washington? As with so many pseudo-debates between the two parties, intelligent thinking — or, really, any thinking at all — is the first casualty. [Militarisation] [Romney] [Decline] [Governance]
• The Republican debate and the role of innovation
  By Emi Kolawole Candidates during the presidential debate sponsored by The Washington Post and Bloomberg at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, Oct. 11, 2011. (Melina Mara - The Washington Post) If you watched the Republican primary debate on Tuesday night, you heard a lot about the economy — especially taxes — and you also learned that ‘9-9-9’ is not a pizza-pie price quote from candidate and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain. What you didn’t hear a lot of, at least this time around, was the word “innovation.” [Innovation] [Governance]
• James Peck: Ideal Illusions
  by jj | 23 August 2011 | No Comment | Last modified: 26 Sep 11:07 am BookTV has an excellent, in-depth interview with James Peck on his new book, Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights. There’s a short clip up at Youtube, but the longer talk and Q&A is well worth watching in its entirety. Here’s the book’s blurb: The United States has long been hailed as a powerful force for global human rights. Now, drawing on thousands of documents from the CIA, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and development agencies, James Peck shows in blunt detail how Washington has shaped human rights into a potent ideological weapon for purposes having little to do with rights—and everything to do with furthering America’s global reach. [Human rights] [Manipulation] [Camouflage] [US global policy]
• Washington and world trade: Intentions in tatters
  By Alan Beattie Battles in a bitterly divided Congress are rendering US international economic policy impotent or counterproductive A hard rain: the American flag in shreds above the Capitol building after Washington's August buffeting by hurricane Irene. Cuts to spending on disaster relief in its wake are among austerity measures being sought by Republicans The eurozone has been attracting plenty of opprobrium for its dysfunctional handling of the sovereign debt crisis. But as François Baroin, French finance minister, mischievously pointed out on a recent trip to Washington, the US also has problems. Whereas managing the euro requires laborious consultations with 17 national parliaments, he said, “here you seem to be having enough trouble with just one”. This week should have been a rare triumph for White House international economic policy. After protracted squabbling with, and inside, Congress, bilateral trade deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia negotiated four or five years ago by George W. Bush’s administration are finally coming up for ratification. But another vote on Capitol Hill last week was potentially far more important than three bilateral trade deals, which are of minor economic significance. The Senate alarmed many supporters of free trade by pushing forward aggressive legislation to punish China for manipulating its currency. [Governance] [Decline] [China competition] [Trade]
• Libya: Sirte battle flushes out pro-Gaddafi fighters
  Once-feared fighters are revealed as frightened ordinary men, who now want only to survive by surrendering, or hiding Peter Beaumont in Sirte guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 October 2011 09.09 BST The stories of some of those inside Ibn Sana hospital in Sirte do not add up. Hamad Ashrak Ali from Sudan is lying on a bed in the hospital's basement. He shows us his wound before explaining the circumstances of it. He has been shot through the side. The bullet exited through one buttock – the wound is becoming septic. He says he came from Abyei in his own country to Sirte to earn money: "I thought I could earn money here by loading trucks." He does not explain why he chose Gaddafi's hometown in particular and claims at first to have been in the hospital with his wound for 50 days. But his wound is relatively recent, the muscles still pronounced. He has not spent almost two months in a hospital bed. "Kids were doing handbrake turns," – doughnuts, he calls them. "Someone fired a gun and I was shot." He is asked again how long he has been in hospital. He changes his story. "Since April," he says. A bearded fighter from the forces of the NTC suggests quietly that Hamad is lying. Other fighters say they have a list and know who are the mercenaries and pro-Gaddafi fighters in the hospital. Not far away an emaciated man struggles up from his bed, stick thin. Other patients in this dreadful place seem comatose, afflicted with wounds long gone rotten, people in desperate need of evacuation. But for now there is nowhere for them to go. Not even the Red Cross has been able to evacuate the bombed out hospital. The nearby field hospitals are full, as is the hospital in Misrata. So they are stuck in this shattered shell. Outside on the street, a three-car convoy drives by towards the Ouagadougou conference centre. Skinny men with dark-skinned (sic), emaciated faces are packed into two cars, with more sitting slumped in open boots. Recent deserters from the pro-Gaddafi forces, who have been fighting to defend this city for a fallen and defeated regime, they are guarded by NTC fighters in the final car. As the new government force push forward from the east and west towards the sea, life in Gaddafi's home town and in his second capital is revealed. The pro-Gaddafi forces – for so long invisible in their positions, where they have poured down fire on the advancing fighters – have been revealed for what they are. Ordinary men, frightened, who now want only to survive by surrendering, hiding in the hospital or trying to escape with fleeing civilians. [Media] [Libya] [Racism]
• FBI's case against anthrax suspect rife with questions
  By Stephen Engelberg, Greg Gordon, Jim Gilmore and Mike Wiser | WASHINGTON — Months after the anthrax mailings that terrorized the nation in 2001, and long before he became the prime suspect, Army biologist Bruce Ivins sent his superiors an email offering to help scientists trace the killer. Already, an FBI science consultant had concluded that the attack powder was made with a rare strain of anthrax known as Ames that's used in research laboratories worldwide. In his December 2001 email, Ivins volunteered to help take things further. He said he had several variants of the Ames strain that could be tested in "ongoing genetic studies" aimed at tracing the origins of the powder that had killed five people. He mentioned several cultures by name, including a batch made mostly of Ames anthrax that had been grown for him at an Army base in Dugway, Utah. Seven years later, as federal investigators prepared to charge him with the same crimes he'd offered to help solve, Ivins, who was 62, committed suicide. At a news conference, prosecutors voiced confidence that Ivins would have been found guilty. They said years of cutting-edge DNA analysis had borne fruit, proving that his spores were "effectively the murder weapon." To many of Ivins' former colleagues at the germ research center in Fort Detrick, Md., where they worked, his invitation to test the Dugway material and other spores in his inventory is among numerous indications that the FBI got the wrong man. [Terrorism] [Coverup]
• For disenchanted liberals, Obama may still be the only choice
  Lesley Clark McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Environmentalists spent a week outside the White House courting arrest and bellowing disappointment at President Barack Obama for considering a pipeline that would expand the flow of oil from Canada. Activists at a progressive gathering cheered and shouted "amen" as a 2008 Obama supporter said she sends campaign fundraisers a list of her grievances with the president every time they call asking for a campaign contribution. The ardor that propelled President Barack Obama to the White House has eroded for some in his liberal base: environmentalists are furious at his decision to scrap clean air regulations; gay activists are disappointed he hasn't embraced gay marriage, and African-Americans say he hasn't done enough to alleviate joblessness in their community. But there appears to be little appetite for a primary challenger within the Democratic party. [Obama] [US_election12] [Governance] [Decline]
• Sanctions Pose Growing Threat to Syria’s Assad
  A souvenir shop in Damascus. International sanctions have weakened Syria's tourist economy. By NADA BAKRI Published: October 10, 2011 BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian economy is buckling under the pressure of sanctions by the West and a continuing popular uprising, posing a growing challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s government as the pain is felt deeply by nearly every layer of Syrian society. .With Syria’s currency weakening, its recession expanding, its tourism industry wrecked and international sanctions affecting most essential sectors, the International Monetary Fund now expects Syria’s economy to shrink this year, by at least 2 percent. [Syria] [Sanctions] [Subversion] [Subcritical]
• NATO Commander Says Resilience of Qaddafi Loyalists Is Surprising
  By ERIC SCHMITT Published: October 10, 2011 WASHINGTON — The commander of NATO’s air campaign in Libya has said that hundreds of organized fighters loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi pose a “resilient and fierce” threat in the two remaining pro-Qaddafi strongholds, and are exploiting the urban settings to complicate the alliance’s mission to protect civilians [Libya] [Pacification]
• Anti-Qaddafi Fighters Face Stiff Resistance in Surt
  Asmaa Waguih/Reuters Anti-Qaddafi soldiers in Surt, Libya, the hometown of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the deposed leader. The fighting poses a risk to civilians. By KAREEM FAHIM Published: October 10, 2011 SURT, Libya — From the windows of an apartment overlooking this seaside town, a commander peered through binoculars and yelled orders into a walkie-talkie, directing fire at a white building in the distance flying Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s green flag. .The commander, who called himself Rake, said he was helping to coordinate a multipronged attack on the colonel’s loyalists, who still control a large swath of central Surt weeks after the anti-Qaddafi fighters launched an attack to capture the town. Somewhere on the ground below, his colleagues — called Rambo, Black Crow and Gorilla — followed his instructions, firing mortars and a recoilless rifle toward a target that they could not see. “Shell, Rambo, shell!” Rake barked. But the round missed. “One hundred meters to the right, and a bit higher,” Rake ordered. [Libya] [Pacification]
• Afghan detainees tortured in prison, U.N. says
  By Joshua Partlow and Sayed Salahuddin, Published: October 10 KABUL — Prisoners handed over by international forces to Afghan custody are being subjected to “systematic’’ torture by Afghan interrogators seeking intelligence in the war against the Taliban, according to a United Nations report released Monday. The report portrays prisoner abuse by Afghan authorities on a scale far wider than previously known. It is bound to complicate American efforts to hand over increasing responsibilities to Afghan forces as U.S. troops begin a steady drawdown from Afghanistan. [Human rights] [Afghanistan] [Double standards] [Imperialism] [Client]
• Gaddafi loyalists find no room for dissent
  View Photo Gallery — ?A revolutionary soldier directs traffic in the poor - and traditionally pro-Gaddafi - neighborhood of Abu Salim. Unlike elsewhere in the city, few houses here display revolutionary flags. By Tara Bahrampour, Published: October 10 TRIPOLI, libya — In a mini-mall in the poor neighborhood of Abu Salim, a 21-year-old perfume store salesgirl named Nisrin popped her head into a mobile phone shop to say hello to friends working there. She glanced around to see who might be listening, then blurted out part of a slogan from the fallen regime — “Moammar is all we need” — and scurried away. After four decades, during which openly criticizing Moammar Gaddafi meant risking imprisonment, torture or death, the architects of post-revolution Libya are promising freedom of speech and openness to a plurality of political views. But supporters of Gaddafi say they don’t yet feel that freedom. .“We can’t talk,” said a 50-year-old housewife in the Tripoli suburb of Jila. She said she and her loyalist friends do not dare reveal their views in public. “If I go out now and say I like Gaddafi, they will arrest me maybe, or shoot me.” Like other Gaddafi supporters in this article, she did not want her name used because she feared retribution. For people who preferred the old Libya, the capital’s streets and workplaces feel like hostile territory. [Libya] [Democracy] [Pacification]
• The illusion of omnipotence has exhausted America and spoiled its allies.
  BY IAN BURUMA | NOVEMBER 2011 Too much power is not good for a person, or for a nation. It leads to hubris, to the childish illusion of omnipotence, and, even when driven by good intentions, to abuse. In the case of the United States, the illusion of being exceptional, the idea that the "Greatest Nation in the History of the World" can do anything, is doubtless fed by the manner of the country's inception. France and the United States are the only Western democracies born from revolutions. Like France, the American republic likes to claim that it represents not only the hopes of humankind, but universal values. The American way is the global way, or it jolly well should be. [Imperialism] [Overreach] [Exceptionalism] [Arrogance]
• Dead Men Tell No Tales: The CIA, 9/11 and the Awlaki Assassination
  by Tom Burghardt Global Research, October 9, 2011 On September 30, the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) assets under the Agency's control, assassinated the alleged "external operations" chief of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, also known as Al-Qaeda, Anwar al-Awlaki, and a second American citizen, Samir Khan, the 25-year-old editor of Inspire magazine, in a drone strike in Yemen. As The Washington Post reported last month, the "commingling" of CIA officers, JSOC paramilitary troops and contractors "occupy an expanding netherworld between intelligence and military operations" where "congressional intelligence and armed services committees rarely get a comprehensive view." Or any "view" at all, which is precisely what the CIA and Pentagon have long desired; an oversight-free zone where American policymakers operate, as Dick Cheney infamously put it, on the "dark side," a position fully-embraced by the "hope and change" administration of Barack Obama. Awlaki's state-sponsored killing, like the May 2 murder of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, resurface many unanswered questions concerning the 9/11 attacks, the so-called trigger for America's global "War on Terror." But before turning to those issues, it is necessary to take a detour and examine administration actions; specifically the deliberations undertaken by Obama's national security team which culminated in Awlaki's death. [9/11] [Coverup] [Global insurgency]
• America's Conquest of Africa: The Roles of France and Israel
  Introduction by Cynthia McKinney by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya and Julien Teil Global Research, October 6, 2011 Introduction: “Operation Gladio” Then and Now... I will begin with the scandal of Operation Gladio that climaxed in the murder of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, who on the day of his kidnapping, was to announce an Italian coalition government that would include the Italian Communist Party. Leader of the Christian Democratic Party at that time, Francesco Cossiga, admits in the 1992 BBC Timewatch documentary about Operation Gladio, that he chose to “sacrifice” Moro “for the good of the Republic.” Not unlike the targeted assassinations that the U.S. government engages in around the world, where someone extrajudicially makes decisions on who lives and who dies. In the three-part documentary, Cossiga states that the decision caused his hair to turn white.
  Order from Chaos? A repeat of the disorder and pandemonium generated inside Afghanistan is in the works for the continent of Africa. The United States, with the help of Britain, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, created the brutal Taliban and then eventually waged war on its Taliban allies. Similarly, across Africa, the United States and its allies are creating a new series of future enemies to fight, but after initially working with them or using them to sow the seeds of chaos in Africa. Washington has literally been helping fund insurgencies and regime change projects in Africa. “Human rights” and “democratization” are also being used as a smokescreen for colonialism and war. So-called human rights and humanitarian organizations are now partners in this imperialist project directed against Africa. [Imperialism] [Camouflage]
• State Department readies Iraq operation, its biggest since Marshall Plan
  By Mary Beth Sheridan and Dan Zak, Published: October 8 | Updated: Sunday, October 9, 12:09 AM The State Department is racing against an end-of-year deadline to take over Iraq operations from the U.S. military, throwing together buildings and marshaling contractors in its biggest overseas operation since the effort to rebuild Europe after World War II. Attention in Washington and Baghdad has centered on the number of U.S. troops that could remain in Iraq. But those forces will be dwarfed by an estimated 16,000 civilians under the American ambassador — the size of an Army division. The number of American troops in Iraq will fall to roughly 40,000 by the end of this month as the U.S. winds down the war, U.S. military officials said Tuesday. (Sept. 20) The scale of the operation has raised concerns among lawmakers and government watchdogs, who fear that the State Department will be overwhelmed by overseeing so many people, about 80 percent of them contractors. There is a risk, they say, that millions of dollars could go to waste and that bodyguards will lack adequate supervision. [Privatisation] [Iraq]
• Are "Democracy Now" Correspondents in Libya Feeding Us the State Department and Pentagon Line?
  by Bruce A. Dixon Global Research, October 5, 2011 Black Agenda Report Is the independent media movement's flagship radio-TV show Democracy Now! pushing the State Department and Pentagon line on Libya instead of “going where the silence is” and telling the truth without fear or favor? Are its Libyan correspondents embedded with the US-backed Libyan rebels to such an extent that they have minimized and failed to follow up persistent reports of ethnic cleansing in Libya or investigate whether alleged “mercenaries” ever existed or Khadaffi's “massacres” ever took place? Have Democracy Now's correspondents in Libya, Anjali Kamat and Sharif Abdel-Kodous minimized or avoided reporting upon the persecution of black Libyans and sub-Saharan African migrants by US-backed Libyan rebels? Have they reported massacres that may not have happened, and mercenaries who might not have existed? Have they ignored or minimized the impact of US and NATO bombing and the presence of Saudi, Qatari and other foreign forces on the ground in Libya, also in support of the US-backed Libyan rebels? Have they simply embedded themselves with US-backed forces in Libya to pass the views of the Pentagon and State Department to us as “independent, unembedded news”? [Libya] [Media] [Liberal]
• Libyan fighters report strategic advances as battle continues for Sirte, Gaddafi's home town
  After taking Tripoli, rebel fighters target Moammar Gaddafi’s last bastions of support. By Tara Bahrampour, Monday, October 10, 2:48 AM BENGHAZI —After almost two months of heavy urban warfare, the besieged city of Sirte seemed Sunday to be on the verge of falling to Libya’s revolutionaries. But by nightfall, as with so many battles in this war, it was not clear this one was over. Anti-Gaddafi forces said they had taken the university, the main hospital and a convention center whose hilltop position gives a strategic advantage to whoever controls it. Forces pushing in from the south, east and west were going street by street to eliminate pockets of snipers, government officials said, and Libya’s temporary leader said he expected the battle to be over in a week. Libya's revolutionary forces seized a convention center Sunday that had served as a key base for fighters loyal to Moammar Gaddafi in the fugitive leader's hometown, as they squeezed remaining regime loyalists in the besieged coastal city. (Oct. 9) .But counterattacks later in the day pushed some of the forces back and fighting continued, according to media reports. Sirte, 278 miles east of Tripoli, carries strategic and symbolic importance in the battle for Libya. It is ousted leader Moammar Gaddafi’s home town, a place where he spent lavishly to build glitzy hotels and villas and to buy loyalty. And it lies at a central point on the main coastal road that connects Libya’s east and west. The prolonged fighting there has stymied the formation of a permanent government. Libya’s temporary leaders have said they will consider the country liberated only when Sirte is under their control. At that point, they say, they will declare an interim government that can start moving the country toward a new constitution and elections. But Sirte, a city of about 100,000 people, one-fifth of whom are from Gaddafi’s tribe, has been harder to subdue than many had hoped. [Libya] [Pacification]
• In western Iraq, a bloody American legacy
  By Dan Zak, Monday, October 10, 10:15 AM AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq — The dust storm swallowed the horizon and then the soldiers, who leaned into the windy blur to load rucksacks onto vehicles pointed homeward. At 3:30 a.m. the next day, their Army battalion would roll out under the cover of darkness, concluding their mission to advise and train Iraqi security forces in Anbar province. The swath of western Iraq the battalion was leaving behind has seen the bloodiest points of the war, but also some of the most promising. Since the war began, 1,332 U.S. soldiers have died in Anbar, nearly one in three of all American fatalities; but none have been killed in action in the province in more than two years. A battalion of the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division readies for a 131-mile road march from Al Asad Air Base in western Anbar province to Camp Taji, just north of Baghdad. The ground operation--comprised of 93 mine-resistant vehicles and 495 service members--relocates the Battalion around the capital to provide security and support as U.S. forces withdraw southward from northern Iraq. (Oct. 6) Al-Qaeda in Iraq, down but hardly out Iraq to reopen probe of deadly 2006 raidU.S. military headquarters in Iraq prepares to closeIraqi forces round up men accused of killing Shiite pilgrimsFour killed when Iraqi insurgents attack compoundState Department readies Iraq operation .In 2006 alone, there were 1,129 total insurgent attacks in Anbar; this year there have been 333. The provincial police force, nonexistent five years ago, employs 32,000 officers. Those numbers are cited by the Americans now leaving Iraq as cause for optimism. But the Iraqis who will stay in Anbar have been taking a darker view of 2012 — wondering whether the province is in the clear or merely in the eye of a storm. [Iraq] [Pacification]
• Exotic Birds in a Cage Criticism Grows of Afghanistan's Bloated NGO Industry
  By Walter Mayr Philip Poupin / DER SPIEGEL The NGO community in Afghanistan has grown into an industry where a large part of aid budgets is spent on security, and money gets frittered away on pointless projects. Afghans are becoming increasingly skeptical about the foreign organizations that are supposed to be rebuilding their country. For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol. Kandahar, Afghanistan's second city, is located in the southern part of the country. In the labyrinthine alleyways of the city's bazaar, traders huddle in shacks barely wider than a cupboard. The faces of the men in turbans, caps and traditional round-topped pakul hats are as impenetrable as wax masks. Out of the corners of their eyes, they keep a lookout for people who don't belong in the Taliban's former and current stronghold. A sticker on a battered Jeep proclaims "Life is short -- pray hard." Foreigners no longer dare to show their faces on these streets. [NGO]
• Afghanistan: Wealth, Corruption and Criminality Amidst Mass Poverty
  The Collapse of Public Health and Sanitation by Prof. Marc W. Herold Global Research, September 25, 2010 “Are we to decide the importance of issues by asking how fashionable or glamorous they are? Or by asking how seriously they affect how many?” - Nelson Mandela, 2002[1] “The preservation of the wealth and welfare of nations, and advances in culture and civilization depend upon how the sewage question is resolved” - Karl Kautsky, 1899[2] “The triumphs of sanitary reforms are perhaps the brightest page in the history of our century” – William Allen, 1903[3] Afghanistan might be characterized as having a paucity of toilets and an excess of corruption. These two aspects capture the post-Taliban essence of the country. The “achievements” of Hamid Karzai the de facto mayor of Kabul, the United States and NATO in Afghanistan after more than eight years of U.S. occupation and approximately $25 billion in disbursed (2001-9) non-military aid,[4] include Afghanistan being ranked as the worst place in the world for sanitation (per UNICEF data) and in 2009 posting 179th (out of 180 countries) in Transparency International’s corruption-perceptions index.[5] The latter figure for 2005 showed Afghanistan ranking 117th out of 159 countries. But as I have pointed out many times beginning in early 2002, for some in Kabul and a few other islands in the Afghan sea, life is jolly-well in Afghanistan ’s post-Taliban, bifurcated economy.[6] Limousines roll, ostentatious villas sprout up, western fashion swirls, four cell phone companies operate, and imported foreign Thai masseuses at the luxury Mustafa Hotel tended to the weary and bored at the rate of $25 an hour.[7] Kabul has turned into a two-tiered city. [Afghanistan] [Governance]
• Financial Polarization and Corruption: Obama’s Politics of Deception: Don’t Let Him Get Away With It...
  by Prof. Michael Hudson Global Research, October 7, 2011 The seeds for President Obama’s demagogic press conference on Thursday were planted last summer when he assigned his right-wing Committee of 13 the role of resolving the obvious and inevitable Congressional budget standoff by forging an anti-labor policy that cuts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and uses the savings to bail out banks from even more loans that will go bad as a result of the IMF-style austerity program that Democrats and Republicans alike have agreed to back. The problem facing Mr. Obama is obvious enough: How can he hold the support of moderates and independents (or as Fox News calls them, socialists and anti-capitalists), students and labor, minorities and others who campaigned so heavily for him in 2008? He has double-crossed them – smoothly, with a gentle smile and patronizing patter talk, but with an iron determination to hand federal monetary and tax policy over to his largest campaign contributors: Wall Street and assorted special interests – the Democratic Party’s Rubinomics and Clintonomics core operators, plus smooth Bush Administration holdovers such as Tim Geithner, not to mention quasi-Cheney factotums in the Justice Department. President Obama’s solution has been to do what any political demagogue does: Come out with loud populist campaign speeches that have no chance of becoming the law of the land, while quietly giving his campaign contributors what they’ve paid him for: giveaways to Wall Street, tax cuts for the wealthy (euphemized as tax “exemptions” and mark-to-model accounting, plus an agreement to count their income as “capital gains” taxed at a much lower rate). So here’s the deal the Democratic leadership has made with the Republicans. The Republicans will run someone from their present gamut of guaranteed losers, enabling Mr. Obama to run as the “voice of reason,” as if this somehow is Middle America. This will throw the 2012 election his way for a second term if he adopts their program – a set of rules paid for by the leading campaign contributors to both parties. [Obama] [US election 12]
• Qui Tacit Consentire: Why Politicians Need to Speak Up on Afghanistan
  by Richard ClearyIn the long-term, it’s unclear precisely what President Karzai’s termination of talks with the Taliban means for the ISAF effort in Afghanistan. But with Karzai’s decision coming on the heels of Admiral Mullen’s criticism of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence for its role in facilitating the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, it seems likely that this could be a decisive moment in the Afghan War, one where America can recommit itself to the government in Kabul, to defeating the Taliban insurgency and to— in Bismarckian fashion—applying pressure on Pakistan to reach some more lasting, and candid, agreement. Exploiting this opening—and ensuring the security conditions for political development– will be crucial to securing the vast U.S. interests at stake in Afghanistan. And while most arguments regarding the American commitment in Afghanistan focus for good reason on the Taliban’s harboring of Al Qaeda, American leaders would do well to emphasize the larger strategic value of having a strong partner in Kabul. [US global strategy] [Afghanistan]
• US Intervention and the Syrian Uprising
  by RAMZY BAROUD United States ambassador to Syria Robert Ford is quite a feisty diplomat. He shows up unannounced and uninvited at various hot spots in the country, greeted with varying degrees of enthusiasm and, oftentimes, anger. When he made a highly touted appearance in the city of Hama in July, residents reportedly greeted him with flowers. However, his appearance at the home of an opposition figure in Damascus on September 29 earned him a salvo of tomatoes and rocks from angry protesters. [Subversion]
• Baby Steps Towards an Asian NATO
  By Michael Mazza September 30, 2011, 11:12 am A A A In our recent report on an Asian alliance structure for the 21st century—principally authored by my colleague Dan Blumenthal—we argued that in order to balance against China’s rising power, the United States should work towards a more tightly knit grouping of allies in Asia. We attempted to preempt the conventional counter-argument—that “the allies would never choose sides between the United States and China”—by pointing to the military modernization that is happening across the board in Asia: countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia are all fielding new, more modern capabilities in response to China’s own build-up. As we wrote, it looks to us as if “the allies have made a choice without being asked: they are balancing against China’s power.” [China confrontation] [Alliance]
• Family of al Qaida blogger Samir Khan 'appalled' by U.S. actions
  Posted on Thursday, October 6, 2011Modified Thursday, October 6, 2011 By Tim Funk | The Charlotte Observer Tim Funk McClatchy Newspapers The Charlotte family of Samir Khan, the al-Qaida propagandist killed in a U.S. airstrike Friday, ended its silence Wednesday night. In a statement, the family cast the 25-year-old Khan as a "law-abiding" U.S. citizen who was assassinated by an American government that has not "contacted us with any news about the recovery of our son's remains (or) offered us any condolences." "As a result," the family added, "we feel appalled by the indifference shown to us by our government." Khan's family moved to Charlotte from New York in 2004. A year later, while a student at Central Piedmont Community College, the young Khan started a radical blog, which he wrote in the basement of his family's home in northeast Charlotte. [Assassination]
• With Rare Double U.N. Veto on Syria, Russia and China Try to Shield Friend
  By NEIL MacFARQUHAR Published: October 5, 2011 UNITED NATIONS — By vetoing a Security Council resolution condemning Syria for its oppression of antigovernment forces, Russia and China effectively tossed a life preserver to President Bashar al-Assad, seemingly unwilling to see a pivotal ally and once stalwart member of the socialist bloc sink beneath the waves of the Arab Spring. .A double veto at the United Nations is rare, in this case driven by similar if not exactly parallel concerns in Moscow and Beijing about losing influence in the Arab world as one authoritarian government after another built on the now-faded Soviet model collapses. [UNUS] [NCW]
• Syrian Woman Says Reports of Her Death Were Mistaken
  By NADA BAKRI Published: October 5, 2011 BEIRUT, Lebanon — The family of a Syrian woman who was reported to have been killed by armed men loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad, with her body later found decapitated, skinned and armless, said Wednesday that they now thought she was still alive. Zainab al-Hosni, who was reported to have been killed by men loyal to Syria's government, said she had run away from home. Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. .The woman, Zainab al-Hosni, 18, a resident of the restive city of Homs in central Syria, quickly became a symbol of the uprising against Mr. Assad and his government’s brutal crackdown on antigovernment activists. Ms. Hosni’s picture was carried in demonstrations in Syria in recent weeks, and sympathizers across the Arab world held vigils for the woman who came to be known as “the flower of Syria” and who was thought to be the first woman to have died in detention. But on Tuesday night, Ms. Hosni appeared on Syrian state television, dressed in black and her face uncovered, flashing her identification card and saying that she was alive and that she planned to marry and have children. She said that her family did not know her whereabouts and that she had run away from home and stayed with a relative because her brothers had been abusing her. [Disinformation]
• Libyan authorities struggle to rein in militias
  Alexandre Meneghini/AP - People, behind a pre-Gadhafi era flag, protest against the presence of weapons in Tripoli, Libya, Friday, Sept. 30, 2011. Dozens of people gathered at Tripoli's main square in favor of a ban on weapons in the capital. The banners read in Arabic: "No for weapons, we want Tripoli clean for all kind of weapons". (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini) By Tara Bahrampour, Thursday, October 6, 5:26 AM TRIPOLI, Libya — The main stage in Martyrs’ Square, the Libyan capital’s central plaza, has been plastered with signs. No to carrying weapons, they read. No to randomly firing bullets and rockets. No to the continued military presence here and in other liberated cities. .The signs reflect the concerns of residents, who say they are fed up with the militias that have taken over the streets of Tripoli in the past two months. [Libya] [Monarchism]
• Recession Officially Over, U.S. Incomes Kept Falling
  By ROBERT PEAR Published: October 9, 2011 WASHINGTON — In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found. Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau officials. During the recession — from December 2007 to June 2009 — household income fell 3.2 percent. The finding helps explain why Americans’ attitudes toward the economy, the country’s direction and its political leaders have continued to sour even as the economy has been growing. Unhappiness and anger have come to dominate the political scene, including the early stages of the 2012 presidential campaign. [Decline] [Crisis]
• Scientists’ Analysis Disputes F.B.I. Closing of Anthrax Case
  By WILLIAM J. BROAD and SCOTT SHANE Published: October 9, 2011 A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues. Alice Gast, head of a panel that assessed the F.B.I.'s scientific work, said the paper “points out connections that deserve further consideration.” Now, three scientists argue that distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated. The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense.
• Occupy Wall Street: Newcomers bring their worries and hopes to New York protest
  The movement, which started Sept. 17 with a few dozen demonstrators who tried to pitch tents in front of the New York Stock Exchange, is spreading to other cities across the country. By Eli Saslow, Monday, October 10, 2:05 AM New York — The three newcomers traveled from across the country, part of the latest wave of aggrieved Americans who hoped their problems might be solved here. The retired lawyer used her diminished savings to come from California. The union boss caught a morning flight from Chicago with his staff. The unemployed television producer, just evicted from his apartment, put his belongings into a storage locker in Harlem and hitched a ride with a friend. Republican presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain spoke with Bob Schieffer on the place religion holds in the election, the driving force behind the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, and Mr. Cain's 9-9-9 tax code to fix America's broken economy. (Oct. 9) .All three arrived in the early morning at a small park in Lower Manhattan, a concrete square edged by skyscrapers and hot-dog carts that has become a destination for thousands of people who are enraged by unemployment, greed on Wall Street and the increasing wealth gap. What began three weeks ago as a small college protest and then grew into a circus of hippies, misfits and anarchists is now trying to grow into something else: a populist movement for economic change. [Crisis] [Inequality] [Unemployment]
• GOP candidates’ economic pitches avoid specific solutions
  By Michael A. Fletcher, Monday, October 10, 1:05 AM The Republican presidential candidates are offering a series of one-size-fits-all economic pitches that fall short of addressing important nuances and competing demands posed by the nation’s diverse fiscal landscape, analysts say. The Rust Belt states are struggling to recover from a historic decline in manufacturing jobs that local policymakers hope to replace. Much of the once-booming Sun Belt has been pummeled by both high unemployment and high foreclosure rates, problems compounded by the absence of any large industry to rebuild. .The two earliest voting states — Iowa and New Hampshire — also are gripped by economic worries, even though they have among the nation’s lowest jobless rates and relatively few housing problems. Those divergent circumstances call for the kinds of tailored economic strategies that the GOP candidates have mostly avoided in the campaign’s early stages. As the candidates seek to harness the economic anxiety eating away at President Obama’s popularity, they have focused on items central to Republican orthodoxy: reducing taxes, cutting government spending, jettisoning regulations and promoting free trade. [Decline] [Governance]
• Romney’s white paper: A guide to a post-Obama foreign policy
  By Jennifer Rubin In conjunction with his speech at the Citadel on Friday, Mitt Romney released a white paper outlining his foreign policy views in some detail. It’s worth a read through, if only to understand what is in essence a comprehensive critique of the Obama foreign policy vision. [Decline]
• — AN AMERICAN CENTURY — A Strategy to Secure America’s Enduring Interests and Ideals
  A ROMNEY FOR PRESIDENT WHITE PAPER with a Foreword by Eliot Cohen October 7, 2011 [Governance] [Decline]
• The Take On Afghanistan, where does Romney stand?
  By Dan Balz, Published: October 8 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivered a major foreign policy address Friday that happened to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan. But in a speech whose prepared text ran more than 2,700 words in length, he devoted just two paragraphs totaling 117 words to that conflict. To be fair to Romney, the speech, delivered at the Citadel in South Carolina, was not intended as a deep dive into U.S. policy in Afghanistan. It was, rather, a broad outline of his foreign policy and national security principles, an across-the-globe look at how the former Massachusetts governor sizes up the critical issues and some of the steps he would take as president in dealing with them. After what was widely considered an unfocused and bloated campaign in 2008, Republican Mitt Romney is returning to the presidential sweepstakes with a more tightly knit team that he hopes will keep him on point. Video Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says government leaders reach for a century of American dominance, outlining proposals to strengthen the military while rejecting multilateral institutions like the United Nations when necessary. .Romney sought to offer a robust vision, an argument for maintaining a strong military and projecting U.S. power. He also asserted that President Obama has taken a starkly different approach during his nearly three years in office. “I will not surrender America’s role in the world,” Romney said. “If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president. You have that president today.” Still, it was striking how little Afghanistan figured into his examination of the world. [Romney] [US global policy] [Afghanistan]
• American man pleads guilty to charges of insulting monarchy in Thailand
  By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, October 10, 8:55 AM BANGKOK — Hoping for a lenient sentence, a shackled U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Monday to charges of defaming Thailand’s royal family, a grave crime in this Southeast Asian kingdom punishable by up to 15 years in jail. Thai-born American Joe Gordon has been detained since late May for translating excerpts of a locally banned biography of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and posting them online. Gordon committed the alleged crimes years ago while living in the U.S. state of Colorado, where he worked as a car salesman. The case has raised concerns about the reach of Thai law and how it is applied to both Thai nationals and foreign visitors. Lese majeste is the crime of insulting a ruler, and Thailand has the most severe lese majeste laws in the world. Critics say they have been increasingly abused by political rivals to harass opponents, particularly since a 2006 military coup. [Human rights] [Double standards]
• Afghanistan, the regional complex
  Paul Rogers, 6 October 2011 Afghanistan's war enters its second decade with the Taliban emboldened and the United States enfeebled. But the power-play between Pakistan, India and China is also now central to an assessment of what comes next. [AfPak]
• The End of 'Growth with Equity'? Economic Growth and Income Inequality in East Asia
  by Wang Feng AsiaPacific Issues, No. 101 Publisher: Honolulu: East-West Center Publication Date: July 2011 Binding: paper Pages: 8 During the closing decades of the twentieth century, much of the world witnessed a substantial increase in economic and social inequalities. Following a period of “growth with equity” that featured economic growth and social redistribution in East Asian countries shortly after World War II, a new era of “growth with inequality” has been ushered in. This leads not only to a divided society, it threatens democratic institutions and suffocates economic growth. Looking forward to the next half century, will East Asia, a major area of economic growth of the twenty-first century, become increasingly unequal economically and socially? The experience of China, a country that has seen a period of both spectacular economic growth and rapid income inequality increase, suggests that the state can serve both as an inequality creator and an equality enforcer. As equitable distribution of benefits of economic growth requires forces beyond the market alone, national policies are required to address the causes of rising inequality and create opportunities that will have beneficial long-term effects. [Inequality]
• Iraq, siding with Iran, sends essential aid to Syria’s Assad
  By Joby Warrick, More than six months after the start of the Syrian uprising, Iraq is offering key moral and financial support to the country’s embattled president, undermining a central U.S. policy objective and raising fresh concerns that Iraq is drifting further into the orbit of an American arch rival — Iran. Iraq’s stance has dealt an embarrassing setback to the Obama administration, which has sought to enlist Muslim allies in its campaign to isolate Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad. While other Arab states have downgraded ties with Assad, Iraq has moved in the opposite direction, hosting official visits by Syrians, signing pacts to expand business ties and offering political support. [Syria] [Decline] [Unintended consequences][Sectarianism]
• Trouble in the Kingdom
  by ALEXANDER COCKBURN Threaten the stability of Saudi Arabia, as the Shi’a upsurges are now doing in Qatif, and al-Awamiyah in the country’s oil-rich Eastern Province and you’re brandishing a dagger over the very heart of long-term U.S. policy in the Middle East for over half a century. In 1945 the chief of the State Department’s Division of Near Eastern Affairs, wrote in a memo that the oil resources of Saudi Arabia are a “stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” The man who steered the Saudi sheikhs towards America and away from Britain, was St.John Philby, Kim’s father, and with that one great stroke Philby Sr. wrought far more devastation on the British Empire than his son ever did. The fall of America’s ally, the Shah of Iran in 1979 only magnified the strategic importance of Saudi Arabia. [US global strategy]
• Yemen and Obama's War: Liquidating Awlaqi
  by PATRICK SEALE On Friday, 30 September, Yemen announced that a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA-operated drone had killed Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaqi, in the north of the country. His grief-stricken father, once a minister of agriculture in a Yemeni government, went to the scene to collect and bury the pieces of what remained of Anwar’s body. It was the seventh U.S. strike in Yemen this year. Anwar al-Awlaqi was a virulent critic of American foreign policy in the Arab world, and a passionate advocate of al-Qaida’s form of Islamic jihad. He was also a U.S. citizen, born in New Mexico, with an engineering degree from Colorado State University. His internet sermons, delivered in fluent English, had a devoted following, especially among young Muslims in the West. [Global insurgency] [Yemen]
• UN Mission in Libya an Attempt to Legitimize NATO Aggression
  Dr. Alexander Mezyaev International Law Department Governance Academy (Kazan`) 29.09.2011 On September 16, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2009 establishing a “peacekeeping” Support Mission in Libya to be headed by British citizen Ian Martin. The Mission is tasked with helping Libya rebuild its national security, assisting the country in drafting a new constitution, expanding the zone under the control of the civilian administration, advocating human rights, supporting justice, rebuilding the Libyan economy, and coordinating the support for future interactions with other subjects. At the moment, it makes sense to get a glimpse of what all of the above may mean in practice. [Libya] [UNUS] [Racism]
• Coming Soon: The Drone Arms Race
  By SCOTT SHANE Published: October 8, 2011 Scott Shane is a national security correspondent for The New York Times. AT the Zhuhai air show in southeastern China last November, Chinese companies startled some Americans by unveiling 25 different models of remotely controlled aircraft and showing video animation of a missile-armed drone taking out an armored vehicle and attacking a United States aircraft carrier. The presentation appeared to be more marketing hype than military threat; the event is China’s biggest aviation market, drawing both Chinese and foreign military buyers. But it was stark evidence that the United States’ near monopoly on armed drones was coming to an end, with far-reaching consequences for American security, international law and the future of warfare. [UAV] China rising]
• Vacuum Is Feared as U.S. Quits Iraq, but Iran’s Deep Influence May Not Fill It
  By TIM ARANGO Published: October 8, 2011 NAJAF, Iraq — As the United States draws down its forces in Iraq, fears abound that Iran will simply move into the vacuum and extend its already substantial political influence more deeply through the soft powers of culture and commerce. But here, in this region that is a center of Shiite Islam, some officials say that Iran wore out its welcome long ago.
• Snipers in last-ditch bid to defend Gaddafi hometown
  By Rania El Gamal and Tim Gaynor, Sunday, October 9, 2:28 AM SIRTE, Libya — Forces of Libya’s transitional government swept into Sirte on Saturday in one of the biggest assaults yet on Moammar Gaddafi’s home town but had to seek cover when they drew fire from his die-hard loyalists. Fighters with the Transitional National Council shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is greatest!”) as a force of about 100 pickup trucks mounted with heavy weapons pushed into a residential district on the southern side of Sirte. .They were forced to scramble for refuge under heavy fire from pro-Gaddafi fighters holed up in an apartment complex, according to a reporter on the scene. Two council fighters were killed and three wounded in the exchanges. “There is a very vicious battle now in Sirte,” Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the council, told reporters in the capital, Tripoli, where he met with defense ministers from Britain and Italy. “Today our fighters are dealing with the snipers that are taking positions and hiding in the city of Sirte.” Taking Sirte would bring Libya’s new rulers closer to their goal of establishing control of the entire country almost two months after they seized Tripoli, but their offensive is hampered by pressure to spare civilians trapped inside. [Libya] [Media]
• Putin’s Eurasian push challenges west
  By Neil Buckley in London AFPA new battle for hearts and minds is being waged in the republics of the former Soviet Union – and the west is in danger of losing it. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, this week unveiled his first big foreign policy initiative since confirming his likely return as president. It was a call to former Soviet republics to join a “Eurasian Union” that Russia is already creating with authoritarian Belarus and Kazakhstan. That is due to expand from a customs union into a 165m-strong common economic space next year, with talk of an eventual single currency. Mr Putin denies this is a reborn Soviet Union. But, shorn of the communist ideology, there are resemblances. Even the newspaper where Mr Putin detailed his plans, Izvestia, was once the official Soviet government paper. All this comes just as European Union attempts at closer integration with its eastern neighbours are faltering. Even if coincidentally, Mr Putin’s article appeared just days after an EU summit in Warsaw that aimed to relaunch an initiative to draw six former Soviet republics into its embrace, known as the “Eastern Partnership”. It was a damp squib. [Resurgence] [NCW]
• Gaddafi's last stronghold, the city of Sirte, becomes Libya's final battle
  Libya's revolution now rests on this one key city but its besieged residents are paying a high price for liberation Peter Beaumont in Sirte guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 October 2011 20.27 BST Article history Libyan forces under fire from Gaddafi loyalists holed up in the coastal city of Sirte. Photograph: Bela Szandelszky/AP The hotel does not even have a name. It was finished but never opened because of the outbreak of the Libyan revolution earlier this year. These days it serves as one of the bases of the revolutionary forces attempting to take Sirte from some of the last loyalists of the Gaddafi regime. The stairs to the seventh floor roof terrace are spotted with blood. The large windows, with views on to the Mediterranean and the beach below, have been blown out by sniper fire. From the roof terrace itself, where a spotter surveys the sniper positions from behind sandbags to call in tank fire, the besieged coastal city is visible below. To one side the highway that runs alongside the sea is empty, save for the armed trucks of the forces of Libya's new government. On this, the east side of the city, the fighters are largely from the east – from Benghazi and cities like Bayda. Straight ahead, however, is a collection of buildings near the Ibn Sana hospital – two miles (3km) away – which has become the target of the tanks, rocket launchers and anti-aircraft guns of Libya's revolutionaries, lined up on the low sandy ridge that overlooks the town. [Libya] [Media]
• Six weeks after Gadhafi's fall, Libya's rebels can't get their story straight
  Hannah Allam McClatchy Newspapers TRIPOLI, Libya — Libya's interim rulers were busy this week: They cheered the imminent fall of Moammar Gadhafi's hometown, ordered trigger-happy revolutionary fighters out of the capital, formed a new caretaker Cabinet and announced the discovery of 900 corpses in two mass graves. Only problem was, all those moves turned out to be premature, exaggerated or patently false. [Libya] [Disinformation]
• Assassinating Awlaki: The Day America Died
  by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS October 04, 2011 September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated. Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from “patriots” who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe. In our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Lawrence Stratton and I showed that long before 9/11 US law had ceased to be a shield of the people and had been turned into a weapon in the hands of the government. The event known as 9/11 was used to raise the executive branch above the law. As long as the President sanctions an illegal act, executive branch employees are no longer accountable to the law that prohibits the illegal act. On the president’s authority, the executive branch can violate US laws against spying on Americans without warrants, indefinite detention, and torture and suffer no consequences. Many expected President Obama to re-establish the accountability of government to law. Instead, he went further than Bush/Cheney and asserted the unconstitutional power not only to hold American citizens indefinitely in prison without bringing charges, but also to take their lives without convicting them in a court of law. Obama asserts that the US Constitution notwithstanding, he has the authority to assassinate US citizens, who he deems to be a “threat,” without due process of law. [Assassination] [Continuity] [Legality]
• The End of America's Pacific Century: Why 2012 Will Shake Up Asia and the World
  by JOHN FEFFER The United States has long styled itself a Pacific power. It established the model of counterinsurgency in the Philippines in 1899 and defeated the Japanese in World War II. It faced down the Chinese and the North Koreans to keep the Korean peninsula divided in 1950, and it armed the Taiwanese to the teeth. Today, America maintains the most powerful military in the Pacific region, supported by a constellation of military bases, bilateral alliances, and about 100,000 service personnel. It has, however, reached the high-water mark of its Pacific presence and influence. The geopolitical map is about to be redrawn. Northeast Asia, the area of the world with the greatest concentration of economic and military power, is on the verge of a regional transformation. And the United States, still preoccupied with the Middle East and hobbled by a stalled and stagnating economy, will be the odd man out. [Decline]
• Heritage Oil strikes $20m Libya deal
  By Michael Kavanagh and Adam Jones Heritage Oil, the FTSE 250 oil and gas explorer, has made a push into Libya in the hope of winning oil and gas licences when they are distributed by the new regime. The group on Tuesday announced that it had bought a 51 per cent stake in a small Libyan oilfield service provider called Sahara Oil Services Holdings, which is based in Benghazi. Paul Atherton, chief finance officer at Heritage, described the deal as the company’s “entrée into Libya”. He added: “When everybody else fled in February, we moved in and saw an opportunity. We cemented relationships and entered into discussions with the National Transitional Council.” Heritage, which is exploring for oil and gas in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo, said it wanted to “play a significant role in the future development of the oil and gas industry in Libya”. [Libya] [Oil]
• Russia and China veto UN censure of Syria
  By Anna Fifield in Washington Russia and China have used their veto power at the UN Security Council to block a western-backed resolution condemning the Syrian regime’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, scuppering even a watered-down denunciation. European members framed the debate as a moral issue but Russia said that its decision was grounded in political reality. [UNUS] [NCW]
• Libyan civilian toll from NATO bombings still unknown
  October 4, 2011 By Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers MAJAR, Libya — When late-night NATO airstrikes rained down on this hardscrabble farming village, then-leader Moammar Gadhafi's propaganda machine kicked into overdrive. Closely monitored journalists were led on a tour of the site by sobbing locals, who pointed out powerful visuals such as a teddy bear or a woman's pink shoe amid the rubble. Regime officials claimed that the Aug. 8 strikes killed 85 Libyans, including many women and children — a fine example of "Western democracy," they sputtered. The Gadhafi regime collapsed two weeks later. Now survivors of the Majar strike say that their heartbreak — so recently the tool of a desperate ruler — has been forgotten. They'd like compensation for the lost lives and property, they said in interviews this week, but most of all they're demanding answers to why NATO bombed them. [Libya] [Casualties]
• Study: A fifth of war veterans have mental health issues
  David Goldstein McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Nearly 20 percent of the more than 2 million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from mental health conditions, according to a new report. They amount to more than half of the 712,000 veterans from both wars who have sought medical treatment since leaving military service. Nearly a third of those veterans may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, one of the signature injuries of the conflicts. Veterans for Common Sense, a nonprofit, nonpartisan activist group for veterans' interests, and health care issues in particular, compiled the statistics from a raft of government reports. In whittling them down to just the bare data, the group created a grim shorthand for the toll the wars have taken on a generation of young men and women. [Imperialism] [Casualties]
• Taliban Using Modern Means to Add to Sway
  By ALISSA J. RUBIN Published: October 4, 2011 LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — Punctually, at 8 o’clock every evening, the cellphone signals disappear in this provincial capital. Under pressure from the Taliban, the major carriers turn off their signal towers, effectively severing most of the connections to the rest of the world. In Kabul, Afghanistan, cellphone service worked as usual on Tuesday, but in many areas of the country the Taliban control the hours of usage, defying the government's authority. This now occurs in some portion of more than half the provinces in Afghanistan, and exemplifies the Taliban’s new and more subtle ways of asserting themselves, even as NATO generals portray the insurgents as a diminished force less able to hold ground. The question is whether the Taliban need to hold territory as they once did in order to influence the population. Increasingly, it seems, the answer is no. Tactics like the cellphone offensive have allowed the Taliban to project their presence in far more insidious and sophisticated ways, using the instruments of modernity that they once shunned. The shutoff sends a daily reminder to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Afghans that the Taliban still hold substantial sway over their future. It is just one part of a broader shift in Taliban strategy that has focused on intimidation, carefully chosen assassinations and limited but spectacular assaults. While often avoiding large-scale combat with NATO forces, the Taliban and their allies in the Haqqani network have effectively undermined peace talks with the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai and sought to pave the way for a gradual return to power as the American-led forces begin scaling back military operations in the country. [Global insurgency] [ICT]
• We need to stop America’s brain drain
  Cliff Owen/AP - The sun sets on the U.S. Capitol. By Vivek Wadhwa, Published: October 4 In 1980, when I came to the United States to study, this was the only land of opportunity for skilled immigrants like me. It took less than 18 months for me to get a permanent resident visa, and I became a citizen as soon as I became eligible five years later. I came here to study, but ended up founding two technology companies, which employed hundreds of Americans. Later in life, I decided to give back to America by becoming an academic. If I was arriving today, I would not have taken the same path. Like the students from India and China that I teach, I would have looked at the bigger opportunities back home after I graduated. And even if I wanted to make America my home, I wouldn’t have had the choice: The waiting time for permanent resident visas for educated workers from India is now 70 years, according to National Foundation for American Policy. This is a big problem for the U.S. because immigrants have founded 52 percent of Silicon Valley’s companies and created millions of American jobs. This won’t be the case in the future. [Diaspora] [Decline]
• Cheney: After Yemen strike, Obama owes apology to Bush
  View Photo Gallery — ?Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric and one of the most influential al-Qaeda operatives wanted by the U.S., was killed Friday in an airstrike in northern Yemen, authorities said. By Joby Warrick, Published: October 2 Former vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday called last week’s CIA drone strike against al-Qaeda operative Anwar Awlaki a validation of the George W. Bush administration’s terrorist-fighting strategy, and said that President Obama should apologize for his past criticism of those policies. Cheney endorsed the killing of Awlaki as “justified,” despite Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship, and suggested that the Obama White House was being hypocritical when it approved a deadly strike against the New Mexico-born Awlaki while condemning Bush’s use of so-called enhanced interrogation methods of al-Qaeda prisoners. .“They’ve agreed they need to be tough and aggressive in defending the nation and using some of the same techniques that the Bush administration did,” Cheney said on CNN’s Sunday talk show “State of the Nation with Candy Crowley.” “And they need, as I say, to go back and reconsider some of the criticisms they offered about our policies.” [Assassination] [Legality] [Continuity]

• Saudis 'eye Pakistani nukes' to face Iran
  Published: Sept. 15, 2011 at 11:52 AM DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabia has been beefing up its military links with Pakistan to counter Iran's expansionist plans and this reportedly includes acquiring atomic arms from the only Muslim nuclear power or its pledge of nuclear cover. Pakistan has become a front-line state for Sunni Islam and is being positioned by its leaders, particularly in the powerful military and intelligence establishments, as a bulwark against Shiite Iran and its proxies. Increasingly, Pakistan is rushing to the defense of Saudi Arabia, with whom it has a long had discreet security links. It is reported to have put two army divisions on standby for deployment to Saudi Arabia if the kingdom is threatened by Iran or the pro-democracy uprisings sweeping the Arab world. It is even reported to be prepared to provide Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons if threatened by Iran. In return, it has been promised Saudi Arabian oil and treasure.
• Destroying a Country's Standard of Living: What Libya Had Achieved, What has been Destroyed
  by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, September 20, 2011 "There is no tomorrow" under a NATO sponsored Al Qaeda rebellion. While a "pro-democracy" rebel government has been instated, the country has been destroyed. Against the backdrop of war propaganda, Libya's economic and social achievements over the last thirty years, have been brutally reversed: The [Libyan Arab Jamahiriya] has had a high standard of living and a robust per capita daily caloric intake of 3144. The country has made strides in public health and, since 1980, child mortality rates have dropped from 70 per thousand live births to 19 in 2009. Life expectancy has risen from 61 to 74 years of age during the same span of years. (FAO, Rome, Libya, Country Profile,) According to sectors of the "Progressive Left" which have endorsed NATO's R2P mandate: "The mood across Libya, particularly in Tripoli, is absolutely—like there’s just a feeling of euphoria everywhere. People are incredibly excited about starting afresh. There’s a real sense of rebirth, a feeling that their lives are starting anew. (DemocracyNow.org, September 14, 2011 emphasis added) The rebels are casually presented as "liberators". The central role of Al Qaeda affilated terrorists within rebel ranks is not mentioned. [Libya]
• Palestinian crisis looms over U.N. meeting
  By Andrew Quinn UNITED NATIONS | Thu Sep 22, 2011 6:31pm EDT UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Diplomats scrambled on Thursday to head off a clash over Palestinian plans to seek full U.N. recognition with little visible sign of progress and a deadline less than 24 hours away. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad briefly seized the spotlight at the United Nations General Assembly, accusing the United States of using the September 11, 2001, attacks as a pretext for attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan and condemning western support for Zionism. But attention focused on the crisis transfixing this year's U.N. meeting. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is ready to submit his application to the U.N. Security Council on Friday despite pressure from U.S. President Barack Obama to forgo the U.N. option and resume direct talks with Israel. Obama's meetings with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday ended with no breakthrough, illustrating stark new limits of U.S. influence over a process spinning in unpredictable directions. [Decline] [Palestine]
• One in Five New York City Residents Living in Poverty
  By SAM ROBERTS Poverty grew nationwide last year, but the increase was even greater in New York City, the Census Bureau will report on Thursday, suggesting that New York was being particularly hard hit by the aftermath of the recession. From 2009 to 2010, 75,000 city residents were pushed into poverty, increasing the poor population to more than 1.6 million and raising the percentage of New Yorkers living below the official federal poverty line to 20.1 percent, the highest level since 2000. The 1.4-percentage-point annual increase in the poverty rate appeared to be the largest jump in nearly two decades. Many New Yorkers were spared the worst of the recession, but the median household income has since shriveled to levels last seen in 1980, adjusted for inflation. Household income declined among almost all groups — by 5 percent over all since the beginning of the recession in 2007, to $48,743 in 2010. [Decline]
• Mullen Asserts Pakistani Role in Attack on U.S. Embassy
  By ELISABETH BUMILLER and JANE PERLEZ WASHINGTON — Pakistan’s intelligence agency aided the insurgents who attacked the American Embassy in Kabul last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate on Thursday. In comments that were the first to directly link Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, with an assault on the United States, Admiral Mullen went further than any other American official in blaming the ISI for undermining the American military effort in Afghanistan. The United States has long said that the ISI has close links to Afghan insurgents, particularly the Haqqani network, but no one has been as blunt as Admiral Mullen. [AfPak] [Client]
• Fleeing Syrian activists are finding a haven in Libya
  By Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers BENGHAZI, Libya — Syrian activists fleeing persecution for taking part in the six-month-old revolt against their government are flocking to Libya, where they face no visa requirements and can find work easily because of the exodus of foreign laborers during the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi. With fresh bullet wounds, emotional trauma and little cash, the Syrians trade experiences with one another largely without fear of Syrian President Bashar Assad's security apparatus. They also are consulting with Libyan activists on the merit of armed rebellion, with many now convinced that taking up weapons is their only hope for toppling Assad, who remains firmly in place despite months of peaceful protests, tougher sanctions and calls from the United States and Europe for his ouster. [Islamists] [Libya] [Syria]
• Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
  Thursday, September 22, 2011 The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 21% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Thirty-nine percent (39%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18 (see trends). Republicans are still trusted more than Democrats to handle the number one issue on voters’ minds, the economy. But the parties are now essentially tied on six out of ten important issues. As of now, the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary race is all about Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, with no other candidate reaching double-digit support. Nineteen percent (19%) of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, while 75% believe the country is heading down the wrong track. [Public opinion]
• Obama’s popularity slips along with job approval in Washington Post poll
  By Jon Cohen With President Obama’s approval ratings mired near career lows, the number of Americans holding favorable impressions of him has – for the first time in his presidency – sagged under 50 percent, according to Washington Post-ABC News polls. Barely more than one in five now hold “strongly” positive views, down significantly since the spring. In the poll – a new weekly look at who is up and who is down on this basic measure of public sentiment – 47 percent say they view Obama favorably, but just as many, 46 percent, view him unfavorably. For the first time, those with intensely negative impressions outnumber his strong backers. [Public opinion]
• Pakistan backed attacks on American targets, U.S. says
  Video: Admiral Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta say Pakistan has provided safe haven to a terrorist group that carried out attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and others. (Sept. 22) By Karen DeYoung, Updated: Friday, September 23, 6:55 AM The Obama administration for the first time Thursday openly asserted that Pakistan was indirectly responsible for specific attacks against U.S. troops and installations in Afghanistan, calling a leading Afghan insurgent group “a veritable arm” of the Pakistani intelligence service. Last week’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and a Sept. 10 truck bombing that killed five Afghans and wounded 77 NATO troops were “planned and conducted” by the Pakistan-based Haqqani network “with ISI support,” said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The ISI is the Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. [Client] [AfPak]
• Battles in Libya raise specter of insurgency
  By Tara Bahrampour, Friday, September 23, 1:59 AM TRIPOLI — For months, Libyan rebels and their international supporters insisted that Libya was not going to become another endless conflict in the model of Iraq or Afghanistan. And when Tripoli was taken by rebels a month ago, it seemed to many that the war was over. But as Moammar Gaddafi’s loyalists put up a fierce resistance in the besieged towns of Sirte and Bani Walid, and bickering erupts among the revolutionaries, there are growing fears that the ousting of Gaddafi will not mean an end to fighting in the new Libya. 7 .In fact, some say the former leader’s defeat could open the door to a more complicated kind of conflict. For the first six months of the rebellion, there were two clear sides — Gaddafi forces and the rebels, with NATO tipping the scale in favor of the latter. But as that phase of the fighting draws to an end, disgruntled Gaddafi loyalists or others who feel left out of the new government could try to destabilize it, with insurgents striking in cities or using desert or foreign outposts as bases. [Libya] [Global insurgency]
• Truth, Propaganda and Media Manipulation
  by Global Research Global Research, September 28, 2011 - 2011-03-31 Never before has it been so important to have independent, honest voices and sources of information. We are – as a society – inundated and overwhelmed with a flood of information from a wide array of sources, but these sources of information, by and large, serve the powerful interests and individuals that own them. The main sources of information, for both public and official consumption, include the mainstream media, alternative media, academia and think tanks. The mainstream media is the most obvious in its inherent bias and manipulation. The mainstream media is owned directly by large multinational corporations, and through their boards of directors are connected with a plethora of other major global corporations and elite interests. An example of these connections can be seen through the board of Time Warner. Time Warner owns Time Magazine, HBO, Warner Bros., and CNN, among many others. The board of directors includes individuals past or presently affiliated with: the Council on Foreign Relations, the IMF, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Warburg Pincus, Phillip Morris, and AMR Corporation, among many others. Two of the most “esteemed” sources of news in the U.S. are the New York Times (referred to as “the paper of record”) and the Washington Post. The New York Times has on its board people who are past or presently affiliated with: Schering-Plough International (pharmaceuticals), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chevron Corporation, Wesco Financial Corporation, Kohlberg & Company, The Charles Schwab Corporation, eBay Inc., Xerox, IBM, Ford Motor Company, Eli Lilly & Company, among others. Hardly a bastion of impartiality. And the same could be said for the Washington Post, which has on its board: Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Warren Buffett, billionaire financial investor, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; and individuals associated with (past or presently): the Coca-Cola Company, New York University, Conservation International, the Council on Foreign Relations, Xerox, Catalyst, Johnson & Johnson, Target Corporation, RAND Corporation, General Motors, and the Business Council, among others. It is also important to address how the mainstream media is intertwined, often covertly and secretly, with the government. Carl Bernstein, one of the two Washington Post reporters who covered the Watergate scandal, revealed that there were over 400 American journalists who had “secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency.” Interestingly, “the use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence-gathering employed by the CIA.” Among organizations which cooperated with the CIA were the "American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune." [Media]
• Venezuela, Cuba defend Iran, Syria attacks Israel at nuke meeting
  By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, September 21, 6:24 PM VIENNA — Iran was praised and Israel criticized Wednesday at a 151-nation meeting, with Cuba and Venezuela defending Tehran’s right to run a nuclear program and Syria saying the Jewish state’s undeclared nuclear arsenal is a threat to world peace. The two Latin American nations are among Tehran’s greatest supporters and Washington’s strongest detractors, depicting it as the leader of privileged nations seeking to deprive developing countries of nuclear power and other benefits. Syria, too is at odds with the U.S, and is the most vocal Arab critic of Israel. While the West sees Tehran as the greatest nuclear threat in the Mideast, Islamic countries assert that Israel and its undeclared atomic arsenal represents the most pressing danger to the region. [Nuclear weapons] [Double standards]
• The Costs of the Great War on Terror
  by VIJAY PRASHAD When Bush declared the Global War on Terror (GWOT), it felt odd. The U.S. had already involved itself in combat with the social forces that attacked it on 9/11. To make such a formal declaration of war allowed the administration to do two things: first, on the surface, to indicate that the 9/11 attacks came from nowhere, and, therefore, to make the claim that the U.S. was now going to enter a conflict for the first time. It allowed it to appear as an innocent bystander that now wanted justice for something that it did not deserve. The second claim, slightly beneath the surface, was a bit more complicated. Very quickly after September 11, the idea of “9/11” became a kind of myth. The notion that an innocent country was attacked in September wiped off all traces of previous U.S. involvement in the Arab lands and South Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan) through warfare towards the control of oil and political power. None of that seemed relevant. If anyone suggested that this was the case, they were shunned. (Professor Ward Churchill was pilloried for saying that 9/11 was simply an instance of the “chickens coming home to roost”; the attack on Churchill silenced many who wanted to raise the question of U.S. involvement overseas.) [9/11] [Media] [Militarisation] [Finance] [Global insurgency
• U.S. Night Raids Aimed at Afghan Civilians
  by GARETH PORTER U.S. Special Operations Forces have been increasingly aiming their night-time raids, which have been the primary cause of Afghan anger at the U.S. military presence, at civilian non- combatants in order to exploit their possible intelligence value, according to a new study published by the Open Society Foundation and The Liaison Office. [Special forces] [Afghanistan]
• Night Raids: For Afghan Civilians, the Costs May Outweigh the Benefits
  September 20, 2011 | by Erica Gaston . If the Taliban came to your house in the night, fully armed, and demanded food, would you feed them? You may have no choice. This does not make you a combatant. But it can leave you at risk of another visit in the night and detention by U.S. special operations forces. [Special forces] [Afghanistan] [Media]
• $23bn windfall for new Libya
  By James Blitz in London and Michael Peel in Abu Dhabi Libya’s revolutionary government has enjoyed a surprise windfall that will help finance the country’s post-war recovery after discovering $23bn-worth of assets that were unspent by Col Muammer Gaddafi’s regime, officials in London and Tripoli have told the Financial Times. The find – described by one British official as “the equivalent of discovering several billion dollars under the mattress” – is being hailed as a big boost to Libya’s new rulers’ efforts to run the country. Much of Libya’s estimated $160bn of foreign assets remains frozen under sanctions imposed against the Gaddafi regime. However, sources have confirmed that the unspent assets were found this month in Libyan state coffers. According to a senior British official, the Libyan government informed the UK last week that about 28bn Libyan dinars ($22.8bn) had been discovered in the Central bank of Libya. [Libya]
• Welcome to Boston, Mr. Rumsfeld. You Are Under Arrest
  by Ralph Lopez Global Research, September 20, 2011 Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been stripped of legal immunity for acts of torture against US citizens authorized while he was in office. The 7th Circuit made the ruling in the case of two American contractors who were tortured by the US military in Iraq after uncovering a smuggling ring within an Iraqi security company. The company was under contract to the Department of Defense. The company was assisting Iraqi insurgent groups in the “mass acquisition” of American weapons. The ruling comes as Rumsfeld begins his book tour with a visit to Boston on Monday, September 26, and as new, uncensored photos of Abu Ghraib spark fresh outrage across Internet. Awareness is growing that Bush-era crimes went far beyond mere waterboarding. [Torture][Legality]
• America’s wars: the logic of escalation
  Paul Rogers, 22 September 2011 The United States's political-military strategy for drawdown in Afghanistan is in trouble, even as Washington is tempted by increased high-tech military engagement in other theatres of war. The killing of Afghanistan’s former president Burhanuddin Rabbani in a suicide bomb-attack at his home in Kabul on 20 September 2011 removes a senior player who for decades was at the centre of the country’s political scene. A major incident in itself, which led the current Afghan president Hamid Karzai to return home from New York to attend the funeral, Rabbani’s death follows the concerted assault on key targets in central Kabul on 13-14 September that lasted twenty hours. [Decline] [Militarisation] [AfPak] [UAV]
• NATO Extends Libya Bombing Campaign
  By KAREEM FAHIM and RICK GLADSTONE Published: September 21, 2011 TRIPOLI, Libya — With armed loyalists of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the fallen Libyan leader, still ensconced in his hometown and a few other redoubts as the seven-month-old Libyan conflict winds down, NATO announced a three-month extension of its bombing campaign on Wednesday. “We are determined to continue our mission for as long as necessary, but ready to terminate the operation as soon as possible,” the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in a statement from the alliance’s Brussels headquarters. It is the second 90-day extension, and it was approved less than a week before the campaign was set to end. NATO’s aerial campaign in Libya, authorized under a United Nations Security Council mandate to protect civilians from Colonel Qaddafi’s military reprisals, effectively became a major weapon of the rebels who toppled him last month. The Transitional National Council, the interim government of anti-Qaddafi forces that have taken control in much of Libya, has expressed gratitude to NATO for its role. [Libya] [UNUS] [Airpower]
• The price of becoming addicted to drones
  By David Ignatius, Published: September 21 What “rules of war” should apply to Predator drones, the eerily efficient weapons that cruise the skies and target adversaries with the precision of a sharpshooter’s bullet? It’s an urgent question — not simply for the United States, which is expanding its use of drones, but for dozens of other nations that may soon use them to target their own “bad guys.” Although drones have been controversial abroad, there has been relatively little public debate about them in America. That’s partly because U.S. officials usually won’t discuss their operations, which are highly classified. But officials affirm privately that they have been highly effective against al-Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal areas of Pakistan — and that they are being used in Yemen and Somalia in an escalating campaign against al-Qaeda affiliates there. .These weapons, which project power without risking “boots on the ground,” can become addictive. According to a report last year by a U.N. special rapporteur, more than 40 countries now have drone technology, and nations seeking to arm drones with missiles include Israel, Russia, Turkey, China, India, Iran, Britain and France. [UAV] [Logic]
• In tropical paradise, U.S. drones meant revenue
  By Craig Whitlock Drones can clearly track down terrorists. But they can apparently boost an economy, too. The U.S. military’s deployment of MQ-9 Reaper drones to the Seychelles, a tropical paradise in the Indian Ocean, generated $3.1 million in revenue for local businesses during their first four months of operations, according to an unclassified U.S. diplomatic cable buried in the database of State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks. As the subject line of the 2010 cable touted: “U.S. Military Presence Benefits Seychelles Economy.” The Reapers – known as “hunter-killer” drones for their tracking ability – may be unmanned. But it takes a whole village of military personnel and contractors to operate the aircraft from the ground. In this case, that meant 82 people deploying to Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles, the island chain known for its Sports Illustrated swimsuit model shoots and royal honeymoons. When they weren’t flying the Reapers, the drone crew spent $937,260 on “Food/Liberty,” or about $11,400 per person over a four-month period ending in December 2009 (the Reapers arrived in late September). [UAV] [Imperialism]
• After Afghan slaying, a sense of helplessness
  By Ernesto Londoño, Published: September 21 KABUL — As they mourned the slain Afghan leader who had been tasked with reconciling with the Taliban, close friends and associates of Burhanuddin Rabbani expressed anger and hopelessness Wednesday about peace talks they say were doomed from the start. “We cannot continue to have wishful thinking,” former presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, who was close to Rabbani, said as he drove to the former president’s house to pay his last respects. “We must deal with them forcefully.” 7 .Abdullah called President Hamid Karzai’s attempts to get Taliban leaders to lay down their arms and join the government naive. “These are the people President Karzai calls ‘dear brothers,’?” Abdullah said of Karzai’s conciliatory approach to the militants. “The ones who have killed thousands of people.” Afghan officials said they were all but certain that the Taliban’s leadership or a faction of the group carried out Tuesday’s assassination, the latest high-profile killing in Afghanistan this year — and arguably the one most detrimental to efforts to end the 10-year-old war. As of Wednesday night, no group had asserted responsibility for the attack. Taliban spokesmen on Wednesday were uncharacteristically hard to reach
• America's costly war machine
  Op-Ed Fighting the war on terror compromises the economy now and threatens it in the future. September 18, 2011|By Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. StiglitzTen years into the war on terror, the U.S. has largely succeeded in its attempts to destabilize Al Qaeda and eliminate its leaders. But the cost has been enormous, and our decisions about how to finance it have profoundly damaged the U.S. economy. Many of these costs were unnecessary. We chose to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan with a small, all-volunteer force, and we supplemented the military presence with a heavy reliance on civilian contractors. These decisions not only placed enormous strain on the troops but dramatically pushed up costs. Recent congressional investigations have shown that roughly 1 of every 4 dollars spent on wartime contracting was wasted or misspent. [Imperialism] [Finance] [Decline] [Global insurgency] [Softpower]
• Two different worlds: 9/11 internet coverage vs. mainstream media
  by Paul J. Balles on September 17, 2011 This past week the internet and mainstream media have both been chock-a-block with 9/11. But they haven't been in the same world. The contrasting stories have been absolutely amazing
  But then there's the other world, which exists outside of the mainstream--the 9/11 truth seekers. Truth seekers range from extreme conspiracy theorists, who believe that the Bush administration engineered the attacks to consolidate power, roll back civil liberties and help oil mogul friends. More moderate factions simply insist that top government officials know more about the attacks than they have acknowledged, and then used the attacks as a pretext for invading Iraq. A large percentage of activists proffer--often in great detail--what they call inconsistencies in government explanations of the attacks, which many consider a governmental cover-up. The most amazing thing about these two worlds is that one of them doesn't even acknowledge that the other even exists. [9/11] [Media]
• Niger town fears Libya turmoil will boost al Qaida group
  Local residents of Agadez, Niger, say that this bank was financed by former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. | Alan Boswell/MCT By Alan Boswell | McClatchy Newspapers Alan Boswell McClatchy Newspapers AGADEZ, Niger — On the southern edge of the Sahara desert, 600 miles from the Libyan border, residents of this dusty town are worrying that they're about to become another wartime lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Truckloads of soldiers and workers from Libya are flooding into this town, a hub of the often-rebellious, semi-nomadic Tuareg ethnic group, many of whose leaders found shelter in Moammar Gadhafi's army and now are returning home. Weaponry is on the loose, and loyalties are uncertain. [Libya] [Racism] [War crimes]
• Empty village raises concerns about fate of black Libyans
  Tawergha used to be a city filled with black non-Arab Libyans. Rebel forces emptied the town after they seized Tripoli and residents have yet to return. | David Enders / MCT By David Enders | McClatchy Newspapers David Enders McClatchy Newspapers TAWERGHA, Libya — This town was once home to thousands of mostly black non-Arab residents. Now, the only manmade sound is a generator that powers a small militia checkpoint, where rebels say the town is a "closed military area." What happened to the residents of Tawergha appears to be another sign that despite the rebel leadership's pledges that they'll exact no revenge on supporters of deposed dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Libya's new rulers often are dealing harshly with the country's black residents. [Libya] [Racism] [War crimes]
• U.S. assembling secret drone bases in Africa, Arabian Peninsula, officials say
  By Craig Whitlock and Greg Miller, Wednesday, September 21, 2:14 AM The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said. One of the installations is being established in Ethi­o­pia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of that country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter-killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somalia from there. [UAV] [Global insurgency]
• Obama anoints new Libyan government
  Video: President Barack Obama promised the Libyan people that the world will stand with them as they reshape their country following the fall of Moammar Gaddafi's regime. (Sept. 20) By Colum Lynch and Scott Wilson, Wednesday, September 21, 4:50 AM UNITED NATIONS — President Obama announced Tuesday at a U.N. summit that he is reopening the U.S. Embassy in the Libyan capital of Tripoli and returning the American ambassador, underscoring U.S. support for the country’s new government. [Libya]
• After Disclosures by WikiLeaks, Al Jazeera Replaces Its Top News Director
  By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Published: September 20, 2011 CAIRO — Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news network financed by Qatar, named a member of the Qatari royal family on Tuesday to replace its top news director after disclosures from the group WikiLeaks indicating that the news director had modified the network’s coverage of the Iraq war in response to pressure from the United States. Al Jazeera is under intense scrutiny in the Middle East over its varying coverage of the Arab Spring revolts. Although the network is nominally independent — and its degree of autonomy was itself a revolution in the context of the region’s state-controlled news media when it began in 1996 — many people contend that its coverage of the region still reflects the views of its Qatari owners. [Media] [Imperialism] [WikiLeaks] [Softpower]
• What Wikileaks Tells Us About Al Jazeera
  Is the rapidly expanding Middle East satellite television network and voice of the Arab Spring as independent as it claims? BY OMAR CHATRIWALA | SEPTEMBER 19, 2011 Al Jazeera has been making waves in the Middle East ever since it aired its first broadcast on Nov. 1, 1996. In its news dispatches and talk shows, the pan-Arab satellite channel, which is funded by the state of Qatar, has been a strident critic of U.S. foreign policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian Territories, even while it has been a thorn in the side of many an Arab autocrat. But after the last dump of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, on Aug. 30, articles have begun to circulate -- especially in Iranian and Syrian media outlets -- about Al Jazeera's close relationship with a surprising interlocutor: the U.S. government. [Media] [Imperialism][Softpower]
• Obama’s Arc of Instability
  by NICK TURSE It’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called “the arc of instability.” It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet. A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them — from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia — Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace. [US global strategy] [Subcritical] [Special forces]
• Libyan Scenario for Central Asia?
  20.09.2011 Alexander Shustov, political scientist on Central Asia Russian general staff chief Gen. N. Makarov warned at a media briefing in Moscow on September 12 that revolutions patterned on the Libyan one can recur in Central Asia. Overall, the pertinent scenario includes the incitement of public unrest, civilian fatalities, international condemnations of repressions against protesters, the passing of a UN resolution partially authorizing the use of force against the regime with the goal of protecting the civilian population, and a massive military intervention boldly overstepping the limits set by the UN resolution. Covert operations launched by NATO special forces disguised as a local militia and a media campaign with shows of imitated atrocities allegedly committed by the regime which therefore should deserve being displaced were also named as elements of the hypothetic plan. Similarly to Libya where mostly Western companies gained control over Libya's oil in the wake of the anti-Gadhafi revolt, Central Asia sits on impressive energy reserves. [US global policy] [Libya] [Destabilisation] [Subcritical] [UNUS]
• A future for drones: Automated killing
  By Peter Finn, Tuesday, September 20, 3:26 AM One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, Ga., two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green and blue tarp. The automated, unpiloted planes worked on their own, with no human guidance, no hand on any control. After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned car on the ground so it could take a final, close-up look. Target confirmed. This successful exercise in autonomous robotics could presage the future of the American way of war: a day when drones hunt, identify and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans. Imagine aerial “Terminators,” minus beefcake and time travel. [UAV] [Technology fetishism]
• Increased U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan killing few high-value militants
  By Greg Miller Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 21, 2011 CIA drone attacks in Pakistan killed at least 581 militants last year, according to independent estimates. The number of those militants noteworthy enough to appear on a U.S. list of most-wanted terrorists: two. [UAV] [Technology fetishism]
• Suicide bombers kill leader of Iraq's Sunni 'Awakening'
  By Laith Hammoudi | McClatchy Newspapers Laith Hammoudi McClatchy Newspapers BAGHDAD, Iraq — Suicide bombers Tuesday killed a leader of Sahwa, the Sunni militias formed and backed by U.S. forces, as well as three other people in a complex attack on a local government compound in Ramadi, capital of mostly Sunni Anbar province [Decline]
• Ex-Afghan leader assassinated in Kabul
  By Hashim Shukoor and Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers McClatchy Newspapers KABUL, Afghanistan — Former President Buhanuddin Rabbani, the head of the government-backed council appointed to negotiate peace with the Taliban-led insurgency, died Tuesday in a suicide bombing inside his Kabul home, the presidential palace announced. It was the fourth major insurgent strike in the heart of the capital in three months. [Decline]
• U.S. Is Quietly Getting Ready for Syria Without Assad
  By HELENE COOPER Published: September 19, 2011 WASHINGTON — Increasingly convinced that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria will not be able to remain in power, the Obama administration has begun to make plans for American policy in the region after he exits. Related Syria: 5 Deaths Reported in Crackdown (September 20, 2011) Syria’s Protesters, Long Mostly Peaceful, Starting to Resort to Violence (September 17, 2011) Times Topic: Syria — Protests (2011)Readers’ Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment » Read All Comments (17) » In coordination with Turkey, the United States has been exploring how to deal with the possibility of a civil war among Syria’s Alawite, Druse, Christian and Sunni sects, a conflict that could quickly ignite other tensions in an already volatile region. [Fragmentation][Imperialism] [Destabilisation]
• Obama says U.S. embassy in Libya will reopen
  By Scott Wilson, NEW YORK—President Obama announced Tuesday that he is reopening the U.S. Embassy in the Libyan capital of Tripoli and returning the ambassador, mixing a pledge to stand by Libya’s post-revolution government with warnings that “difficult days lie ahead” as the country attempts to build a new government and economy. Beginning his official visit to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama addressed a high-level meeting on Libya, recently rid of long-time dictator Moammar Qaddafi after seven months of civil war. British Prime Minister David Cameron says help from the UK and France is coming for Libya's new transition government. He also urged the Libyan people to avoid vengeance, and said Moammar Gaddafi would be brought to justice. His message was a defense of NATO’s decision to intervene on behalf of the rebels in order to prevent a threatened civilian massacre, as well as a promise that security and humanitarian assistance will continue until the oil-rich North African nation is stable. “This is how the international community should work in the 21st century—more nations bearing the responsibility and costs of meeting global challenges,” Obama said. But Obama also warned that “even as we speak, remnants of the old regime continue to fight.” [Libya]
• Is it Hobson’s Choice time for Panetta?
  By David Ignatius In his new office at the Pentagon, Leon Panetta is said to display the most precious trophy of war in modern times: A brick from Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, marked at the kiln, “A-1,” mounted in a glass case with bin Laden’s CIA code name, “Geronimo,” fixed to the frame. Panetta’s new target may be even more elusive than was bin Laden. As secretary of defense, his top concern is finding ways to cut the Pentagon budget that don’t gut the U.S. military. The biggest danger is that Congress will insist on protecting pet weapons projects, forcing Panetta to cope with the budget squeeze by reducing troops and “hollowing out” the structure of U.S. forces. Panetta can live with the $450 billion reduction in planned defense spending over the next 10 years that was promised by his predecessor, Bob Gates. His nightmare scenario is if the congressional “supercommittee” fails to reach agreement on $1.2 trillion in budget cuts, forcing an across-the board sequestration of funds. Panetta’s aides reckon that would mean a doubling of the cuts in defense, to about $1 trillion.
  If Panetta were forced to those deeper cuts, he fears he would have to make the choices defense secretaries dread most — deciding the relative importance of different deadly threats. Should he stress systems that might be needed to contain China’s rise, or those necessary to project U.S. power in a turbulent Middle East? Should he remain vigilant against a future threat in Asia from North Korea, or spend more on homeland defense? Those are the kind of “Hobson’s Choices” that Panetta fears may be ahead. [Threat] [Strategic paralysis]
• Libya wrangles over interim cabinet
  By Borzou Daragahi in Tripoli Libya’s transitional authorities were locked in talks on Sunday night to name a new interim cabinet in an attempt to bolster their legitimacy by creating a more inclusive government. Members of the provisional national transitional council meeting in the eastern city of Benghazi were expected to name a 36-minister cabinet but failed to reach agreement . [Libya]
• Geopolitical Realignments: USA-Israel-China versus Russia-Europe-Arabia
  by Dr. K R Bolton September 19, 2011 Despite the focus of the mass media on (mostly theoretical) rivalry between the USA and China, and the rapport in recent years between China and Russia through a Central Asian axis, neither of these apparent geopolitical alignments are historically or organically based. They are superficial and in particular obscure the behind-the-scenes diplomacy that takes place above and beyond the public view. I have contended since the 1980s that there will be conflict between Russia and China, and that the USA will eventually adopt a de jure pro-China position, which has continued de facto despite the occasional posturing on the world stage. [Realignment][Bizarre]
• Black life is cheap in Libya
  Justice Malala | 19 September, 2011 00:04 They are killing black people in Libya. They are killing them in the street, they are killing them in hospitals, they are killing them in transit camps, they are killing them in their houses. They are not killing any old African. They are killing black Africans, the dark, sub-Saharan Africans. Skin tone, the darkness of one's skin, has become for many blacks in Libya the difference between prison and freedom, death and life. [Libya] [Racism]
• Prisons grow as rebels pursue their enemies and questions arise about the missing
  By David Enders | McClatchy Newspapers David Enders McClatchy Newspapers TRIPOLI, Libya — The last time Hussein Ibrahim Saleh saw his brother Jamal was more than one month ago. On Saturday, Saleh received confirmation that his brother was body number 531 in a cemetery for fighters loyal to former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in Misrata, 120 miles east. "He left Tripoli on August 10 to visit our brother in Hisha," Saleh said, referring to a town taken over by rebels two weeks ago on the road between Misrata and Sirte, one of the cities where fighting continues between fighters loyal to Gadhafi and the rebels that deposed him last month. "He was missing since then." The majority of the more than 800 bodies and sets of remains in the "pro-Gadhafi" cemetery are without names or identification other than digital photos of their faces taken by the volunteers who run the cemetery. Many of the bodies have simply been left at the cemetery by the rebels to be buried, with no information about where they were killed or found. In a revolution where rebel fighters have banded together in local groups answerable only to the communities they come from, much remains unresolved. One emerging problem is the apparent persecution of black Libyans and non-Libyan Africans, which has resulted in at least one instance of racial cleansing, as rebels from Misrata have pursued residents from the nearby predominantly black village of Tawergha, which many Libyans say offered support for Gadhafi. Residents also fled a predominantly black neighborhood in Misrata. [Libya] [Casualties] [Racism]
• Free to Die
  By PAUL KRUGMAN Back in 1980, just as America was making its political turn to the right, Milton Friedman lent his voice to the change with the famous TV series “Free to Choose.” In episode after episode, the genial economist identified laissez-faire economics with personal choice and empowerment, an upbeat vision that would be echoed and amplified by Ronald Reagan. But that was then. Today, “free to choose” has become “free to die.”
• Bahrain Boils Under the Lid of Repression
  By ANTHONY SHADID MANAMA, Bahrain — The battle began soon after sundown. And for the next six hours, in air heavy with heat and tear gas, phalanxes of police officers in helmets battled scores of youths in ski masks, as customers at a Costa Coffee not far away sat like spectators. No one won in the clashes, which erupt almost every night in this Persian Gulf state. Five months after the start of a ferocious crackdown against a popular uprising — so sweeping it smacks of apartheidlike repression of Bahrain’s religious majority — many fear that no one can win. “This is all cutting so deep,” said Abdulnabi Alekry, an activist whose car was stopped at one of the checkpoints of trash bins, wood and bricks the youth had fashioned during the clash in August. “The fabric here was never that strong, and now it is torn.” In the revolts that have roiled the Middle East this year, toppling or endangering a half-dozen leaders, Bahrain, an island kingdom once best known for its pearls and banks, has emerged as the cornerstone of a counterrevolution to stanch demands for democracy. While the turmoil elsewhere has proved unpredictable — the ascent of Islamists in Egypt, the threat of civil war in Syria and the prospect of anarchy in Yemen — Bahrain suggests that the alternative, a failed uprising cauterized by searing repression, may prove no less dangerous. [US global policy] [Double standards]
• Marx to Market
  The economic crisis has made the philosopher’s ideas relevant again, but the world shouldn’t forget what Marx got wrong
  By Peter Coy September 19, 2011 Society generally moves on from its mistakes. Doctors no longer drain blood from patients. Aviators don’t try to fly by strapping wings to their arms. Nobody still thinks that slavery is a good idea. Karl Marx, though, appears to be an exception to the rule of live and learn. Marx’s most famous predictions failed; there has been no dictatorship of the proletariat, nor has the state withered away. His followers included some of the 20th century’s worst mass murderers: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Yet the gloomy, combative philosopher seems to find adherents in each new generation of tyrants and dreamers. You might even say the Bearded One has rarely looked better. [Crisis]
• ..Deal near on more US military access in Australia
  By ANNE GEARAN - Associated Press, LOLITA C. BALDOR - Associated Press | AP SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An emerging defense agreement would let the U.S. expand its military presence in Australia as the Obama administration and its allies maneuver to counter an increasingly assertive China. [China confrontation] [Decline] [Australia]
• A World Without 9/11: No President Obama, More China Trouble, Same Debt Crisis
  By Michael Lind, New America Foundation September 9, 2011 | The Washington Post Bottom line: Even without 9/11 and the subsequent wars, the United States still might be facing huge deficits.Imagine that the twin towers still dominated the Manhattan skyline. Imagine that the Pentagon's western facade had remained intact. Imagine that there was no reason to build a memorial in Shanksville, Pa. And imagine that the numbers 9 and 11 meant nothing more than an emergency telephone call. The world changed on Sept. 11, 2001, that much is clear. But how much, and how radically?
  American foreign policy would be strikingly different and almost certainly less bellicose. In the early months of the Bush administration, U.S.-Chinese tensions were high, and many American neoconservatives were focused on the rise of China as a military "peer competitor." If the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had never come under attack, U.S. defense policy probably would have concentrated more on the Pacific than on the Middle East. A direct confrontation with China would have been unlikely, but without a distracting war on terror, Washington would have focused much more on China's military buildup, its deals with anti-American regimes, and cyber-attacks by Chinese hackers against the United States and its allies. [US global strategy] [China confrontation]
• Burma/Myanmar: The Triangulation of Strategic Interests
  by David I. Steinberg David I. Steinberg [steinbdi@georgetown.edu] is Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. His latest volume is Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford). A decade ago, in February 2001, Georgetown University sponsored in Washington a conference “Burma/Myanmar: Nexus on the Bay of Bengal.” It was designed to encourage the new Bush administration to consider the strategic importance of that country as an element of US foreign policy. Although well attended by some 150 influential people, it did not accomplish its goal of drawing policy attention to the importance of the pivotal location of that sad country. US policy continued, and still continues, to be focused primarily on democracy and human rights, important but not normally the sole elements of foreign policy. Myanmar is now the focus of three strategic thrusts that will profoundly affect the region and the Burmese people. Although Washington ignored strategic issues in any public dialogue on Myanmar, China had a decade earlier begun a drive with astonishing vigor to ensure that its varied interests in Myanmar were pursued.
• On Libya, Now They Tell Us
  September 15, 2011 Exclusive: The Washington Post now admits that the key role of Islamists in Libya’s uprising “went largely unnoticed” before Muammar Gaddafi was toppled last month. But Robert Parry asks whose fault was that, since it was the Post and other Big Media that were acting more as propagandists for “regime change” than honest brokers. By Robert Parry During the six-month uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, major U.S. news outlets repeated again and again that the Libyan dictator was behind the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and they ignored warnings that militant Islamists were at the core of the anti-Gaddafi rebel army. Indeed, for Americans to get alternative views on these points, they had to search out Web sites, like Consortiumnews.com, which had the audacity not to march in lockstep with the rest of the Western media. Only outside the mainstream press would you find significant questions asked about the certainty over Libya’s guilt in the Pan Am bombing and about the makeup of the rebels. [Libya] [Islamist]
• How America lost the war of ideas
  Roger Hardy, 12 September 2011 Subjects:9/11 In the decade since 9/11, the United States has failed to win Muslim hearts and minds. Two administrations, beginning from very different starting-points, have been unable to produce a coherent strategy for the ‘war of ideas’. About the author Roger Hardy is the author of The Muslim Revolt: A Journey through Political Islam (Hurst, 2010). A Middle East analyst for more than twenty years with the BBC World Service, he is currently a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. ‘We are in an information war’, declared Hillary Clinton, addressing a congressional committee in March 2011, ‘and we’re losing that war.’ The US Secretary of State was struggling to persuade a reluctant Congress to approve her $47-billion budget for diplomacy and development in 2012. Her blunt admission reinforced what countless think-tank reports have concluded in the decade since 9/11: that the American superpower is losing the ‘war of ideas’ . [Militarisation] [Global insurgency] [Softpower] [Propaganda]
• Osama crippled the American century
  By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - A decade after its spectacular September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City's twin World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and despite the killing earlier this year of its charismatic leader, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda appears to have largely succeeded in its hopes of accelerating the decline of United States global power, if not bringing it to the brink of collapse. [9/11] [Decline] [Overreach]
• Smith seeking US help to build 12 subs
  Brendan Nicholson From: The Australian July 25, 2011 12:00AM DEFENCE Minister Stephen Smith will seek US help with Australia's plan to build 12 big conventional submarines to replace the navy's six troubled Collins-class boats. Mr Smith arrives in Washington today with Defence Department secretary Ian Watt, and the new chief of the Australian Defence Force, General David Hurley, for their first face-to-face talks with new US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta and other senior officials. While the US Navy operates only nuclear-powered submarines and some defence analysts have suggested that Australia should buy or lease a nuclear fleet from the Americans, Mr Smith told The Australian before he left on Friday that nuclear submarines were not an option for Australia. The answer for Australia was a conventional fleet to be built in South Australia, he said. After initial problems with the Collins fleet a decade ago, the US provided a state-of-the-art combat system and the latest technology to improve the subs' propulsion systems and make them less noisy. Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar. Related Coverage.Subs 'cost us our superiority' The Australian, 3 days agoSub failings 'threaten security' The Australian, 6 days agoCollins sub forced to surface The Australian, 24 Aug 2011US eyes base in state's Outback Adelaide Now, 28 Jul 2011Paralysed by our anti-nuclear hysteria The Australian, 22 Jul 2011..End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar. The building of the so-called Future Submarine will be Australia's biggest-ever defence project. The 12 big, long-range boats are expected to cost about $36 billion. Talks will include progress in Afghanistan, the transition to Afghan-led security responsibility and prospects for reconciliation and political settlement. Mr Smith will also seek an up-to-date report on the Joint Strike Fighter, which is being developed in the US and which is intended to replace the RAAF's F/A-18 Hornet fighter bombers and the recently retired F-111 bomber fleet. Concerns about the growing military power of China will be a key focus of discussions on closer bilateral co-operation on security matters in the Asia-Pacific region. The two delegations will discuss the US global force posture review, which will help the Obama administration decide where US forces should be based, and how Australia's recently announced defence force posture review fits in with it. Those issues will be discussed in detail at the next round of annual Australian-US defence and foreign affairs talks in the US in September. Mr Smith said he would also meet United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and other senior UN officials to discuss Australia's involvement in UN missions, including those in South Sudan, Afghanistan and East Timor. More than 500 ADF personnel are deployed on Security Council-mandated peacekeeping operations around the world. [China confrontation]
• Egypt’s military rulers assert wider powers in wake of attack on Israeli Embassy
  By Anthony Faiola, Published: September 16 CAIRO — Egypt’s military government is sharply expanding emergency powers to detain people without evidence or official charges, in what critics are decrying as the most significant curbs on personal freedoms here since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. [Global insurgency]
• U.S. increases Yemen drone strikes
  By Karen DeYoung, Updated: Saturday, September 17, 7:39 AM The Obama administration has significantly increased the frequency of drone strikes and other air attacks against the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen in recent months amid rising concern about political collapse there. Some of the the strikes, carried out by the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have been focused in the southern part of the country, where insurgent forces have for the first time conquered and held territory as the Yemeni government continues to struggle against escalating opposition to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule. [Global insurgency] [UAV]
• Libyan fighters make concerted push on Gaddafi bastions
  By Simon Denyer, Published: September 16 TRIPOLI — Libyan fighters came under heavy fire from rockets, machine guns and snipers Friday as they tried to push into two key strongholds of former leader Moammar Gaddafi in a concerted attempt to crush resistance by his loyalists. They reported progress on the outskirts of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte, but in the desert oasis town Bani Walid, they had retreated by the end of the day after a chaotic advance. Libyan revolutionary forces faced fierce resistance on Friday as they streamed into Bani Walid, one of the remaining bastions of support for deposed leader Moammar Gaddafi. (Sept. 16) .There was more progress on the diplomatic front, with the U.N. General Assembly transferring Libya’s diplomatic credentials to the Transitional National Council, essentially recognizing it as the country’s lawful government. [Libya]
• Asia's New Great Game
  China and India are both hungry for Burma's vast natural riches. But will Burma's people pay the price or can this Southeast Asian backwater finally enter the 21st century? BY THANT MYINT-U | SEPTEMBER 12, 2011 When geography changes -- as when the Suez Canal joined Europe to the Indian Ocean, or when the railroads transformed the American West and the Russian East -- old patterns of contact disappear and new ones take hold, turning strangers into neighbors and transforming backwaters into zones of new strategic significance. Entire groups decline or vanish; others rise in importance. Over these next few years, Asia's geography will see a fundamental reorientation, bringing China and India together as never before across what was once a vast and neglected frontier stretching over a thousand miles from Kolkata to the Yangtze River basin. And Burma, long seen in Western policy circles as little more than an intractable human rights conundrum, may soon sit astride one of the world's newest and most strategically significant crossroads.
• The Real Reason the US Wanted Gaddafi Gone
  by MURRAY DOBBIN Powell River, BC When the U.S. invaded Iraq riding a pack of lies and monstrous manipulation, the entire U.S. elite, including major news services, academics, and politicians from both parties, lined up to cheerlead and off they went to war. It was one of the most shameful chapters in the long history of shameful acts of U.S. imperial foreign policy. But it actually didn’t take too long for dissenting voices to come out of the woodwork. The lies were exposed, the liars identified, the manipulation denounced. The war went ion but at least we knew the lies. Watching the sorry media spectacle of the tragic farce unfolding in Libya, one has to wonder if anyone will ever expose the lies and hubris that have characterized the coverage of this faux Arab spring. [Libya][US global policy]
• Are the Taliban Winning?
  by GARETH PORTER Gen. David Petraeus wrote in his 2006 counterinsurgency manual that the U.S. command headquarters should establish a “narrative” for the counterinsurgency war – a simple storyline that provides a framework for understanding events, both for the population of the country in question and for international audiences. But this week’s Taliban attacks on multiple targets in Kabul, including the U.S. Embassy and U.S.-NATO headquarters, are the latest and most spectacular of a long series of operations that have given the insurgents the upper hand in establishing the narrative of the war as perceived by the Afghan population. [AfPak]
• Gaddafi loyalists stage desperate defence in stronghold of Sirte
  The Libyan regime's remnants are fighting behind human shields, knowing that they face war crimes trials Chris Stephen guardian.co.uk, Saturday 17 September 2011 19.34 BST Article history An injured rebel fighter is taken to an ambulance near Sirte, where Gaddafi loyalists are mounting stiff resistance. Photograph: Manu Brabo/AP The three rockets came out of a blue sky with a sound something between a howl and a hiss, exploding with harsh, dry detonations on the far side of the hill from the rebel field hospital outside Sirte. [Libya] [Media] [War crimes]
• Benghazi, Libya: A city in foul disrepair, but its people share euphoria
  By Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers Roy Gutman McClatchy Newspapers BENGHAZI, Libya — Benghazi may possess the most soulless cityscape on the Mediterranean, full of boxy new buildings that lack any architectural motif or sense of place and new dwellings with all the charm of high rises in Communist East Germany. "They're like prisons" says Ali Tarhouni, the new regime's finance and oil minister, of housing being built by Chinese contractors. In the vast empty spaces that abut Benghazi's tangle of elevated highways, garbage is strewn as far as the eye can see. At the city's two showpiece hotels, located on an otherwise charming lake, the raw sewage that pollutes the water is enough to keep any visitor indoors. Trash litters the seaside, the water unsafe for swimming or fishing, and many buildings along the shore are derelict or decrepit. But make no mistake: this is one of the happiest and most exciting cities in the world. It was in Benghazi that Libya's improbable revolution got its start on Feb.17 with a protest commemorating a 1990s prison massacre that few non-Libyans ever heard of. [Media] [Libya] [Cliché]
• Pakistan search for energy could run afoul of U.S. Iran sanctions
  Saeed Shah McClatchy Newspapers ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's power supply network is in deep crisis, pounding the economy and making life miserable for average Pakistanis. But one of the solutions that Pakistan has proposed to fix the problem, a natural gas pipeline from Iran, faces objections from the United States. This week U.S. officials warned Pakistan not to depend on Iran. [Pipeline] [Iran] [US global policy]
• Patrick Cockburn: Turkey's bid to lead the Arab world meets Israel head on
  World Vew: Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a strong advocate of secularism, is feted in Egypt, and now he is promoting the Palestinian cause Sunday, 18 September 2011 The political world has turned upside down in the Middle East since the Arab Awakening erupted. The region has been convulsed by the most radical changes since the end of imperial occupation and the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. One significant development is becoming evident: many Arab countries may be more democratic in future, but they will be weaker in terms of state power and ability to secure their independence. This enfeeblement of the state is most obvious in Iraq, is under way in Libya and is now likely to happen in Syria. This weakness – unlikely to be reversed for many years – ensures the growing influence of foreign powers.
• Israel: Adrift at Sea Alone
  By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN September 17, 2011 I’VE never been more worried about Israel’s future. The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation. This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s. [Client] [Israel]
• Anti-Qaddafi Forces Capture, Then Lose, Last Redoubts
  By ROD NORDLAND Published: September 17, 2011 TRIPOLI, Libya — In a conflict that has seen more than its share of martial ineptitude, the struggles for the town of Bani Walid and the city of Surt stand out. Anti-Qaddafi fighters pushed close to Bani Walid's center on Friday when Qaddafi forces counterattacked and gave them such a battering that at least 70 were hurt, and four or more were killed. Not since the fight for Brega, on the coast, have cities been claimed to have fallen so often, well before they did. And not since Ajdabiya, a desert town on the road to Benghazi in the east, have anti-Qaddafi forces repeatedly attacked and fled so frequently, often beginning the fighting day with bravado and bluster, and ending it with a disorderly and sometimes humiliating retreat. [Libya]
• Tumult of Arab Spring Prompts Worries in Washington
  By STEVEN LEE MYERS Published: September 17, 2011 WASHINGTON — While the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring created new opportunities for American diplomacy, the tumult has also presented the United States with challenges — and worst-case scenarios — that would have once been almost unimaginable. What if the Palestinians’ quest for recognition of a state at the United Nations, despite American pleas otherwise, lands Israel in the International Criminal Court, fuels deeper resentment of the United States, or touches off a new convulsion of violence in the West Bank and Gaza? Or if Egypt, emerging from decades of autocratic rule under President Hosni Mubarak, responds to anti-Israeli sentiments on the street and abrogates the Camp David peace treaty, a bulwark of Arab-Israeli stability for three decades? [US global policy] [Global insurgency] [Strategic paralysis]
• Editorial: Runaway Spending on War Contractors
  Published: September 17, 2011 Tales of waste, fraud and mayhem by private contractors have been commonplace during 10 years of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now a Congressional study commission has put a “conservative” estimate on waste of between $31 billion and $60 billion in the $206 billion paid to contractors since the start of the two wars. [MISCOM] [Corruption]
• Libyan fighters battle loyalists in Gaddafi’s base
  By Hadeel al-Shalchi and Ryan Lucas, SIRTE, Libya — Revolutionary fighters struggled to make gains in an assault on Moammar Gaddafi’s home town Saturday, with street-by-street battles against loyalist forces defending the most symbolic of the shattered regime’s remaining strongholds. The new attack on the Mediterranean coastal city of Sirte contrasted with a stalemate in the mountain enclave of Bani Walid, where anti-Gaddafi forces tried to regroup after being beaten back by loyalist snipers and gunners holding strategic high ground. Moammar Gaddafi has ruled Libya for more than 40 years. Now, he is strongly rejecting opposition demands that he give up power, as anti-government demonstrators continue to push for his ouster. .Intense resistance has stalled forces of Libya’s new leadership trying to crush the dug-in fighters loyal to Gaddafi, weeks after the former rebels swept into Tripoli on Aug. 21 and pushed the country’s leader out of power and into hiding. Sirte and Bani Walid are the main bastions of supporters of the old regime in Libya’s coastal plain, but smaller holdouts remain in the deserts of the center of the country — and another major stronghold, Sabha, lies in the deep south.
  The resistance has raised fears of a protracted insurgency of the sort that has played out in Iraq and Afghanistan, even as the transitional government tries to establish its authority and move toward eventual elections. [Libya] [Global insurgency]
• At the Pentagon, the specter of a sequester
  By George F. Will, Published: September 17 It must take some getting used to. Leon Panetta, the secretary of defense, knows the Pentagon is under 24-hour cyber siege. There constantly are thousands of what he calls “exploitive” cyber probes from nations “pulsing the system,” trying to devise tools to disrupt the control systems without which complex societies such as ours cannot function. Panetta, a seasoned Washingtonian who laughs easily and a temperate Californian who frets about the San Francisco Giants’ bats, is not given to hyperbole. But he says any cyber attack that “crippled our [electricity] grid or took down our financial system would make Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined look mild” in terms of social disruption. Although a cyber attack “is moving up” on his list of his worries, it ranks only “third or fourth,” behind North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear weapons programs; what he calls terrorism “nodes” in places such as Yemen, Somalia and North Africa; and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Iraq, the mission of the remnant of U.S. forces — the number 3,000 has been bruited — will, Panetta says, include counterterrorism actions “working with the Iraqis.” Which leaves a lot of room for danger. [Military expenditure] [Threat] [Cyberwar]
• Risks of US alliance rising as value falls
  Raoul Heinrichs September 15, 2011 All smiles: Australia has become far too comfortable with its position of reliance on the US, and needs to take a closer look. IN SAN Francisco this week, Australian and American leaders are marking the 60th anniversary of the US alliance. For Australia, they have been good decades. Indeed, the US alliance has served Australia so well, for so long, that it has come to be seen by many as an irreducible feature of Australian strategic policy. [Australia] [Realignment] [China confrontation]
• Can Libya's fledgling government get along, or will internal rivalries and tensions tear it apart?
  SEPTEMBER 16, 2011 BY SARAH A. TOPOL | SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 TRIPOLI, Libya — When the head of Libya's transitional government, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, took the stage on the night of Monday, Sept. 12, for the first time since Tripoli fell to rebel forces, the crowd in the capital's central square went nuts. Women and young girls screamed his name. Clutching the podium, Jalil, the justice minister under Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime, urged the Libyan people to have faith in their new leadership.
  Behind the scenes and off the record, officials close to the NTC describe the fissures that have opened up between top military commanders and political officials. Tensions between Western-backed liberals and homegrown Islamists are on the rise, bolstered by the international community's fears that Islamist militant groups will hijack the revolution. On Al Jazeera just an hour after Jalil's speech, Ali Sallabi, a popular Islamist cleric, denounced the NTC as composed of "extreme secularists" and warned that they were taking the country into "a new era of tyranny." Sallabi has ties to Tripoli's military commander, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who once led the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a militant group with links to al Qaeda. [Libya] [Islamist]
• Defense contractors launch campaign to end military spending cuts
  September 14, 2011 | 4:03 pm 930 Seeking to whip up public support for what’s expected to be a hard-fought budget battle in Congress, a group of defense contractors launched a lobbying campaign urging an end to cuts in military spending. The campaign, named Second to None, was introduced by the Aerospace Industries Assn. trade group Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington. The group, which represents manufacturers and suppliers of aircraft, space systems and engines, warned of potential job losses and national security risks. “While we do have a fancy logo, this campaign will not be your typical, glitzy, short term inside the Beltway blitz of advertising followed by deafening silence after one piece of legislation or another is finalized,” said Marion Blakey, chief executive of the association. “This will be a sustained effort, in states, cities and towns, as well as in Washington, to caution the American people and our leaders of risks associated with cutting defense further.” [MISCOM]
• Light at End of Afghan Tunnel Recedes With Brazen Taliban Attacks, Army Desertion, and Flourishing Opium Trade
  By Conn Hallinan, September 16, 2011 “Now we can see [success in Vietnam] clearly, like the light at the end of a tunnel.” -- Gen. Henri Navarre, commander French forces in Vietnam, May 20, 1953 “A new phase is starting…we have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view…there is a light at the end of the tunnel.” -- Gen. William Westmoreland, commander U.S. forces in Vietnam, November 1967 “Yesterday’s attack [in Kabul] was a fleeting event; it came and it went. The insurgents are on the defensive.” The performance of Afghan security forces should tell Afghans “they can sleep well at night.” -- Gen. John Allen, North Atlantic Treaty Commander in Afghanistan, Sept. 14, 2011 Dear Lord, what is about generals that seem to make them so particularly immune to history’s lessons? [AfPak]
• Why Libya is not a template for future military statecraft
  Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Thursday, August 25, 2011 - 1:48 PM Share Fareed Zakaria thinks that the Libya intervention signals "a new era in U.S. foreign policy": The United States decided that it was only going to intervene in Libya if it could establish several conditions: 1) A local group that was willing to fight and die for change; in other words, "indigenous capacity". 2) Locally recognized legitimacy in the form of the Arab League's request for intervention. 3) International legitimacy in the form of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. 4) Genuine burden sharing with the British and French spelling out precisely how many sorties they would be willing to man and precisely what level of commitment they would be willing to provide.… The new model does two things: First, it ensures that there's genuinely a local alliance committed to the same goals as the external coalition. This way, there is more legitimacy on the ground. And if there is anything Afghanistan and Iraq have taught us, it is that local legitimacy is key. Second, this model ensures that there is genuine burden sharing so that the United States is not left owning the country as has happened so often in the past.… In the future, we will again have to follow this limited model of intervention. This sounds great, except that the set of criteria that Zakaria lists is so stringent that I seriously doubt that they will be satisfied again in my lifetime. Russia and China regretted the U.N. support the minute after it passed, and the president of the Arab League had buyer's remorse almost immediately after NATO started bombing. Even if the Libya operation looks like a success from here on out, there's no way that list of criteria will be satisfied. Ever. [Libya] [Militarisation] [US global strategy]
• Israel, Turkey and the Palmer report
  By: Graham Usher | Published: September 14, 2011 On 2 September Turkey expelled its Israeli ambassador as a first response to Israel’s refusal to apologise for the killing last year of nine Turkish activists by Israeli commandos on a ship trying to breach its naval blockade on Gaza. The sanction followed the premature publication by the New York Times of an oft-postponed United Nations report into the raid, the so-called Palmer Report, named after its head, ex-New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer. It had been set up to mend the rift between the erstwhile allies. Its leak served only to tear them apart.
• The unclear future of women in Egypt
  Tuesday, September 13, by Anwaar Abdalla CAIRO, September 13, 2011-Egyptian women currently face numerous threats that will not only destroy the goals of equality, freedom and change voiced in the January revolution, but the advances women have made over the last century. Because Mrs. Mubarak was extremely active in women’s issues, including the advancement of women’s rights, many Egyptians, especially men, equate women’s rights with the former corrupt dictatorship of Hosni Mubara. As a result of Mr. Mubarek’s fall, there is a move to reject the advances Egyptian women have made over the last several years. After burning down the National Council for Women's Rights, some men began demanding that the government revise all laws related to marriage, divorce, and even child custody and visitation. Protestors claimed that most women's rights were biased, favoring women simply to please the wife of ex-president Mubarak, instead of allowing Egyptian women in the 21st Century to have the right to education and financial security. In general, women are considered second-class citizens in Egypt. Many Egyptian women lack any education, and more than 50 percent can neither read nor write. [Egypt] [Human rights] [Islamist]
• Tawarga: fires blaze and bad blood lingers in Libyan ghost town
  Misratans have long accused population of poor dormitory town of murders, rapes and looting in alliance with pro-Gaddafi forces Chris Stephen in Tawarga guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011 18.30 Homes ablaze in Tawarga, a ghost town occupied by Libyan rebels. It's mostly black population fled in August. Photograph: Irina Kalshnikova Columns of dark oily smoke wound up through the still afternoon air on Tuesday from abandoned homes set ablaze in the Libyan rebel-occupied town of Tawarga. A local police chief, who refused to give his name and ordered journalists out of the town, said the fires were the work of arsonists in the pay of Muammar Gaddafi who were hoping to tarnish the reputation of the new authorities. Tawarga is a poor dormitory town 20 minutes from Misrata, whose mostly black population fled in August when rebel forces captured it. Today it is a ghost town, its modest grey breeze block houses empty, the doors broken open, with green flags indicating support for the Gaddafi regime still fluttering from rooftops. Misratans have long blamed the people of Tawarga for murders, rapes and looting in alliance with pro-Gaddafi forces during fighting in March and April. It is common to hear Misratans making derogatory remarks about Tawarga's black population, coupled with the hope that the population, who fled to southern Libya, will never return. [Libya] [Racism]
• NATO's "Victory" in Libya: Genocide and Rebel Infighting
  by Tony Cartalucci Global Research, September 13, 2011 landdestroyer.blogspot.com - 2011-09-12 Desperate to declare NATO's mission in Libya a victory ahead of the September 19, 2011 deadline on their contrived UN Security Council resolution, already violated in every conceivable manner possible, NATO planes in tandem with NATO special forces obliterated Tripoli ahead of swarms of Libyan rebel troops led by notorious Al Qaeda thug Abdulhakim Hasadi (aka Balhaj.) Three weeks later, NATO's proxy Libyan representative, long-time globalist and servant of the West Mahmoud Gibril Elwarfally, touched down at Tripoli's airport, one of the few enclaves held by rebels in the city, to give the impression that his "National Transitional Council" (NTC) actually controls the capital and therefore the country. In reality, Gibril (also spelled Jabril) is in control of nothing, apparently not even his own rebel forces, and stunts such as landing in Tripoli are desperate ploys to portray a sense of strength and resolve to garner continued "international support" as NATO's deadline quickly approaches. Libya's rebellion, despite the corporate-media's disingenuous presentation, is divided along tribal and ethnic lines, with most of Libya's rebels being motivated, not by aspirations for liberal-democracy, but rather by ideological extremism cultivated over the last 30 years by US and British intelligence in the eastern cities of Darnah and Benghazi. As NATO enables these violent ideologues to expand their control over the country, they are systematically committing war crimes including large-scale theft and looting, exiling entire civilian populations from cities, and wholesale genocide. They are also reportedly turning their weapons on one another. [Libya] [War crimes]
• Ma’a as-salaamah Mohammad… May Allah protect you!
  by Franklin Lamb August 30, 2011 TRIPOLI, August 28 — My roommate left our hotel and hopefully Libya last night for his village near Arlit, Niger thanks to the assistance of one of Tripoli’s Christian Churches. I shall miss him a lot. It was a recently formed human rights group from the Coptic Orthodox (Egyptian) Church in Tripoli, working to protect blacks from the still lawless Tripoli streets, that enabled my roommate to depart this hotel. The Coptic Church, according to their Prelate here, has the largest Christian communion in Libya, with normally 60,000 parishioners, and has roots in Libya going back hundreds of years before the Arabs spread westward from Egypt. Mohammad departed none too soon since “security personnel” arrived at the Corinthia Hotel close to one p.m. this afternoon with gunmen and two “Generals” in fine new uniforms complete with epaulets. Their surprise visit was to check the hotel rooms for Gaddafi supporters. They claimed they had received “reports.” The Copts did a good job in getting Mohammad to safety. Most observers here agree that for the immediate future there will be a whirlwind of wild speculation, accusations, and even some serious examination of Moammar Gaddafi’s leadership of Libya these past four decades. One fact, however, is incontrovertible to this observer, and it is that under Gaddafi, Christians, whether Roman Catholic, Anglican Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, or Greek Orthodox, the main Christian sects here, have been well treated and allowed virtually complete freedom to practice their beliefs and to celebrate their traditions, with some restrictions placed on campaigns to proselytize Muslims, which there haven’t been since the Mormons and the “Way of the Cross” evangelicals left some years back. [Libya] [Religion][Islamist]
• Candid Audio Tapes Reveal Private Kennedy Life
  Decades-old audio tapes of former U.S. first lady Jacqueline Kennedy are providing a rare glimpse of her life, opinions and marriage to the young president John F. Kennedy. The hours-long interviews on the tapes were recorded months after the 1963 assassination of her husband
  The tapes also reveal her opinions on former heads of state and other prominent figures. The former first lady called then-French president Charles de Gaulle an "egomaniac," the civil rights icon Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. a "phony," and future Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi a "bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman."
• Islamists’ Growing Sway Raises Questions for Libya
  By ROD NORDLAND and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Published: September 14, 2011 TRIPOLI, Libya — In the emerging post-Qaddafi Libya, the most influential politician may well be Ali Sallabi, who has no formal title but commands broad respect as an Islamic scholar and populist orator who was instrumental in leading the mass uprising. [Islamist] [Libya] [US global policy]
• Sarkozy, the new Napoleon, wants to attack Iran
  02.09.2011 It seems that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warmed to the role of Napoleon. The events in Libya have infatuated him. Gaddafi has not been toppled yet, but Sarkozy already threatens Iran. "Its military nuclear and ballistic ambitions constitute a growing threat that may lead to a preventive attack against Iranian sites that would provoke a major crisis that France wants to avoid at all costs," he said. "Iran refuses to negotiate seriously," he told an annual meeting of French diplomats. "Iran is carrying out new provocations in response to the challenge from the international community for it to provide a credible response," he claimed. It goes without saying that the impunity of the aggressor gives birth to new predatory appetites. [Subordinate]][Imperialism]
• Paris, London agree to continue military operation in Libya
  The United Kingdom and France agreed to continue NATO's military operation in Libya under a request from the country's National Transition Council, the council's chairman and head of international affairs Mahmoud Jibril said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Libya on Thursday on their first visit since Libyan rebels ousted strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Cameron and Sarkozy were instrumental in engineering the NATO bombing campaign that aided fighters in toppling Gaddafi and his forces. [Subordinate][Libya]
• Islamists emerge in force in new Libya
  Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images - Abdel Hakim Belhaj, commander of the Tripoli Military Council, is now responsible for keeping order in Tripoli. He was formerly the emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was considered a terrorist organization by the United States. Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsShare:More > FacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditStumbleUponDiggDeliciousGoogle+1By Leila Fadel, Published: September 14TRIPOLI, Libya — For decades, bearded men in Libya were afraid to walk in the streets or go to the mosque, worried that to be seen as an Islamist would land them in prison, or worse. As Libya’s leader, Moammar Gaddafi regarded Islamists as the greatest threat to his authority, and he ordered thousands of them detained, tortured and, in some cases, killed. The lucky ones fled the country in droves. But with Gaddafi now in hiding, Islamists are vying to have a say in a new Libya, which they say should have a system based on Islamic law. .Although it went largely unnoticed during the uprising that toppled Gaddafi last month, Islamists were at the heart of the fight, many as rebel commanders. [Islamist] [Libya] [Media]
• The "Critics" of 9/11 Truth. Do They Have a Case?
  by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, September 13, 2011 The short answer to the question in the title is no. The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments. Let’s examine the case against "the truthers" presented by Ted Rall, Ann Barnhardt, and Alexander Cockburn. But first let’s define who "the truthers" are. The Internet has made it possible for anyone to have a web site and to rant and speculate to their heart’s content. There are a large number of "9/11 conspiracy theorists". Many on both sides of the issue are equally ignorant. Neither side has any shame about demonstrating ignorance. Both sides of the issue have conspiracy theories. 9/11 was a conspiracy whether a person believes that it was an inside job or that a handful of Arabs outwitted the entire intelligence apparatus of the Western world and the operational response of NORAD and the US Air Force. For one side to call the other conspiracy theorists is the pot calling the kettle black. The question turns not on name-calling but on evidence. The 9/11 Truth movement was not created by bloggers ranting on their web sites. It was created by professional architects and engineers some of whom are known for having designed steel high rise buildings. It was created by distinguished scientists, such as University of Copenhagen nano-Chemist Niels Harrit who has 60 scientific papers to his credit and physicist Steven Jones. It was created by US Air Force pilots and commercial airline pilots who are expert at flying airplanes. It was created by firefighters who were in the twin towers and who personally heard and experienced numerous explosions including explosions in the sub-basements. It was created by members of 9/11 families who desire to know how such an improbable event as 9/11 could possibly occur. The professionals and the scientists are speaking from the basis of years of experience and expert knowledge. Moreover, the scientists are speaking from the basis of careful research into the evidence that exists. [9/11]
• The Perils of Military Expansionism: America’s Financial Armageddon and Afghanistan
  by PAUL FITZGERALD and ELIZABETH GOULD As the U.S. economy grinds down to a finish, it becomes increasingly difficult to measure whether Washington understands the importance of how to deal realistically with the worsening crisis in Afghanistan. Left off the front pages during the recent obsession with the debt crisis, Afghanistan has lurched back onto the scene in ways that are reminiscent of the Soviet collapse of two decades ago. After ten years of war, it seems Washington not only continues to lack a comprehensive understanding of Afghanistan, but it lacks an understanding of its own role in creating both the economic and political catastrophe it now faces.
  As German and Japanese manufacturers battered their American competition in the marketplace, the defense-heavy American economy faltered. Born of necessity, diplomatic overtures to China and détente with the Soviets offered the first chance since World War II to get off the wartime treadmill. [Decline] [Imperialism] [Afghanistan][MISCOM]
• Militants attack government and Nato buildings in Kabul
  Explosions rock Afghan capital as militants strike at government buildings, US embassy and Nato military base Jeremy Kelly in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011 18.47 BST Article history THE US embassy in Kabul was attacked. Link to this video A multi-pronged attack by Taliban militants held Kabul to siege on Tuesday and raised fresh doubts over the Afghan security forces' ability to take over security operations in the country. For more than six hours insurgents occupied the upper floors of unfinished building in the Afghan capital, raining bullets and rockets towards their three main enemies in the 10-year war – the US embassy, Nato's HQ and the country's national directorate of security.
• Census: U.S. poverty rate hit 52-year high in 2010
  By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers Tony Pugh McClatchy Newspapers Washington — Continued high unemployment drove the number of Americans living in poverty to a 52-year high in 2010 and pushed the nation’s median household income down for the third straight year since the Great Recession first cast its ominous cloud over the nation’s economy Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/13/123980/census-us-poverty-rate-hit-52.html#ixzz1XrFldWj7 [Decline]
• Amtrak rolls on 40 years later, destination still uncertain
  By Curtis Tate | McClatchy Newspapers Curtis Tate McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — In 1958, an Interstate Commerce Commission report predicted that the passenger train would vanish by 1970, the victim of a traveling public whose affection had shifted to cars and airplanes. But the passenger train refused to die.
  The trains are slow. Most of Amtrak's trains can go no faster than 79 mph on tracks that are busy with freight. Even the Northeast Corridor's maximum speed of 150 mph falls well short of the advanced passenger-train networks in Europe, Japan and China. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/12/123888/amtrak-rolls-on-40-years-later.html#ixzz1XrGaTGSV [Decline] [Railways]
• U.S. poverty rate reaches 15.1 percent
  By Michael A. Fletcher, Updated: Tuesday, September 13, 6:12 PM The nation’s poverty rate spiked to 15.1 percent in 2010, the highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday, providing vivid new evidence about the country’s inability to escape the lingering effects of the recession. About 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty last year, marking an increase of 2.6 million over 2009 and the fourth consecutive annual increase in poverty. While total employment is expected to increase by 15.3 million, or 10 percent, from 2008 to 2018, the number of jobs in certain industries will decrease significantly, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here’s a look at some of America’s disappearing professions. Gallery According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, these 10 metro areas have the highest unemployment rates .The total number of people living below the poverty line — which in 2010 was set at an income of $22,314 for a family of four — is now at the highest level in the 52 years the statistic has been collected. [Decline] [Crisis] [Inequality]
• Suicide bombers, gunmen attack U.S. Embassy, NATO headquarters in Kabul
  By Ernesto Londono and Javed Hamdard, Updated: Tuesday, September 13, 3:14 PM KABUL — Suicide bombers and gunmen launched a coordinated attack on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul on Tuesday afternoon, witnesses and security officials said, a rare and sophisticated strike in the heart of the fortified capital. The assault, launched from a tall building under construction that overlooks the heavily guarded area, was followed by a volley of rocket attacks targeting an upscale neighborhood where several other embassies are based and by suicide bombings outside two police stations in the capital.
• Defense spending must have credit limits
  By Walter Pincus, Tuesday, September 13, 12:08 AM Like children with a parent’s credit card, some Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee — joined by many other members of Congress and probably a good part of the public — want to keep spending on defense without caring, or even thinking about, who is going to pay the bill. [MISCOM]
• Pilots for 9/11 Truth
  Pilots for 9/11 Truth is an organization of aviation professionals and pilots throughout the globe who have gathered together for one purpose. We are committed to seeking the truth surrounding the events of the 11th of September 2001. Our main focus concentrates on the four flights, maneuvers performed and the reported pilots. We do not offer theory or point blame at this point in time. However, we are focused on determining the truth of that fateful day based on solid data and facts -- since 9/11/2001 is the catalyst for many of the events shaping our world today -- and the United States Government doesn't seem to be very forthcoming with answers or facts. [9/11]
• Elephant in the Room The Terrorism Issue That Wasn’t Discussed
  by GARETH PORTER In the commentary on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the news and infotainment media have predictably framed the discussion by the question of how successful the CIA and the military have been in destroying al Qaeda. Absent from the torrent of opinion and analysis was any mention of how the U.S. military occupation of Muslim lands and wars that continue to kill Muslim civilians fuel jihadist sentiment that will keep the threat of terrorism high for many years to come. The failure to have that discussion is not an accident. In December 2007, at a conference in Washington, D.C. on al Qaeda, former State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Daniel Benjamin offered a laundry list of things the United States could do to reduce the threat from al Qaeda. But he said nothing about the most important thing to be done: pledging to the Islamic world that the United States would pull its military forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq and end its warfare against those in Islamic countries resisting U.S. military presence. During the coffee break, I asked him whether that item shouldn’t have been on his list. “You’re right,” he answered. And then he added, “But we can’t do that.”
  There is only one way to understand this conundrum: there are winners and losers in the “war on terrorism”. Ordinary Americans are clearly the losers, and the institutions and leaders of the military, the Pentagon and the CIA and their political and corporate allies are the winners. They have accumulated enormous resources and power in a collapsing economy and society. [Global insurgency] [UAV] [MISCOM] [US global policy]
• In Cheney’s memoir, it’s clear Iraq’s lessons didn’t sink in
  By Bob Woodward, Monday, September 12, 12:18 AM A key lesson of the 9/11 decade for presidents and other national security decision makers is the importance of rigorously testing intelligence evidence: poking holes in it, setting out contradictions, figuring out what may have been overlooked or left out. It is essential to distinguish between hard facts and what is an assessment or judgment. The so-called slam-dunk case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction illustrates the failure. If anyone should have learned this, it is former president George W. Bush and former vice president Dick Cheney. Yet in his new memoir, “In My Time,” Cheney shows he has not fully absorbed that lesson when he writes about the administration’s response to the 2007 discovery of a nuclear reactor in Syria that the North Koreans had helped build. In Cheney’s telling, the evidence showed “a clandestine nuclear reactor, built by two terrorist-sponsoring states.” Given the potential threat, he argued privately to Bush, and later to top national security officials, that the United States should destroy the reactor. [Intelligence]
• For some former Guantanamo detainees, present bleaker than past
  By Ernesto Londoño, Published: September 10 KABUL — Haji Shahzada never leaves home without a neatly folded scrap of paper that is the closest thing to an apology the United States offered after keeping him locked up in Guantanamo Bay for more than two years. “This individual has been determined to pose no threat to the United States Armed Forces or its interests in Afghanistan,” reads the April 2005 release document, which includes a squiggle of a signature and the initials of a sergeant first class. “This certificate has no bearing on any future misconduct.” .The words are of little consolation to Shahzada as he struggles to rebuild a life he says is in ruins, in a nation he views as worse off than a decade ago when U.S. troops swooped in, promising to rebuild, secure and transform Afghanistan. Like several other Guantanamo detainees interviewed, Shahzada said he has come to see the toll that the U.S. invasion took on his country as a bigger curse than the years he spent locked up in the seaside prison for suspected terrorists. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, the United States has held more than 200 Afghans in Guantanamo Bay. All but 20 have been released. Now back in their war-torn homeland, the men serve as legacies of what is arguably the most notorious institution of the U.S. war against terrorism. Their different paths reflect some of the unintended consequences of the way the United States has waged this battle. Some have again taken up arms against the Americans and their allies. Others have stayed out of the battle but consider their status as a former Guantanamo detainee a badge of honor [Global insurgency]
• Anti-American cleric in Iraq asks followers to cease attacks on US troops to hasten withdrawal
  By Associated Press, Published: September 11 BAGHDAD — An anti-American cleric is urging his followers to stop attacking U.S. troops in Iraq so that their withdrawal from the country isn’t slowed down, a call meant to ramp up pressure on Baghdad’s political leaders who are considering asking some American forces to stay. In a statement posted on his website, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told his militias to halt attacks against U.S. forces till the withdrawal is finished at the end of the year as required under a security agreement between Washington and Baghdad. “Out of my desire to complete Iraq’s independence and to finish the withdrawal of the occupation forces from our holy lands, I am obliged to halt military operations of the honest Iraqi resistance until the withdrawal of the occupation forces is complete,” al-Sadr said in the statement, posted late Saturday. Sadrist lawmaker Mushraq Naji confirmed the statement on Sunday. [Iraq] [Decline]
• The Arab Counterrevolution
  September 29, 2011Hussein Agha and Robert Malley The Arab uprising that started in Tunisia and Egypt reached its climax on February 11, the day President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down. It was peaceful, homegrown, spontaneous, and seemingly unified. Lenin’s theory was turned on its head. The Russian leader postulated that a victorious revolution required a structured and disciplined political party, robust leadership, and a clear program. The Egyptian rebellion, like its Tunisian precursor and unlike the Iranian Revolution of 1979, possessed neither organization nor identifiable leaders nor an unambiguous agenda.
• 9/11 Paved the Way for America's Permanent Wars of Aggression
  by Finian Cunningham Global Research, September 11, 2011 Whether 9/11 was an inside job or an amazing terrorist success, the fact is that either way the atrocity is intimately linked with US state terrorism. The attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001 were a seminal event that paved the way for permanent wars of aggression by the US and its puppet allies – wars that have made a travesty of international law, taking state criminality to new heights and resulting in mass murder of innocents. That is state terrorism, by any definition, that is out of control, which no alleged original crime can justify. In the unlikely second scenario where a bunch of incompetent Al Qaeda pilots managed to pull off an amazing feat of flying maneuvers than even seasoned professionals could not (see for example www.pilotsfor9/11truth.org), the fact is that the alleged jihadi plotters were the product of US state terrorism. It is well documented that Al Qaeda/Mujahideen/Jihadis – whatever they are labeled – are the Frankenstein creation of US and British military intelligence to fight the proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The 9/11 tragedy – if we see it as such – is thus a form of blowback where the terrorist dogs of dirty war come back to bite the hand that feeds them [9/11] [Global insurgency]
• Deep flaws in the UN's Mavi Marmara report
  Despite the UN report's shortcomings, Turkey's reaction shows that Israeli lawlessness will not go uncontested. Richard Falk Last Modified: 09 Sep 2011 16:45 The Mavi Marmara incident caused a major rift between Turkey and Israel [EPA] When the UN Secretary General announced on August 2, 2010 that a panel of inquiry had been established to investigate the May 31, 2010 Israeli attacks on the Mavi Marmara and five other ships carrying humanitarian aid to the beleaguered people of Gaza, there was widespread hope that international law would be vindicated and the Israelis would finally be held accountable. With the release of the report this past week, these hopes have been largely dashed: The report failed to address the central international law issues in a credible and satisfactory manner. Turkey, not surprisingly, responded strongly that it was not prepared to live with the central finding of the 105-page report, which found that the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is lawful and could legally be enforced by Israel against a humanitarian mission, even in international waters. Perhaps this outcome should not be surprising. The panel was woefully ill-equipped to render an authoritative result. Former New Zealand Prime Minister and environmental law professor Geoffrey Palmer, the chair of the panel, was not particularly knowledgeable about either international maritime law or the law of war. [UNUS] [Legality] [Israel]
• Ten years after the mouse roared
  Bush made a tactical error in declaring a 'global war on terrorism'; he should have instead declared war on al-Qaeda.
  Joseph S Nye
  Last Modified: 07 Sep 2011 13:07 In an information age, the outcome of a war is influenced by who has the better story; competing narratives matter [GALLO/GETTY] Al-Qaeda’s attack on the United States ten years ago was a profound shock to both American and international public opinion. What lessons can we learn a decade later? Anyone who flies or tries to visit a Washington office building gets a reminder of how American security was changed by 9/11. But, while concern about terrorism is greater, and immigration restrictions are tighter, the hysteria of the early days after 9/11 has abated. New agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, and an upgraded Counter Terrorism Centre have not transformed American government, and, for most Americans, personal freedoms have been little affected. No more large-scale attacks have occurred inside the US, and everyday life has recovered well. But this apparent return to normality should not mislead us about the longer-term importance of 9/11. As I argue in my book The Future of Power, one of the great power shifts of this global information age is the strengthening of non-state actors. Al-Qaeda killed more Americans on 9/11 than the attack by the government of Japan did at Pearl Harbour in 1941. This might be called the “privatisation of war.” [NSA] [9/11]
• Al Qaeda is down, not out
  U.S. talk of defeating terrorism is dangerously premature. By Amy Zegart September 7, 2011 Advertisement Talk of strategically defeating Al Qaeda is all the rage in the White House these days. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta used the "D-word" in July. President Obama declared in his new counter-terrorism strategy, "We can say with growing confidence… that we have put Al Qaeda on the path to defeat." Compared to the woeful state of the economy, terrorism has become the administration's feel-good story of the year. "Defeat" is a big word. It is also dangerously misleading. Yes, the United States has made great strides in the last decade to harden targets, improve intelligence and degrade the capabilities of violent Islamist extremists. Osama bin Laden's death was a major accomplishment. But the fight is nowhere close to being won, and America's most perilous times may lie ahead. Three reasons explain why.
  As long as fissile material is poorly stored and rogue states like Iran and North Korea continue their illicit weapons programs, nuclear terrorism remains a haunting possibility. [Nuclear terrorism]
• Neoliberalism and its Discontents: Gaddafi, Assange, and China
  One might think that in this brave new world of escalating global economic and social problems and burgeoning BRICs, priority might be given to forging consensus with the new rising powers to get the planet out of its economic rut and building a future less reliant on ruinous competition for resources and security. However, it seems that traditional elites are more interested in keeping the mace of geopolitical power and moral authority firmly in the hands of the West.
  A prominent pro-democracy blogger, Yang Hengjun, praised the Libyan revolt as an exercise in popular democracy. Then he doubled down, going where few American pundits dare to go, and praised the US invasion of Iraq (Yang also tiptoed close to the line of sedition by holding up the example of North Korea, a frequent stalking horse for Chinese dissident criticisms of CCP rule, as a suitable target for intensified US democratic intervention):
  Those who see Iraq as a textbook of bad examples should look at North Korea, which the American military never has managed to topple. Are the people there harmonious? Are there no killings? Is there no chaos? America is the world’s preeminent political, economic and military power, and it is also the base camp for so-called freedom and democracy. These actions to overthrow political despots can’t happen without America’s participation. [Chinese IR]
• GOING ROGUE: NATO’s War Crimes in Libya
  493by Susan Lindauer, former US Asset covering Libya at the United Nations It’s a story CNN won’t report. Late at night there’s a pounding on the door in Misurata. Armed soldiers force young Libyan women out of their beds at gun-point. Hustling the women and teenagers into trucks, the soldiers rush the women to gang bang parties for NATO rebels—or else rape them in front of their husbands or fathers. When NATO rebels finish their rape sport, the soldiers cut the women’s throats. Rapes are now ongoing acts of war in rebel-held cities, like an organized military strategy, according to refugees. Joanna Moriarty, who’s part of a global fact-finding delegation visiting Tripoli this week, also reports that NATO rebels have gone house to house through Misurata, asking families if they support NATO. If the families say no, they are killed on the spot. If families say they want to stay out of the fighting, NATO rebels take a different approach to scare other families. The doors of “neutral homes” are welded shut, Moriarty says, trapping families inside. In Libyan homes, windows are typically barred. So when the doors to a family compound get welded shut, Libyans are entombed in their own houses, where NATO forces can be sure large families will slowly starve to death. [Libya] [War crimes]
• Libya: NATO Acquires Military Outpost In Third Continent
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, August 31, 2011 Voice of Russia Libya: Another country for NATO to take root in Interview conducted John Robles on August 27 with Rick Rozoff, the manager of the Stop NATO website and a Correspondent of Global Research at www.globalresearch.ca Can you shed a little light on the situation in Libya, in particular with NATO? As you know, I’m in Chicago, not in Tripoli, so I’m observing events from afar. Yet there is an old Roman expression which says the game is best viewed by the spectator. So, what I have to say I think is trying to situate developments in Libya, whatever they are on the ground, within both a regional and an international context. And, within that framework, we know that the African Union has refused recognition to the so-called Transitional National Council, consisting of what by all accounts is a fairly motley, heterogeneous grouping of anti-government forces in Libya, aided and abetted by major NATO powers like France, Britain, the U.S. and Italy and by Persian Gulf monarchies like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. So, the fact that the African continent, on which Libya is located, has collectively refused recognition to the new rebel regime is significant, as is the fact that the Russian Foreign Ministry has voiced its concerns and its opposition to any plans that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization may entertain for placing troops on the ground in Libya, ostensibly under the guise of a peacekeeping or stabilization force, but also more prominently voiced some concerns about the prospect of NATO military facilities being authorized by the forces opposed to Gaddafi. [Libya] [Bases]
• Karzai adviser says most Afghans want security pact keeping US forces in country indefinitely
  By Associated Press, QUANTICO, Va. — Most Afghans want a binding security pact with the United States that would keep American troops in Afghanistan indefinitely, a senior adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday. Negotiations for such a pact have lagged in part because “some in the Afghan government are trying to sabotage it,” said Taj Ayubi, minister-counselor to Karzai. [Bases] [Client] [AfPak] [Media]
• Can Petraeus handle the CIA’s skepticism on Afghanistan?
  By David Ignatius, Published: September 1 When David Petraeus takes over as CIA director next week, he will confront a tricky problem: CIA analysts who will be working for him concluded in a recent assessment that the war in Afghanistan is heading toward a “stalemate” — a view with which Petraeus disagrees. The analysts made their judgment in “District Assessment on Afghanistan,” completed in July, the same month Petraeus quit his post as U.S. commander there. He disagrees with the analysts’ pessimistic reading, as does Gen. John Allen, the new commander in Kabul; Gen. James Mattis, the Centcom commander; and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. [AfPak] [Intelligence]
• U.S.-Pakistan: Divorce is not an option
  By Peter Bergen, CNN, and Michael Mazarr, Special to CNN September 1, 2011 -- Updated 1613 GMT (0013 HKT) Pakistani Shiite Muslims chant slogans against Israel and the U.S. during a procession in Karachi on August 22.STORY HIGHLIGHTS Pakistani-U.S. relations are at their lowest ebb, authors say Some argue that there needs to be a cooling-off period to calm tempers Authors: Both nations should craft a new plan to change the game Joint anti-terror operations and new trade policies would help, they say Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and a director at the New America Foundation. Michael Mazarr is professor at the U.S. National War College; the views expressed here reflect his personal opinion. This is adapted from the new report "Pakistan and the United States at a Strategic Crossroads." (CNN) -- Pakistan, and Pakistani-American relations, confront their worst crises in recent memory. Pakistan's economy is in free fall, and its major cities are wracked by political violence, while Pakistani attitudes toward the United States have never been worse -- a legacy of the CIA contractor who shot and killed two Pakistanis in the city of Lahore this year, the campaign of drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal regions and the unilateral American raid to kill Osama bin Laden in northern Pakistan in May. [AfPak]
• Israel asks U.S. to help protect embassy in Cairo after protesters attack building
  By Michael Birnbaum and Ingy Hassieb, Published: September 9 | Updated: Saturday, September 10, 11:05 AM CAIRO — Israel airlifted its ambassador home and sought U.S. protection for its embassy here early Saturday, hours after thousands of Egyptian protesters besieged the building, with several managing to gain entry and fling Hebrew-language documents from a balcony. Protesters knocked down a 12-foot concrete wall that had been built last week to protect the embassy, which is near the top floor of a 21-story residential building in the upscale Dokki area. At least two protesters scaled the front of the building to pull down the Israeli flag, hanging from the 20th floor. It was the second time in recent weeks that demonstrators had removed the flag. [Israel]
• In Libya, the peril of being black
  By Leila Fadel, Saturday, September 10, 1:00 AM TRIPOLI, Libya — Vivienne looked out through the bars of the Tripoli jail cell where rebel authorities had held her for five days. She is one of a group of 90 Ni­ger­ian migrants who were rounded up during the climactic battle here last month against Moammar Gaddafi’s troops, accused of possessing weapons and killing Libyans. Vivienne said her only crime is her black skin. .“They think because we are black, we are fighting for Gaddafi,” she said this week, afraid to give her last name. “We were hiding. We were afraid. There were gunshots and bombs.” Around her, other women — hairdressers, housekeepers, one pregnant — told the same story. Since the uprising against Gaddafi’s 42-year-long rule began in February, many dark-skinned Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans here have feared for their lives [Libya] [War crimes] [Racism]
• America: A Sunset Empire
  The rise and decline of the American Empire by Devon DB Global Research, September 7, 2011 Overview The America: An Empire In Decline series examines the rise and decline of the American Empire. In Part 1, Dawn Of A New Century, I analyzed America’s original plans for the 21st century, immediately after the end of the Cold War, which imagined a world where the US would be the sole superpower and preventive diplomacy would be used to ensure no flare-ups occurred. However, with the rise of the neoconservatives, first with the Project for the New American Century think tank and then later in the form of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Condoleeza Rice as Cabinet members in the Bush administration, a vision that saw the fall of the Soviet Union as an opportunity for the United States to become a full-fledged empire became deeply rooted in the American political and military psyche. They envisioned a world in which America would be the dominant economic, political, and military power and whose enemies and potential rivals would be kept in check. All they needed was an incident to make this possible and the devastating attacks on 9/11 provided an excuse for the US to God the globe. [Imperialism] [Decline]
• The Decline of the United States of America: The Moral, Political and Economic Causes
  by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay Global Research, September 7, 2011
  The American economy is in the Doldrums, the American Political System is Dysfunctional and Paralyzed Around the world, many are baffled by what's happening to the United States. It seems that all at once the wheels are going off the cart. The American economy is in the doldrums, the American political system is dysfunctional and paralyzed, and a series of elective, far away foreign wars is ruining the country. [Decline] [Governance][Corruption]
• ‘Top Secret America’: A look at the military’s Joint Special Operations Command
  View Photo Gallery — A look at the military’s Joint Special Operations Command:?Created in 1980 but reinvented in recent years, JSOC has grown from 1,800 troops prior to Sept. 11, 2001, to as many as 25,000. It has its own intelligence division, its own drones and reconnaissance planes, even its own dedicated satellites. By Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, Published: September 2 The CIA’s armed drones and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of al-Qaeda leaders and thousands of its foot soldiers. But there is another mysterious organization that has killed even more of America’s enemies in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. CIA operatives have imprisoned and interrogated nearly 100 suspected terrorists in their former secret prisons around the world, but troops from this other secret organization have imprisoned and interrogated 10 times as many, holding them in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan. .Since 9/11, this secretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level of obscurity that not even the CIA has managed. “We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen,” a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit. [Special forces] [Imperialism] [Militarisation]
• The age of high-tech war: after Libya
  Paul Rogers, 9 September 2011 There is intense rethinking in the Pentagon about the “war on terror”. The outcome of the Libyan conflict will reinforce its principal trends. When Donald Rumsfeld was appointed George W Bush's defence secretary in 2001, he had the clear aim of fighting wars with minimal “boots on the ground”. From that point, the United States would fight its enemies mainly from the air and the sea. This vision of a high-tech military age saw armies as increasingly redundant. Imperialism] [Airpower] [UAV] [Libya]
• The irrelevancy of the Obama presidency
  By Dana Milbank, Friday, September 9, 6:29 AM President Obama gave one of the most impassioned speeches of his presidency when he addressed a joint session of Congress on Thursday night. Too bad so many in the audience thought it was a big, fat joke. “You should pass this jobs plan right away!” Obama exhorted. Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) chuckled. .“Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary — an outrage he has asked us to fix,” Obama went on. Widespread laughter broke out on the GOP side of the aisle.
  House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Vice President Biden set the tone at the start. Waiting for Obama to make his way down the center aisle, they stood before the House and had a talk — not about jobs, but about golf.
  Boehner went on about other memorable golf moments before an aide let the men know that their microphones were live. Yet long before the speech, both sides had concluded that it didn’t much matter: Obama has become too weak to enact anything big enough to do much good. “I thought it was a great speech,” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) [Decline] [Governance]
• 12,000 in military courts under SCAF; 2,000 under Mubarak, says lawyer
  By Mai Shams El-Din /Daily News Egypt September 7, 2011, 7:36 pm CAIRO: The ruling military council has tried over 12,000 civilians in military courts in seven months, while ousted president Hosni Mubarak used military trials for silencing only 2,000 civilian political opponents in 30 years, lawyer and executive director of Hisham Mubarak Law Center (HMLC) Ahmed Ragheb said Wednesday.
• Agent of death
  N.D. JAYAPRAKASH On the 50th anniversary of the use of the deadly Agent Orange in Vietnam, an international conference seeks justice for its victims. THE shocking images of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York are well etched in the minds of almost everyone who had access to a television set at that time. Similarly, all those who were adults or were in their teens in the late 1960s and early 1970s and had access to radio or newspapers must have heard or read about the Vietnam War. Some of them may be familiar with the term “Agent Orange” and may even have come across some fleeting references to the same. However, the devastating effect of the chemical warfare that the United States military unleashed on Vietnam from 1961 to 1971 is hardly ever in the news, despite being hundreds of times deadlier than the 9/11 attack in terms of the scale of death and devastation and long-term impact. This report is an attempt to shed light on some aspects of this critical issue that has gone largely unnoticed and unaddressed to date. [cbw] [Double standards]
• Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
  Saturday 3 September 2011 by: Mike Lofgren, Truthout | News Analysis (Photo: Carolyn Tiry / Flickr) Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!" Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944) Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma. But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP. [Decline] [Governance]
• CIA's Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs
  Tuesday 6 September 2011 by: Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service | News Analysis Washington, (IPS) - When David Petraeus walks into the Central Intelligence Agency Tuesday, he will be taking over an organisation whose mission has changed in recent years from gathering and analysing intelligence to waging military campaigns through drone strikes in Pakistan, as well as in Yemen and Somalia. But the transformation of the CIA did not simply follow the expansion of the drone war in Pakistan to its present level. CIA Director Michael Hayden lobbied hard for that expansion at a time when drone strikes seemed like a failed experiment. The reason Hayden pushed for a much bigger drone war, it now appears, is that it had already created a whole bureaucracy in the anticipation of such a war. [Militarisation] [CIA] [UAV]
• 9/11, and the lost decade
  Paul Rogers, 8 September 2011 What are the principal lessons of the ten years of war since the 11 September 2001 attacks? Paul Rogers, whose first openDemocracy column was published a few days after 9/11, responds to three questions.
  There has been so much loss. Have there been any winners from 9/11? The main winner has been the military-industrial complex, especially in the United States, where substantial increases in the defence budget have brought in numerous examples of highly profitable new lines of destruction. Private-security contracting has also expanded massively, with many new contracts being available, and not just in Iraq and Afghanistan. The “terrorism industry” has extended its reach, in the process soaking up think-tankers and academics who were heading for difficult times after the ending of the cold war. For all these people and companies, 9/11 came not a moment too soon. [9/11] [MISCOM]
• A War Gone Badly Wrong - The War on Terror Ten Years On
  Paul Rogers September 2011 Introduction The atrocities in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 led to protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ten years after the attacks, this briefing assesses the consequences of the response from the United States and its coalition partners. It questions whether the response was either appropriate or wise and whether the results so far have been counterproductive and may indicate the need for a changed security paradigm. Such a fundamental rethink of the way western governments respond to insecurity must go beyond the current approach in which intelligence, counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism are all beginning to merge into a seamless web of a single security posture. Such a posture is likely to be no more successful than the policies adopted in 2001. [[9/11] [Global insurgency] [US global policy]
• Labor’s Demise As A Countervailing Power: "Labor Day" should be renamed "Corporation Day" or "War Day"
  by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, September 3, 2011 It is Labor Day weekend, 2011, but labor has nothing to celebrate. The jobs that once gave American workers a stake in capitalism have left and gone away. Corporations in pursuit of near-term profits have moved labor’s jobs to China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea and Eastern Europe. Labor arbitrage, that is, the substitution of foreign labor that is paid less than its productivity for American labor, has enriched Wall Street, shareholders and corporate CEOs, but it has devastated American employment, household incomes, tax base, and the outlook for the US economy. [Statistics] [Unemployment] [Offshoring] [Imperialism]
• The Al Qaeda Insurgency in Syria: Recruiting Jihadists to Wage NATO's "Humanitarian Wars"
  PART III by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, September 2, 2011 Recent developments in Syria point to a full-fledged armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist "freedom fighters" covertly supported, trained and equipped by foreign powers. What triggered the crisis in Syria? It was not the result of internal political cleavages, but rather the consequence of a deliberate plan by the US-NATO alliance to trigger social chaos, to discredit the Syrian government of Bashar Al Assad and ultimately destabilize Syria as a Nation State. Since the middle of March 2011, Islamist armed groups covertly supported by Western and Israeli intelligence have conducted terrorist attacks on government buildings and acts of arson. Amply documented, trained gunmen and snipers have targeted the police, the armed forces as well as unarmed civilians. The objective of this armed insurrection is to trigger the response of the police and armed forces, including the deployment of tanks and armored vehicles with a view to eventually justifying a "humanitarian" military intervention, under NATO's "responsibility to protect" mandate. The Nature of the Syrian Political System There is certainly cause for social unrest and mass protest in Syria: unemployment has increased in recent years, social conditions have deteriorated, particularly since the adoption in 2006 of sweeping economic reforms under IMF guidance. The later include austerity measures, a freeze on wages, the deregulation of the financial system, trade reform and privatization. (See IMF Syrian Arab Republic — IMF Article IV Consultation Mission's Concluding Statement, http://www.imf.org/external/np/ms/2006/051406.htm, 2006). Moreover, there are serious divisions within the government and the military. The populist policy framework of the Baath party has largely been eroded. A faction within the ruling political establishment has embraced the neoliberal agenda. In turn, the adoption of IMF "economic medicine" has served to enrich the ruling economic elite. Pro-US factions have also developed within the upper echelons of the Syrian military and intelligence. But the "pro-democracy" movement integrated by Islamists and supported by NATO and the "international community" did not emanate from the mainstay of Syrian civil society. The protests largely dominated by Islamists represent a very small fraction of Syrian public opinion. They are of a sectarian nature. They do no address the broader issues of social inequality, civil rights and unemployment. [Syria]
• The GOP's Misguided Campaign Against the United Nations
  By Stewart M. Patrick Sep 2 2011, 1:15 PM ET 1 From partial de-funding efforts to the recent "reform" bill, Republican moves against the UN risk U.S. global leadership and would cost far more than they'd save GOP presidential contender Rick Perry has said of the UN, "We cannot concede the moral authority of our nation to multi-lateral debating societies" / Reuters For a case study of misguided Congressional efforts to micromanage U.S. foreign policy, look no further than H.R. 2829. If it became law, The United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act of 2011 (PDF)--introduced this week by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee--would destroy U.S. leadership at the United Nations and undermine critical U.S. national interests. It would alienate U.S. allies, encourage other nations to adopt similarly irresponsible policies, and impose heavy costs on U.S. taxpayers. Fortunately, the bill has zero chance of becoming law. [Hardliners] [UNUS]
• US War on Terror: Provocations, Mystifications, and Illusory Feats
  08.09.2011 Nil Nikandrov, publicist, Latin America expert A decade ago, the World Trade Center was destroyed in “a terrorist attack” on September 11 in New York. Contrary to all efforts made by the Empire's propaganda and (dis)information machine, the belief in the complicity of hawks from G. Bush's Administration in the whole story did not recede from public discourse but, instead, gained tens of millions of followers worldwide... Even those who take no interest in global politics are beginning to discern the agenda behind the drama which shook the heart of New York: after the collapse of the USSR, the US military-industrial complex desperately needed a credible threat posed by a strong and lethally dangerous enemy. The hawks gave the role to Al Qaeda and its leader Usama Bin Laden, a former CIA agent who had led the mujahideen resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan. [9/11] [MISCOM]
• African women say rebels raped them in Libyan camp
  By David Enders | McClatchy Newspapers JANZOUR, Libya — When the sun sets on the refugee camp for black Africans that has sprung up at the marina in this town six miles west of Tripoli, the women here brace for the worst. The rebels who ring the camp suddenly open fire. Then they race into the camp, shouting "gabbour, gabbour" — Arabic for whore — and haul away young women, residents say. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/07/123403/african-women-say-rebels-raped.html#ixzz1XOP5G2Le [Libya]
• Has the U.S. lost the will to compete?
  By Emi Kolawole Job seekers line up for a career fair in Oak Brook, Ill. (M. Spencer Green - AP) The World Economic Forum has released its annual Global Competitiveness Report, and the news is not good for the United States — or for developed economies, for that matter. The U.S. has fallen for the third year in a row, placing fifth among the top 10 most competitive nations. The question, now, is why? Why does the U.S. continue to drop, and what does it say about America’s willingness to compete? The United States’ fall from first in 2005 to fifth in 2011 represents the largest fall of any of the 113 countries included in the Global Competitiveness Index. Three countries tied for second in this regard: Greece, Ireland and Iceland. Meanwhile, the gap between the U.S. and China continues to narrow. And that gap is critical, according to the report, because it “partly explain[s] the reduction of the gap between the emerging and advanced blocks.” [Decline] [Innovation]
• Did 9/11 Make Peace Passe?
  By John Feffer, September 6, 2011 Peace has never been a particularly popular word in Washington, DC. This is, after all, the home of the Pentagon and the major military contractors, not to mention all the think tanks and congressional lapdogs that lie in the king-size family bed with them. But the word "peace" has acquired such a negative reputation inside the Beltway that the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), which saw Congress nearly ax all its funding over the summer, is now considering a name change. [US global policy] [Militarisation]
• To Whatever Extent Libya Is a Victory, It's a Defeat for Nuclear Nonproliferation
  By Russ Wellen, September 6, 2011 However one might care to characterize the U.S.-NATO campaign in Libya, it's another blow to worldwide nuclear nonproliferation. At the Christian Science Monitor, Reza Sanati writes: The lesson is elementary. Eight years ago, Libya agreed to dismantle its infant nuclear program. … Would NATO have launched a bombing campaign against Libya if [it] had possessed nuclear weapons? The United States set a precedent when it attacked Iraq in 2003. The door had been shut on Iraq's attempts to develop nuclear weapons by the UN inspections regime known as UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission). Which, of course, didn't prevent George W. Bush's administration from propping up the corpse of Iraq's nuclear weapons program to justify its invasion. Thus, adding insult to injury, not only did the U.S. attack a country without nuclear weapons, it conjured up the fiction that Iraq had renewed its program. This constituted a double blow to nonproliferation. What's the point of a state disarming if it's not only subjecting itself to attack, but leaving itself vulnerable to the possibility that a nuclear-weapons state might make the claim that, in fact, it hasn't disarmed? [Libya] [Deterrence]
• Israel Isolates Itself
  September 5, 2011 By ROGER COHEN LONDON — Here’s what the United Nations report on Israel’s raid last year on the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara had to say about the killing of a 19-year-old U.S. citizen on board: “At least one of those killed, Furkan Dogan, was shot at extremely close range. Mr. Dogan sustained wounds to the face, back of the skull, back and left leg. That suggests he may already have been lying wounded when the fatal shot was delivered, as suggested by witness accounts to that effect.” The four-member panel, led by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, a former prime minister of New Zealand, appears with these words to raise the possibility of an execution or something close. Dogan, born in upstate New York, was an aspiring doctor. Little interested in politics, he’d won a lottery to travel on the Gaza-bound vessel. The report says of him and the other eight people killed that, “No evidence has been provided to establish that any of the deceased were armed with lethal weapons.” I met Dogan’s father, Ahmet, a professor at Erciyes University in Kayseri, last year in Ankara: His grief was as deep as his dismay at U.S. evasiveness. It’s hard to imagine any other circumstances in which the slaying in international waters, at point-blank range, of a U.S. citizen by forces of a foreign power would prompt such a singular American silence. [Double standards] [Israel]
• Why Gaddafi got a red card
  By Pepe Escobar Surveying the Libyan wasteland out of a cozy room crammed with wafer-thin LCDs in a Pyongyang palace, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, must have been stunned as he contemplated Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's predicament. "What a fool," the Dear Leader predictably murmurs. No wonder. He knows how The Big G virtually signed his death sentence that day in 2003 when he accepted the suggestion of his irrepressibly nasty offspring - all infatuated with Europe - to dump his weapons of mass destruction program and place the future of the regime in the hands of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). [Libya] [Deterrence]
• Tripoli Files Show CIA Working With Libya
  By SIOBHAN GORMAN in Washington and CHARLES LEVINSON and MARGARET COKER in Tripoli Agence France-Presse/Getty Images A fighter loyal to Libya's National Transitional Council guards noontime prayers Friday in the newly renamed Martyr's Square in central Tripoli. .The Central Intelligence Agency and Libyan intelligence services developed such a tight relationship during the George W. Bush administration that the U.S. shipped terror suspects to Libya for interrogation and suggested the questions they should be asked, according to documents found in Libya's External Security agency headquarters. ..The relationship was close enough that the CIA moved to establish "a permanent presence" in Libya in 2004, according to a note from Stephen Kappes, at the time the No. 2 in the CIA's clandestine service, to Libya's then-intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa. [Libya] [Global insurgency] [Inversion]
• Double Dip or Not, Economy Is Falling Further Behind
  By NATE SILVER While Washington was busy debating whether or not to sabotage the recovery by failing to raise the federal debt ceiling, the economy seemed to be doing everything in its power to demonstrate that it’s in feeble health to begin with. Leading indicators, like an index of manufacturing activity, have printed poorly, about at the levels that suggest the economy is on the brink of another recession. Although bearish economists have been warning about recession risk for some time now — and looking the wiser for it — concerns about a double-dip have crossed into the mainstream. The Harvard economist Martin Feldstein thinks there is a 50-50 chance of another recession. We may even be in a recession right now. In some sense, however, this is beside the point. The American economy lost a ton of ground during the global financial crisis. Slipping back into a recession — meaning negative growth — obviously wouldn’t help matters at all. But neither, really, would slow growth of the sort we’ve experienced during the first half of the year. [Decline]
• Why U.S. politics is going to get even nastier
  By Fareed Zakaria, CNN If you think politics have heated up this summer, you ain't seen nothing yet. The presidential campaign is going to get underway in a serious way soon and expect it to get nasty. I'm not making any assumptions about the Republican candidate and what he or she will say on the stump.?? I'm making this prediction because I think we're going to go into an election with a bad economy the likes of which we have rarely seen.
  You can see, over the last ten years, a new pattern has emerged in the American economy - jobless growth. [Decline] [Unemployment] [Crisis]
• Iran and Syria: America's Middle East pundits get it wrong (again)
  Given their track record of failed predictions and all that is at stake, for the United States and the people of the region, these individuals’ current policy recommendations ought to elicit very tough and skeptical scrutiny. Two points stand out as especially important. First of all, it is far from clear that the Assad government is actually imploding. It is obvious that a portion of Syria’s population is aggrieved and disaffected, but it is not evident at all that this portion represents a majority. President Bashar al-Assad still retains the backing of key segments of Syrian society. Moreover, no one has identified a plausible scenario by which the “opposition”, however defined, can actually seize power. [Syria] [Iran] [MISCOM] [Paradigm]
• In Libya, Former Enemy Is Recast in Role of Ally
  By ROD NORDLAND Published: September 1, 2011 TRIPOLI, Libya — Abdel Hakim Belhaj had a wry smile about the oddity of his situation. Yes, he said, he was detained by Malaysian officials in 2004 on arrival at the Kuala Lumpur airport, where he was subjected to extraordinary rendition on behalf of the United States, and sent to Thailand. His pregnant wife, traveling with him, was taken away, and his child would be 6 before he saw him. [Islamist] [Libya]
• Grand Strategy after 9/11: Perpetual War
  by TARIQ ALI ‘Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,’ Carl Schmitt wrote in different times almost a century ago, when European empires and armies dominated most continents and the United States was basking underneath an isolationist sun. What the conservative theorist meant by ‘exception’ was a state of emergency, necessitated by serious economic or political cataclysms, that required a suspension of the Constitution, internal repression and war abroad. A decade after the attentats of 9/11, the United States and its European allies are trapped in a quagmire. The events of that year were simply used as a pretext to remake the world and to punish those states that did not comply. And today while the majority of Euro-American citizens flounder in a moral desert, now unhappy with the wars, now resigned, now propagandized into differentiating what is, in effect, an overarching imperial strategy into good/bad wars, the US General Petraeus (currently commanding the CIA) tells us: “You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It’s a little bit like Iraq, actually . . .. Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.” Thus speaks the voice of a sovereign power, determining in this case that the exception is the rule. [Imperialism]
• Taliban will be defeated, insist Australian generals
  EXCLUSIVE Brendan Nicholson From: The Australian August 27, 2011 12:00AM AUSTRALIAN generals in Afghanistan are confident they can defeat the Taliban insurgency before control of security is handed over to local forces, and have urged the coalition nations to "hold your nerve". In a series of frank interviews, the commanders of Australian forces and others serving in the US-led coalition headquarters have revealed their comprehensive plan to gain control of the war-torn nation, and said that they were confident it was working. The goal of Operation Omid (Hope) is to drive the insurgents out of Afghanistan's populated areas in the fertile belt that circles the country around the barren Hindu Kush. Through this population belt runs the main national road, Route 1. As territory is taken from the insurgents and coalition forces gain control of Route 1, Afghan army units and police are being moved in. [AfPak] [Imperialism] [Subordinate]
• Arab Spring: Revolutions, Lies, and Intervention
  by Devon DB Global Research, August 31, 2011 In 2011, the United States had its dominance of the Middle East seriously threatened due to massive peaceful protests that were sweeping the Arab world. No longer were people going to put up with corrupt and oppressive regimes that were backed by Washington. No longer would they put up with horrid dictatorships in which the only freedom they had was to obey. In 2011 began what would be known as the Arab Spring. [Imperialism] [Libya]
• How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli
  By Pepe Escobar His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the Middle East might have, but few in the West and across the world would have heard of him. Time to catch up. Because the story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter - once again - that wilderness of mirrors that is the "war on terror", as well as deeply compromising the carefully constructed propaganda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) "humanitarian" intervention in Libya. [Libya] [Islamist]
• Study Finds Extensive Waste in War Contracting
  By NATHAN HODGE A congressionally mandated panel found that the U.S. has wasted or misspent between $31 billion and $60 billion contracting for services in Iraq and Afghanistan, or as much as one out of every four dollars spent on wartime contracting in the past decade. The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, established by Congress in 2008, unveiled a final report Wednesday that represents the most comprehensive assessment to date of how the U.S. government has managed the more than $206 billion it is projected to spend on contracting in both wars through the end of fiscal 2011. [Imperialism] {MISCOM] [Corruption]
• Why the global economic crash, the rise of the Tea Party, the Arab Spring, and China’s coming fall are all connected.
  BY GEORGE MAGNUS | AUGUST 31, 2011 The clamor of economic and political events this year -- including the Arab Spring, the intensification of the Western economic crisis, the rise of the Tea Party, and the growing ascendancy of China -- has been deafening. But though most reporting has described these events as disconnected, they are far from coincidental. The crisis of capitalism that erupted with the 2008 financial bust has very much to do with all of these seemingly disparate events. During the long boom period from 1980 to 2008, mainstream thinking ignored the principles of political economy laid out by Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. Instead, we got monetarism, free market ideology, Alan Greenspan's facile notions of a "new economy," and even the often self-serving hype about China's ability to rule the world and sustain global prosperity. Today, we can see better how the crisis of 2008 and 2009 marked the end of one era and the start of a new and still very uncertain one. [Crisis]
• We must embrace Gaddafi’s allies ... or else
  By Hafed Al-Ghwell I was 17 years old, when I felt I had no choice but to leave Libya. Life in Tripoli was stifling. To survive you had to fall into line and sing the praises of “the brother leader” and his green book. I remember when soldiers would march into our classroom, file us into single lines, and take us, under threats of giving failing grades and beatings, to rallies for the regime. I also remember the arbitrary arrests and barbaric “revolutionary courts” on TV, passing summary judgments on “the traitors of the revolution”. [Libya] [Client]
• Condoleezza Rice disputes parts of Dick Cheney’s book
  EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS - Vice President Dick Cheney, left, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, right, stand in the Oval Office during a meeting between President Bush and the Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006 in Washington. Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Beth Marlowe, Thursday, September 1, 4:26 PM Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice fired back at her former colleague, Vice President Dick Cheney, over descriptions of her in his recent memoir. In her first public comments on Cheney’s book, “In My Time,” Rice told Reuters that the book attacked her integrity. .She disputed Cheney’s much-discussed claim that she had “tearfully admitted” the vice president was right about a major difference of opinion. Rice wanted the administration to apologize for President Bush’s unfounded claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was looking for uranium to build nuclear weapons. Cheney thought a public apology was a bad idea. In his memoir, Cheney wrote that after the apology was made, Rice “came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right.” “It certainly doesn’t sound like me, now, does it?” Rice said of the passage. “I would never—I don’t remember coming to the vice president tearfully about anything in the entire eight years that I knew him,” she said. Rice remembered the meeting quite differently. “I did say to the vice president, ‘you know, you were right about the press reaction.’ But I am quite certain that I didn’t do it tearfully.” Rice also took issue with Cheney’s assertion that she had misled President Bush about her negotiations with North Korea. “I kept the president fully and completely informed about every in and out of the negotiations with the North Koreans,” she said. [US NK negotiations] [Dissension]

• Worse Than Iraq: Lies of the Libyan War
  by THOMAS MOUNTAIN July 27, 2011 As exposed here on CounterPunch the lies used to justify the NATO war against Libya have surpassed those created to justify the invasion of Iraq. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both had honest observers on the ground for months following the rebellion in eastern Libya and both have repudiated every major charge used to justify the NATO war on Libya. [Libya] [Disinformation] [Media]
• Lockerbie and the Belgian Nurses: Gaddafi’s Libya as Demon
  by DIANA JOHNSTONE The current ideology to justify aggressive war is based on a dogmatic dichotomy between Democracy and Dictators. The pro-war party in the West has been shifting the center of international law and order from the United Nations to a more exclusive club of “democracies” which alone have “legitimacy”. The core of this club is the English-speaking world, plus Israel, the European Union, and Japan. This “International Community” of democracies is understood to possess the unique moral right to decide when the leader of any country outside their charmed circle may be denounced as a “dictator” and overthrown with the help of a NATO bombing campaign. This ideology assumes that Democracies respect human rights, whereas dictators by definition are criminals who systematically violate human rights and may be contemplating “genocide against their own people”. Certain details, such as the fact that the United States has the largest prison population in the world in both absolute and relative terms, and uses convicts for cheap labor in the arms industry, are not allowed to interfere with this dualistic world view. [Libya] [Double standards] [Pretext]
• With source of water still in Gadhafi hands, Tripoli goes thirsty
  August 29, 2011 By David Enders | McClatchy Newspapers SAID AL SIAH, Libya — Water is in short supply in Tripoli, Libya's newly liberated capital, and from here it's easy to see why: the massive storage tank, part of the network that supplies water to the capital from a huge underground aquifer in southern Libya, is nearly empty. And this storage facility lies just 25 miles south of Tripoli. The real problem, say rebel leaders, lies much further away, in Hasouna, 400 miles to the south, which forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi still control. They've turned off the tap, not just to Tripoli but to many of Libya's cities. As water lines run dry and prices for bottled water skyrocket, Tripoli's burgeoning water crisis reveals the limitations of the rebel leadership, which still must consolidate its control over vast parts of the country even as it tries to exert its authority over a shortage-plagued capital. While Tripoli has been mostly cleared of serious pro-Gadhafi resistance, much of the country to the south lies outside rebel control, and that means that not just water supplies, but also refineries and oilfields, have yet to be secured. Rebel leaders offer no estimates for how quickly that might be accomplished. [Libya]
• ‘In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir’ by Dick Cheney
  By Robert G. Kaiser, Published: August 29 If this book were read by an intelligent person who spent the past 10 years on, say, Mars, she would have no idea that Dick Cheney was the vice president in one of the most hapless American administrations of modern times. There are hints, to be sure, that things did not always go swimmingly under President George W. Bush and Cheney, but these are surrounded by triumphalist accounts of events that many readers — and future historians — are unlikely to consider triumphs. [US global policy]
• UN at stalemate over Syria
  By Anna Fifield in Washington and an FT Reporter in Damascus The prospects of a UN condemnation of the Syrian regime’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters remain dim as security council members work on two competing resolutions, neither of which has the support to pass. Security council members on Monday headed back to their capitals for advice on how to proceed. “Having two resolutions on the table is not helping anyone,” said one western diplomat at the UN. The US, Britain, France, Germany and Portugal have circulated a draft resolution calling for an arms embargo and financial sanctions against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader, and members of his regime. Russia and China, which have veto power as permanent members of the security council, have signalled they will block the resolution. Brazil, India and South Africa have also been reluctant to chastise, let alone sanction, Syria over the crackdown. [UNUS] [Syria] [Russia]
• Iran says US, Israeli plot against Syria failed: official
  Xinhua | August 29, 2011 16:06 Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said the US and Israel plot to trigger a sectarian war in Syria has failed, the local satellite Press TV reported on Monday. "A plan by the American-Zionism axis aimed at creating a sectarian war in Syria is defeated," Amirabdollahian was quoted as saying. He called on "the people of Syria (to) pursue their legitimate demands through democratic way and believe in the reforms plan of (President) Bashar al-Assad," said the report.
• Texas Gov. Perry became a millionaire while serving in office
  Since his first race for office more than a quarter-century ago, Gov. Rick Perry has emphasized his roots as a rural farmer. Yet Perry's bank account no longer reflects those humble beginnings as his bottom line has soared in recent years, records show, thanks largely to a handful of real estate deals that critics allege were achieved through the presidential candidates' political connections [Corruption]
• U.S. Tactics in Libya May Be a Model for Other Efforts
  By HELENE COOPER and STEVEN LEE MYERS Published: August 28, 2011 WASHINGTON — It would be premature to call the war in Libya a complete success for United States interests. But the arrival of victorious rebels on the shores of Tripoli last week gave President Obama’s senior advisers a chance to claim a key victory for an Obama doctrine for the Middle East that had been roundly criticized in recent months as leading from behind. Administration officials say that even though the NATO intervention in Libya, emphasizing airstrikes to protect civilians, cannot be applied uniformly in other hotspots like Syria, the conflict may, in some important ways, become a model for how the United States wields force in other countries where its interests are threatened. “We’ve resisted the notion of a doctrine, because we don’t think you can impose one model on very different countries; that gets you into trouble and can lead you to intervene in places that you shouldn’t,” said Ben Rhodes, the director for strategic communications at the National Security Council. Even so, he said, the Libya action helped to establish two principles for when the United States could apply military force to advance its diplomatic interests even though its national security is not threatened directly. [Imperialism] [Libya] [Subordinate] [Client] [Humanitarian intervention]
• WikiLeaks cables expose Washington’s close ties to Gaddafi
  by Bill Van Auken Global Research, August 27, 2011 World Socialist Web Site US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday and Thursday expose the close collaboration between the US government, top American politicians and Muammar Gaddafi, who Washington now insists must be hunted down and murdered. Washington and its NATO allies are now determined to smash the Libyan regime, supposedly in the interests of “liberating” the Libyan people. That Gaddafi was until the beginning of this year viewed as a strategic, if somewhat unreliable, ally is clearly seen as an inconvenient truth. The cables have been virtually blacked out by the corporate media, which has functioned as an embedded asset of NATO and the so-called rebel forces that it directs. It is hardly coincidental that the WikiLeaks posting of the cables was followed the next day by a combination of a massive denial of service attack and a US judge’s use of the Patriot Act to issue a sweeping “production order” or subpoena against the anti-secrecy organization’s California-based Domain Name Server, Dynadot [Libya] [Imperialism] [Client]
• Charred remains of massacre victims found in Tripoli
  Regime troops killed 53 people in a warehouse and then burnt the bodies, say local people By David Randall and Jonathan Owen Sunday, 28 August 2011 The terrible price many Libyan people have paid to be free of Colonel Gaddafi is becoming plain. Yesterday, only a day after more than 120 decomposing bodies were found in a Tripoli hospital, a British television team filmed the charred remains of an estimated 53 people in a burnt-out warehouse in the south of the city.
  Yesterday, The Independent on Sunday learned that the rebel military commander behind the successful assault on Tripoli had fought in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban and was an Islamist terror suspect interrogated by the CIA. Abdelhakim Belhadj, the newly appointed commander of the Tripoli Military Council is a former emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) – banned by Britain and the US as a terrorist organisation after the 9/11 attacks. The 45-year-old first went to Afghanistan in the late 1980s, where he fought against occupying Soviet forces. Arrested in Malaysia in 2004, he was interrogated by the CIA in Thailand before being extradited to Libya, where he was released from prison last year; he has since renounced violence. Mr Belhadj has become a hero of the Libyan revolution – and ally of the West. [Libya] [Islamist] [Media]
• R2P is now Right 2 Plunder
  By Pepe Escobar The white man's burden doesn't allow asking Africans what they think about the current Western/monarchical Arab onslaught on the northern shores of their continent. At least some are not beating around the bush. Over 200 African leaders and intellectuals released a letter in Johannesburg, South Africa, stressing the "misuse of the United Nations Security Council to engage in militarized diplomacy to effect regime change in Libya", as well as the "marginalization of the African Union". As for the Western "winners" in Libya, they are not even playing smoke and mirrors anymore. Richard Haass, president of that Gotha of the US establishment that is the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a Financial Times op-ed blatantly stating, "The 'humanitarian' intervention introduced to save lives believed to be threatened was in fact a political intervention introduced to bring about regime change." [Libya] [Humanitarian intervention] [Camouflage]
• Gamble on Libya pays off for Qatar
  By Simeon Kerr in Dubai The capital of Qatar was arguably as important a rebel base as Benghazi during the six-month campaign to oust Colonel Muammer Gaddafi from power. When Col Gaddafi in February threatened the eastern city with columns of tanks, Doha stepped up to become the emerging rebel movement’s strongest ally.
• NATO troops in Libya: No entry, no exit
  Topic: Protests against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya The Libyan rebels' somewhat dubious success in Tripoli threatens to draw NATO into a ground operation while Washington is wondering whether the European coalition was right to rush into battle. Who is fighting on the side of the rebels in Libya? The saga of Tripoli's fall and the toppling of the Gaddafi regime in Libya continues. The European allies seem to be launching a new phase of their Libyan operation, one that is marked by even greater military involvement. So far, only one thing is certain: increased activity in terms of technical intelligence gathering and on the part of the Special Forces. [Libya]
• Libyan rebels carry out reprisal attacks
  View Photo Gallery — ?With rebels surrounding Moammar Gaddafi’s headquarters and reports of government fighters melting away, the six-month-old battle for control of Libya appears to be in its final stages. By Simon Denyer, Published: August 26 TRIPOLI, Libya — Evidence emerged Friday that Col. Moammar Gaddafi’s retreating forces executed scores or even hundreds of political prisoners this week, even as victorious rebel fighters appear to have carried out their own abuses. Survivors of an attack by pro-Gaddafi troops said they had watched as fellow prisoners were mowed down by machine-gun fire, minutes after being told they were free. .But Gaddafi loyalists were also targets of apparent extrajudicial killings. Those deaths have cast a dark shadow over Libya’s newfound freedom and call into question whether the rebels will break with Gaddafi’s blood-soaked style of governance or merely mimic it. “In Tripoli, we are seeing the same pattern in recent days that we saw earlier in the east,” said Diana Eltahawy, Libya researcher for Amnesty International. She described a record of abuse, torture and the extrajudicial killing of captured pro-Gaddafi fighters that has followed the rebels from east to west as they have taken over the country. [Libya] [Casualties]
• 9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?
  By Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, August 24, 2011 In a few days it will be the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. How well has the US government’s official account of the event held up over the decade? Not very well. The chairman, vice chairman, and senior legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission wrote books partially disassociating themselves from the commission’s report. They said that the Bush administration put obstacles in their path, that information was withheld from them, that President Bush agreed to testify only if he was chaperoned by Vice President Cheney and neither were put under oath, that Pentagon and FAA officials lied to the commission and that the commission considered referring the false testimony for investigation for obstruction of justice. In their book, the chairman and vice chairman, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, wrote that the 9/11 Commission was “set up to fail.” Senior counsel John Farmer, Jr., wrote that the US government made “a decision not to tell the truth about what happened,” and that the NORAD “tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public.” Kean said, “We to this day don’t know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth.”
• More to DSK saga than swiftly laid rape case
  By Fran O'Sullivan 5:30 AM Saturday Aug 27, 2011 Share Email Print Expand Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been able to rely on the support of his wife, Anne Sinclair. Photo / APThe New York prosecutor's decision to drop rape charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn will be dissected by journalists, feminists and political analysts for years to come. And so it should be. Cyrus R. Vance jnr's decision not to allow housekeeper Nafissatou Diallo her day in court is astounding on many levels
• Gaddafi's desperate bid to save regime revealed
  Secret documents detail clandestine lobbying of Nato and even Obama following fear of full-scale US invasion Luke Harding in Tripoli guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 August 2011 21.19 BST Article history Gaddafi feared a full-scale Western invasion in 'either late September or October', secret documents reveal. Photograph: Max Rossi/Reuters The Gaddafi regime carried out an extraordinary clandestine lobbying operation to try to stop Nato's bombardment of Libya, and believed the western allies were likely to launch a full-scale invasion in "either late September or October". Secret documents in Tripoli seen by the Guardian reveal the desperate attempts made by the Libyan government in its final months to influence US and world opinion. It approached key international opinion formers from the US president Barack Obama downwards. [Imperialism] [Appeasement] [Personalisation]
• Visa, other cards no longer valid in Syria under sanctions
  By Associated Press, Published: August 25 DAMASCUS, Syria — Visa and MasterCard credit cards are no longer valid in Syria under new U.S. sanctions targeting Damascus because of its deadly crackdown on a 5-month-old uprising, officials said Thursday. [Financial sanctions] [Destabilisation]
• Ron Paul: We May Have to Accept Iran Nukes
  Wednesday, August 24, 2011 02:56 PM By: Doug Wead Ron Paul has a perfectly logical explanation for why we might have to get used to the idea of an Iran with nuclear power. We have six wars going now, he points out, with numerous opportunities for more on the drawing board. We could go into Somalia and clean out al-Qaida and this time, as opposed to our $ 1 trillion war in Iraq, they are actually there. Likewise, we should have a war against North Korea, the most repressive regime in the world where weapons of mass destruction actually exist. We could invade Syria. There is a great opportunity to get rid of a terrorist enemy in President Bashar al-Assad? The natives will help us. But such posturing is ridiculous. American is broke. Our endless wars are destroying us. We have lost sight of Thomas Jefferson's maxim, "The more you use your power the less you have." [Overstretch]
• NATO is in big trouble
  24.08.2011 Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (2011) of the UN Security Council were very clear in their terms: No foreign military personnel, no mercenaries, no weapons to the parties in conflict and inspection of vessels ferrying arms and soldiers. NATO has breached all four counts and now is liable for prosecution under international law. [Libya] [UNUS] [Legality]
• Russian companies to be thrown out of Libya
  24.08.2011 The collapse of Muammar Gaddafi's regime will close many projects for Russian companies in Libya, the head of the Russian-Libyan Business Council, Aram Shegunts said. Such large companies as Gazprom, Gazpromneft, Tatneft and Russian Railways are currently working in the war-torn country. All of those companies made multi-million investments in their Libyan project. "We have lost Libya completely. Our companies won't be given the green light to work there. If anyone thinks otherwise they are wrong. Our companies will lose everything there because NATO will prevent them from doing their business in Libya," Shegunts told Reuters. [Libya] [Imperialism]
• Libya: Prostitution of Western journalism
  24.08.2011 AP photoThe last two days have once again proved the obvious fact that there are no independent media and that Western news agencies, newspapers and magazines work out a political order. The lion's share of newspapers, magazines and news agencies reported the unprecedented success of the insurgents and predicted the imminent fall of Tripoli. [Libya] [Media]
• Norway’s Terror as Systemic Destabilization: Breivik, the Arms-for-Drugs Milieu, and Global Shadow Elites
  Peter Dale Scott Breivik’s Terror: Was It a Deep Event? The most surprising aspect of the recent unexpected terrorist violence in Norway is that, in retrospect, it is not surprising. Our revived hopes after the end of the Cold War, that we might finally be emerging into a world of diminishing bloodshed, have been abundantly disabused. Events of seemingly random irrational violence, such as that which so shocked us when President Kennedy was assassinated, have become a predictable part of the world in which we live. To some extent we can blame the violence on our social system itself. It is clearly unsatisfactory, and needs fundamental reconstructions that nonviolent actions have been painfully slow to deliver. Thus violence slowly builds up at all levels, from the flash mobs of the hopeless at the base of society to the war schemes of those in high places. In such a milieu Anders Breivik is only one of many, from the Unabomber in America to the jihadi suicide bombers everywhere, who have chosen to dedicate themselves to sacrificial violence, rather than to an eventless survival in an alienating status quo. But the backgrounds of some violent events are more mysteriously organized than, say, those of a resentful and quasi-spontaneous grudge killing or flash mob. For some time I have discussed acts such as the Kennedy assassination as what I have called deep events: events, obscured and/or misrepresented in mainstream media, whose origins are mysterious but often intelligence-related, attributed to marginal outsiders, but intersecting with large and powerful but covert forces having the power and the intent to influence history. More recently I have emphasized the need to analyze deep events comparatively, as part of an on-going hidden substrate in so-called developed societies. And to raise the question whether key deep events are interrelated.
• After 9/11: Ten Years of War
  Special Commemorative Conference, Montreal, September 8
  by Cynthia McKinney and Wayne Madsen and Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, September 9, 2011 The tragic events of September 11, 2001, which claimed many lives in the United States, have since given rise to an era of endless US/NATO-sponsored wars accompanied by economic chaos, rising poverty and financial manipulation. We have seen a marked shift towards authoritarianism, the criminalization of justice and the development of a police state. At this special 10 year commemorative event, we invite the public to an evening exploring the truth behind 9/11 and its implications for the future of society. [Global insurgency]
• Libya: Ensuring a Smooth and Peaceful Transition into the Post-Qaddafi Era
  Brussels | 23 Aug 2011 As Libyans prepare for the Qaddafi regime’s imminent demise, the country faces a pivotal moment of historic proportions. Steps taken in the next few days and weeks will decisively shape the post-Qaddafi order. The new, still nascent, Libyan leadership, faces a dual, difficult legacy which it will need to overcome: four decades of an autocratic regime that failed to build genuine state institutions and six months of a civil war that, together with inevitable human and material losses, exposed old divisions and fissures while prompting new ones. The challenge for that leadership, as well as for international actors who enabled its drive into Tripoli (sic), is threefold: to establish a broadly inclusive and representative transitional governing body; address immediate security risks; and find an appropriate balance between, on the one hand, the search for accountability and justice and, on the other, the imperative of avoiding arbitrary score-settling and revenge. [Libya] [Pacification] [Imperialism] [Spin]
• Boeing tests submarine drone off Santa Catalina Island
  The 18-foot mini-sub made at the company's defense systems facility in Anaheim could be used for national defense and environmental protection. By W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times August 19, 2011, 4:11 p.m. An 18-foot, bright-yellow submarine drone is being tested off the coast of Santa Catalina Island for possible use by the U.S. military to stalk enemy waters, patrol local harbors for national security threats and scour ocean floors to detect environmental hazards. Although robotic aircraft already play a critical role in modern warfare, taking out insurgents with missile strikes in the skies above Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya (sic), the same robotic revolution hasn't taken place in the world's oceans. [Global insurgency] [UAV] [Military balance]
• The West Scores Another Triumph Over the Arab World: Libya on the Brink
  23.08.2011 Dmitri Sedov, political scientist The fall of M. Gadhafi's regime will come as a huge success of the globalization forces seeking to establish a new world order. The proportions of the campaign the West launched in Libya and the level of sophistication of the technologies employed were impressive regardless of the accompanying political assessments – altogether they combined into a fundamental political initiative with far-reaching historical goals. In Libya, the West managed to undermine and eventually demolish a completely viable regime which must be credited with keeping the country stable and the population's living standards – fairly high. Even though, customarily for the region, Gadhafi was an eccentric and self-righteous autocrat, a relatively short time ago he used to be a figure to which the majority of Libyans showed no signs of allergy. Under such circumstances, it had to take serious manipulative skills to convince the people that things in their country were skewed and to lead them to rebel against the legitimate government. The shift in the public atmosphere is hardly attributable to the impact of any particular subversive programs or to the sway of a handful of Western satellite TV channels over Libya's public opinion. Rather, it could be induced within a wider approach based on what specialists these days refer to as informational warfare. Currently, whole populations in a number of countries enduring regime changes are the targets of informational warfare altering traditional models of human existence and conduct. The alliance of the West's ideological agencies and media built around a certain type of information policies is the force behind the ongoing informational aggression. Its key objective is to saturate all information flows with the notion of an a priori superiority of the Western democracy standard and to instill among the nations whose political lives are not aligned with it a humiliating sense of inferiority. Under appropriate external influence, the sense of inferiority automatically nourishes public discontent. Given the background of pervasive informational aggression, ideological campaigns and provocations aimed at destabilizing and in the long run dislodging otherwise stable regimes tend to become extremely efficient. [Destabilisation] [Psychwar] [Libya]
• Gaddafi conspiracy saga over?
  Topic: International sanctions against Gaddafi regime Lies and deception have always been a weapon in military conflicts. The strange story of Libyan rebels' unsuccessful attempt to take the capital, Tripoli, by storm offers a striking example of deliberate misrepresentations in war. The Libyan war will inevitably become the basis for the script of an action movie eventually, so in anticipation, let's just imagine what this might look like. On the set of the film, "Looking for Col. Gaddafi" Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been conspicuously absent from all international media reports about this week's rebel offensive on his stronghold in Tripoli. In fact, he has not been seen in public since June, except in occasional video footage. It has become clear that the Libyan leader has disappeared. This is not uncommon in times of war. [Libya]
• The Truth About the Situation in Libya
  Cutting through the government propaganda and media lies August 22, 2011 By Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition Libya is a small country of just over 6 million people but it possesses the largest oil reserves in all of Africa. The oil produced there is especially coveted because of its particularly high quality. The Air Force of the United States along with Britain and France has carried out 7,459 bombing attacks since March 19. Britain, France and the United States sent special operation ground forces and commando units to direct the military operations of the so-called rebel fighters – it is a NATO- led army in the field. [Libya]
• USA steals Cuban brains
  23.08.2011 In order to discredit the Cuban government, the State Department and special services of the United States conduct the program to lure Cuban doctors, who work in 77 countries of the world within the scope of Solidarity Aid. The program has been conducted since 2006. The Cuban authorities have been trying to struggle against the brain drain and refuse to confirm the authenticity of doctors' diplomas. Cuban doctors have been working in many countries of the world since 1998. In Cuba, there is a chain of medical schools for foreign citizens. The students of those schools come from poor families. If it was not for Cuba, they would not have had the opportunity to receive education. Cuban doctors work in the slums of Latin America, Africa and Asia. The doctors enjoy popularity and respect among local population, because they are highly qualified and always agree to work with "dangerous" patients, for example with those suffering from leprosy in Thailand or cholera in Haiti. However, their work in the missions of Solidarity Aid does not bring them much income ($500 a month). Many Cuban doctors realize that they could make much more in the States. Some of them give in to temptation and seek political shelter in America.
• NATO'S planned bloodbath in Tripoli
  23.08.2011 By Stephen Lendman AP photoNATO intends to get the bloodbath it wants through intensified terror bombing and low-level strafing of civilians and nonmilitary sites. No matter that it grossly violates international and constitutional law, what Washington-led member states long ago trashed. Through August 22, air operations included 19,877 sorties and 7,505 strike ones, with no elaboration of their intensity or deadliness. What is known is that powerful, high-explosive munitions are used, able to cause deadly force casualties and destruction. In recent days, strikes intensified. Without them, rebels would disintegrate and collapse. Most of them are little more than ragtag mercenary hooligans, imperial tools, used for what won't benefit them.
• Gaddafi's son says Tripoli under govt. control
  Topic: Protests against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya 1 / 2Seif al-Islam flashes the victory sign as he talks to reporters in Tripoli in the early hours of August 23, 2011 © REUTERS/ Paul HackettSeif al-Islam greets supporters in Tripoli in the early hours of August 23, 2011 © REUTERS/ Paul Hackett 05:49 23/08/2011CAIRO, August 23 (RIA Novosti) The son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam, whom the rebels had said they had arrested, appeared on TV screens on Tuesday accompanied by his supporters near the Bab al Aziziyah compound. Al Arabya television aired footage with Gaddafi's heir apparent assuring reporters that the situation in Tripoli was under control of government forces and offering them a trip around the city, which had been reportedly overrun by the rebels. "We will visit the alleged 'hot spots' and you will see with your own eyes that everything is quiet there," he tells the journalists in the clip. "I am here to disperse the rumors...Our people has broken the backbone of these rebels, these gangs," he says. The rebels claimed on Sunday they had captured Saif al-Islam, along with other members of Gaddafi's family. The sudden appearance of Gaddafi's son in public questions the reliability of reports coming from Libya. [Disinformation] [Libya]
• NATO SLAUGHTER IN TRIPOLI: "Operation Mermaid Dawn" Signals Assault by Rebels' Al Qaeda Death Squads
  by Thierry Meyssan Global Research, August 21, 2011 Voltaire Network Tripoli, Libya, Aug. 22, 2011, 1 AM CET– On Saturday evening, at 8pm, when the hour of Iftar marked the breaking of the Ramadan fast, the NATO command launched its “Operation Mermaid Dawn” against Libya. The Sirens were the loudspeakers of the mosques, which were used to launch Al Qaeda’s call to revolt against the Qaddafi government. Immediately the sleeper cells of the Benghazi rebels went into action. These were small groups with great mobility, which carried out multiple attacks. The overnight fighting caused 350 deaths and 3,000 wounded. The situation calmed somewhat on Sunday during the course of the day. Then, a NATO warship sailed up and anchored just off the shore at Tripoli, delivering heavy weapons and debarking Al Qaeda jihadi forces, which were led by NATO officers. Fighting stared again during the night. There were intense firefights. NATO drones and aircraft kept bombing in all directions. NATO helicopters strafed civilians in the streets with machine guns to open the way for the jihadis. In the evening, a motorcade of official cars carrying top government figures came under attack. The convoy fled to the Hotel Rixos, where the foreign press is based. NATO did not dare to bomb the hotel because they wanted to avoid killing the journalists. Nevertheless the hotel, which is where I am staying, is now under heavy fire. At 11:30pm, the Health Minister had to announce that the hospitals were full to overflowing. On Sunday evening, there had been 1300 additional dead and 5,000 wounded. NATO had been charged by the UN Security Council with protecting civilians in Libya. In reality, France and Great Britain have just re-started their colonial massacres. At 1am, Khamis Qaddafi came to the Rixos Hotel personally to deliver weapons for the defense of the hotel. He then left. There is now heavy fighting all around the hotel. [Libya]
• Libya now needs boots on the ground
  By Richard Haass Events in Libya have reached the proverbial beginning of the end, but as is often the case, the truth is that it is closer to the end of the beginning. It is only a matter of time, and quite little time at that, before what is left of Colonel Muammer Gaddafi’s era ends. Four decades after it was established, some six months after the world community decided that Col Gaddafi had to go, the regime is crumbling. Defections are multiplying, the favoured son is now in custody, and the rebels are at the gates of the capital Tripoli. It has been difficult reaching this juncture, but now the truly hard part begins. It is one thing to kill the king and oust the ancient regime, something very different and much more difficult to put something better and lasting in its place. [Libya] [Pacification]
• Allies guided rebel ‘pincer’ assault on Tripoli
  By Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller, Monday, August 22, 5:48 PM The rapid weekend advance of Libyan rebel troops into Tripoli was the result of an opposition strategy put in place two weeks ago with the advice of British, French and Qatari special forces on the ground, along with an earlier decision by the Obama administration to share additional intelligence on the positions of Libyan government forces, according to NATO and U.S. military and intelligence officials. [Imperialism] [Libya] [Client] [Intelligence] [Subordinate]
• The Pentagon's "Salvador Option": The Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and Syria
  by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, August 16, 2011 The following article is Part II of a three part series. This present essay (Part II below) focusses on the history of the Pentagon's "Salvador Option" in Iraq and its relevance to Syria. The program was implemented under the tenure of John D. Negroponte, who served as US ambassador to Iraq (June 2004-April 2005). The current ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford was part of Negroponte's team in Baghdad in 2004-2005. Syria: Overview and Recent Developments The Western media has played a central role in obfuscating the nature of foreign interference in Syria including outside support to armed insurgents. In chorus they have described recent events in Syria as a "peaceful protest movement" directed against the government of Bashar Al Assad, when the evidence amply confirms that Islamic paramilitary groups have infiltrated the rallies. Israel's Debka Intelligence news, while avoiding the issue of an armed insurgency, tacitly acknowledges that Syrian forces are being confronted by an organized paramilitary: "[Syrian forces] are now running into heavy resistance: Awaiting them are anti-tank traps and fortified barriers manned by protesters armed with heavy machine guns." DEBKAfile, Since when are peaceful civilian protesters armed with "heavy machine guns" and "anti-tank traps"? Recent developments in Syria point to a full-fledged armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist "freedom fighters" covertly supported, trained and equipped by foreign powers. According to Israeli intelligence sources: NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime's crackdown on dissent. Instead of repeating the Libyan model of air strikes, NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011, emphasis added) The delivery of weapons to the rebels is to be implemented "overland, namely through Turkey and under Turkish army protection....Alternatively, the arms would be trucked into Syria under Turkish military guard and transferred to rebel leaders at pre-arranged rendez-vous." (Ibid, emphasis added) [Destabilisation]
• NATO’s Puppet Regime in Libya Falls Apart
  by Peter Symonds Global Research, August 15, 2011 World Socialist Web Site - 2011-08-13 The sacking of the entire Benghazi-based Libyan opposition cabinet this week has exposed the anti-democratic, faction-riven character of the regime that the US and its European allies are seeking to impose on Libya. The self-proclaimed Transitional National Council (TNC)—facing a military stalemate in efforts to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi due to its lack of popular support—is being consumed by violent internal conflicts. TNC President Abdul Mustafa Jalil ordered the dismissal of the TNC’s executive committee on Monday, after the unexplained murder of the organisation’s military chief, General Abdel Fatah Younis, on July 28. Only Mahmoud Jibril, the TNC’s so-called prime minister, was kept on to form the next cabinet. In a further sign of disarray, Jalil insisted that members of various autonomous militias operating broadly under the TNC’s banner had to integrate into its armed forces as individuals rather than units. Jalil was acting under demands for justice from Younis’s family members and the powerful Obeidi tribe, and under pressure from the February 17 Coalition, a secular grouping of Libyan judges and lawyers, critical of the growing influence of Islamists within the TNC. As it announced the sackings, a TNC spokesman declared that the cabinet was responsible for “improper administrative procedures” that led to Younis’s death. No official explanation has been given for the arrest and killing of Younis, which has been the subject of bitter recriminations. He was Gaddafi’s interior minister before defecting to the Benghazi opposition, along with the Special Forces troops under his command. Those close to Younis have accused an Islamist militia of killing him, to avenge the general’s savage repression of an Islamist uprising in the mid-1990s and to block his efforts to bring TNC military units under his unified command. Various Islamist organisations—including those derived from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al Qaeda-aligned Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)—are prominent in the TNC’s loosely-organised military umbrella group, known as the Union of Revolutionary Forces. An article in Canada’s Globe and Mail last week highlighted the increasing assertiveness of Islamist forces led by Mohammed Busidra, who dubs himself “a moderate”. His network includes the Muslim Brotherhood, the February 17 Martyrs’ Brigade led by cleric Ismail Al-Sallabi, and a number of other Islamist imams. In his Globe and Mail interview, Busidra explained that he had drawn up an Islamist constitution for post-Gaddafi Libya and wanted Sheikh Al-Sallabi, Ismail’s brother who is currently based in Doha, to take on the presidency. Ismail Al-Sallabi has blamed Gaddafi infiltrators, rather an Islamist militia, for the killing of Younis. As factional tensions inside the TNC have sharpened, his units have been rounding up dozens of “Gaddafi loyalists”, which undoubtedly include political opponents. To date, none of the militia has abided by the TNC’s order to integrate into a unified military force. A third factor in the Younis killing is the shady military figure Khalifa Hifter, a former Libyan army colonel with a long association with the CIA. He is known to have clashed with Younis for control of the TNC’s military wing. Whether or not he is directly implicated, Hifter’s presence in the TNC confirms the involvement of various Western intelligence agencies in the sordid machinations in Benghazi. A fortnight after Younis’s death, TNC president Jalil, himself a former Gaddafi justice minister, has offered no account of what happened. Moreover, he has been forced to dismiss his entire “cabinet” to keep control of his fractious coalition of Islamists, ex-Gaddafi officials, CIA assets and assorted adventurers. [Libya]
• Give Obama an ‘F’ in the Middle East
  August 04, 2011 12:50 AM (Last updated: August 04, 2011 12:20 PM) By Michael Young The Daily Star We can learn a great deal about President Barack Obama’s approach to the Middle East from the contentious way that he handled the recent debt ceiling dispute with the U.S. Congress. Earlier this year the administration warned Congress that the debt ceiling would be breached by August. Some weeks ago Obama entered into negotiations with congressional Republicans over a debt reduction package that would include raising taxes and slashing spending. Republicans rejected a tax increase and broke off talks, leaving Obama in limbo. The president then stood back and watched as Congress tried to devise a solution, reinserting himself into the process when this failed, fearing that a default would harm his re-election prospects. Ultimately, he brokered a deal that conceded quite a bit to the Republicans, angering many among his Democratic base. Transpose those lessons to Obama’s actions today on a variety of Middle Eastern issues, and a pattern emerges. What we have is a president with undeniable intelligence, but without particularly strong convictions, whose preference for standing away from the fray often allows his political rivals to outmaneuver him, and who will raise expectations then come up short in carrying through on them. Obama is an opportunist ill adept at creating opportunities. [Obama] [Middle East]
• Russia, Turkey stand by Assad
  August 20, 2011 01:57 AM (Last updated: August 20, 2011 10:11 AM) Agencies Anti-government protesters hold signs calling for an end to the Assad regime’s crackdown. (AFP Photo) DAMASCUS/BEIRUT/ANKARA/MOSCOW: Syrian forces killed at least 23 protesters after tens of thousands of people flooded the streets after Friday prayers, activists said, as Russia and Turkey rejected Western calls for the Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down. Assad, who inherited power from his father in 2000, is facing the most serious international isolation of his rule. The U.S. and its European allies Thursday demanded he leave power. But both Russia and Turkey Friday dismissed calls for Assad to quit, offering the Syrian leader rare support despite a damning U.N. report Thursday on his “apparent shoot to kill” policy. A Russian Foreign Ministry source said Russia opposes U.S. and European calls for Assad leave power and believes he needs more time to implement promised reforms, while in Turkey. An official source told AFP Turkey also believes it is “too soon” to call for Assad’s departure. “We are not there yet. First and foremost the people of Syria must tell Assad to go. This has not been heard in the streets of Syria,” the Turkish official said. “The Syrian opposition is not united and we haven’t seen yet a collective call from Syrians to tell Assad to go, like in Egypt and Libya.” [Syria]
• Report: Mossad behind string of assassinations in Iran
  Posted By Robert Zeliger Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - 11:21 AM Share Israel's Mossad intelligence agency carried out the assassinations of several Iranian nuclear scientists in recent months, which has led to "the virtual decimation of the Islamic republic's elite physicists," according to Germany's Der Spiegel. The latest victim -- 35-year-old physicist Darioush Rezaei -- was shot in the throat in front of his daughter's kindergarten in Tehran on July 23. The attackers fled on motorcycle. Iran said Rezaei was a student, not a nuclear weapons expert, but the Associated Press reported last week that international sources confirmed he was indeed involved with the country's nuclear weapons program, working specifically on a key component for detonating a nuclear bomb -- high-voltage switches. [Assassination]
• The US-Al Qaeda Alliance: Bosnia, Kosovo and Now Libya. Washington’s On-Going Collusion with Terrorists
  by Prof. Peter Dale Scott Global Research, July 29, 2011 The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 31 No 1, August 1, 2011 Twice in the last two decades, significant cuts in U.S. and western military spending were foreseen: first after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But both times military spending soon increased, and among the factors contributing to the increase were America’s interventions in new areas: the Balkans in the 1990s, and Libya today.1 Hidden from public view in both cases was the extent to which al-Qaeda was a covert U.S. ally in both interventions, rather than its foe. U.S. interventions in the Balkans and then Libya were presented by the compliant U.S. and allied mainstream media as humanitarian. Indeed, some Washington interventionists may have sincerely believed this. But deeper motivations – from oil to geostrategic priorities – were also at work in both instances. In virtually all the wars since 1989, America and Islamist factions have been battling to determine who will control the heartlands of Eurasia in the post-Soviet era. In some countries – Somalia in 1993, Afghanistan in 2001 – the conflict has been straightforward, with each side using the other’s excesses as an excuse for intervention. But there have been other interventions in which Americans have used al-Qaeda as a resource to increase their influence, for example Azerbaijan in 1993. There a pro-Moscow president was ousted after large numbers of Arab and other foreign mujahedin veterans were secretly imported from Afghanistan, on an airline hastily organized by three former veterans of the CIA’s airline Air America. (The three, all once detailed from the Pentagon to the CIA, were Richard Secord, Harry Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn.)2 This was an ad hoc marriage of convenience: the mujahedin got to defend Muslims against Russian influence in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while the Americans got a new president who opened up the oilfields of Baku to western oil companies. The pattern of U.S. collaboration with Muslim fundamentalists against more secular enemies is not new. [Imperialism] [Religion] [Libya]
• West shows worrying signs of ‘Japanisation’
  By Richard Milne The big question for many investors these days is one that could scarcely have been thought about a few years ago: is the west turning into Japan? The response to that will determine the future direction of western economies as well as of shares and bonds. To date, the tentative answer has been that the developed world is heading Japan’s way as government bonds have far outperformed equities. [Crisis]
• America’s Dangerous Battle Plan
  August 17, 2011 By Raoul Heinrichs The AirSea Battle concept for countering China’s military rise is expensive and unhelpful. And could even spark a nuclear conflict. The officer, a senior leader in US Pacific Command, looked down, fumbled with his papers and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It was 2009, and he was answering a question about whether, in a Taiwan Straits crisis similar to that which occurred in the mid-1990s, the United States could confidently respond by again deploying aircraft carrier groups around Taiwan. ‘No,’ he conceded after a long pause, ‘and it’s the thing that really keeps me up at night.’ It was a telling response. Indeed, while China’s new aircraft carrier grabs all the attention, the People’s Liberation Army’s maritime denial strategy is quietly maturing, leaving the United States facing some difficult choices. As submarines and precision-guided strike capabilities accumulate in Chinese arsenals – and are woven into war plans – the US capacity for sea-control and power projection in the Western Pacific, long taken for granted, is steadily being eroded [China confrontation] [Military balance] [AirSea Battle]
• Turkey Attacks Kurdish Targets in Northern Iraq After Ambush
  By SEBNEM ARSU Published: August 18, 2011 ISTANBUL — Turkish warplanes attacked 60 targets in the mountains and border areas of northern Iraq early Thursday in pursuit of Kurdish separatist rebels suspected of responsibility a day earlier for a deadly quadruple bombing ambush on a military convoy in southeast Turkey, the army headquarters said. The airstrikes followed an artillery barrage by Turkish forces targeting 168 locations in the same region of northern Iraq, which military intelligence showed were frequented by the P.K.K., or Kurdistan Workers Party, the insurgent group that has been fighting for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast since the early 1980s. [Double standards][Client] [Decline]
• America’s lost ally
  By George F. Will, Thursday, August 18, 12:48 AM LONDON During the Second World War, a future prime minister, Harold Macmillan, said America is “the new Roman empire and we Britons, like the Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go.” How goes the tutoring of Rome by Athens? .We are in the fifth month of the Libyan intervention that Barack Obama’s administration said would involve “days, not weeks,” an undertaking about which Prime Minister David Cameron was much more enthusiastic than Obama, who rarely mentions it. The intervention resulted from Cameron’s and French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s sudden zest for waging humanitarian war. Before its objective became regime change, the point was to prevent Moammar Gaddafi from inflicting a humanitarian disaster. Officials here speak of “a crime being committed within our reach.” But what is that reach? After Gaddafi is deposed, as he probably will be, and after undetermined other nations have been deputed to police Libya’s postwar chaos, which surely there will be, moralists can answer this question: Did NATO’s operations — actually, those of a minority of NATO nations — really serve the humanitarian objective of economizing violence in Libya? And people here can then decide whether this was a sensible undertaking by a British government whose post-recession austerity budget, announced before the Libyan exercise in power projection, involves a mismatch between political ends and contracting military means. [Client] [Libya] [Humanitarian intervention]
• THE PERSONAL IS TOO POLITICAL
  Lee Siegel takes a step back from the surreal antagonism on Capitol Hill to figure out how we got here ... Given the recent gridlock in the American Congress over the debt ceiling and the budget, it’s sobering to remember an historical fact. Even during the McCarthy era—the most politically divisive moment in American history since the civil war—no one was arguing over taxes or the size of the federal government. In fact, at the height of McCarthyism, when the accusation of being un-American destroyed lives and careers, no one seemed especially vexed over the top marginal tax rate, which hovered between 91% and 94%. To be sure, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created an almost fanatical hatred of taxes among conservatives. Books like Frank Chodorov’s 1952 “The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil” suddenly found an eager audience. Yet while Chodorov’s book was published at a time when McCarthy’s indictments had liberals cowering in terror, Congress had yet to see the sort of onslaught against taxes that took place during the Reagan years. The anti-tax furore had yet to become mainstream. Until the final years of the cold war, high tax rates were part of the American way. The conflict between left and right created by the cold war was strictly ideological. It barely touched the structures of everyday life. Consider the policies of Richard Nixon, that legendary bugbear of the American left. The man created wage and price controls; established the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; signed the Clean Water Act; endorsed integrating schools, affirmative action and the Equal Rights Amendment. Today Nixon would be considered not just a big-government liberal, but a socialist leading the country helter-skelter down the road to serfdom. [Decline]
• As America's Economy Collapses, "New Normal" Police State Takes Shape
  by Tom Burghardt Global Research, August 15, 2011 As corporate overlords position themselves to seize what little remains of a tattered social net (adieu Medicare and Medicaid! Social Security? Au revoir!), the Obama administration is moving at break-neck speed to expand police state programs first stood-up by the Bush government. After all, with world share prices gyrating wildly, employment and wages in a death spiral, and retirement funds and publicly-owned assets swallowed whole by speculators and rentier scum, the state better dust-off contingency plans lest the Greek, Spanish or British "contagion" spread beyond the fabled shores of "old Europe" and infect God-fearin' folk here in the heimat. Fear not, they have and the lyrically-titled Civil Disturbances: Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources, otherwise known as Army Regulation 500-50, spells out the "responsibilities, policy, and guidance for the Department of the Army in planning and operations involving the use of Army resources in the control of actual or anticipated civil disturbances." (emphasis added) With British politicians demanding a clampdown on social media in the wake of London riots, and with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency having done so last week in San Francisco, switching off underground cell phone service to help squelch a protest against police violence, authoritarian control tactics, aping those deployed in Egypt and Tunisia (that worked out well!) are becoming the norm in so-called "Western democracies." [Surveillance] [Extraterritoriality] [Decline]
• Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down
  Eyewitnesses claim a second aircraft fired at the plane raising questions of British cover-up over the 1961 crash and its causes Share252 reddit this Comments (84) Julian Borger and Georgina Smith in Ndola guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 August 2011 19.20 BST Article history The wreckage of Dag Hammarskjöld's plane near Ndola, now Zambia. Eyewitnesses claim they saw a second plane fire at the UN chief's plane. Photograph: TopFoto New evidence has emerged in one of the most enduring mysteries of United Nations and African history, suggesting that the plane carrying the UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld, was shot down over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) 50 years ago, and the murder covered up by British colonial authorities. A British-run commission of inquiry blamed the 1961 crash on pilot error and a later UN investigation largely rubber-stamped its findings. They ignored or downplayed witness testimony of villagers near the crash site which suggested foul play. The Guardian has talked to surviving witnesses who were never questioned by the official investigations and were too scared to come forward. The residents on the western outskirts of the town of Ndola described Hammarskjöld's DC6 being shot down by a second, smaller aircraft
  The investigation led Björkdahl to previously unpublished telegrams – seen by the Guardian – from the days leading up to Hammarskjöld's death on 17 September 1961, which illustrate US and British anger at an abortive UN military operation that the secretary general ordered on behalf of the Congolese government against a rebellion backed by western mining companies and mercenaries in the mineral-rich Katanga region.
• A Christian Plot for Domination?
  Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry aren't just devout—both have deep ties to a fringe fundamentalist movement known as Dominionism, which says Christians should rule the world. Aug 14, 2011 10:51 PM EDT PrintEmail (Page 1 of 2) With Tim Pawlenty out of the presidential race, it is now fairly clear that the GOP candidate will either be Mitt Romney or someone who makes George W. Bush look like Tom Paine. Of the three most plausible candidates for the Republican nomination, two are deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism known as Dominionism. If you want to understand Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, understanding Dominionism isn’t optional. Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. [Religion]
• True cost of Afghan, Iraq wars is anyone's guess
  By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — When congressional cost-cutters meet later this year to decide on trimming the federal budget, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could represent juicy targets. But how much do the wars actually cost the U.S. taxpayer? Nobody really knows. Yes, Congress has allotted $1.3 trillion for war spending through fiscal year 2011 just to the Defense Department. There are long Pentagon spreadsheets that outline how much of that was spent on personnel, transportation, fuel and other costs. In a recent speech, President Barack Obama assigned the wars a $1 trillion price tag. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/08/15/120758/true-cost-of-afghan-iraq-wars.html#ixzz1VBNckjMo [Imperialism]
• Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases
  About CAAB The Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB) evolved in 1992 out of the long campaign of protest at the American base at Menwith Hill, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire; local people having expressed their concerns at the arrival of the US Army at Menwith Hill in 1951. We have continued to build on the work and struggles of many people over the years since the arrival, occupation and control of the US Visiting Forces in the UK. [Bases]
• England riots: pair jailed for four years for using Facebook to incite disorder
  Two men – whose posts did not result in riot-related event – sentenced at Chester crown court after arrests last week Share413 reddit this Helen Carter guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 August 2011 18.49 BST Article history Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, one of two men jailed for four years at Chester crown court for using Facebook to incite disorder, even though their actions did not cause rioting Two men have been jailed for four years for using Facebook to incite disorder. Jordan Blackshaw, 20, from Marston near Northwich, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, from Warrington, appeared at Chester crown court on Tuesday. They were arrested last week following incidents of violent disorder in London and other cities across the UK. Neither of their Facebook posts resulted in a riot-related event. [Human rights] [Double standards] [Media]
• Threat Resurges in Deadliest Day of Year for Iraq
  Marwan Ibrahim/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Mar Afram Syriac Orthodox Church in Kirkuk, Iraq, was one of many targets of violence across the country on Monday. By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT Published: August 15, 2011 BAGHDAD — A chilling series of fatal attacks across Iraq on Monday sent a disheartening message to the Iraqi and American governments: After hundreds of billions of dollars spent since the United States invasion in 2003, and tens of thousands of lives lost, insurgents remain a potent and perhaps resurging threat to Iraqis and the American troops still in the country. The 42 apparently coordinated attacks underscored the reality that few places in Iraq are safe. [Iraq] [Decline]
• The World Consequences of U.S. Decline
  by Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 311, Aug. 15, 2011 A decade ago, when I and some others spoke of U.S. decline in the world-system, we were met at best with condescending smiles at our naivety. Was not the United States the lone superpower, involved in every remote corner of the earth, and getting its way most of the time? This was a view shared all along the political spectrum. Today, the view that the United States has declined, has seriously declined, is a banality. Everyone is saying it, except for a few U.S. politicians who fear they will be blamed for the bad news of the decline if they discuss it. The fact is that just about everyone believes today in the reality of the decline. [Decline]
• Britain’s Riots: Thuggery, Looting, Lawlessness… By the Ruling Class
  by Finian Cunningham Global Research, August 11, 2011 After a conflagration of arson attacks, riots and looting in several British cities, including the capital, London, there is a sense of order having been restored from a massive mobilisation of police forces. There now follows the tracking down and prosecution of individuals involved in the mayhem. Conservative Prime Minister is leading “the fight back” to punish anyone who has inflicted damage and destruction to Britain’s society. The events have visibly shocked the political establishment of all parties, police chiefs and the mainstream media. But what should be more shocking is the myopic and incredibly banal commentary that is being offered to “explain” the outburst of street disturbances and violence. As pundits sit in comfy television studios trading inane insights about the “evils” of individual immorality, criminality, dysfunctional families, gang culture – in the background, so to speak, are the glaring signs scrolling across the screens of the cause of this societal breakdown. And yet the preponderant signs escape the mental radar of pundits and politicians alike. [Crisis]
• Happy Birthday Fidel Castro
  by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, August 13, 2011 Today, August 13, 2011 it is the birthday of Fidel Castro Ruz, leader of the Cuban Revolution. The Global Research team extends its warm greetings and best wishes to Comandante Fidel. Fidel Castro under arrest in July 1953 after the Moncada attack. Fidel Castro Ruz at the United Nations General Assembly in 1960 At the height of a US sponsored war and Worldwide economic crisis, Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban revolution, who to this day defies America's imperial design, remains a source of hope and inspiration to those committed to social justice and international solidarity. Last October, I had the opportunity of spending several days at Fidel Castro`s home in the suburbs of Havana. Our conversation and exchange focussed on the dangers of nuclear war. I had read Fidel Castro and Che Guevara during my high school days in Geneva, Switzerland and later at university in Britain and the US. When meeting him in person, I discovered a man of tremendous integrity, with an acute mind and sense of humor, committed in the minute detail of his speech to social progress and the advancement of humankind, conscious of the dangers of the US led war and the Worldwide crisis, with exceptional skills of analysis and understanding of his fellow human beings, with a true sprit of internationalism and a tremendous knowledge of history, economics and geopolitics. On a daily basis, Fidel spends several hours reading a large number of detailed international press reports (As he mentioned to me with a smile, "I frequently consult articles from the Global Research website"...). We focussed in large part on the dangers of nuclear war. Fidel Castro has the knack of addressing political details while relating them to key concepts. We also covered numerous complex international issues, focussing on the role of prominent political personalities, heads of State, authors and intellectuals. On the first day, when I met Fidel at his home, he was reading Bob Woodward's best-seller The Obama Wars which had just been released. (See Picture below).
• Openness – Burmese style
  August 15, 2011 12:16 pm by David Pilling .27 1. Aung San Suu Kyi on August 14, 2011. Getty Images. There are some strange things going on in Burma, the country renamed Myanmar by the generals who have ruled it since 1962. On Sunday, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to her home after leaving Rangoon, the former capital, for the first time since she was released from seven years of house arrest in November. The 66-year-old Nobel prize winner opened a library, donated food to some flood victims, and made a couple of speeches to several hundred supporters in which she asked for their patience. Not only were the Rangoon toll gates opened without fuss, according to a report from Reuters, but apparently the fee was waived, perhaps a sign that the generals are flush with cash from doing business with Thailand and China. [Media]
• Americans are angry. Why aren’t they protesting?
  By David S. Meyer, Published: August 12 There’s something exciting, sometimes terrifying, about people taking to the streets to get what they want. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, they gathered to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. In Athens, demonstrators set up a gallows in front of Parliament, threatening the socialist government, which was imposing austerity measures in the face of 15 percent unemployment. Most recently, in London and across England, young people have assembled at night, looting stores and burning cars to demand — well, that’s not clear yet. Whether you’re inspired or appalled depends on your politics. Demonstrators who play to our hopes are heroes; those who challenge our beliefs are at best misguided and at worst terrorists. Regardless, those in the streets carrying petrol or placards project their anger and aspirations to an audience as broad as possible. When they’re successful, we talk about their concerns as well as their tactics. .What about here in the United States? Polls consistently show that fewer than half of Americans approve of the job that President Obama is doing, and those ratings are far higher than Congress or either political party receives. Unemployment remains stubbornly above 9 percent. There is plenty of anger in America today: anger about joblessness across the nation, about cutbacks in services in the states, about increased tuition at our universities, about economic and political inequality that seems to be increasing, and at a government that seems unable to do anything about any of this. Where are the people taking to the streets? [Crisis]
• Insurgents kill 22 in suicide attack on Afghan provincial governor’s compound north of Kabul
  By Associated Press, Updated: Sunday, August 14, 3:23 PM CHARIKAR, Afghanistan — A team of six suicide bombers — some wearing explosive vests — stormed a provincial governor’s compound in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing 22 people in the latest high-profile attack to target prominent Afghan government officials, authorities said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in the Parwan provincial capital of Charikar, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Kabul. The province is home to Bagram Air Field, a sprawling base for U.S. and NATO troops. The coordinated assault is the most recent in a string of spectacular Taliban attacks within an hour’s drive of Kabul — a worrying sign of the insurgency’s strength near the heart of the country and its determination to target Afghanistan’s nascent leadership. [AfPak]
• Which offends? Her short dress or critic’s narrow view?
  By Anne Midgette, Published: August 12 Pianist Yuja Wang’s dress at a concert this month at the Hollywood Bowl has given rise to considerable attention.
• Iraqi Leader Backs Syria, With a Nudge From Iran
  By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and YASIR GHAZI Published: August 12, 2011 BAGHDAD — As leaders in the Arab world and other countries condemn President Bashar al-Assad’s violent crackdown on demonstrators in Syria, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq has struck a far friendlier tone, urging the protesters not to “sabotage” the state and hosting an official Syrian delegation. [Imperialism] [Unintended consequences] [Client]
• A "Humanitarian War" on Syria? Military Escalation. Towards a Broader Middle East-Central Asian War?
  by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, August 9, 2011 The ongoing protest movement is intended to serve as a pretext and a justification to intervene militarily against Syria. The existence of an armed insurrection is denied. The Western media in chorus have described recent events in Syria as a "peaceful protest movement" directed against the government of Bashar Al Assad, when the evidence confirms the existence of an armed insurgency integrated by Islamic paramilitary groups. From the outset of the protest movement in Daraa in mid-March, there has been an exchange of fire between the police and armed forces on the one hand and armed gunmen on the other. Acts of arson directed against government buildings have also been committed. In late July in Hama, public buildings including the Court House and the Agricultural Bank were set on fire. Israeli news sources, while dismissing the existence of an armed conflict, nonetheless, acknowledge that "protesters [were] armed with heavy machine guns." (DEBKAfile August 1, 2001. Report on Hama, emphasis added) [Humanitarian intervention]
• The Crisis of Humanitarian Intervention
  By Walden Bello, August 9, 2011 Events in Libya and Syria have again brought to the forefront the question of armed humanitarian intervention or the “responsibility to protect.” Our hearts all go out to the unarmed demonstrators seeking to bring down corrupt dictatorships that are a plague on their people. In Tunisia and Egypt, the people rose and deposed dictators on their own. Armed supporters of the Mubarak regime did attack and even fire on people in Tahrir Square, but a massive crackdown was avoided when the military decided not to take the side of the dictator. Things have not been so simple since then. Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi came down hard on civilian protesters, providing the opportunity for the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to intervene militarily by waging an air war and arming the rebels. Today, the Assad dictatorship's massive repression in cities and towns in Syria that have risen in revolt has also sparked agitation for intervention in the West. Is it ever legitimate to supersede the principle of national sovereignty with a military intervention aimed at protecting citizens from their government? And if the answer is yes, what circumstances would justify this course of action and how should it be carried out? [Humanitarian intervention]
• Media Disinformation and the Causes of the Somali Famine
  by William Bowles Global Research, August 4, 2011 Strategic Culture Foundation and williambowles.info BBC news coverage of the famine in Somalia has been saturating the airwaves and it's always like this whenever 'natural disasters' strike. Fundamentally it's little more than a fund-raising promo paid for with our taxes as endlessly repeated shots of emaciated babies and dying people serves no informative purpose except to tug covetously at our purse strings. And of course it has the added benefit of distracting us from our own condition – until the next crisis comes our way. The experience of Somalia shows that famine in the late 20th century is not a consequence of a shortage of food. On the contrary, famines are spurred on as a result of a global oversupply of grain staples. Since the 1980s, grain markets have been deregulated under the supervision of the World Bank and US grain surpluses are used systematically as in the case of Somalia to destroy the peasantry and destabilize national food agriculture. The latter becomes, under these circumstances, far more vulnerable to the vagaries of drought and environmental degradation. -- Michel Chossudovsky News coverage is further complicated by the fact that the disaster is taking place in a Western-originated and maintained 'war on terror'. Thus the ban on aid entering the region controlled by al-Shabab, the 'terrorists' is made play of by the BBC, though it presents us with conflicting stories on the subject. On 6 July the BBC carried a story titled, 'Somalia Islamists lift aid ban to help drought victims' but then on 22 July we read that somehow al- Shabab had managed to maintain a ban that it had supposedly lifted, 'Somali Islamists maintain aid ban'. Methinks the BBC speaks with forked tongue.[1] But what of the US sanctions in place on Somalia? The BBC carries one story on the subject of the sanctions put in place by Obama in April 2010 that banned any US aid to areas controlled by al-Shabab (which is pretty much the entire country apart from a few streets in what's left of Mogadishu, the capital) and now revised with the following proviso made by the deputy administrator of USAID: "What we need is assurances from the World Food Programme and from other agencies, the United Nations or other agencies, both public and in the non-governmental sector, who are willing to go into Somalia who will tell us affirmatively that they are not being taxed by al-Shabab, they are not being subjected to bribes from al-Shabab, that they can operate unfettered" -- 'US 'to aid Islamist areas of famine-hit Somalia'', BBC 20 July 2011 In other words, so far no aid is being sent by the US, thus the reality betrays the claims of the headline. [Media] [Sanctions] [Aid weapon]
• The Mysterious Death of Osama bin Laden: Creating Evidence Where There Is None
  by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, August 4, 2011 The New Yorker has published a story planted on Nicholas Schmidle by unidentified sources who claim to be familiar with the alleged operation that murdered Osama bin Laden. There is no useful information in the story. Its purpose seems simply to explain away or cover up holes in the original story, principally why did the Seals murder an unarmed, unresisting Osama bin Laden whose capture would have resulted in a goldmine of terrorist information and whose show trial would have rescued the government’s crumbling 9/11 story? The gullible Schmidle tells us: “‘There was never any question of detaining or capturing him--it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,’ the special-operations officer told me.” In other words, the SEALs murdered bin Laden, because the US government did not want detainees, not because trigger-happy stupid SEALs destroyed a font of terrorist information. Why did the SEALS dump bin Laden’s body in the ocean instead of producing the evidence to a skeptical world? No real explanation, just that SEALS had done the same thing to other victims. Schmidle writes: “All along, the SEALs had planned to dump bin Laden’s corpse into the sea--a blunt way of ending the bin Laden myth.” But before they did so, the US checked with an unidentified Saudi intelligence operative, who allegedly replied, “Your plan sounds like a good one.” I mean, really. After all of Sy Hersh’s New Yorker revelations of US government lies and plots, one can understand the pressure that might have been applied to the New Yorker to publish this fairy tale. But what is extraordinary is that there was a real story that Schmidle and the New Yorker could have investigated. In the immediate aftermath of bin Laden’s alleged murder by the SEALs, Pakistani TV interviewed the next door neighbor to bin Laden’s alleged compound. Someone supplied the video with an English translation running at the bottom of the video. According to the translation, the next door neighbor, Mr. Bashir, said that he watched the entire operation from the roof of his house. There were 3 helicopters. Only 1 landed. About a dozen men got out and entered the house. They shortly returned and boarded the helicopter. When the helicopter lifted off it exploded, killing all aboard. Mr. Bashir reports seeing bodies and pieces of bodies all over. The US government acknowledges that it lost a helicopter, but claims no one was hurt. Obviously, as there were no further landings, if everyone was killed as Mr. Bashir reports, there was no body to be dumped into the ocean. [Osama] [Media] [Disinformation]
• A time of riot: England and the world
  Paul Rogers, 11 August 2011 In the four nights from 6 August 2011, London and some of England's largest provincial cities have witnessed rioting on a scale greater than for many decades. The prime minister David Cameron and his colleagues - on holiday and off guard - have sought to regain authority by promoting a clear narrative of the unrest that can appeal to many citizens, not least those concerned by looting and mayhem entirely out of their experience. The government's central effort is to define the events in terms solely of absolute criminality and mindless violence. The perpetrators, according to this narrative, bear every bit of responsibility for what has happened; there is no need to explore any subtext whatsoever. The penalties imposed on those arrested will be harsh. If the violence continues, then more stringent techniques - baton-rounds, water-cannon and more aggressive policing - will be employed, and prisons expanded. [Crisis]
• U.S. Budget Cuts Will Reshape Power Balance in Northeast Asia
  The U.S. defense budget amounts to approximately US$700 billion a year, 10 times higher than China's. But the U.S. has decided on drastic cuts to its defense spending, which account for around 20 percent of the national budget. The Obama administration intends to cut defense spending by $400 billion over the next decade, and U.S. media forecast between $550 billion to $900 billion in cuts over the next 10 years. [China confrontation] [Military balance]
• Four months of war in Libya
  02.08.2011 ?natoly Tsyganok, director of the Center for Military Forecasting NATO’s military operation against Libya, conducted mainly by the armed forces of the US, France and Britain, is speeding up the formation of a new system of international relations. At the same time the war serves as a firing ground for testing the strategy of the United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) in real combat situation as well as the efficiency of new weapons … US and NATO strategists were wrong counting that the military campaign would be completed in several weeks. Under resolution ? 1973 of the UN Security Council, no-fly zone over the air space of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was created, embargo on weapon supplies was introduced and the Libyan assets were frozen. The operation in Libya which was initially to be completed by June 27 was prolonged by 90 days till the end of September. There have been reports in mass media that a wide-scale ground operation in Libya under the US command is being planned and the troops are expected to be deployed there by October. The Libyan war is the fifth in addition to four wars the US is conducting in Iraq, Afghanistan Pakistan and Yemen… The goals of the US permanent presence in Libya are to punish Gaddafi for his refusal to join USAFRICOM, to drive the Chinese away from Libya and to cut the access to oil resources for Europeans. [Imperialism] [Libya]
• How to make the best of the long malaise
  By Joseph Stiglitz The only good thing about the continuing barrage of bad economic news is that it could have been worse: all three rating agencies could have downgraded the US, stock markets could have fallen further and the US could have defaulted on its debt. The general view is now that in this, the next round of the Great Recession, there is a high risk of things getting worse, with no effective instruments at governments’ disposal. The first point is correct but the second is not quite right. [Crisis]
• London Rioting Prompts Fears Over Soccer and Olympics
  By JULIET MACUR and ERIC PFANNER Published: August 9, 2011 Fearing for the safety of players and fans amid the rioting in London, soccer officials on Tuesday canceled two international matches and may postpone the opening weekend of the English Premier League, prompting questions about the city’s ability to secure high-profile events like soccer matches and next summer’s Olympics. Those decisions were caused by the widespread violence in the city, with rioters setting cars and buildings afire, looting stores and challenging an already stretched police force. The unrest has spread into neighborhoods near the Olympic Park in east London, the site of the Olympic Stadium and several other sites that will form the heart of the 2012 London Games. [Crisis]
• London Riots Put Spotlight on Troubled, Unemployed Youths in Britain
  By LANDON THOMAS Jr. and RAVI SOMAIYA Published: August 9, 2011 LONDON — “I came here to get my penny’s worth,” said a man who gave his name as Louis James, 19, a slightly built participant in the widening riots that have shaken London to its core. With a touch of guilt on Tuesday, Mr. James showed off what he described as a $195 designer sweater that he said he took during looting in Camden Town, a gentrified area of north London. In recent days, young rioters and looters like Mr. James have dominated front pages and television reports around the world, prompted a recall of Parliament to a special session and forced the deployment of thousands of police officers.
  But the riots also reflect the alienation and resentment of many young people in Britain, where one million people from the ages of 16 to 24 are officially unemployed, the most since the deep recession of the mid-1980s. [Crisis]
• Editorial Board Opinion: What’s behind Britain’s riots
  By Editorial, Published: August 9 LONDON IS a long way from the Middle East, and the riots that have racked British cities the past four nights have none of the positive qualities of the Arab Spring uprisings. The mostly peaceful crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and the Syrian city of Hama have sought to overturn corrupt tyrants; the rampaging youths in London have aimed at stealing televisions and clothes and setting cars and buildings on fire. Arab protest leaders speak with Jeffersonian passion of building a new democratic order, while the British rioters’ ideology seemed to be summed up by two young women who told the BBC that they meant to show the police and “the rich” that “we can do whatever we want.” Still, it’s possible to see a connection between the young people who first gathered in frustration outside a police station in north London last Saturday, infuriated by police officers’ killing of a 29-year-old black man, and those who began rioting in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid following the self-immolation of a frustrated fruit seller last December. The common factors include high unemployment, resentment toward a prosperous and seemingly impenetrable upper class, and hatred of the police. In Britain’s case, as in some Arab countries, the trouble is further fueled by racial and ethnic tensions. [Crisis]
• Nancy Wake, ‘White Mouse’ of World War II, dies at 98
  By Adam Bernstein, Wednesday, August 10, 1:19 AM The Gestapo called her “The White Mouse” for the way she deftly avoided their traps. Nancy Wake, 98, who died of an infection Aug. 7 in London, was one of the most effective and cunning British agents working in German-occupied France during World War II. .A sultry glamour girl before the war, she married a French playboy industrialist whose tastes, like hers, ran to caviar and champagne midmorning and love in the afternoon. They were living in southern France when the war ignited. She hid downed Allied servicemen at her home and led them over the Pyrenees to the safety of neutral Spain. She later helped organize thousands of French resistance fighters known as the Maquis, by meeting Allied arms drops, distributing weapons and training 7,000 partisans in preparation for the Normandy invasion. She earned decorations from the British, French and American governments; she was belatedly honored in Australia, where she had grown up. Exact figures are hard to establish, but she was reported to have helped save many hundreds of lives.
  Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, the youngest of six siblings, was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on Aug. 30, 1912. Her father, a journalist, abandoned the family in Sydney. He also sold the family’s home, forcing his wife and their children to find new lodgings. Ms. Wake left home at 16 and, buffered by a small inheritance from an aunt, booked passage to England.
  .In London, she bluffed her way into journalism by telling a Hearst newspaper executive that she was fluent in Egyptian— Egypt being a favorite topic of his. She wrote shorthand gibberish that resembled hieroglyphics and passed it off as the language. [Media]
• Victors Justice in Iraq. Tariq Aziz : “Ill, Isolated and Abandoned"
  by Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research, July 15, 2011 “The expense of spirit in a waste of shame … is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust.” William Shakespeare (1564-1616.) In the UK, there has been much discussion in recent months, on the right of the ill or those with potentially disabling conditions to choose their time of death. Imagine however, feeling so hopeless, abandoned and despairing that you request execution – in Iraq. That is the plea of Tariq Aziz, that country’s former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. Aziz surrendered to the Americans two weeks after the invasion, in 2003. Well known in the West, he had some faith in the international community. Although woefully treated in diplomatic circles in the US., unable to travel away from the UN in New York (“The embargo even extends to dialogue, yet the West accuses us of being undemocratic”, he told me, in an interview, prior to the invasion. He had a point.) Broadly, though, he believed in the integrity of the international community. “I can talk at any level (with) the French, Russians, Chinese, Spanish, Italians, Belgians …” The former Foreign Minister was a sick man, with a serious heart ailment, even as he traveled from Baghdad to Rome, to ask the Pope to intervene, just prior to the invasion, in a brave and desperate move to avert more suffering and bloodshed. His passion for his country was unmistakable and in the complex and – after decades on a war footing – understandably paranoid clime of the country, he was prepared to take personal risks. “Why don’t a cross party group of US congressmen come here, address our Parliament, engage in dialogue, meet people?” He asked me and other foreign visitors whom he met, extending the invitation to senior British parliamentarians. Some of us tried hard to convey his message. He – and we - were addressing a political brick wall. Lies, slaughter and invasion trump diplomacy every time, it seems, under the “New World Order.” [Imperialism] [human rights] [Iraq]
• America and Afghanistan: politics in charge
  Paul Rogers, 14 July 2011 The United States’s military strategy in Afghanistan is fracturing, but what matters most now in Washington is the domestic electoral timetable. A series of violent incidents in Afghanistan casts renewed doubt over the claims of progress in the United States’s military-political strategy in the country. It includes the assassination on 12 July 2011 of the powerful and high-profile Kandahar politician Ahmed Wali Karzai (half-brother of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai) and the bombing of a mosque-held memorial service for him on 14 July which killed five people. [AfPak] [Domestic] [US global strategy]
• U.S. recognizes Libya's rebel government, which needs a boost
  Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that the United States was formally recognizing Libya's main opposition group as the country's legitimate government, a move aimed at boosting a floundering rebellion that's approaching its sixth month as Col. Moammar Gadhafi remains in control of the capital. "The United States views the Gadhafi regime as no longer having any legitimate authority in Libya," Clinton said at a meeting in Istanbul, where more than 30 countries and international bodies signed on to a road map for Gadhafi to give up power and for the rebel Transitional National Council to lead a move to a new democratic government Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/15/117725/us-recognizes-libyas-rebel-government.html#ixzz1SIaLG700 [Imperialism][Legality]
• On debt, credit rating firms flex muscle with downgrade warnings despite U.S. pleas
  By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Saturday, July 16, 3:37 AM The Obama administration has mounted an intense behind-the-scenes campaign to keep the nation’s major credit rating companies from issuing threats that they might downgrade the United States over the swelling size of the federal debt. Senior administration officials have been trying for months to convince analysts at the credit rating companies — all part of publicly traded firms — that political leaders in Washington can come to an agreement to tame the debt. .At one key moment, worried that news of a potential downgrade could wreak havoc on the markets, officials summoned four Standard & Poor’s analysts to a meeting with nearly every senior member of President Obama’s economic team at which Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner made an impassioned plea against any action raising doubts about U.S. credit. [Crisis]
• Will international terrorists help the U.S. build ‘The Greater Middle East’?
  13.07.2011 Peter Iskenderov PhD, Senior Research Associate Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Science The so-called ‘Arab spring’, which started as a wave of anti-government riots in Tunisia and Egypt, is now developing in full accordance with the US scenario, its main aim being to reshape the geopolitics, which the Bush administration once described as ‘The Greater Middle East’ plan. Emphasis is made on maintaining instability in this region through its gradual territorial division. In case of success, the allies of the US in Western Europe might get a chance to control huge energy resources and energy routes thus preventing other countries from having their own zones of influence on territories expanding from Morocco and Algeria to western Indonesia and the Philippines. This tactics were previously successfully used in the Balkans. A new national security strategy unveiled by the US administration proves that we`ve entered a new stage of the Arab revolution. First Barack Obama’s assistant for counterterrorism and homeland security, John Brennan said that Washington was going to deepen ties with governments in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan and North Africa. Then the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton elaborated which ‘governments’ they were talking about: The Society of the Muslim Brotherhood, or simply ‘The Muslim Brotherhood’ Islamist organization, which has long been seeking power in Egypt, is one of them. “We welcome…dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us”, Mrs. Clinton said, without mentioning however terrorist roots of this group and its links to Al-Qaeda, as well the US ban on any contacts with the Brotherhood. But now the US officials are allowed to cooperate with members of this Islamist party which was founded in 1928 with the main goal of ‘reclaiming Islam`s manifest destiny, an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia’. A similar scenario the West is now being implemented in Libya. There the US chose to cooperate with the Libyan Fighting Group (LIFG), founded in 1970 as a radical faction against Muammar Gaddafi`s regime. In the middle 1990s LIFG joined Al-Qaeda, and their unity was officially confirmed in 2007. As of today, the LIFG has a kind of a political wing- the Libyan Islamic Movement for Change which is seeking leadership among the opposition in Benghazi and receives active support from the US, France and NATO. Cooperation between the West and Islamists is also quite active in Syria, where radical groups are supposed to play a crucial role in toppling the Bashar Assad regime [US Global strategy] [Fragmentation] [Libya] [Syria] [Islamist]
• Karzai brother's death worsens U.S. troubles in Afghanistan
  By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — In the end, Ahmed Wali Karzai personified America's dearth of good options in Afghanistan. He was a corrupt politico who became the kingpin of volatile southern Afghanistan through kickbacks, violence, family ties, and working both sides of the war — the Taliban and the West. He promised the U.S.-led military coalition that dealing with him would promote security, but it brought mixed results at best. More often, his corrupt and self-serving methods ran counter to the kind of government the coalition wanted to leave behind, fueling resentment and earning recruits for the Taliban in their southern heartland. His assassination Tuesday by a close family associate leaves the United States, even as it begins to draw down 33,000 surge troops, facing the very question that has bedeviled it since the war began: How to leave behind a southern Afghanistan stable enough not to become a breeding ground for the Taliban and other anti-American extremist groups. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/12/117541/karzai-brothers-death-worsens.html#ixzz1S1DdYN97 [AfPak] [Client]
• Arab world’s views of U.S., President Obama increasingly negative, new poll finds
  Posted at 11:00 PM ET, 07/12/2011 By Jason Ukman The hope that the Arab world had not long ago put in the United States and President Obama has all but evaporated. Two and a half years after Obama came to office, raising expectations for change among many in the Arab world, favorable ratings of the United States have plummeted in the Middle East, according to a new poll conducted by Zogby International for the Arab American Institute Foundation. In most countries surveyed, favorable attitudes toward the United States dropped to levels lower than they were during the last year of the Bush administration. The killing of Osama bin Laden also worsened attitudes toward the United States. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, 30 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the United States (compared with 41 percent in 2009), while roughly 5 percent said the same in Egypt (compared with 30 percent in 2009). [Decline] [Obama] [Public opinion] [Image] [Obama]

• With Blunt, Salty Talk, Panetta Era Begins
  Pool photo by Paul J. Richards Leon Panetta, the defense secretary, with U.S. Military Police at Kabul International Airport on Sunday. By ELISABETH BUMILLER Published: July 12, 2011 ERBIL, Iraq — The received wisdom in Washington when Leon E. Panetta took Robert M. Gates’s place as defense secretary was that the Pentagon was exchanging one low-intensity Beltway professional for another. Well, yes and no. Mr. Panetta may be Mr. Gates’s friend and a longtime creature of the capital, but his inaugural trip to Iraq and Afghanistan this week and last proved that in substance and style — from a relentless focus on military intelligence and quashing Al Qaeda to salty remarks that left his aides scrambling to provide him cover — he is another species entirely. A new era at the Pentagon has begun. “This damn country has a hell of a lot of resources,” Mr. Panetta boomed on Monday to American troops at Camp Victory in Baghdad, during 28 minutes of remarks that included, if you were counting, 16 cheerful “damns” and “hells” and one unprintable description of Osama bin Laden. [US global strategy]
• Visa Delays Imperil Iraqis Who Helped U.S.
  By TIM ARANGO Published: July 12, 2011 BAGHDAD — Terrorism fears in the United States are all but halting visas for Iraqis, even those who risked their lives aiding the American war effort, making them especially vulnerable ahead of the planned American military withdrawal. [Imperialism] [Client]
• Ahmed Wali Karzai had rebuilt relationship with U.S.
  Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Updated: Wednesday, July 13, 6:24 AM KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — In the months before his death by an assassin’s bullets on Tuesday, Ahmed Wali Karzai had quietly rebuilt his relationship with the United States and emerged as the most influential ally for American commanders and diplomats seeking to quell the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan. They believe Ahmed Karzai, President Hamid Karzai’s half-brother and the leader of Kandahar’s provincial council, had started to evolve earlier this year from a self-interested strongman to a regional leader willing to take nascent steps to share power with political and tribal rivals. .U.S. officials were initially skeptical of Taliban claims of responsibility for the assassination but now believe that the killer, a trusted Karzai security official, was a Taliban sleeper agent. Karzai’s killing now poses a significant setback for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. [AfPak] [Client]
• May trade deficit rose to $50.2B, highest level in 31 months, as oil imports surge
  By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, July 13, 5:19 AM WASHINGTON — The U.S. trade deficit surged in May to the highest level in more than two and a half years, driven wider by a big increase in oil imports and a decline in exports. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that the deficit increased 15.1 percent to $50.2 billion in May. That’s the largest imbalance since October 2008. [Currency] [Deficit]
• The Army's Next Big Fight Protecting its own budget from Panetta and the pols.
  By Fred Kaplan, New America Foundation July 6, 2011 | Slate It's a fair bet that when Leon Panetta took the helm of the Pentagon last week, one of his marching orders was to find more ways to cut the defense budget, and not just around the edges. One result of this is that the Army will very likely take a whacking. That's probably the plan, anyway. Obstacles may, of course, intervene. [Pentagon]
• Diagnosing the American decline: a guest post
  Posted By Clyde Prestowitz Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - 2:45 PM Share In the wake of my recent blog post on the new Oakland Bay Bridge being made in China, a lively debate has erupted. I found the best comments to be those of Vikram Dalal of Iowa State University. I am passing them along here [Decline]
• Risk-Free And Above The Law: U.S. Globalizes Drone Warfare
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, July 7, 2011 Last week the Washington Post, the New York Times and other major American newspapers reported that the U.S. launched its first unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) missile attack inside Somalia. The strike was the first acknowledged Pentagon military attack inside the Horn of Africa nation since a helicopter raid staged by commandos in 2009 and the first use of an American drone to conduct a missile strike there. Drones had earlier been used in the country in their original capacity, for surveillance, including identifying targets for bomb and missile attacks, one being shot down in October of 2009. But as Britain’s The Guardian reported on July 30, the strike in Somalia marked “the expansion of the pilotless war campaign to a sixth country,” as the remote-controlled aircraft have already been employed to deadly effect in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and most recently Libya.
• US shock doctrine – Libya style
  Rob Prince, 7 July 2011 It has been relatively easy for NATO to violate UN Resolution 1973 in part because of the splits of the peace movement worldwide. The peace movement will have to work very hard to counter the other interests involved in the next stage. A few voices are warning against continuing intervention. It has been relatively easy for NATO to violate UN Resolution 1973 in part because of the splits of the peace movement worldwide. While the resolution clearly calls for a no-fly zone to protect the Libyan opposition from air attacks from Gaddafi’s air force and has a vague provision to do whatever necessary to implement the no fly zone, there is nothing in the resolution that supports the bombing of Gaddafi forces positions, arming the opposition and providing military advisors, or, as it has evolved, calling for the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime itself. This is a classic case of ‘mission creep’. NATO used the UN Security Council resolution to provide a pretext to open the door to Libya militarily and then has gone on its merry way in violation of much of its framework. They were able to do so in large measure, especially in Europe and North America, due to the manner in which the media pulled on the heartstrings of the public with respect to the fate of the Libyan rebels. Some of it was true: the rebels certainly looked about to be crushed. Some of it was embellished: true enough Gaddafi’s regime was repressive and tolerated no opposition, but the social and economic achievements Libyans have enjoyed over his forty-year rule are not insignificant. Some of it was fabricated: for example, that the wave of repression Gaddafi would have unleashed against his adversaries would have amounted to nothing short of genocide. [Imperialism] [Humanitarian intervention]
• The Military as a Jobs Program: There are More Efficient Ways to Stimulate the Economy
  by Ellen Brown Global Research, June 22, 2011 Web of Debt "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. . . . We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people." –Dwight David Eisenhower, "The Chance for Peace," speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953 In a Wall Street Journal editorial on June 8 bemoaning the failure of the Obama stimulus package, Martin Feldstein wrote: "Experience shows that the most cost-effective form of temporary fiscal stimulus is direct government spending. The most obvious way to achieve that in 2009 was to repair and replace the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan that would otherwise have to be done in the future. But the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department." You can’t make this stuff up. The most obvious way to stimulate the economy is to replace military equipment? And the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department? When veterans’ benefits and other past military costs are factored in, the military now devours half the U.S. budget. If military spending is such a cost-effective stimulus, why have the trillions poured into it in the last decade left the economy reeling? [Militarisation] [Military industrial complex]
• Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy
  by Michael Parenti Global Research, June 30, 2011 Information Clearing House - 2011-06-28 Why has the United States government supported counterinsurgency in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and many other places around the world, at such a loss of human life to the populations of those nations? Why did it invade tiny Grenada and then Panama? Why did it support mercenary wars against progressive governments in Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, East Timor, Western Sahara, South Yemen, and elsewhere? Is it because our leaders want to save democracy? Are they concerned about the well-being of these defenseless peoples? Is our national security threatened? I shall try to show that the arguments given to justify U.S. policies are false ones. But this does not mean the policies themselves are senseless. American intervention may seem "wrongheaded" but, in fact, it is fairly consistent and horribly successful. [Imperialism] [Spin] [Camouflage] [Humanitarian intervention]
• The Powers of Manipulation: Islam as a Geopolitical Tool to Control the Middle East
  by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research, July 2, 2011 As Washington and its cohorts march towards the Eurasian Heartland, they have tried to manipulate Islam as a geo-political tool. They have created political and social chaos in the process. Along the way they have tried to redefine Islam and to subordinate it to the interests of global capital by ushering in a new generation of so-called Islamists, chiefly amongst the Arabs. The Project to Redefine Islam: Turkey as the New Model and “Calvinist Islam” Turkey in its present form is now being presented as the democratic model for the rebelling Arab masses to follow. It is true that Ankara has progressed since the days it used to ban Kurdish from being spoken in public, but Turkey is not a functional democracy and is very much a kleptocracy with fascist tendencies. The military still plays a huge role in the affairs of the state and government. The term “deep state,” which denotes a state run secretly from the top-down by unaccountable bodies and individuals, in fact originates from Turkey. Civil rights are still not respected in Turkey and candidates for public office have to be approved by the state apparatus and the groups controlling them, which try to filter out anyone that would go against the status quo in Turkey. Turkey is not being presented as a model for the Arabs due to its democratic qualifications. It is being presented as the political model for the Arabs, because of a project of political and socio-economic “bida” (innovation) involving the manipulation of Islam. Although very popular, the Turkish Justice and Development Party or JDP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi or AKP) was allowed to come into power in 2002, without opposition by the Turkish military and the Turkish courts [US global strategy] [Islam]
• Countering the New Orthodoxy Reinterpreting Counterinsurgency in Iraq
  By Douglas Ollivant, New America Foundation June 28, 2011 | New America Foundation Success, it is said, has a thousand fathers. Now four years removed from the advent of the 2007 Baghdad “Surge,”[i] the situation in Iraq, while not perfect, has dramatically improved. Violence is down significantly, despite continuing acts of terror against the Iraqi people by Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and some Iranian surrogate forces.[ii] Admittedly, the formation of the new Iraqi government following the 2010 election has been less-than-efficiently executed. But even so, Iraq continues to find a “good enough” solution and has avoided a return to the violence of 2006-2007. While it is not exactly a victory parade or “Mission Accomplished,” this may well be what success in a stability operations looks like. [Pacification]
• A changing Asia-Pacific: Prospects for war, peace, cooperation and order
  Muthiah Alagappa Ph.D. Centre for Strategic Studies: New Zealand Victoria University of Wellington No. 09/11
• On Independence Day 2011, we're more dependent than ever
  By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — This year, as the nation celebrates Independence Day, the sputtering U.S. economy offers a stark reminder that today we're more dependent upon foreigners than ever before. We need them to finance our debt; China and Japan together hold more than $2 trillion of U.S. Treasury bonds. We need them to supply much of the oil that's critical to our economy. We need them to make the shoes we wear and the gadgets that dominate our lives. We even need them to buy more of the products we make, as growing exports are vital to our economic rebound. None of these dependencies is particularly new, but there's growing concern about how much economic independence we've lost. [Independence] [Juche]
• French See Case Against Strauss-Kahn as American Folly
  By STEVEN ERLANGER Published: July 3, 2011 PARIS — The stunning reversals in the criminal case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a putative French presidential candidate, have reawakened a dormant anti-Americanism here, fueled by a sense that the raw, media-driven culture of the United States has undermined justice and fair play. There was shock in France after the arrest of Mr. Strauss-Kahn in May and intense criticism of the manner in which he was displayed in handcuffs, pulled unshaven into a televised court session and stuffed into a Rikers Island cell under suicide watch. There was confusion and criticism over the glee with which the New York tabloids in particular highlighted every humiliation and turned to clichés about the French — “Chez Perv” and “Frog Legs It” — in the coverage. And there was a sense that it was not just Mr. Strauss-Kahn who was being so jauntily humiliated, but France itself. Now, with the case appearing to collapse over questions about the credibility of the hotel housekeeper from Guinea who accused him, and Mr. Strauss-Kahn freed from house arrest, the French are feeling a kind of bitter jubilation of their own, and renewing their criticisms about the rush to judgment, the public relations concerns of elected prosecutors and the somehow uncivilized, brutal and carnival nature of American society, democracy and justice. Former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said Friday that “he was thrown to the wolves” in the American system; a former justice minister, Robert Badinter, called Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s treatment “a lynching, a murder by media.” In an editorial this weekend, Le Monde wrote that “the least one can say is that the vagaries of the American procedure” had “condemned Dominique Strauss-Kahn before even the start of a serious inquiry.” Criticizing the “media-judicial machine,” the paper said the costs to Mr. Strauss-Kahn were heavy, including the loss of his job and his political future. The paper said that with the American system of an elected prosecutor dependent on the voters and the way it functions with the press, with police leaks and “terrible photos illegally transmitted to the press and then also illegally reproduced by certain newspapers — everything was done to place Mr. Strauss-Kahn in a situation of extreme weakness before even the beginning of an inquiry.”
• DLA Piper alum launches practice focused on humanitarian issues
  By Catherine Ho, Monday, July 4, 4:07 AM Jared Genser, a Washington lawyer who has lobbied to free imprisoned human rights activists, has left DLA Piper to start his own firm focusing on international humanitarian issues. Formerly a partner in the government affairs practice at one of the world’s largest law firms, Genser launched Perseus Strategies LLC last week. The venture is primarily a law firm aimed at helping companies, nonprofits and governments set up humanitarian projects related to international development, global health advocacy and poverty alleviation. It will also provide political consulting services and public relations advocacy. .The firm is a solo practice but may expand later, Genser said. It shares office space with boutique law firm Heideman Nudelman & Kalik at 1146 19th St. NW. [Human rights] [Manipulation]
• Navy photographer spurns deal, will spend July 4 in jail
  By Carol Rosenberg | Miami Herald A U.S. military veteran of Iraq and Guantánamo on Friday spurned a government offer of pre-trial probation and instead faced the prospect of the Fourth of July in a Miami lockup while awaiting a federal passport fraud trial later this month. Navy Reserves Petty Officer 2nd Class Elisha Leo Dawkins, 26, has been confined to the downtown federal detention center since soon after he returned from the Guantánamo detention center earlier this year. There he served as a Navy photographer, chronicling the lives of war-on-terror captives, apparently unaware that the U.S. immigration service had targeted him for deportation to his mother’s native Bahamas when he was 8 years old. [Human rights]
• Strauss-Kahn Case Seen as in Jeopardy
  By JIM DWYER, WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and JOHN ELIGON Published: June 30, 2011 The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement officials. Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself. Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said.

• France sent arms to Libyan rebels
  Anis Mili/Reuters - Libyan rebel fighters help themselves to weapons from an abandoned Gaddafi ammunition dump bombed by NATO a few days ago, approximately 25 miles southeast of Zintan. Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Michael Birnbaum, Thursday, June 30, 3:33 AM French officials announced Wednesday that they had armed rebels in Libya, marking the first time a NATO country has said it was providing direct military aid to opponents of the government in a conflict that has lasted longer than many policymakers expected. France dropped light armaments, including guns and rocket-propelled grenades, in the Nafusa Mountains in western Libya in early June to help rebel forces who were “in a very deteriorating situation” under threat from the Libyan military, a French military spokeswoman said. The Pentagon's top officials say nations other than the U.S. need to step up if Libya's rebels want equipment and training, vowing that U.S. troops won't get involved on the ground. (March 31) Libya’s rebel government asks for $3 billion in international loans The decision marks a new step in the international military intervention in Libya, which has entered its fourth month. NATO has been careful to limit its contact with the rebels, citing ground rules that restrict it to protecting civilians, not explicitly choosing sides in the battle between anti-government forces and Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s military.
• Who Does The Law Serve?
  by Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, June 26, 2011 hen my book (with Lawrence Stratton), The Tyranny of Good Intentions, was published, progressives and the left-wing refused to believe that the rich suffer frame-ups from prosecutorial abuse. Their response was that law is controlled by the rich and functions in their service. Only the poor and minorities suffer at the hands of the law. The political left knew that Michael Milken was guilty, because the rich “junk bond king” financed takeovers of corporations that threw workers out of jobs. Leftists accepted the Justice (sic) Department’s fanciful claim that the Exxon Valdez oil spill was a criminal act, not an accident for which civil damages were the remedy. Leona Helmsley was guilty, because she was a rich bitch. So was Martha Stewart. The left-wing was firm: all rich white people in prison are guilty, and the only reason they are in prison is that they are so obviously guilty that the system couldn’t let them off. In other words, they were so audacious in their crimes that the crimes couldn’t be covered up. The same mentality now dominates discussions of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.
• The Defense Rests
  As Robert Gates retires from the Pentagon top job, he sounds a grim warning: America is losing its grip. Aboard the Pentagon jet on his last foreign trip as secretary of defense, Robert Gates takes a moment to peer across the American horizon—and the view is dire: the U.S. is in danger of losing its supremacy on the global stage, he says. “I’ve spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position,” he tells NEWSWEEK, seated in a windowless conference room aboard the Boeing E-4B. “It didn’t have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong. This is a different time.” A pause. “To tell you the truth, that’s one of the many reasons it’s time for me to retire, because frankly I can’t imagine being part of a nation, part of a government … that’s being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world.” [Decline]
• Assad deserves a swift trip to The Hague
  By Madeleine Albright and Marwan Muasher It is time for the international community to take a stand against Syria’s use of violence against its citizens. On Monday the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Muammer Gaddafi and two of his closest lieutenants for alleged crimes against humanity. The United Nations Security Council should now direct the ICC to investigate whether Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is guilty of crimes against humanity. The charge: using lethal violence to repress peaceful demonstrations in support of democratic rule. The Arab League should also assume the same principled position on Syria that it took on Libya. [Double standards] [Manipulation] [Camouflage] [UNUS]
• Landmark Kabul hotel attacked by Taliban suicide bombers
  By Pamela Constable, Updated: Wednesday, June 29, 5:40 PM KABUL — A squad of up to eight Taliban suicide bombers and gunmen laid siege to a landmark hotel overlooking the Afghan capital late Tuesday, sparking an hours-long firefight that ended only when NATO helicopters shot dead several insurgents who had commandeered the building’s roof. The audacious and heavily armed assault, for which a Taliban spokesman quickly asserted responsibility, shattered any sense of security in the sprawling capital. The attack, which left at least 10 dead and eight wounded among civilians and security forces, comes as Afghanistan prepares to begin a transition from international to full domestic control of defense, security and civilian governance. .The insurgents targeted one of Kabul’s best-known and best-protected buildings, the historic Intercontinental Hotel, on a hilltop in the city’s west. It was unclear exactly how they managed to reach the site, but at least one police official said early Wednesday that the assailants had been wearing police uniforms. [Global insurgency] [AfPak]
• America, Awaken
  By ROGER COHEN Published: June 27, 2011 NEW YORK — The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once remarked that the United States was “aesthetically inferior but morally superior” to Europe. On the aesthetics, there’s not much doubt. Savoir vivre is a French expression that English finds it needs. Style is many things but one reason Italy elevates it is because it is a fine disguise for lost power. When you’re running the world you don’t have much time for Windsor knots. [Decline]
• Coming to Jakarta and Deep Politics: How Writing a Poem Enabled Me to Write American War Machine
  (An Essay on Liberation) Peter Dale Scott For Mark Selden For most of my life I have felt split between two conflicting approaches to reality: 1) as a researcher trying rigorously and methodically to understand violence in the world, and 2) as a poet, responding to intuitive impulses to say what moved me, whether rational or not. But recently my editor Mark Selden suggested that I write about the role of Coming to Jakarta in my political thinking. In responding to his request I have come to realize that the two sides of my life have become synergistic, each side not just facilitating the other but indeed enabling it. Because each can be characterized as an attempt, using radically different methods but towards the same goal, of becoming more aware of forces in our life that are not easily understandable by normal rational investigation. So that each is an exploration, if you like, on the same frontier between the known and the unknowable. In particular I have had to acknowledge to myself that I could not possibly have depicted the scene in the opening pages of American War Machine if I had not first, with some pain, written Coming to Jakarta. This poem is often presented (even by myself) as my response in 1980 to the anguish of knowing facts I was unable to share, about U.S. involvement in the 1965 massacre by the Indonesian army of over half a million Indonesian men, women, and children. But it was also a confrontation with the disturbing reality that there is a gap between the world as we think we know it, and darker, more inscrutable forces at work both in the world and in ourselves. As I wrote in 2000, Soon ... I was looking at the same process of denial in myself: I had once discounted my own university's support of elements working with the army. In this way Jakarta took the form of an argument, at first with the external world, but increasingly with myself"1 Mark's request was a timely one. Just then I was attempting to write in prose about what I consider the failure of structural (or what I call Newtonian) social science to deal adequately with deep unstructured and unarchived forces in our society, such as the international drug traffic. I was also studying the prose writings of the Nobel-winning Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, who helped inspire the Polish Solidarity movement, and later wrote that the social task of the inspired poet is "to transcend his paltry ego," and remind the "soul of the people" of "the open space ahead."2 The first draft of my poem Coming to Jakarta was written in an intense burst of energy thirty years ago, as I strenuously wrote myself out of a near mental breakdown. A decade later, when the poem was honored in an issue of the literary review Agni, I attempted to analyze the diverse sources of my mental discomfort: The first was a growing self-hatred for carrying around a headful of horrors which most people (including my former editors and publishers) were less and less willing to hear about. An afternoon talk in 1980 with Noam Chomsky about our increasing difficulties in reaching audiences, right after each of us had had a book suppressed by its publisher, did indeed help trigger the very real personal crisis at the opening of the poem, the fear that I might be at the point of losing, like some close friends, my personal sanity altogether.
• Gaddafi revives election offer
  Global Times | June 27, 2011 02:42 By Agencies The Libyan government on Sunday renewed its offer to hold a vote on whether Muammar Gaddafi should stay in power. Pressure is growing from some quarters within the alliance to find a political solution, three months into a military campaign which is costing NATO members billions of dollars, has killed civilians, and has so far failed to topple Gaddafi. Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for Gaddafi's administration, told reporters in Tripoli the government was proposing a period of national dialogue and an election overseen by the UN and the African Union. "If the Libyan people decide Gaddafi should leave he will leave. If the people decide he should stay he will stay," Ibrahim said. However, he said Gaddafi would not go into exile whatever happened. "Gaddafi is not leaving anywhere, he is staying in this country," Ibrahim said. The idea of holding an election was first raised earlier this month by one of Gaddafi's sons, Saif al-Islam.
• What's happened to America’s leadership role?
  Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Fred Hiatt, Monday, June 27, 12:31 PM America is not fated to lose its leadership position in the world. But President Obama and his Republican opposition, in different ways, are making that outcome more likely. In the decades after World War II, as Japan, Germany, France and Britain recovered and America’s share of the global economy declined, we could have accepted the inevitability of a multipolar world. Instead, the United States drew the reemerging powers into alliances that spread the burden of leadership, magnified U.S. influence and promoted freedom and free trade. Now a new generation is debuting — South Korea, China, India, Brazil and more. This is a good thing. As those countries prosper, hundreds of millions of people move from misery into decent lives. And as they do, the U.S. share of the global economy will decline further. But that no more guarantees the decline of U.S. influence than did the recovery of our foes and allies a half-century ago. The United States retains great advantages, not least that other nations see the benefit of rules we help enforce, like open and safe sea lanes, and the moral authority of enforcing those rules without seizing the benefits of empire. [Decline]
• U.S. fares poorly in first modern polling of Egyptian views
  By Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers CAIRO — Egyptians largely reject U.S. involvement in Egypt and appear split on whether to extend the longstanding peace treaty with neighboring Israel. They overwhelmingly support the revolution and are eager to vote without delay, but haven't yet identified a trusted party or politician to steer the nation toward their vision of an Islam-compatible democracy. [Image]
• NATO’s Libya campaign drags on
  By Michael Birnbaum and Ernesto Londono, Sunday, June 26, 12:10 PM NAPLES — As NATO bombs began to rain on Libya in March, President Obama and other Western leaders assured their war-weary publics that the campaign to protect civilians from Moammar Gaddafi’s crackdown would be over within weeks. Now the coalition’s springtime incursion has stretched to summer, and Gaddafi’s resilience has startled the leaders who committed to the operation. Calls are growing to end it even as NATO pleads for more time. [Imperialism] [Public opinion] [Libya] [Airpower]
• Barack Obama rebuked for Libya action by US House of Representatives
  In a primarily symbolic vote, Republican-led House rejects resolution authorising Libya mission – but fails in bid to cut funds Share204 reddit this Ewen MacAskill and Nick Hopkins The Guardian, Saturday 25 June 2011 Article history Rebel fighters fire a Grad rocket at the front line west of Misrata, Libya. Photograph: Hassan Ammar/AP The Republican-controlled House of Representatives delivered a rare rebuke to Barack Obama over his involvement in the Libyan war on Friday by rejecting a resolution to authorise the US mission. It is an embarrassment for the president to have a vote go against him in time of conflict and reflects the disenchantment in the US over yet another war. The vote is primarily symbolic but members of Congress sympathetic to Obama and the US role in Libya said the danger was that it could leave the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, with the impression that support for the war is collapsing.
• Jewish gaucho tradition fades in Argentina
  By Juan Forero, Published: June 24 CARMEL, Argentina — Through the years, they’ve seen Jewish schools and synagogues close and said tearful goodbyes to the young who migrated to cosmopolitan Buenos Aires. But in hamlets with names like Sajaroff and Sonnenfeld, a tight-knit community of Jewish elders, some in their late 80s, fight to hold back time. On Argentina’s endless plains only a few Jewish cowboys still ride. Synagogues once filled with pious congregants now stand empty and forlorn on the edge of soybean fields.
• Mullen warns of withdrawal risks
  By Daniel Dombey in Washington America’s top military official set out his concerns about Barack Obama’s Afghanistan withdrawal plans on Thursday, describing the US president’s decision as a risky course of action that went further than he was initially prepared to accept. “More force for more time is, without doubt, the safer course,” said Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, even as he insisted he and other US military leaders supported Mr Obama’s order to withdraw the 33,000-strong surge to Afghanistan by September next year. [Dissension] [US global strategy] [AfPak]
• Syria’s Ailing Economy Poses a Threat to Assad
  Muzaffar Salman/Associated Press Since the uprising erupted, tourists have been scarce. The Omayyad Mosque in old Damascus is usually teeming with foreigners at this time of year. By ANTHONY SHADID Published: June 23, 2011 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hotels that catered to sandal-wearing backpackers in the storied Syrian city of Aleppo stand empty. Capital from the Persian Gulf that underpinned Syrian ambitions of modernization has begun to dry up. The Syrian pound has faltered, exports have fallen and the government has promised respite with money it will not have for long. In April, a wall decorated with posters of President Bashar al-Assad caught a visitor's eye. In his first address to Syrians in two months, President Bashar al-Assad warned this week of “the collapse of the Syrian economy.” The words might have been hyperbole, aimed at rallying support for a leadership staggering from a three-month uprising. But the sentiments underlined the danger the economy there poses for a government that long promised its people better lives, even as it refused to surrender any real political power. [Subcritical] [Syria]
• Syria’s broken spring: a Damascus report
  Vicken Cheterian, 22 June 2011 A seething revolt across much of Syria is being met with ferocious repression by the Ba’athist government’s security forces. But so far, the two cities where close to half of Syria’s population lives - Damascus and Aleppo - are relatively calm. In this evolving situation, what are the prospects for Syria’s regime and people? Vicken Cheterian reports and reflects. About the authorVicken Cheterian is a journalist and political analyst who works for the non-profit governance organisation CIMERA, based in Geneva. He is the author of War and Peace in the Caucasus: Russia’s Troubled Frontier (C Hurst / Columbia University Press, 2009), Vicken Cheterian is a journalist and political analyst who works for the non-profit governance organisation CIMERA, based in Geneva. He is the author of War and Peace in the Caucasus: Russia’s Troubled Frontier (C Hurst, 2009; Columbia University Press, 2009), and From Perestroika to Rainbow Revolutions: Reform and Revolution After Socialism (C Hurst, 2011)A visit to Damascus, at a time when so much of the rest of Syria is burning, offers a striking contrast to the images of the country presented in international broadcasting media [Media]
• Afghanistan withdrawal: Barack Obama says 33,000 troops will leave next year
  President takes gamble on retreat from Afghanistan with address declaring success against al-Qaida and the Taliban Share248 reddit this Ewen MacAskill in Washington, Patrick Wintour The Guardian, Thursday 23 June 2011 Article history Barack Obama confirmed the withdrawal of about a third of US forces from Afghanistan in 2012. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP Barack Obama has begun the long retreat from Afghanistan in a televised statement to the US, declaring success against al-Qaida and the Taliban and the withdrawal of about a third of US forces next year. Obama said 33,000 US troops would be withdrawn by the summer of 2012 or by September at the latest. The first 5,000 would return next month and another 5,000 by the end of the year. The president said that when he ordered the 33,000 extra troops to Afghanistan in 2009 they had a clear mission: to refocus on al-Qaida; reverse the Taliban's momentum; and train Afghan security forces to defend their own country. "Tonight, I can tell you that we are fulfilling that commitment," he said, adding: "We are meeting our goals." He was careful to avoid repeating George Bush's ill-fated prediction on Iraq in 2003 of "mission accomplished". He settled instead for: "We have put al-Qaida on a path to defeat." [AfPak] [Decline]
• Obama's Afghan withdrawal timetable given lukewarm reaction in US
  President comes under fire from both parties after announcing 33,000 troops will return by end of next year Share14 reddit this Ewen MacAskill in Washington guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 June 2011 04.27 BST Article history US soldier stands on a guard tower as the sun rises at Combat Outpost Sabari in Khost province, eastern Afghanistan. Photograph: Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images Barack Obama's much-trailed announcement of a one-third reduction in US troop numbers in Afghanistan by the end of next year has been criticised on both flanks as a compromise that "will please no-one". Senior Republicans have condemned his decision to bring back more troops than his military advisors wanted, yet he has also taken flak from his own party for not withdrawing fast enough. [AfPak] [Decline]
• Obama Will Speed Pullout From War in Afghanistan
  By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER Published: June 22, 2011 WASHINGTON — President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgment of the shifting threat in the region and the fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America [Decline] [AfPak]
• Obama announces plan to bring home 33,000 ‘surge’ troops from Afghanistan
  Video: President Obama announced plans Wednesday night to remove 33,000 'surge' troops from Afghanistan and discussed a more strategic, focused American foreign policy. By Scott Wilson, Thursday, June 23, 7:48 AM President Obama charted a middle course Wednesday for ending the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, outlining a departure plan that will remove troops faster than his commanders had requested but more slowly than many of his political allies would like. In a prime-time address from the White House, Obama said he will bring home 10,000 U.S. troops by the end of the year and 23,000 more by next summer, a withdrawal window that will conclude two months before voters decide whether to give him a second term. The first troops will leave Afghanistan next month. .“Tonight,” the president said from the East Room, “we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding.” [Decline] [AfPak]
• President Obama’s Afghanistan speech confirms America’s decline
  By Richard Cohen Posted at 09:26 PM ET, 06/22/2011 The American Century just ended. This was the phrase coined by Henry Luce, which so aptly described America as the modern-day colossus, more powerful than any nation had ever been. Wednesday night, President Obama said that power had reached its limit. He was bringing 10,000 troops home from Afghanistan. The war was not finished, but we are. [Decline]
• Senate moves to halt U.S. force changes in East Asia
  Posted By Josh Rogin Friday, June 17, 2011 - 3:44 PM Share The Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled a new bill on Friday that includes provisions to halt the Obama administration's plans to reshape the U.S. military presence in Okinawa, Guam, and South Korea. Committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) and ranking Republican John McCain (R-AZ), along with Jim Webb (D-VA), called for an entirely new plan for basing U.S. troops in East Asia on May 11, arguing that the current plans were no longer feasible or cost effective. They proposed halting the realignment of U.S. troops in South Korea, scaling back the plan to drastically increase the U.S. military presence on Guam, and changing the plan to relocate the controversial Futenma Air Base on Okinawa to a new facility elsewhere on the island. Today, the committee's bill put many of those ideas in play by including them in its annual policy bill. If the bill is approved by the Senate, and if these ideas then survive negotiations with the House, the administration's already troubled plan would be placed on hold. "The current plans for maintaining our troops there are unsustainable. They are incredibly expensive," Levin told reporters on a Friday conference call. "The costs... are out of sight and can no longer be sustained." [US global strategy][US military]
• Calls for ceasefire in Libya ring louder
  By Michael Peel in Abu Dhabi and Guy Dinmore in Rome Published: June 22 2011 18:22 | Last updated: June 22 2011 18:22 Calls for a ceasefire in Libya’s civil war grew on Wednesday as Nato’s bombing campaign approached its 100th day with an end to the crisis nowhere in sight. China urged a solution “through political channels” and Italy said it would support an immediate end to hostilities to allow humanitarian aid in, while the Arab world’s top diplomat spoke of his “misgivings” about civilian deaths from Nato air strikes. The activity highlights growing international unease at the deadlock in Libya, despite a more than four-month rebellion and more than three months of bombings by the military alliance of targets linked to Muammer Gaddafi’s 41-year regime. Yang Jiechi, China’s foreign minister, said: “We hope the two parties in conflict in Libya can attach importance to the country and the people’s interests, and earnestly consider the international community’s relevant resolution plans, quickly cease hostilities, and resolve the Libyan crisis through political channels.” . [Decline]
• World's wealthiest people now richer than before the credit crunch
  World Wealth Report reveals soaring numbers of rich individuals in Asia Pacific region – but slower growth in Britain • Read highlights from the report here Jill Treanor guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 June 2011 15.56 BST Article history We are not all in this together. The UK economy is flat, the US is weak and the Greek debt crisis, according to some commentators, is threatening another Lehman Brothers-style meltdown. But a new report shows the world's wealthiest people are getting more prosperous – and more numerous – by the day. The globe's richest have now recouped the losses they suffered after the 2008 banking crisis. They are richer than ever, and there are more of them – nearly 11 million – than before the recession struck. [Inequality]
• Time to quit Afghanistan
  By Richard Cohen, Published: June 21 Not long after Afghanistan goes off its meds — American and other troops, oodles of aid, civilian technicians, and so much cash that airplanes have to strain to smuggle it out of the country — it will revert to Afghanistan. The Taliban will come down from the mountains and from Pakistan and either make a deal with the government or reassume control. This is not only what will happen in the future. It is what has happened in the past.
• The foreign correspondent: James Cameron, 1911-85
  David Hayes, 17 June 2011 A voice of wry observation and quiet authority that made humane sense of distant events to a domestic public helped James Cameron become the most respected international journalist in post-1945 Britain. But is there room for his world-reporting craft in a very different media age, asks David Hayes. About the authorDavid Hayes is deputy editor of openDemocracy, which he co-founded in 2000. He has written textbooks on human rights and terrorism, and was a contributor to Town and Country (Jonathan Cape, 1998). His work has been published in PN Review, the Irish Times, El Pais, the Iran Times International, the Canberra Times, the Scotsman, the New Statesman and The Absolute Game He has edited five print collections of material from the openDemocracy website, including Europe and Islam; Turkey: Writers, Politics, and Free Speech; and Europe: Visions, Realities, Futures. He is the editor of Fred Halliday's Political Journeys - the openDemocracy Essays (Saqi, 2011) The professional life of the journalist James Cameron, who was born on 17 June 1911, is indelibly linked to the major events and issues he reported in a career spanning half a century until his death in 1985: wars in Korea and Vietnam, cold-war standoffs, late-colonial emergencies, the dark overhang of nuclear weapons in an era of superpower rivalry. His work in other fields - books, including the autobiography Point of Departure, and television, where he became from the mid-1960s an accomplished travelling observer, including of his own copious career - also played a great part in securing his reputation more widely among Britain’s public as a figure of journalistic integrity and authority. The recognition of James Cameron’s achievement and example is reflected in the memorial award granted annually for distinguished foreign-affairs journalism by a British correspondent, an annual memorial lecture delivered by a respected practioner of the trade, and more generally in the esteem that still, a generation after his death, attaches to his name. All this is enough to justify a brief recollection on the centenary of his birth, and reflection on the enduring vitality of the classic virtues of journalistic inquiry he is held to embody. The witness If every notable journalist’s career is forever marked by a single moment, in James Cameron’s case it took place in 1950, during the early stages of the Korean war, while he was working alongside the photographer Bert Hardy for the news magazine Picture Post. Their illustrated account of the brutal treatment of political prisoners in Busan by forces of the South Korean leader Syngman Rhee was all the more shocking since the war had the authority of a United Nations resolution and Rhee owed his position to the United States. The exposure of what Cameron was to describe as “a straightforward case of political tyranny...under the United Nations flag” was, in the fevered atmosphere of the early cold war, regarded by those with the power to act not as a humanitarian or legal scandal but as a journalistic one. The appearance of the photos in the Picture Post resulted in the forced resignation of the publication’s editor, Tom Hopkinson, on orders of the proprietor, Edward Hulton. Cameron’s follow-up story, laboriously reworked to make it as “austere” as possible and remove any taint of emotion and partisanship (“I never worked so hard to write so badly”, he later said) was censored, and he resigned from the magazine. [Korea War] [Media] [UNUS]
• With executive pay, rich pull away from rest of America
  By Peter Whoriskey, Published: June 19 It was the 1970s, and the chief executive of a leading U.S. dairy company, Kenneth J. Douglas, lived the good life. He earned the equivalent of about $1 million today. He and his family moved from a three-bedroom home to a four-bedroom home, about a half-mile away, in River Forest, Ill., an upscale Chicago suburb. He joined a country club. The company gave him a Cadillac. The money was good enough, in fact, that he sometimes turned down raises. He said making too much was bad for morale. Forty years later, the trappings at the top of Dean Foods, as at most U.S. big companies, are more lavish. The current chief executive, Gregg L. Engles, averages 10 times as much in compensation as Douglas did, or about $10 million in a typical year. He owns a $6 million home in an elite suburb of Dallas and 64 acres near Vail, Colo., an area he frequently visits. He belongs to as many as four golf clubs at a time — two in Texas and two in Colorado. While Douglas’s office sat on the second floor of a milk distribution center, Engles’s stylish new headquarters occupies the top nine floors of a 41-story Dallas office tower. When Engles leaves town, he takes the company’s $10 million Challenger 604 jet, which is largely dedicated to his needs, both business and personal. .The evolution of executive grandeur — from very comfortable to jet-setting — reflects one of the primary reasons that the gap between those with the highest incomes and everyone else is widening. [Inequality]
• 'Son of star wars' base in Yorkshire finally ready to open
  Peace campaigners slam secrecy over $10bn Menwith Hill project that puts UK in line of fire Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk, Saturday 18 June 2011 19.33 BST Article history The radomes at the US base in Menwith Hill where the defence shield inspired by Ronald Reagan's 'star-wars' will be launched. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images A "star wars" inspired defence shield that will alert the US to the launch of ballistic missiles is expected to be operational from a North Yorkshire airbase before the end of the year. The Space Based Infrared System is seen as the successor to Ronald Reagan's unrealised "star wars" programme, which would have detected Soviet missiles and shot them down using lasers. The new system, which has cost more than $10bn, has taken almost two decades to build and has been subject to numerous delays and cost overruns. The imminent completion of the project at the RAF Menwith Hill base near Harrogate has revived fears that space is in danger of becoming militarised, with Britain in the vanguard.
• WikiLeaks: Few Cubans can name U.S.-backed dissidents
  Posted on Saturday, June 18, 2011 By Juan O. Tamayo | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — The peaceful Cuban dissidents who receive the most attention in the U.S. were largely unknown to Cubans seeking to emigrate, American diplomats in Havana found in a survey taken in 2008, according to a classified State Department cable obtained by WikiLeaks. Nearly half of the 236 people surveyed could not identify any of seven dissidents included on a list of 20 significant Cuban political and cultural figures, the survey found. But more than two-thirds recognized the name of Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile wanted in Cuba in the 1976 bombing of a passenger plane that killed 73 people and a string of bombings of island tourist sites in 1997 that killed an Italian citizen. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/06/18/116072/wikileaks-few-cubans-can-name.html#ixzz1PhnOjvtK [Media] [Terrorism] [Double standards] [Inversion]
• Qaeda Woes Fuel Talk of Speeding Afghan Pullback
  By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER Published: June 18, 2011 WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration nears a crucial decision on how rapidly to withdraw combat forces from Afghanistan, high-ranking officials say that Al Qaeda’s original network in the region has been crippled, providing a rationale for an accelerated reduction of troops. The officials said the intense campaign of drone strikes and other covert operations in Pakistan — most dramatically the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — had left Al Qaeda paralyzed, with its leaders either dead or pinned down in the frontier area near Afghanistan. Of 30 prominent members of the terrorist organization in the region identified by intelligence agencies as targets, 20 have been killed in the last year and a half, they said, reducing the threat they pose. Their confidence, these officials said, was buttressed by information found in Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. They said the trove revealed disarray within Al Qaeda’s leadership, with a frustrated Bin Laden indicating that he could no longer direct terrorist attacks by lieutenants who feared for their own lives. [AfPak] [Spin] [US global strategy
• Afghanistan: mapping the endgame
  Paul Rogers, 16 June 2011 The American narrative of progress against the Taliban faces uncomfortable realities on the ground - and unexpected resistance in Washington.
  Many of the most protracted wars around the world since 1945 have had a seasonal element. The French colonial war against the Viet Minh in what was then known as “Indochina” (southeast Asia, with Vietnam at its heart) is - especially in its later years, 1950-54 - a classic example. For almost six months of the year, monsoons would render movement of troops and equipment difficult; in these periods, each side would develop their plans and tactics in preparation for the start of the dry season in September-October. The weather even played a part in the seminal event of the war, in that the defeat of the besieged French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 was hastened by the onset of monsoons flooding the stout defences. In the war in Afghanistan launched in October 2001 and now approaching its eleventh year, the beginning of spring around May initiates what has come to be called the annual “fighting season”, with intensifying conflict continuing throughout the summer months. This “season” is also characterised by the harvesting of the opium-poppy crop, in which many of the young men in the armed opposition groups have invested time and labour (see “Afghanistan’s Vietnam portent”, 17 April 2008). The United States forces expected 2011 to be different, a belief fueled by confidence that their military surge of winter 2010-11 - amounting to an injection of 30,000 troops, backed by the much more systematic use of drone-strikes and night-raids by special forces - had seriously weakened the Taliban. The claim of serious progress tended to downplay or even ignore the collateral effects of the intensified attacks and the associated risk of deepening resistance to foreign occupation. A number of events in April 2011 raised questions over this assessment: the spectacular prison-break at Kandahar that released 480 Taliban, the killing by an Afghan soldier of eight Americans and a civilian contractor at Bagram air-base, and a suicide-attack that penetrated the heavily protected defence ministry in Kabul (see “Afghanistan: between war and politics”, 28 April 2011). The death of Osama bin Laden at the beginning of May was, however, a powerful reinforcement of the American case for optimism. It helped strengthen the view that Barack Obama’s administration could afford to opt for significant troop-reductions in Afghanistan, above those logistics and engineering contingents already scheduled for a drawdown. But if the view that 2011 would be different survived the setbacks of April, how do things look by the half-year stage? A refocus In respect of open attacks by Taliban elements, not least in the key provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, there is apparent evidence of real diminishment. But the question of whether this is a sign of weakness or of adaptation is harder to answer. ]AfPak]
• Obama, we're at war. Stop insulting us.
  Posted By Stephen M. Walt Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 1:20 PM Share JUNE 19, 2011 Not that FP has suddenly become joke central, but there's an old joke that runs like this: An accountant, a social scientist and a lawyer are seated in a room. A guy walks in and asks them: "how much is 2 + 2?" The accountant whips out a calculator, pencils and paper, scribbles for awhile, and then says: "The answer, sir, is 4." The social scientist grabs her laptop, fires it up a few minutes, and then says "Well, as you know this is not an exact science, but I can say with a 95% level of confidence that the answer is between 3 and 5." The lawyer, meanwhile, gets up, looks under all the chairs, checks in the closet, opens the door to the room and looks both ways down the hall. Then he comes back, sidles up to the guy who asked the question, and whispers: "I don't care. How much do you want it to be?" I mention this because I learned that the Obama administration is claiming that it doesn't need congressional authorization for its Libyan intervention under the War Powers Act. Why? Because what we are doing doesn't amount to "full-blown" hostilities. Oh, please. Let's start with the definition of "war" itself. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as "a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country." Now, let's see: what are we doing in Libya? What we know is that we've sent cruise missiles, and drones and U.S. aircraft to attack military targets in various places, including several attacks on Qaddafi's own compound. We are continuing to provide targeting information to our NATO allies, who are conducting additional raids on their own. Although U.S. ground troops are not present in force, it's a safe bet that U.S. special forces are operating in various places, probably helping provide some of that targeting info. And of course because the Obama administration isn't telling us everything that it's doing, we have no clear way of knowing exactly how involved we really are. By any reasonable, common-sense standard, in short, we are at war. [Spin] [Libya]
• Faith in the market
  Posted By Joshua Keating Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 10:33 AM Share This week, Molly Worthen wrote about how Mormonism may affect the foreign policy positions of GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. Mormons tend to get singled out in discussions of international religion because of their active missionary culture, relatively recent founding, and the fundamental American-ness of their founding doctrine. But in fact, Mormonism is hardly alone on the list of America's religious exports. Of the world's 35 largest protestant denominations, 24 are headquartered in the United States, making the U.S. the world's largest single exporter of Protestant Christianity. The most significant of these if Pentecostalism, a movement that originated in the United States in the early 1900s and involves a literal reading of the bible as well as "ecstatic" worship practices, such as speaking in tongues. Today, Pentecostalism has 600 million adherents worldwide today, accounting for 26 percent of all Christians. These facts come from a fascinating new paper by economists Gordon Hanson of U.C. San Diego and Chong Xiang of Purdue University, titled, "Exporting Christianity: Governance and Doctrine in the Globalization of U.S. Denominations." The paper takes the novel approach of looking at religious sects as types of multinational enterprises, whose success or failure is determined by how well their "product" responds to local market conditions. [Religion] [Imperialism] [Softpower] [Decline]
• U.S. Pressing Its Crackdown Against Leaks
  By SCOTT SHANE Published: June 17, 2011 WASHINGTON — Stephen J. Kim, an arms expert who immigrated from South Korea as a child, spent a decade briefing top government officials on the dangers posed by North Korea. Then last August he was charged with violating the Espionage Act — not by aiding some foreign adversary, but by revealing classified information to a Fox News reporter. Stephen Kim, an arms expert, is accused of violating the Espionage Act by giving classified information to a reporter. .Mr. Kim’s case is next in line in the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on leaks, after the crumbling last week of the case against a former National Security Agency official, Thomas A. Drake. Accused of giving secrets to The Baltimore Sun, Mr. Drake pleaded guilty to a minor charge and will serve no prison time and pay no fine.
• America’s WASP rot
  By Henry Allen, Saturday, June 18, 12:07 PM I know why America is falling into a cataclysm of debt and can’t get out. I know because I’ve seen the cataclysm before on a smaller but no less poignant scale while growing up in New England. A Boston friend calls it WASP rot: a squalor of doom and debt that prompts the best sort of people to spit sarcasms at each other during cocktail hour, to weep and rage the way Congress is doing as the debt limit looms on Aug. 2. 122 .Of course, losing a summer house isn’t losing a war or America defaulting on its debts. Yet to me, at least, the feeling is oddly the same. I worry that America is becoming a character in a story by John Cheever or F. Scott Fitzgerald. My ancestors arrived early in North America, founded towns, fought at Bunker Hill, built railroads and cornered markets. But that day was long done when I was growing up. We were not unusual — in so many families, the money had been made, the money had been spent. What made these families exceptional, the way America is exceptional, is that they believed that standards had to be maintained at all costs, a moral obligation, even though there never seemed to be much difference between the material and the moral. Houses in the right neighborhoods, alumni donations and keeping one’s word all seemed to have the same value. [Exceptionalism] [Decline]
• New Egypt? 7,000 civilians jailed since Mubarak fell
  Posted on Monday, June 13, 2011 By Mohannad Sabry | McClatchy Newspapers CAIRO — Egypt's military rulers told human rights advocates Monday that at least 7,000 civilians have been sentenced to prison terms by military courts since Hosni Mubarak was ousted — an astoundingly high number likely to fuel debate over how much the revolution has changed the country. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/06/13/115722/egypt-military-7000-civilians.html#ixzz1PQMZd6I1 [Human rights]
• White House defends U.S. role in Libya after lawmakers sue
  Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 By Steven Thomma and David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Facing growing opposition on Capitol Hill, the White House insisted Wednesday that it's within its legal rights to wage war in Libya without explicit authorization from Congress, essentially because no American lives are at risk. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/06/15/115885/white-house-defends-us-role-in.html#ixzz1PQFvyjBa [Libya] [Imperialism] [Legality]
• Bank chiefs’ pay rises by 36%
  By Megan Murphy and Sharlene Goff in London Published: June 14 2011 21:02 | Last updated: June 14 2011 21:02 Bank chiefs’ average pay in the US and Europe leapt 36 per cent last year to $9.7m, according to data compiled for the Financial Times, despite variable performance across the sector. Interactive: Bank CEO pay Explore the bank chiefs and their 2010 pay in this interactive graphic ..Two of the industry’s biggest names – Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase chief executive, and Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein – were paid more than 15 times their 2009 earnings. Mr Dimon received nearly $21m in 2010, topping the FT’s survey of the salary and bonus packages awarded to 15 top bankers. Mr Blankfein earned $14.1m, including a $5.4m cash bonus – up from $863,000 in 2009. In the UK, the chief executives of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland were awarded cash and stock bonuses valued at more than $26m last year. That contrasts with 2009, when all four declined bonuses in a nod to public and political furore.
• Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants in Bin Laden Raid
  By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI Published: June 14, 2011 WASHINGTON — Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials. A casualty of the recent tension between the countries is an ambitious Pentagon program to train Pakistani paramilitary troops to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the northwestern tribal areas. Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration is seeking Pakistan’s support in brokering an endgame in the war in neighboring Afghanistan. At a closed briefing last week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Michael J. Morell, the deputy C.I.A. director, to rate Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations, on a scale of 1 to 10. “Three,” Mr. Morell replied, according to officials familiar with the exchange [Client] [Intelligence] [AfPak] [Global insurgency]
• Life expectancy in the U.S. varies widely by region and in some places is decreasing
  By David Brown, Updated: Wednesday, June 15, 7:01 PM Large swaths of the United States are showing decreasing or stagnating life expectancy even as the nation’s overall longevity trend has continued upwards, according to a county-by-county study of life expectancy over two decades. In one-quarter of the country, girls born today may live shorter lives than their mothers, and the country as a whole is falling behind other industrialized nations in the march toward longer life, according to the study. .Those are among the conclusions of the study by a team of researchers that has spent years teasing apart the regional and demographic differences in longevity in the United States. It sketches a picture of widening inequality among regions and is likely to add urgency to the debate over health-care reform and spending. [Decline] [Health]
• Nuclear waste dump is mired in inertia
  By Joel Achenbach and Brian Vastag, Wednesday, June 15, 8:40 AM In the desert of Nevada, a hundred miles from Las Vegas, engineers have drilled a tunnel through the heart of Yucca Mountain. The hole is 25 feet wide and five miles long. It’s dark in there. The light bulbs have been removed. The ventilation has been turned off. There’s nothing inside but some rusting rails that were supposed to carry 70,000 tons of nuclear waste to a permanent grave. Outside, the gates are locked. When three members of Congress visited in March, the federal government spent $15,000 just to reopen the place for a few hours. .Yucca Mountain is a case study in government dysfunction and bureaucratic inertia. The project dates back three decades. It has not solved the problem of nuclear waste but has succeeded in keeping fully employed large numbers of litigators. [Decline] [Incompetence]
• Federal report shows history scores rising slowly
  By Michael Alison Chandler, Wednesday, June 15, 4:00 AM Most fourth-graders who took a national U.S. history test last year were stumped when asked a question such as this: Identify a picture of Abraham Lincoln and give two reasons why he was important. A majority of eighth-graders had trouble with this kind of question: Articulate an advantage American forces had over the British during the Revolutionary War. And most 12th-graders missed on questions of this sort: Why did the United States enter World War I? .Those findings were included Tuesday in the first federal readout on history achievement in four years. Average scores for history on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — a federally funded series known as the nation’s report card — have risen slowly since 1994. But the portion of students who fail to reach a basic level of achievement remains larger than the share rated as proficient or advanced, particularly for high school seniors. [Decline] [Education]
• Webb: U.S. 'blasé' on use of force
  By MIKE ALLEN | 5/24/11 11:03 PM EDT Sen. Jim Webb, a Vietnam War hero and former secretary of the Navy, said President Barack Obama “needs to narrow his focus a bit when it comes to judgments about using military force” and needs to give more sway to the views of Congress. “We have to have a very serious debate about presidential authority in terms of using the military around the world and have sort of a tighter string on these unilateral decisions that end up getting us into these situations,” Webb said in an interview for the POLITICO video series “A Decade of Fighting Terrorism.” “You can’t have 535 commanders in chief. But at the same time, we have become — over the past 10 or 11 years — very blasé about the use of military force around the world. I never thought we would be so blasé as a nation in terms of where we’re going in and dropping bombs and doing these sorts of things. And we need to be a lot smarter about it.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/55636.html#ixzz1PKVY5w00 [Militarisation]
• Rape in Libya: America’s recent major wars have all been accompanied by memorable falsehoods
  Peter Dale Scott It is a troubled Time for NATO’s campaign against Libya. President Obama has seen a near-revolt in Congress against the costly war, while Defense Secretary Gates in Brussels has warned his European allies that their tepid response “is putting the Libya mission and the alliance's very future at risk.”1 Back home, according to the London Daily Mail, “Mr Gates has requested extra funds for Libya operations, but has been rebuffed by the White House.”2 The past history of American wars tells us that, when the war-going begins to get tough, the professional p.r. campaigns get going, often with wholly invented stories. For example, when in 1990 Defense Secretary Colin Powell was expressing doubts that the United States should attack Kuwait, stories appeared that, as revealed by classified satellite photos, Saddam had amassed 265,000 troops and 1500 tanks at the edge of the Saudi Arabian border. Powell then changed his mind, and the attack proceeded. But after the invasion a reporter from the St. Petersburg Times viewed satellite photos from a commercial satellite, and “she saw no sign of a quarter of a million troops or their tanks.”3 Hawks in Congress, notably Tom Lantos and Stephen Solarz, secured support for the attack on Iraq with a story from a 15-year-old girl, that she had seen Kuwaiti infants snatched from their incubators by Iraqi soldiers. The story was discredited when it was learned that the girl, the daughter of the Saudi ambassador in Washington, might not have visited the hospital at all. She had been prepped on her story by the p.r. firm Hill & Knowlton, which had a contract for $11.5 million from the Kuwaiti government.4 The history of American foreign interventions is littered with such false stories, from the “Remember the Maine” campaign of the Hearst press in 1898, to the false stories of a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. destroyers in the so-called Second Tonkin Gulf incident of August 4, 1964. We know furthermore that in their Operation Northwoods documents, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 proposed a series of ways, some of them lethal, to deceive the American people in order to engineer a war against Cuba.5 Since the fiasco of the false Iraqi stories in 1990-91, these stories have tended to be floated by foreign sources, usually European. This was conspicuously the case with the forged yellowcake documents from Italy underlying Bush’s misleading reference to Iraq in his 2003 State of the Union address.6 But it was true also of the false stories linking Saddam Hussein to the celebrated anthrax letters of 2001. (Their anthrax was later determined to have come from a U.S. biowarfare laboratory.)7 This recurring history of falsified stories to justify interventions should be on our minds as we now face the allegations, as yet neither proven nor disproven, that Gaddafi has been using rape as a method to fight insurrection, and may have been guilty of raping victims himself. These charges were made on June 8 by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who claimed (according to Time Magazine there were indications that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had ordered the rape of hundreds of women during his violent crackdown on the rebels and that he had even provided his soldiers with Viagra to stimulate the potential for attacks.8 Luis Moreno-Ocampo According to Time, the rape stories are being circulated by doctors who claim to have met and treated patients but do not have patients' permission to reveal their identities. Earlier, according to a Libyan doctor interviewed in an Al Jazeera video, “many doctors have found Viagra and condoms in the pockets of dead pro-Gaddafi fighters, as well as treated female rape survivors. The doctor insists this clearly indicates the Gaddafi regime is using rape as a weapon of war.”9 But what of Moreno’s charge that “Now we are getting some information that Gaddafi himself decided to rape, and this is new.”10 This is a sensational charge: until we learn there is a reliable source for it, one can suspect it was made to grab headlines. [Disinformation]
• ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ comes clean
  Screengrab/Facebook - Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old American, wrote online for years under the pseudonym Amina Arraf, supposedly a lesbian Syrian blogger. By Melissa Bell and Elizabeth Flock, Monday, June 13, 8:37 AM For nearly a week, the world followed the saga of Amina Arraf, the blogger who was celebrated for her passionate, often intimate writings about the Syrian government’s crackdown on Arab Spring protesters. Those writings stopped abruptly last Monday, and in a posting on her blog, “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” a cousin said Amina had been hauled away by government security agents. [Cyberwar] [Disinformation]
• Syrian lesbian blogger is revealed conclusively to be a married man
  Tom MacMaster's wife has confirmed in an email to the Guardian that he is the real identity behind the Gay Girl in Damascus blog Share1439 Esther Addley The Guardian, Monday 13 June 2011 Article history Syrian lesbian blogger has been revealed to be Tom MacMaster, an American based in Scotland. Public domain The mysterious identity of a young Arab lesbian blogger who was apparently kidnapped last week in Syria has been revealed conclusively to be a hoax. The blogs were written not by a gay girl in Damascus, but a middle-aged American man based in Scotland. [Cyberwar] [Disinformation]
• The Battle against Neoliberalism: Massive Popular Uprising in Greece
  by Yorgos Mitralias Global Research, June 11, 2011 Greek Committee Against the Debt and CADTM Two weeks after it started the Greek movement of ‘outraged’ people has the main squares in all cities overflowing with crowds that shout their anger, and makes the Papandreou government and its local and international supporters tremble. It is now more than just a protest movement or even a massive mobilization against austerity measures. It has turned into a genuine popular uprising that is sweeping over the country. An uprising that makes it know at large its refusal to pay for ‘their crisis’ or ‘their debt’ while vomiting the two big neoliberal parties, if not the whole political world in complete disarray. How many were there on Syntagma square (Constitution square) in the centre of Athens, just in front of the Parliament building on Sunday 5 June 2011? Difficult to say since one of the characteristic features of such popular gatherings is that there is no key event (speech or concert) and that people come and go. But according to people in charge of the Athens underground, who know how to assess the numbers of passengers, there were at least 250,000 people converging on Syntagma on that memorable night! Actually several hundreds of thousands of people if we add the ‘historic’ gatherings that took place on the main squares of other Greek cities (see map). At this juncture we should however raise the question: how can such a mass movement that is shaking the Greek government (in which the EU has a particular interest) not be mentioned at all in Western medias? For these first twelve days there was virtually not a word, not an image of those unprecedented crowds shouting their anger against the IMF, the European Commission, the ‘Troika’ (IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank), and against Frau Merkel and the international neoliberal leaders. Nothing. [Media]
• America and Iraq-Iran: a new balance
  Paul Rogers, 10 June 2011 The United States’s post-9/11 strategy sought to establish a new order in the middle east. A proposed regional-security constellation involving Baghdad and Tehran is a measure of its failure. 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 28 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 diverse trajectories of the “Arab spring”, from Syria’s suppression of dissent to Libya’s civil war, continue to dominate the attention of analysts and policy-makers concerned with the middle east. In these circumstances, the evolving relationship between Iran and its most populous Arab neighbour, Iraq, is receiving less attention than the region’s current conflicts - though its long-term impact may be equally great. [US global strategy] [Decline]
• U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors
  Keith Berkoben/Fab Folk Volunteers have built a wireless Internet around Jalalabad, Afghanistan, from off-the-shelf electronics and ordinary materials. More Photos » By JAMES GLANZ and JOHN MARKOFF Published: June 12, 2011 The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks. The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.” [Cyberwar] [Propaganda][Subversion]
• How to exit Afghanistan without creating wider conflict
  By Henry A. Kissinger, Published: June 8 The American role in Afghanistan is drawing to a close in a manner paralleling the pattern of three other inconclusive wars since the Allied victory in World War II: a wide consensus in entering them, and growing disillusionment as the war drags on, shading into an intense national search for an exit strategy with the emphasis on exit rather than strategy. We entered Afghanistan to punish the Taliban for harboring al-Qaeda, which, under Osama bin Laden’s leadership, had carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. After a rapid victory, U.S. forces remained to assist the construction of a post-Taliban state. But nation-building ran up against the irony that the Afghan nation comes into being primarily in opposition to occupying forces. When foreign forces are withdrawn, Afghan politics revert to a contest over territory and population by various essentially tribal groups. [US global strategy] [AfPak]
• New challenge for U.S.-Pakistan ties
  By Griff Witte and Karen DeYoung, Published: June 10 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Twice in recent weeks, the United States provided Pakistan with the specific locations of insurgent bomb-making factories, only to see the militants learn their cover had been blown and vacate the sites before military action could be taken, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials. Overhead surveillance video and other information was given to Pakistani officials in mid-May, officials said, as part of a trust-building effort by the Obama administration after the killing of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. raid early last month. But Pakistani military units that arrived at the sites in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan on June 4 found them abandoned. [Pacification] [Client] [AfPak]
• Gates rebukes European allies in farewell speech
  By Greg Jaffe and Michael Birnbaum, Saturday, June 11, 1:09 AM BERLIN — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates rebuked some of America’s staunchest allies Friday, saying the United States has a “dwindling appetite” to serve as the heavyweight partner in the military order that has underpinned the U.S. relationship with Europe since the end of World War II. In an unusually stinging speech, made on his valedictory visit to Europe before he retires at the end of the month, Gates condemned European defense cuts and said the United States is tired of engaging in combat missions for those who “don’t want to share the risks and the costs.” [Client] [US global strategy]
• Obama’s partnership deficit
  By David Ignatius, Saturday, June 11, 3:17 AM There was some head-scratching in Washington last week at the presentation of the Medal of Freedom to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The previous foreign recipients included Pope John Paul II, who championed the freedom of Eastern Europe; Nelson Mandela, who triumphed over apartheid in South Africa; and Helmut Kohl, who reunited Germany. Did Merkel, for all her good qualities, really fit in that group?
  Then take China, which is a recurring demonstration of the difficulty of partnering on security issues. The Obama administration has repeatedly said that it wants Beijing’s help in dealing with the erratic nuclear-armed menace that is North Korea. The Chinese talk the language of shared responsibility in Sino-American meetings, but they never quite step up to the task of jointly solving problems. It seems they prefer to let things fester rather than take decisive action. [Client] [US China]
• Supergun made stronger than ever
  The U.S. Navy has developed the world’s most powerful railgun, also known as supergun, breaking the world record. A shot fired by the electromagnetic railgun at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia, generated 33 megajoules of force out of the barrel, a world record for muzzle energy and more than three times the previous record last December, the Daily Mail reported Wednesday. A single megajoule is roughly equivalent to a one-ton car travelling at 100mph. The impact of the projectile hitting a target would be 33 times that force. This supergun does not need gunpowder, but requires electrical energy, which will eventually allow the Navy to attack from much more farther and safer distance. This railgun’s final goal is to make cannons of Navy’s ship that reach 322 kilometers in six minutes, creating 64 megajoules. However, the weapon is still in the process of being made, it will take at least 5 more years, maybe ten years. Once it is made, it will at least double the power of U.S. navy, and it will be the start of new futuristic weapon which needs a lot more researches. [Military balance]
• ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ may not be real
  Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Liz Sly, Thursday, June 9, 12:32 PM BEIRUT — Questions emerged Wednesday about the existence and identity of a Syrian American blogger whose eloquent postings on life in Damascus and her purported detention Monday by Syrian security forces had catapulted her to global fame. The Washington Post was among the news organizations in the United States and around the world that reported on the writings of Amina Arraf and her alleged detention, which was publicized in a posting on her blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus, by a woman who claimed to be her cousin. (Courtesy of Sandra Bagaria/COURTESY OF SANDRA BAGARIA) - Photographs of Amina Arraf released by the friend and on her Web site are of a woman in London, Jelena Lecic, who said her identity had been stolen, according to a statement from the woman’s publicist. .But although many Syrian activists said they had corresponded with Arraf online, none acknowledged actually meeting her. A friend in Montreal, Sandra Bagaria, who started a campaign for Arraf’s release and said she knew her well, said she had corresponded with Arraf only by e-mail. Photographs of Arraf released by the friend and on her Web site are of a woman in London, Jelena Lecic, who said her identity had been stolen, according to a statement from the woman’s publicist. [Disinformation] [Subversion] [Cyberwar] [Syria]
• Revealed: the untold story of the deal that shocked the Middle East
  Exclusive by Robert Fisk Tuesday, 7 June 2011 Secret meetings between Palestinian intermediaries, Egyptian intelligence officials, the Turkish foreign minister, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal – the latter requiring a covert journey to Damascus with a detour round the rebellious city of Deraa – brought about the Palestinian unity which has so disturbed both Israelis and the American government. Fatah and Hamas ended four years of conflict in May with an agreement that is crucial to the Paslestinian demand for a state. A series of detailed letters, accepted by all sides, of which The Independent has copies, show just how complex the negotiations were; Hamas also sought – and received – the support of Syrian President Bachar al-Assad, the country’s vice president Farouk al-Sharaa and its foreign minister, Walid Moallem. Among the results was an agreement by Meshaal to end Hamas rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza – since resistance would be the right only of the state – and agreement that a future Palestinian state be based on Israel’s 1967 borders.
• U.S. Plans Private Guard Force for Iraq
  State Department Prepares to Hire 5,100-Strong Security Detail and Take Over Military Hardware for After Army Leaves By NATHAN HODGE WASHINGTON—The State Department is preparing to spend close to $3 billion to hire a security force to protect diplomats in Iraq after the U.S. pulls its last troops out of the country by year's end. In testimony Monday before the Commission on Wartime Contracting, Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, said the department plans to hire a 5,100-strong force to protect diplomatic personnel, guard embassy buildings and operate a fleet of aircraft and armored vehicles. Underscoring the security risks in Iraq, five American troops were killed Monday in an attack in Baghdad, the largest single loss of life for the U.S. military there since April 2009. Fewer than 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq. Under a 2008 U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, all U.S. troops are supposed to leave the country by the end of the year, leaving behind only a small military office to oversee arms sales. While U.S. officials have expressed a willingness to station a small residual force in the country, it is unclear if the Iraqi government will make the request, which faces strong opposition in Iraq. A large U.S. diplomatic presence will remain, however, and the departments of state and defense are wrestling with how to provide security for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad—which is a target of rocket attacks—and diplomatic outposts in the provinces. As the military withdraws, Mr. Kennedy said, the State Department will rely on contractors to carry out a range of military-style missions that he said were "not inherently governmental," including providing emergency medical evacuation, operating systems to detect and warn against incoming rocket or artillery fire, or rescue diplomatic personnel under attack. [privatisation]
• Syria says 120 troops dead in clashes
  By Abigail Fielding-Smith in Beirut and agencies Published: June 6 2011 19:37 | Last updated: June 6 2011 20:22 Heavy fighting has been reported in north-western Syria but there are conflicting claims about the nature and perpetrators of the violence. Syrian state TV claimed that 120 members of the security services were killed in the town of Jisr al-Shughour, one of the sites of protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad that have rocked the country. The reports come as Alain Juppe, French foreign minister, declared that Mr Assad had “lost his legitimacy to rule”. State media have been used as a channel for propagana throughout the uprsiing and some fear that the reported death toll is a ploy to justify a major operation by the security services against protesters. If true, howevre, the report would indicate that protesters resistance to the regime’s brutal crackdown is becoming more organised and heavily armed. . [Media]
• One in four US hackers 'is an FBI informer'
  The FBI and US secret service have used the threat of prison to create an army of informers among online criminals Ed Pilkington in New York guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 June 2011 16.12 BST Article history A quarter of hackers in the US have been recruited by federal authorities, according to Eric Corley, publisher of the hacker quarterly, 2600. Photograph: Getty Images The underground world of computer hackers has been so thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service that it is now riddled with paranoia and mistrust, with an estimated one in four hackers secretly informing on their peers, a Guardian investigation has established. Cyber policing units have had such success in forcing online criminals to co-operate with their investigations through the threat of long prison sentences that they have managed to create an army of informants deep inside the hacking community [Surveillance] [Cyberwar]
• Ratko Mladic, truculent and smirking, faces his accusers at The Hague
  After 16-year wait, Srebrenica's women come face to face with commander accused of slaughtering their men and boys Robert Booth in The Hague guardian.co.uk, Friday 3 June 2011 18.39 BST Article history Ratko Mladic caused consternation among alleged victims' families during the open of his trial by asking for two months to consider the charges against him Photograph: Serge Ligtenberg/Getty Images Munira Subasic last saw Ratko Mladic at Srebrenica in 1995, when she begged him to leave her ill son alone. On Friday, 16 years on and with her son still missing, presumed dead, in a massacre that claimed more than 7,000 lives, Subasic came face to face again with the Bosnian Serb commander accused of the atrocity. [Media]
• Mladic, frail but defiant, rejects genocide indictment as ‘obnoxious’ but declines to plead
  View Photo Gallery — ?Serbian police have arrested the wartime general whose long evasion of arrest on genocide charges has blocked Serbia’s progress toward joining the European Union. Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Associated Press, Published: June 3 THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Last seen as a swaggering general in the Bosnia war, Ratko Mladic needed help rising from his chair for war-crimes judges Friday, his limp right hand too weak to put on earphones without assistance. But as his arraignment proceeded, his old bluster returned as he called his indictment “obnoxious” and told judges he doesn’t want help walking “as if I were a blind man.” .The capture and trial of the Bosnian Serb wartime commander on charges of genocide and war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war closes the bloodiest chapter in European history since World War II and is nearly the final act of the Yugoslav tribunal, a court that launched a renewed era of international justice after the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. Together with his former political boss Radovan Karadzic, Mladic is accused of orchestrating the four-year war for Serbian domination in Bosnia that cost 100,000 lives and climaxed with the July 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the U.N.-declared safe zone of Srebrenica. The first clear glimpse the world got of the 69-year-old Mladic after he spent 16 years on the run came after a curtain separating the public gallery and the courtroom was lifted Friday. Wearing a peaked cap, he saluted the gallery with his left hand through bulletproof glass. Observers stood and strained to see Mladic, clearly thinner and weaker than when he led the Bosnian Serb army. Two U.N. guards helped Mladic to his feet when the judges entered the courtroom, and he saluted them as well. With his right arm apparently impaired, a guard had to help him put earphones over his head to hear the Serbian translation. When he responded to questions from the judge, his speech was slow and slightly slurred. Mladic declined to enter formal pleas to the 11-count indictment, but admitted no guilt. “I defended my country and my people,” he said, before presiding judge Alphons Orie cut him short. [Media]
• Why Anne Sinclair is standing by Dominique Strauss-Kahn
  As the former IMF chief faces charges of violent sexual assault, the rumours about his sex life are swirling around the media. But one woman refuses to believe a word of it – his wife Angelique Chrisafis The Guardian, Friday 3 June 2011 Article history Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Anne Sinclair, in 2006. Photograph: Christian Liewig/Corbis As Dominique Strauss-Kahn sat in a New York court for a bail hearing, accused of attempting to rape a hotel maid, the focus was on the stomach-churning allegations. One of the world's most powerful men stood charged with locking his hotel suite, dragging an immigrant cleaner from room to room, grabbing and assaulting her, using brute strength to twice force her to give him oral sex, pinning her down and trying to rape her. But one subtle moment in his televised hearing captivated France. After he was granted bail, Strauss-Kahn raised his eyes to his wife sitting in the front row of the public seats, smiled and blew her a kiss. She, a feminist and former political journalist, pressed her lips to the palm of her hand and blew him a kiss back.
• Obama’s commitment to Israel
  By Rahm Emanuel, Friday, June 3, 12:07 PM Days into my tenure as mayor of Chicago, with my focus on keeping our city’s streets safe, our schools strong and our finances stabilized, I expected my attention to be in the Midwest, not in the Middle East. But as an American and the son of an Israeli immigrant, I have a deep, abiding commitment to the survival, security and success of the state of Israel. I am among the many who know that the Israeli people yearn for peace. They have taken risks for peace in spite of dangers. They will again, when they have a viable partner in the process and a region that recognizes a Jewish state of Israel with secure and defensible borders. .President Obama, like every student of the Middle East, understands that the shifting sands of demography in that volatile region are working against the two-state solution needed to end generations of bloodshed. The fragile stasis that exists today cannot hold. [Israel] [Strategic paralysis] [Obama]
• The man and the machine: in search of Barack Obama
  Roger Hardy, 31 May 2011 In his first two years in office, President Obama had six foreign-policy goals. None has been achieved. A couple of weeks ago Ryan Lizza, a journalist at the New Yorker, went in search of an Obama doctrine. He had difficulty finding one. Obama, he concluded, was a foreign-policy novice veering uncertainly between idealism and realism. I think there is a bit more to it than that. We need to look at the man and the machine. When I arrived in Washington in September last year, I asked Lee Hamilton – the then head of the Woodrow Wilson Center, a think-tank where I was to be based for the next six months – if he could help me understand how Washington works. ‘Some of us,’ he replied, ‘are not sure it does.’ [Strategic paralysis] [Militarisation]
• The Political Quandary of Barack Obama
  Commentary No. 306, June 1, 2011 Immanuel Wallenstein ? The President of the United States is considered to be the most powerful single individual in the modern world. What Barack Obama is learning to his chagrin is that he still has enormous power to do harm. But he has virtually no power to do good. I think he realizes this, and doesn't know what he can do about it. The fact is that there is very little he can do about it. Take his biggest single concern at the moment - the second Arab revolt. He didn't start it. He was obviously taken by surprise when it began, as was almost everyone else. His immediate response was to think, correctly, that it posed great dangers to the already shaky geopolitical order in the region. The United States sought in every way it could to limit the damage, maintain its own position, and restore "order." One can't say that the United States has been very successful. Every day in every way the situation has become more disorderly and beyond the control of the United States.
• In New Case, Boss Is Suspended for Not Reporting Housekeeper’s Abuse Claim
  By JOHN ELIGON Published: May 31, 2011 The supervisor of a housekeeper at the Pierre hotel was suspended on Tuesday after she failed to report to the police the housekeeper’s complaint that she was sexually assaulted by a prominent Egyptian businessman, causing a 15-hour delay in the investigation. The suspension came as the Pierre and the Sofitel New York, where a sexual assault involving another international figure was alleged to have occurred, made new commitments to improve safety measures for their workers. The Egyptian businessman, Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar, was arraigned just before midnight on Tuesday on charges that he sexually abused a 44-year-old housekeeper who brought tissues to his room at his request. Once she was inside the room, Mr. Omar grabbed her breasts, the police said. At the arraignment, the prosecutor, Nicole Blumberg, offered more details. She said Mr. Omar grabbed the victim several times, kissed her on the neck and lips, and “grinded his groin against her legs.” The judge set bail for Mr. Omar at $25,000 cash or a $50,000 bond. Liz Beal, a lawyer who represented Mr. Omar at the arraignment, said she he expected him to post the bail on Wednesday. She said he “adamantly denies the charges.” The new allegations have eerie parallels to the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who was arrested and charged with an attack at the Sofitel a little more than two weeks ago.
• Sycophantic Kingdom: Cameron and company creep to Obama
  Peter Oborne, 27 May 2011 About the authorPeter Oborne is an author and political columnist on the Daily Mail. He is interested in UK politics, Zimababwe and political culturesOne of the first big strategic decisions made by David Cameron after his election as Conservative leader more than five years ago concerned the United States of America. Cameron claimed to have been taken aback by Tony Blair’s uncritical subservience to George W Bush, so he promised that any government he led would take a more independent stance. Britain, or so he stated, would no longer be “America’s unconditional associate in every endeavour”. It is tempting to say that these remarks were brave, but actually, they weren’t. Cameron was simply reflecting the national mood of disgust at the busted alliance between Blair and Bush. And like so many of his pronouncements while in Opposition, the pledge to distance Britain from the US has been at least partly forgotten. This week’s visit by Barack Obama has been a national embarrassment, although Cameron is not the only one at fault. Nick Clegg has been almost as bad, and the same applies to Ed Miliband. A great deal of the media coverage has been more craven still. I have detected very little sense that Britain is a proud, independent nation with a distinct sense of our own values and traditions, many of which are very sharply different and, in some cases, contradictory to America’s. [Client]
• Libya: SAS veterans helping Nato identify Gaddafi targets in Misrata
  Ex-SAS soldiers and private security firm employees passing information to Nato attack helicopters, sources tell Guardian Share47 Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 May 2011 18.25 BST Article historyWestern advisers are passing information on Gaddafi's forces to Nato, sources have told the Guardian Former SAS soldiers and other western employees of private security companies are helping Nato identify targets in the Libyan port city of Misrata, the scene of heavy fighting between Gaddafi's forces and rebels, well-placed sources have told the Guardian. [Privatisation]
• Goldman Sachs lost 98% of Gaddafi's $1.3bn investment
  As compensation Goldman Sachs offered to turn Gaddafi into one of its top investors, the Wall Street Journal reports Share184 Tom Bawden guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 May 2011 17.31 BST Article history Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York. The bank invested Gadddafi's money to buy options in currencies and shares amid turmoil in the markets. Photograph Lucas Jackson/Reuters A bitter rift has opened up between the world's most powerful bank and one of its most fearsome dictators after Goldman Sachs invested $1.3bn (£790m) of Colonel Gaddafi's money – and lost virtually all of it. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Goldman offered to make Gaddafi one of its biggest investors as compensation for losing 98% of the money the Wall Street firm invested on behalf of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA). This left the $53bn Gaddifi-controlled sovereign wealth fund, which elsewhere has stakes in companies such as Financial Times-owner Pearson and BP, with just $25.1m of the money it entrusted to Goldman. [Personalisation]
• The Arrest of R. Mladic From the Perspective of International Law
  31.05.2011 Dr. Alexander Mezyaev International Law Department Governance Academy (Kazan`) The May 26 arrest of former Serbian military leader Gen. R. Mladic evokes serious questions of both moral and legal character. Clearly aware of the shakiness of the indictment Mladic is about to face, the global media tend to avoid touching upon the legal aspect of the Mladic case. It is an open secret that arresting Mladic and handing him over to the Hague Tribunal was set by the West as a part of the price Belgrade was supposed to pay for the entry ticket to the EU. It is less known that permanent pressure on Serbia over the matter was also linked to legal requirements defying which could earn the country problems much more serious than being shut out of the EU [Legality]
• They put others on trial, not to be tried themselves. On the arrest of General Mladic
  30.05.2011 Elena Ponomareva, PhD (History), MGIMO The recent arrest of the Chief of the General Staff of the Republika Srpska Army, General Ratko Mladic, as well as preparations for his extradition to The Hague is another in the chain of events that are part of the on-going “mopping-up of History”… Ratko Mladic was the central figure in the Bosnian War. He is known of far beyond the Balkans. The Daily Telegraph has put him on the list of 30 prominent modern-day military leaders, adding in a comment that the officers who held talks with him saw him as a genius at tactics. The enemy feared him, while Serbs idolized him for his reputation for honest dealing, military professionalism, courage and fidelity to his country. Mladic enormously boosted the Serbs’ national identity by actually winning the war against the Croat-Muslim Bosnia-Herzegovina despite continual NATO bombing raids. Hence NATO and EU interest in the man.
• Karzai orders NATO to stop airstrikes in Afghanistan
  By Joshua Partlow and Javed Hamdard, Published: May 31KABUL--President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday issued an ultimatum to NATO forces to stop airstrikes on Afghan homes and warned that if they don’t, the Afghan people would drive them out as they have occupying armies in the past. The demand was the most serious warning to the coalition that Karzai has issued to date. The immediate provocation was a coalition airstrike on Saturday in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province that killed nine civilians, including children. But Karzai’s statement also was the culmination of years of complaints about civilian casualties and aggressive NATO military operations. [Client]
• Cluster Bombing of Misrata Committed by US Naval Forces, Not Qadhafi
  by Human Rights Investigations (HRI) Global Research, May 27, 2011 humanrightsinvestigations.org The ongoing HRI investigation of the cluster bombing of Misrata in April 2011 has found convincing evidence the bombing was committed by US naval forces. The bombing of Misrata On the 15th April 2011, during the day, sub-munitions of a MAT-120 cluster bomb were shown to Human Rights Watch (HRW) and C.J. Chivers, a journalist for the New York Times, in Misrata. On that evening, during ongoing clashes between rebel and loyalist forces, Human Rights Watch workers witnessed 3 or 4 cluster munitions landing in residential areas of Misrata. HRW attest to further subsequent such bombings [War crimes] [Double standards]
• Shanghai Cooperation Organization outflanking U.S. in Mideast, Central Asia regions
  by Dr. Fariborz Saremi Global Research, May 30, 2011 World Tribune The U.S. government suffered a major diplomatic setback in the Central Asian region when Zalmay Rasoul, the Afghan Foreign Minister, traveled to Beijing to discuss proposals for tightening Afghan relations with the Chinese government despite prior American warnings that it should not do so. Rasoul’s recent four day trip (May 9-12) was particularly irksome as it came at a time in which the United States has been particularly active in the region and because it reflects the growing confidence of China that it can undermine U.S. ambitions in Central Asia by establishing diplomatic ties with various neighbors. Moreover, the move was so swift and effective that the Americans seem to have caught on the wrong foot. It has most certainly made U.S. and NATO efforts to secure a long-term military presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia more strenuous than they already were. The primary mover behind such diplomacy has been the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which has enabled China and Russia to cooperate more closely in their dealings with the Central Asia and the Middle East than in any other region. China has been given a platform to expand interests in the region without inciting Russian ire and at the same time Russia now has a means for indirectly but actively participating in Chinese policy. The SCO has presented itself to the region as an alternative provider of security to NATO even as China and Russia publicly profess interest in supporting Western security efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thus, since the SCO already contains China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as members and is now cozying up to Afghanistan, it seriously threatens the USA’s exclusive right to secure military bases in Afghanistan and other parts of the area. China has other potential allies in its sights too, one of these being India, which has made it clear that it prefers to pursue an independent regional policy rather than simply toe the U.S. line. [SCO]
• Imperial Eye on Pakistan: Pakistan in Pieces, Part 1
  by Andrew Gavin Marshall Global Research, May 28, 2011 - 2011-05-27 As the purported assassination of Osama bin Laden has placed the focus on Pakistan, it is vital to assess the changing role of Pakistan in broad geostrategic terms, and in particular, of the changing American strategy toward Pakistan. The recently reported assassination was a propaganda ploy aimed at targeting Pakistan. To understand this, it is necessary to examine how America has, in recent years, altered its strategy in Pakistan in the direction of destabilization. In short, Pakistan is an American target. The reason: Pakistan’s growing military and strategic ties to China, America’s primary global strategic rival. In the ‘Great Game’ for global hegemony, any country that impedes America’s world primacy – even one as historically significant to America as Pakistan – may be sacrificed upon the altar of war. Part 1 of ‘Pakistan in Pieces’ examines the changing views of the American strategic community – particularly the military and intelligence circles – towards Pakistan. In particular, there is a general acknowledgement that Pakistan will very likely continue to be destabilized and ultimately collapse. What is not mentioned in these assessments, however, is the role of the military and intelligence communities in making this a reality; a veritable self-fulfilling prophecy. This part also examines the active on the ground changes in American strategy in Pakistan, with increasing military incursions into the country. [AfPak] [US global strategy]

• Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, Obama’s choice to head Joint Chiefs, is a low-tech soldier
  By Greg Jaffe, Monday, May 30, 12:51 PM Shortly after he was promoted to four stars, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey made a decision that spoke volumes about how he views the future of war. The Army had spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the previous decade on an annual war game designed to peer 15 to 20 years into the future and envision what kinds of technology and fighting concepts the military would need to prevail in the next major war. The game involved dozens of role players and an army of defense contractors waging computer-simulated battles. 5 .Dempsey, whom President Obama will nominate on Monday to be chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, killed the war game in 2009. He replaced it the next year with a series of seminars devoted to producing more flexible and free-thinking officers at all levels. [US global strategy] [US military] [Pacification]
• US default ‘more likely than in Indonesia’
  By James Mackintosh Published: May 25 2011 18:27 | Last updated: May 25 2011 18:27 It sounds dotty to suggest the US is at imminent risk of default. A country that has rarely been able to borrow so cheaply, that issues debt in its own currency and has just demonstrated that it can print as much money as it likes need never miss a coupon payment. Yet in the past fortnight traders have come to the conclusion that America might breach its own constitutional clause that its debt “shall not be questioned”. According to Markit, the cost of one-year US credit default swaps, which insure against default, almost tripled in six trading days. According to this – far from perfect – measure, the US is now more likely to default than Indonesia or Slovenia in the next 12 months. America’s dysfunctional politics is starting to infect the markets. To blame are congressmen who, like House Speaker John Boehner, argue it would be less damaging to default than to raise the debt limit without dealing with the deficit. Traders had assumed this was political brinkmanship as usual until Mr Boehner was publicly supported by Stanley Druckenmiller, an eminent former hedge fund manager. He told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that a few days of missed payments would be worth it to force the White House to accept cuts. The danger is that a technical default does nothing to bring Democrats round, and there is no sign that Republicans are willing to accept tax rises, also needed if the budget is to balance. Rather than a short sharp political manoeuvre, default could drag on – and become a total disaster. If a technical default led to a rating downgrade – as it should – it would be catastrophic, forcing rule-driven investors to dump Treasuries and sending yields through the roof. For now, default worries still seem to be confined to the CDS market. The more congressmen try to make a political virtue out of default, the bigger the danger that fear spills over into the broader bond markets. .Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. You may [Reserve] [Decline] [Governance]
• Saudi Arabia Scrambles to Limit Region’s Upheaval
  By NEIL MacFARQUHAR RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia is flexing its financial and diplomatic might across the Middle East in a wide-ranging bid to contain the tide of change, shield fellow monarchs from popular discontent and avert the overthrow of any more leaders struggling to calm turbulent republics.
• US on cusp of striking industrial renaissance
  Source: Global Times [16:47 May 26 2011] Comments By John Gong China may well be the world's largest economy sooner than expected, but the age of the US is not going to fade away easily. Instead of the gradual erosion of world market shares and the continued decadence of domestic manufacturing bases, the corporate US is roaring back, roaring back with a vengeance, roaring back with a mission, ushering in two decades or so of what I believe will be a new US Industrial Renaissance. The economic landscape in the US is arguably much better this year. The growth engine is cranking. Real estate has been stabilized. Companies are finally starting to hire again. Financial markets are slowly coming back. There is no doubt that the economic recovery is well on its way. Perhaps none other news symbolizes this recovery more than the resounding turnaround of General Motors, once a crippled, ancient giant of the auto industry, but now born-again following a government bailout at the height of the financial crisis. The five consecutive quarters of GM's billion dollar profits unequivocally vindicate Obama's vision of a private-government partnership, which was once damned by critics as the "war on capitalism." But this turnaround of fortune is more than just about a much expected economic recovery. Corporate US is transforming itself, and more importantly injecting it with new blood that makes it ever more efficient and competitive globally. The scale and speed of these changes may be such that it justifies being called the next US Industrial Renaissance.
• Samoa to shift back west of international dateline
  Associated Press, 05.09.11, 12:31 AM EDT WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- The South Pacific island nation of Samoa announced plans Monday to jump forward in time by one day by switching to the west side of the international dateline - 119 years after it moved the other way in a bid to boost its trade and economy. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi cited the same reasons for shifting back, saying moving forward a day will make doing business with key partners Australia and New Zealand "far, far easier and more convenient." Article Controls The move will see the independent Polynesian nation share the same date and a similar time as its Pacific neighbors, including Australia and New Zealand. Samoa and neighboring American Samoa lied west of the international dateline until 1892, when a U.S. business trader convinced both to switch to the east, moving back to the previous day's date. Samoa has long marketed itself as the last place on earth to see the sun each day. "A local trader lobbied successfully for the change as it was convenient for trading ships from Europe and the United States that were servicing Samoa at the time," Tuilaepa said in a statement. "But our trading partners have dramatically changed since, and today we do a lot more business with New Zealand and Australia, China and Pacific Rim countries such as Singapore." Tuilaepa said Samoa is currently losing out on two working days a week doing business with New Zealand and Australia. "While it's Friday here, it's Saturday in New Zealand, and when we're at church Sunday, they're already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane," he said. The shift will put the dateline between Samoa and American Samoa, a U.S. territory, but Tuilaepa said that would create "exciting tourism opportunities." "You can have two birthdays, two weddings and two wedding anniversaries on the same date - on separate days - in less than an hour's flight across, without leaving the Samoan chain," he said. In 2009, Tuilaepa enacted a law switching drivers to the left side of the road instead of the right, to bring Samoa in line with Australia and New Zealand. Samoa, a nation of 180,000 people, is located about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii. [Decline] [China rising]
• Translating innovation into US growth: An advanced-industries perspective
  The United States faces a future in which the elements of economic leadership are moving abroad. Reversing these trends will require the private and public sectors to collaborate. MAY 2011 • James Manyika, Daniel Pacthod, and Michael Park ..Is America losing its innovation edge? For decades, the country has debated this question in the halls of Washington, on the nightly news, and in corporate boardrooms. Pundits have looked abroad for signs—from the Soviets during the Cold War to the Japanese in the late 1980s to the Asian Tigers1 in the early 2000s—that the United States was losing its economic advantage. Pessimists point to startling statistics, such as the rise in the number of patents filed by foreign inventors or the growing corps of engineers graduating overseas. These statistics are indeed alarming. Yet despite the historical challenges, the United States has remained the home of innovation. From the Internet to mainframe servers to pharmaceuticals, major innovations are still “Made in the USA.” [Decline] [Innovations]
• First to Third World in one lifetime
  Posted By Clyde Prestowitz Tuesday, May 24, 2011 - 6:13 PM Share I'm sitting at Gate 31 of Washington's Reagan National Airport waiting for a flight to Chicago. I've actually been sitting here for about four hours so far with no departure time in sight. During that time, I have been booked on three different flights, denied boarding on my original flight when the pilot failed to show up, and had my plane swapped from the Chicago route to become a flight to Denver, but then that was also delayed for want of a pilot. This follows an experience last week in which I waited at National Airport for four hours while trying to get the 11 a.m. shuttle to New York and then waited at La Guardia for another four hours before my return flight took off.
  The bottom line here is that the United States does not have an economic problem or a competitiveness problem so much as it has a political problem. Its institutions, largely created for the 18th and 19th centuries, are simply no longer adequate to shape the debate and the decisions we need to arrest the slide toward Third World status that has taken place in my lifetime. [Decline]
• Bumrushing the Syrian Revolution with the Help of The Independent
  The Syrian government has banned foreign and, I would imagine, anything but state-media reportage on the ongoing unrest. So I guess that foreign journos have little to chew on except reports relayed by dissidents and their own, understandable resentment at Bashar al-Assad’s attempt to dominate the news cycle. Even so, I think The Independent’s Alastair Beach or his editors reached a new low in submissive fluffing of the Syrian revolution. Detailed fisking is not even required. Just cut and paste. The issue concerns a rather cool young Syrian gentleman, Ahmad Biasi, who made a guerilla video debunking desperate government spin concerning cellphone footage of heavy-handed government stomping of detainees in the town of Al Bayda. Not our town, said the government. Some old footage...maybe from Iraq? Baisa did a video tour of his town, showing that the square where the stomping occurred was indisputably Al Bayda. At the end of the video, Biasi stood in front of the camera and held up his national ID card to certify the authenticity of his film. The video went viral and the Syrian government detained Biasi. Now let’s put the spinmobile in the capable hands of Alastair Beach. He writes: [Media]
• Gates Urges Iraq to Let U.S. Troops Stay Longer
  By JULIAN E. BARNES And BEN LANDO Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Iraq to host U.S. troops beyond the end of the year to maintain stability and keep Iran at bay, echoing the growing concerns of U.S. military officials that the government in Baghdad isn't moving fast enough to request an extension of the U.S. troop presence. Mr. Gates predicted the U.S. would accede to such a request to send a message to American allies and Iran that the U.S. isn't withdrawing from the region, he said in remarks to a think tank in Washington on Tuesday. "It would be reassuring to the Gulf States. It would not be reassuring to Iran, and that is a good thing," Mr. Gates said. Some military officials say that without a continued U.S. presence, Iraq is likely to fall into the orbit of Iran. [Unintended consequences] [Bases]
• Rinderpest, or ‘cattle plague,’ becomes only second disease to be eradicated
  By David Brown, Friday, May 27, 2:12 PM Rinderpest, a cattle disease that for centuries felled herds in Europe, Africa and Asia and caused periodic human famine, has been eradicated, veterinary epidemiologists announced this week. Eradication is the Holy Grail of disease prevention and has been successful only once before. Smallpox, an equally devastating human scourge, was eradicated in 1980, proving it is possible to stamp out a microbe across the entire planet. Attempts are underway to rid the world of polio and Guinea worm disease. .The bovine equivalent of measles, rinderpest is described in ancient Chinese writings and in documents from the Roman Empire. It hobbled Charlemagne when he moved herds to support his armies in the 8th century. When it entered Ethi­o­pia in 1889, it caused starvation that killed one-third of the country’s human population, even though the microbe does not infect people. Even in communities that do not depend on herding for their livelihood, rinderpest could be lethal because it killed draft animals and disrupted agriculture.
• Afghanistan war tactics are profoundly wrong, says former ambassador
  Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles says General Petraeus has increased levels of violence and should be ashamed of himself Share169 Julian Borger, diplomatic editor guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 May 2011 21.58 BST Article history Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's former ambassador to Afghanistan, said it was a mistake to boast about the numbers of Taliban killed. Photograph: Teri Pengilley Britain's former ambassador to Afghanistan has attacked the conduct of the war by the US commander, General David Petraeus, describing the future CIA chief's tactics as counter-productive and "profoundly wrong". Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who also served as the UK's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, added that Petraeus should be "ashamed of himself" for making claims of the number of insurgent commanders his forces had killed. "He has increased the violence, trebled the number of special forces raids by British, American, Dutch and Australian special forces going out killing Taliban commanders, and there has been a lot more rather regrettable boasting from the military about the body count," said Cowper-Coles. He added that the use of statistics was reminiscent of the Vietnam war. "It is profoundly wrong and it's not conducive to a stable political settlement." Petraeus is due to leave Afghanistan to become CIA director this summer. Since taking command of US and coalition troops in Afghanistan last June, he has increased the use of special forces raids and drone attacks against Taliban commanders. [Militarisation]
• Obama: The West still leads the world in the 21st century
  By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers LONDON — Setting the stage for a G-8 summit starting Thursday in France, President Barack Obama spoke Wednesday from one heart of "Old Europe" to assert that the U.S.-European alliance will lead the 21st century even as new powers such as China, India and Brazil emerge. Flatly rejecting the notion that Western civilization has peaked, Obama instead insisted that the free people and free markets that forged a new order from the ashes of World War II remain essential to global leadership in economics, politics and security arrangements, especially as turmoil spreads across the Middle East and North Africa. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/25/114770/obama-the-west-still-leads-the.html#ixzz1NRxjv6RO [Decline]
• Libyan gold rush followed end to sanctions
  By Robert O’Harrow Jr. and James V. Grimaldi, Thursday, May 26, 2:18 PM Some of the world’s most sophisticated banks and investment firms rushed to do business with Moammar Gaddafi’s government in Libya after the United States rescinded the country’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism five years ago, according to an internal financial document obtained by The Washington Post. HSBC, Goldman Sachs and other top banks took on hundreds of millions in cash deposits. Hedge funds and private investment firms, including the Washington-based Carlyle Group, sold Libya’s investment authority complex financial products. The Libyan sovereign wealth fund bought more than $1 billion in U.S. Treasury bills, effectively giving Libya a chance to underwrite U.S. debt. .By last year, Libya’s fund recorded about $56 billion in assets around the world, the internal document shows. [Sanctions]
• Strauss-Kahn and rambunctious final of “Washington consensus”
  25.05.2011 Elena Pustovoytova, political scientist The arrest of the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn onboard of the plane ten minutes before flying to Paris from New York shook the global mass media not less than the elimination of terrorist N 1 Osama bin laden in Pakistan. Does it mean that both of them, each in his own right, posed the same danger for the United States? According to many reporters, there are many strange and even mysterious things in what happened to the IMF’s Chief May 14. But we better leave all the mysteries to the American and French reporters – this is their business to dig out sensations
• Asians 42 times more likely to be held under terror law
  People from ethnic minorities more likely than white people to be stopped under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act Vikram Dodd, crime correspondent guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 May 2011 22.25 BST Article history Heathrow Terminal 4, where people go through security checks. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian People from ethnic minorities are up to 42 times more likely than white people to be the target of a counter-terrorism power which allows the stopping and searching of the innocent yet grants them less rights than suspected criminals, official figures seen by the Guardian show. [Global insurgency] [Media]
• Apache helicopters to be sent into Libya by Britain
  Use of helicopters, which can attack small targets, represents significant escalation of conflict Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 May 2011 18.16 BST Article history British army Apache helicopter. The UK is to send helicopters to Libya following similar announcements by France. Photograph: Ministry of Defence/EPA Britain and France are to deploy attack helicopters against Libya in an attempt to break the military stalemate, particularly in the important coastal city of Misrata, security sources have told the Guardian. In a significant escalation of the conflict, the Apaches – based on HMS Ocean – will join French helicopters in risky operations which reflect deepening frustration among British and French defence chiefs about their continuing inability to protect civilians in Libya. Apaches, which are being used in counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan, can manoeuvre and attack small targets in relatively built-up areas. Heavily armed Apaches and French Tiger helicopters are equipped with night vision equipment and electronic guidance systems. Forces loyal to the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, have shed their uniforms, are using civilian vehicles and hiding armour near civilian buildings, including hospitals and schools. [Media] [Libya]
• Decoding Obama's Bahrain puzzle
  By M K Bhadrakumar The address by United States President Barack Obama on Thursday regarding the Middle East situation was a mixed bag of certainties and ambiguities, although Obama did bring US regional policy frankly and squarely behind the Arab Spring. On the other hand, the speech was a last-ditch attempt to define a new narrative and a desperate gamble to regain the initiative. There is indeed a fundamental contradiction insofar as any political order that is born out of the Arab Spring, which is representative or sensitive to popular Arab opinion will, by definition, find it difficult to forge strategic cooperation with America.
• Justices uphold order that may release thousands of Calif. Inmates
  By Robert Barnes, Tuesday, May 24, 5:23 AM A bitterly divided Supreme Court on Monday upheld a judicial order that could result in the release of nearly 40,000 prisoners from a California penal system so overcrowded that its conditions are, the court wrote, “incompatible with the concept of human dignity.” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a California native, joined the court’s four consistent liberals in agreeing that, after nearly two decades of litigation, it is time for the courts to force the state to act.
  The number of prisoners in California continues to fluctuate, but at one time the prison system there held nearly twice as many inmates as the 80,000 it was meant to hold.
  As many as 200 prisoners may live in a gymnasium, monitored by as few as two or three correctional officers,” he wrote. “As many as 54 prisoners may share a single toilet.” [Prisoners] [Human rights]
• Justice Department, SEC investigations often rely on companies’ internal probes
  View Photo Gallery — ?The SEC and the Justice Department have relied on these investigations in cases as wide-ranging as corruption, health-care fraud and accounting ma­nipu­la­tion. Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy David S. Hilzenrath, Monday, May 23, 1:36 PM As the U.S. government steps up investigations of companies suspected of paying bribes overseas, law enforcement officials are leaving much of the detective work to the very corporations under suspicion. The probes are so costly and wide-ranging that the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission often let the companies investigate themselves and then share the results. SEC staff’s ‘revolving door’ prompts concernsSEC worker says she paid ‘heavy price’ for voicing Stanford probe concernsGet the latest business news .The strategy is especially common in cases of foreign corruption but also extends to domestic investigations involving issues as varied as health-care fraud and shady accounting. [Corruption]
• Obama seeks to reassure Israel on Mideast policy in speech at AIPAC conference
  By Joby Warrick, Monday, May 23, 8:31 AM President Obama sought to reassure Israel and its supporters of “ironclad” U.S. support Sunday in a speech to a Jewish lobbying group that also warned that time could be running out for a peace accord with Palestinians. Obama, wading afresh into a topic that evoked anger from Israeli leaders last week, insisted again that 1967 boundary lines should be the starting point for talks on a new Palestinian state. But he allowed that the dividing line would be negotiated to accommodate Israeli settlements and security needs. [Middle East][Client] [Strategic paralysis]
• Apocalypse believers wait vigilantly for the end after months of preparing; skeptics carry on
  By Associated Press, Published: May 21 | Updated: Sunday, May 22, 4:08 PM OAKLAND, Calif. — They spent months warning the world of the apocalypse, some giving away earthly belongings or draining their savings accounts. And so they waited, vigilantly, on Saturday for the appointed hour to arrive. When 6 p.m. came and went across the United States and various spots around the globe, and no extraordinary cataclysm occurred, some believers expressed confusion, while others reassured each of their faith. Still, some others took it in stride.
• As Indian companies grow in the U.S., outsourcing comes home
  By Paul Glader, Published: May 21 New York — Ray Capuana paces the rows of cubicles in a haggard high-rise a stone’s throw from Wall Street as his people hustle the phones and hope for a bonus check. His employees are not bond traders, though. They are call center workers. Many are African Americans without college degrees. Some lack high school diplomas. They work for a Mumbai-based company called Aegis Communications. .India’s outsourcing giants — faced with rising wages at home — have looked for growth opportunities in the United States. But with Washington crimping visas for visiting Indian workers, some companies such as Aegis are slowly hiring workers in North America, where their largest corporate customers are based. In this evolution, outsourcing has come home [Offshoring]
• Doomsday for the Dollar?
  May 21, 2011 12:22 PM EDT The dollar may need to make room for the Euro and the Renminbi as the rise of economic strength and influence of emerging markets threaten its dominant position as the world's currency. By 2025, six major emerging economies-Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Russia-will account for more than half of all global growth the World Bank predicts. [Reserve]
• Was Dominique Strauss-Kahn Trying to Torpedo the Dollar?
  by Mike Whitney Global Research, May 19, 2011 It's all about perception management. The media is trying to dig up as much dirt as they can on Dominique Strauss-Kahn so they can hang the man before he ever sees the inside of a courthouse. It reminds me of the Terry Schiavo case, where devoted-husband Michael was pegged as an insensitive slimeball for carrying out the explicit wishes of his brain-dead wife. Do you remember how the media conducted their disgraceful 24 hour-a-day Blitzkrieg with the endless coverage of weepy Christian fanatics on the front lawn of the hospital while Hannity, Limbaugh and O' Reilly fired away with their sanctimonious claptrap?
  Can I tell you what this is all about? It's about the dollar. That's right. Strauss-Kahn was mounting an attack against the dollar and now the wrath of the Empire has descended on him like ton-of-bricks. [Reserve]
• International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn calls for new world currency
  Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has called for a new world currency that would challenge the dominance of the dollar and protect against future financial instability. Dominique Strauss-Kahn saw a greater role for the IMF's Special Drawing Rights, which is currently composed of the dollar, sterling, euro and yen Photo: ReutersBy Andrew Trotman 5:14PM GMT 10 Feb 2011 250 Comments “Global imbalances are back, with issues that worried us before the crisis - large and volatile capital flows, exchange rate pressures, rapidly growing excess reserves - on the front burner once again,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn said. “Left unresolved, these problems could even sow the seeds of the next crisis.” “When we worry about the deficiencies of the international monetary system, we are mostly worrying about volatility,” he added. There is “a sense that money sometimes flows around the globe in too-volatile a fashion and that countries need a more stable, more predictable external environment in order to prosper”, he said. He suggested adding emerging market countries' currencies, such as the yuan, to a basket of currencies that the IMF administers could add stability to the global system. [Reserve]
• Dark undertones of US cyberspace diplomacy
  Source: Global Times [00:38 May 18 2011] Comments The White House rolled out its International Strategy for Cyberspace on Monday, a carefully worded plan, which the US claims will help "build on cyberspace's successes and help secure its future - for the United States, and the global community." This is to formally strategize the Internet freedom diplomacy that has been defended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton since early last year. A borderless cyber world with a free flow of information and maximum economic benefits is an ideal situation, except that the standard is set by the US, which would "combine diplomacy, defense and development" to reach this vaguely stated goal. Countries still at the receiving end of online information are at the stage of better integrating cyberspace into everyday life, to which end necessary Internet regulation is needed to ensure a fair and balanced online world. US Internet freedom diplomacy has its precedents, for [Softwar] [US global strategy]
• Israel's '67 borders have long been at root of peace debate
  By Sheera Frenkel | McClatchy Newspapers JERUSALEM — Despite the Israeli government's distress over President Barack Obama's address Thursday on Middle East issues, veterans of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks say there was little new in what the president proposed — and little chance that Israel would be forced into an agreement it found intolerable. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/20/114526/israels-67-borders-have-long-been.html#ixzz1N1SKWRGp [US global strategy] [Obama] [Strategic paralysis] [Israel]
• Will NATO Forces Under the UN Flag Take the Jamahiriya’s Place in Libya?
  20.05.2011 Sergei Shashkov, political scientist "How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." --Abraham Lincoln A conference on Libya convened in London on March 29 and was attended by representatives from 40 countries which had voted for UN Security Council Resolution 1973. The panel included such dignitaries as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, his Libya envoy Abdul Ilah Khatib, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, US Secretary of State H. Clinton, French foreign minister Alain Juppé, etc. An address was delivered by somebody Guma El-Gamaty, British coordinator for the rebel Interim National Council of Libya who vividly described the opposition’s hunger for weapons, complained about the lack of armored vehicles, and said that were it not for the problem Gadhafi would have been deposed in a matter of days. In response, H. Clinton expressed a view that the UN Security Council’s resolutions actually authorized a legitimate transfer of weapons, and the gathering pledged that the coalition offensive in Libya would continue until its leader does what the Resolutions urge him to. Italian diplomacy chief Franco Frattini said consensus was reached that Gadhafi must leave the country. Serious humanitarian missions tend to be costly, but in Libya’s case one gets an impression that somehow reservations or any accompanying moral regards concerning the plan are nonexistent. Germany’s Federal Minister of Economics and Technology Rainer Bruederle, for example, called for a confiscation of Libya’s assets across the EU and for a transfer of the funds to a special UN account to be used to cover the mission costs. A day earlier US Secretary of State H. Clinton similarly suggested passing to Libya’s people the money currently frozen on the accounts of Gadhafi and his cabinet members. Interestingly, while Bruederle mentioned a modest $6b, H. Clinton voiced a more ambitious agenda adding up to $90b (she said $30b were frozen in the US and $60b - in the EU). In other words, a flag for the mission will be borrowed from the UN, the troops will be contributed by the EU, the leadership will be left to Washington, and Libyans will pick up the bill.
  There is information that the NATO navy maintaining a marine blockade of Libya not only debars freight ships from moving towards Tripoli but also redirects them to Benghazi. Having failed to crush Libya’s regime in a snap offensive, the West is tightening the economic blockade of the country where fuel shortages are already visible and available food reserves can last for at most a couple of months. What the future holds - a military offensive in the guise of a humanitarian mission, a new potentially notorious oil-for-food program, a partition of Libya, a combination of the above, or some other outcome - is an open question to be answered shortly. [Libya] [Humanitarian intervention] [Imperialism] [Sanctions]
• Obama speech greeted with wariness, apathy in Mideast
  View Photo Gallery — ?Syria, Libya and other Middle Eastern regimes aren’t the only ones to use force against protesters. Here are some of the major crackdowns since 2000. By Liz Sly and Ernesto Londono, Friday, May 20, 7:25 AM BEIRUT — The words were stirring, the emotions powerful and the intentions seemingly sincere. “Repression will fail .?.?. tyrants will fall,” President Obama declared solemnly. And America, he said, “cannot hesitate to stand squarely on the side of those who are reaching for their rights.” But why, wondered those watching the televised speech in the region to which his comments were aimed, couldn’t he have said that before? Obama speech greeted with skepticism, yawns in Mideast .As the Arab Spring enters its sixth month, and at a time when some of the region’s dictators are dramatically ratcheting up their repression, Obama’s effort to reset the U.S. relationship with a rapidly changing Middle East seemed to fizzle against the reality of America’s fading relevance. Obama addressed for the first time the brutal crackdown in Syria, rebuked U.S.-allied Bahrain for its harsh oppression of Shiite dissidents and called, to Israel’s consternation, for a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of Israel’s 1967 borders — an unprecedented step for a U.S. president. But for many in the region, it was simply too little, too late. [Obama] [Middle East]
• Regime Change at the IMF: The Frame-Up of Dominique Strauss-Kahn?
  by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, May 19, 2011 The arrest of IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has all the appearances of a frame-up ordered by powerful members of the financial establishment, in liaison with France's Nicolas Sarkozy, whose presidency has served the interests of the US at the expense of those of France and the European Union. While there is for the moment no proof of a plot, the unusual circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment require careful examination. Immediately following Strauss Kahn's arrest, pressures were exerted by Washington to speed up his replacement as Managing Director of the IMF preferably by a non-European, an American or a handpicked candidate from an "emerging market economy" or a developing country. Since the founding of the Bretton Woods institutions in 1945, the World Bank has been headed by an American whereas the IMF has been under the helm of a (Western) European. Strauss-Kahn is a member of elite groups who meet behind closed doors. He belongs to the Bildeberger. Categorized as one of the world's most influential persons, he is an academic and politician rather than a banker. In contrast to his predecessors at the IMF, he has no direct affiliation to a banking or financial institution. But at the same time he is the fall guy. His "gaffe" was to confront the Washington-Wall Street Consensus and push for reforms within the IMF, which challenged America's overriding role within the organization. The demise of Strauss-Kahn potentially serves to strengthen the hegemony of the US and its control over the IMF at the expense of what former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called "Old Europe".
• China, India eye IMF job
  Source: Global Times [08:14 May 19 2011] Comments Benjamin Brafman, lawyer of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, talks to reporters outside of the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, the United States, May 16, 2011. Strauss-Kahn must remain jailed without bail over alleged sexual assault, a New York judge said on Monday. The judge, Melissa Jackson, refused a request for bail, agreeing that Strauss-Kahn, who was pulled off a Paris-bound plane on Saturday and charged with a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment, represented a flight risk. Photo:Xinhua By Li Qian International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's uncertain future has led to speculation about who will take over the much-coveted position, amid calls for a new leader to be selected from an emerging economy. Western leaders broke silence Tuesday and urged the resignation of Strauss-Kahn, who was denied bail by a Manhattan Criminal Court judge and was placed on suicide watch in a cell at New York's Rikers Island jail complex, according to CNN. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that Strauss-Kahn, a former French finance minister, was "obviously not in a position to run the IMF" following [Unintended consequences]
• Focus Is on Obama as Tensions Soar Across Mideast
  Uriel Sinai/Getty Images Two Palestinian men with rocks during clashes with the Israeli police on Sunday near Ramallah. By HELENE COOPER and ETHAN BRONNER Published: May 18, 2011 WASHINGTON — Few game-changing proposals are emerging to defuse tensions in the Middle East as a busy week of diplomacy unfolds with President Obama’s address to the region and his meeting with Israel’s prime minister. Against the backdrop of Middle East uprisings that have intensified animus toward Israel and growing momentum for global recognition of a Palestinian state, American and Israeli officials are struggling to balance national security interests against the need to adapt to a transformative movement in the Arab world. [US global strategy]
• Why Hamas has no need for Saatchi and Saatchi.
  Wasseem El Sarraj, 17 May 2011 There is little evidence that suggests that sanitizing or transforming the Palestinian brand produces much of a return, at least not for Palestinians. About the authorWasseem El Sarraj is a researcher with the Gaza based think tank TiDA (www.tidagaza.org)Media-savvy westerners arrive in Gaza with usually just one stunning piece of advice for Gaza’s evolving de-facto government: you need a good PR firm. Hamas’s biggest problem, apparently, is not the 63-year illegal occupation: it’s branding.
  Even a network of tunnels cannot hide the obvious: Hamas leaders are neo-liberal capitalists, their economic policy no different from the orthodox economies of any other western nation. In fact Gazans’ ability to deal with enforced austerity and its resilient Big Society should be a model for the west. Ghazi Hamad, the Deputy Foreign Minister, delivered a message to Israelis - in Hebrew - calling for a truce after tensions rose dramatically in April. And in the last week Khaled Meshaal announced an acceptance of the 1967 borders - if that is not recognition of Israel, I don’t know what is - and yet another twenty-year Hudna (Arabic for truce). [Media]
• Managing the breakdown of order
  18.05.2011 Konstantin Gordeev, political scientist Have you ever heard of tempered glass? When you break it, it crumbles into small chunks. Or imagine a ball lying in a pit: it looks as if perfectly fixed inside the pit but once you touch it slightly, it runs down- nobody can predict where exactly. There is also another example from if you please: the phenomenon of compression and rarefaction in the strength of materials. All the above mentioned examples can refer as well to the word 'catastrophe', which is understood as 'abrupt alterations occurring as a response to gradual change in the external world'. Let us leave out all complicated details about this phenomenon and focus just on the role it plays in human evolution and the fact that a catastrophe always results from accumulated dysfunctions.
• After Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, emerging economies eye top IMF job
  By Howard Schneider, Wednesday, May 18, 4:13 AM Testing their new clout in the world economy, developing nations began pressing Tuesday to strip Europe of its traditional hold on the top job at the International Monetary Fund, as pressure mounted on embattled managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn to resign. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner added what may be a decisive voice to the debate Tuesday when he said during a speech in New York that Strauss-Kahn’s arrest on sexual assault charges means he is “obviously not in the position to run the IMF.” Geithner called for acting managing director John Lipsky, the agency’s No. 2, to be more formally recognized as the IMF’s interim head. .It was the most explicit statement yet by a U.S. official about the matter, and while not a direct call for Strauss-Kahn’s resignation, it added to the sense that his grip on the job is slipping. In China, Brazil and Turkey, officials of the three large, fast-growing and influential emerging economies used Strauss-Kahn’s arrest to argue that his successor be chosen by merit and not geography, setting the tone for a potentially divisive battle over the IMF’s executive suite. European officials, struggling through a continental debt crisis and relying on the IMF for help, insist they retain the managing director’s job at least for the next few years. But both the Brazilian and Chinese foreign ministries issued statements Tuesday saying it was time to end the World War II-era “gentleman’s agreement” that guaranteed Europe the managing director’s post.
• John Lipsky
  First Deputy Managing Director, IMF Biographical Information February 11, 2010 John Lipsky assumed the position of First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund on September 1, 2006.
  He also participated in negotiations with several member countries and served as the Fund's Resident Representative in Chile during 1978-80.
  A graduate of Wesleyan University, Mr. Lipsky earned a bachelors degree in economics. Subsequently, he was awarded an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.
• Death of the War Powers Act?
  By Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway, Wednesday, May 18, 11:43 AM This week, the War Powers Act confronts its moment of truth. Friday will mark the 60th day since President Obama told Congress of his Libyan campaign. According to the act, that declaration started a 60-day clock: If Obama fails to obtain congressional support for his decision within this time limit, he has only one option — end American involvement within the following 30 days. Obama has not only failed but he hasn’t even tried — leaving it to Sen. Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, to call for a “specific resolution that would give [the president] authority.” Neither the president nor the Democratic congressional leadership has shown any interest. They have been sleep-walking their way to Day 60. [Libya] [Legality]
• US hits federal debt ceiling
  Source: Global Times [01:59 May 17 2011] Comments By Zhu Shanshan As lawmakers in Washington remained deadlocked over whether to extend the federal government's credit line, US government debt hit its ceiling, spelling potential trouble for investments by China, its biggest creditor. According to US figures, China holds around 7 percent of the country's total debt, putting it in the firing line of any consequences should the US default, analysts warned. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner declared a "debt issuance suspension period" in a letter to lawmakers Monday to stave off the federal debt limit until August 2. "I have determined that a ‘debt issuance suspension period' will begin today, May 16, 2011, and last until August 2, 2011, when the Department of the Treasury predicts that the borrowing authority of the US will be exhausted," Geithner said in the letter. The US reached the limits of its borrowing authority as its government debt hit the legal ceiling of $14.294 trillion. [F&E]
• WikiLeaks cables show that it was all about the oil
  Kevin G. Hall talks with the Real News Network about the U.S. diplomatic push for more oil sources. By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — In 2006, three years after the Russian government had charged Mikhail Khodorkovsky — then the country's wealthiest businessman — with fraud and moved to break up his Yukos oil company, U.S. diplomats had had enough. Gazprom, which grew out of the former Soviet Union's state gas ministry, had been busy buying up Yukos' far-flung empire, stoking American fears that soon Russia and its tough leader, Vladimir Putin, would control virtually all of the natural gas flowing to Europe. The United States wanted to stop that from happening. So the American embassy in Slovakia hired a Texas-based oil consultant and began secretly advising the Slovakian government on how to buy the 49 percent stake Yukos had held in Transpetrol, the Slovakian oil pipeline company. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/16/114269/wikileaks-cables-show-oil-a-major.html#ixzz1ManDhZds [Client] [Oil] [US global strategy]
• Chicago Trial May Unmask Pakistan’s Links to Militants
  By GINGER THOMPSON and DAVID ROHDE WASHINGTON — Two years before terrorists struck the Indian port city of Mumbai, a Pakistani-American man named David Coleman Headley began laying the groundwork for the attack, financed, he claims, by $25,000 from an officer in Pakistan’s powerful intelligence service. Mr. Headley told Indian investigators that the officer, known only as Major Iqbal, “listened to my entire plan to attack India.” Another officer with the intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, “assured me of the financial help,” Mr. Headley said. As the United States presses Pakistan for answers about whether the ISI played a role in harboring Osama bin Laden, Mr. Headley is set to recount his story of the Mumbai attack in a federal courthouse in Chicago. What he discloses could deepen suspicions that Pakistani spies are connected to terrorists and could potentially worsen relations between Washington and Islamabad. India, the site of the November 2008 attacks, will be monitoring the trial for evidence of the ISI’s duplicity. Pakistan will also be listening to — and is likely to deny — Mr. Headley’s every word. Islamabad has been dismissing his accusations against the ISI as little more than a desperate performance by a man hoping to avoid the death penalty.
• Afghans turn from West despite military gains: study
  7:35pm EDT By Missy Ryan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Despite(sic) battlefield gains against insurgents in southern Afghanistan, the United States is failing to win over Afghans in the heartland of the Taliban, a new study shows. Almost 90 percent of men polled in contested districts in southern Afghanistan believe foreign military operations are bad for them, according to research by the International Council on Security and Development, or ICOS. Over half the people who took part in the study in southern Afghanistan, where military commanders say President Barack Obama's decision to send an additional 30,000 troops has helped push insurgents out of key areas, said their opinion of foreign troops was more negative than it was a year ago. [Global insurgency] [Pacification]
• Xenophobia and the Civilizing Mission
  Françoise Vergès, 13 May 2011 Europe’s civilizing mission is humanitarian - its duty to intervene to spread the good word, protecting the oppressed against local tyrants. The conditions by which this protection is granted are always dictated by the protector and never the protégé. Though this is not said, it is a given [Humanitarian intervention]
• America’s military: failures of success
  Paul Rogers, 12 May 2011 The afterglow of Osama bin Laden’s killing fuels the United States’s confidence in its shift towards integration of military and security policy. But it is another grand illusion and missed opportunity. 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 28 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)Three actions undertaken by western forces in three different countries in the second week of May 2011 are connected by a single feature: the “transnationalisation” of warfare, whereby national boundaries and sovereignty count for less and less: * In Pakistan early on 2 May, a United States “Seal” team killed Osama bin Laden * In Libya, a Nato air-raid on 1 May that hit Muammar Gaddafi’s compound came close to the leader, instead killing one of his sons and two grandchildren * In Yemen on 6 May, an armed-drone attack that targeted the radical preacher Anwar al-Awlaki killed two people. The pursuit by states of enemies across frontiers is not new. [Global insurgency] [Sovereignty] [Imperialism] [Asymmetry]
• Afghanistan likely to be given observer status in SCO
  Vladimir Radyuhin Afghanistan may join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as an observer at the group’s 10th jubilee summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, next month, Russia’s Foreign Minister said. The SCO will also consider the applications of India and Pakistan to join the organisation as full members, Mr. Sergei Lavrov said. [SCO]
• Obama administration is divided over future of U.S.-Pakistan relationship
  By Karen DeYoung and and Karin Brulliard, Sunday, May 15, 12:44 PM Two weeks after the death of Osama bin Laden, the Obama administration remains uncertain and divided over the future of its relationship with Pakistan, according to senior U.S. officials. The discovery of the al-Qaeda leader in a city near Pakistan’s capital has pushed many in the administration beyond any willingness to tolerate Pakistan’s ambiguous connections with extremist groups. After years of ineffective American warnings, many U.S. officials are concluding that a change in policy is long overdue. Those warnings are detailed in a series of contemporaneous written accounts, obtained by The Washington [AfPak] [Client]
• Osama is Dead: What Difference Does This Make?
  Immanuel Wallenstein Commentary No. 305, May 15, 2011 Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011, Pakistan time. He was killed by U.S. Seals forces in a special operation ordered by the U.S. president. The whole world knows this, and reactions to this event have been extremely diverse. But has this death changed anything anywhere? Does it matter?
  There is a piece of even more persuasive evidence. Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, published a story the very day of Osama's death, citing eye-witnesses that electricity was cut off in the area during the operation - indeed for two hours before it occurred - which could only have been done by some Pakistani agency that knew of the forthcoming raid. The Chinese have at least as good an internal intelligence operation in Pakistan as the United States. So it seems probable that, while some Pakistani agencies were kept in the dark, others coordinated with the United States. [Osama] [Client]
• Secret Desert Force Set Up by Blackwater’s Founder
  By MARK MAZZETTI and EMILY B. HAGER Published: May 14, 2011 ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer, the group boarded an unmarked bus and drove roughly 20 miles to a windswept military complex in the desert sand. The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater Worldwide, with $529 million from the oil-soaked sheikdom. [Privatisation]
• Iraq dossier drawn up to make case for war – intelligence officer
  Newly released evidence to Chilcot inquiry directly contradicts Blair government's claims about dossier Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 May 2011 15.41 BST A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq's weapons programme was drawn up "to make the case for war", flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister's chief spin doctor. In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: "We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care." His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government's claims about the dossier – and, perhaps more significantly, what Tony Blair and Campbell said when it was released seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. [Iraq] [Imperialism] [WMD] [Disinformation]
• How Wikileaks vindicated Bush’s anti-terrorism strategy
  By Donald H. Rumsfeld, Friday, May 13, 10:59 AM Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. special operations forces is a major success in our country’s war against al-Qaeda. As a result of the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program and the intelligence gained from detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a major fraction of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has been captured or killed since 2001. This conclusion was inadvertently reinforced recently by WikiLeaks’ illegal disclosure of more than 700 classified Defense Department files on Guantanamo Bay detainees. Their publication has harmed our security and cemented the impression among allies that America is incapable of keeping secrets. But the material also provides compelling evidence of the effectiveness of Bush administration anti-terror policies after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. .The illegally released files, in addition to a host of declassified documents on U.S. detention policies posted at www.rumsfeld.com, record complex decisions and excruciating trade-offs that President Bush and national security officials had to make. They document the deadly techniques and intentions of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees who still desire to return to the fight, and the labors of analysts and interrogators who enabled us to stop additional attacks.
• Bin Laden’s preoccupation with U.S. said to be source of friction with followers
  By Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung, Thursday, May 12, 1:38 PM Osama bin Laden was preoccupied with attacking the United States over all other targets, a fixation that led to friction with followers, according to U.S. intelligence officials involved in analyzing the trove of materials recovered from the al-Qaeda leader’s compound. In handwritten journals and long-winded compositions saved on computer hard drives, the officials said, bin Laden always seemed to be searching for a way to replicate the impact of al-Qaeda’s most devastating strike. .He exhorted followers to explore ways to recruit non-Muslims “who are oppressed in the United States,” in the words of one official — particularly African Americans and Latinos — and to assemble a plot in time for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Even while sealed inside a cement compound in a Pakistani city, bin Laden functioned like a crime boss (sic) pulling strings from a prison cell, sending regular messages to his most trusted lieutenants and strategic advice to far-flung franchises, including al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. Some followers pledged their fealty to him; others, however, chafed at his exhortations to remain focused on U.S. targets instead of mounting less risky operations in places such as Yemen, Somalia and Algeria. [Media]
• The People vs. Goldman Sachs
  A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of The Goldman Sachs Group, is sworn in while testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Investigations Subcommittee on Capitol Hill on April 27, 2010 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson/Getty Images They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it. Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial. [Corruption]
• Osama bin Laden sons attack legitimacy of US assault
  In letter to New York Times, sons of al-Qaida leader call for UN inquiry into why their father was killed and not arrested Share3 Declan Walsh in Islamabad guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 May 2011 07.58 BST Article history Osama bin Laden's son Omar has called on the US to provide proof of his father's death. Photograph: Elisabetta A Villa/WireImage.com Osama bin Laden's adult sons have attacked the legitimacy of the US assault that killed their father, calling for a UN inquiry to determine why he was not arrested and prosecuted. In a joint letter the family said it wanted to know "why an unarmed man was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that truth is revealed to the people of the world". "Arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems," they said. The letter was sent to the New York Times under the name of Omar bin Laden, the 30-year-old fourth son of Bin Laden who lived with the al-Qaida leader in Sudan and Afghanistan but has publicly denounced his attacks on civilians. [Osama]
• Text of al Qaida's statement on the death of Osama bin Laden
  McClatchy Newspapers This is the text of al Qaida's statement acknowledging the death of Osama bin Laden. It was translated by McClatchy Special Correspondent Mohannad Sabry. "Thanks be to Allah who said 'And if you are killed or die in the Way of Allah, forgiveness and mercy from Allah are far better than all that they amass.' Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/06/113843/text-of-al-qaidas-statement-on.html?storylink=MI_emailed#ixzz1M1o7fvOP [Osama]
• Bin Laden Sons Say U.S. Broke International Law
  By SCOTT SHANE Published: May 10, 2011 WASHINGTON — The adult sons of Osama bin Laden have lashed out at President Obama in their first public reaction to their father’s death, accusing the United States of violating its basic legal principles by killing an unarmed man, shooting his family members and disposing of his body in the sea. The statement, provided to The New York Times on Tuesday, said the family was asking why Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, “was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that truth is revealed to the people of the world.” [Osama] [Legality]
• Managing Pakistan After bin Laden
  Removing troops from Afghanistan will be seen in Islamabad as weakness.
  By JOHN BOLTON Duplicity has been a hallmark of Pakistan's approach to the U.S. for years. Beginning in the 1970s, Islamabad denied it was pursuing nuclear weapons, even as Washington repeatedly confronted it with concrete evidence. Presidents and Congresses fulminated, but the nuclear program continued and a device was successfully tested in 1998. So no one should be stunned that Osama bin Laden resided comfortably for perhaps six years one mile from Pakistan's West Point. This arrangement would have been unworkable without complicity by elements of Pakistan's government, most likely Inter-Services Intelligence, which fathered the Taliban years ago. The key question is how extensive knowledge of bin Laden's presence was within Islamabad's military and civilian structures.
• The Unwisdom of Elites
  By PAUL KRUGMAN The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europe’s single currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong? Well, what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it’s mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness. So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong. The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster.
• Geopolitics Behind the Great Triumph
  09.05.2011 Leonid Ivashov Even as we talk of the great triumph over Nazis in World War II, discuss the global impact of the Soviet people's victory, and say that it irreversibly transformed the world, we often fail to appreciate the extent of heroism of Soviet soldiers and the proportions of the changes it helped to bring about. Debates over World War II explainably focus on military aspects of the historical drama – the battles, the armed forces involved, and the commanders - but it should not evade us that the war was driven by geopolitics which is expressed in profound categories of historical epochs, continental spaces, and world civilizations.
  Religious divisions also factored into the situation on the eve of World War II. Ideologists of the Western Christianity regarded fascism as a force capable of subduing the Orthodox world weakened by the communist revolution and by the Soviet rule in Russia. As in the 1990ies, in the 1930ies Rome was actively struggling over positions in the Balkan region. Hitler enjoyed support from the Roman Catholic circles and from a variety of Protestant sects, as those who channeled his aggressiveness in Russia's direction were aware that the Soviet Russia was putting into practice the traditional Third Rome geopolitical project, albeit in an atheist guise. Arnold Toynbee wrote in his Civilization on Trial that for centuries aggression used to be the West's only form of linking to the outside world and that the conclusion to be drawn from chronicles of centuries-long struggle between the two branches of Christianity was that invariably Westerners were the aggressors and Russians – the victims of aggression.
• U.S. Braced for Fights With Pakistanis in Bin Laden Raid
  By ERIC SCHMITT, THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER Published: May 9, 2011 WASHINGTON — President Obama insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops, senior administration and military officials said Monday. In revealing additional details about planning for the mission, senior officials also said that two teams of specialists were on standby: One to bury Bin Laden if he was killed, and a second composed of lawyers, interrogators and translators in case he was captured alive. That team was set to meet aboard a Navy ship, most likely the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea. Mr. Obama’s decision to increase the size of the force sent into Pakistan shows that he was willing to risk a military confrontation with a close ally in order to capture or kill the leader of Al Qaeda.
• The myth of American Exceptionalism
  By Richard Cohen, Tuesday, May 10, 11:11 AM “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1903 — and I will not quibble. But the problem of the 21st century is the problem of culture, not just the infamous “culture of poverty” but what I would call the culture of smugness. The emblem of this culture is the term “American exceptionalism.” It has been adopted by the right to mean that America, alone among the nations, is beloved of God. Maybe so, but on some days it’s hard to tell. The term “American exceptionalism” has been invoked by Mitt Romney, Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and, of course, Sarah Palin. I would throw in Michele Bachmann, since if she has not said it yet, she soon will because she says almost anything. She is no exception to the cult of American exceptionalism. [Exceptionalism] [Decline]
• Osama and the Ghosts of September 11: "Proof that Obama is Lying"
  by Michael C. Ruppert Global Research, May 7, 2011 May 5, 2011, 1400 PST, SEBASTOPOL – I have personally interrogated underage criminal suspects who could lie better than White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. It has been four days since the P.T. Barnum proclamation of the death of Osama bin Laden (OBL). President Obama’s account of the firefight has had zero credibility from the outset and it continues to fray and wear thin as each day passes.
  Let’s start with what I consider the most-obvious proof that the Obama administration is lying. It comes from a world-class microbiologist who allowed me to use this quote on condition of anonymity. The simple proof of his accuracy is to just ask any microbiologist experienced in DNA sequencing about his statement. There are tens of thousands of them around the world. Here is what he wrote me: I am a molecular biologist and I've built a lucrative career in human genetics. I have run one of the world's largest and most productive DNA genotyping facilities and now I am helping to build the global market for clinical whole human genome sequencing for the world's largest human genome sequencing facility. I have worked with the absolute best genome scientists from the military, academia, medicine, and industry from around the world. I know DNA. And, one thing I know about DNA is that you cannot, repeat CANNOT: take a tissue sample from a shot-in-the-noggin-dead-guy in a north central Pakistan special forces op, extract the DNA, prepare the DNA for assay, test the DNA, curate the raw DNA sequence data, assemble the reads or QC the genotype, compare the tested DNA to a reference, and make a positive identity determination…. all in 12 hours- let alone transport the tissue samples all the places they'd need to have gone in order to get this done. [Osama]
• Full Metal Racket Jake Whitney interviews Michael Hastings
  May 2011 The Rolling Stone reporter on his blockbuster articles, how the generals pushed Obama into a war he didn’t want to fight, and the Pentagon’s effort to tear down the wall between PR and propaganda. [Media] [Psychwar] [Propaganda] [Militarisation]
• Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death
  May 6, 2011 We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.
  By Noam Chomsky It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. [Osama]
• Kandahar assaults underscore vulnerabilities in Afghan war effort
  Taliban attacks continued for a second day in Kandahar, despite a yearlong effort by NATO and Afghan forces to drive the Taliban out of the southern province. By Kristen Chick, Correspondent / May 8, 2011 .The Taliban continued their assault on government offices in Kandahar for the second day Sunday, after militants launched attacks in their former stronghold Saturday as part of the start of the group’s spring offensive. The attacks across the city come after a yearlong campaign by NATO and Afghan forces to drive the Taliban out of Kandahar Province and southern Afghanistan. They show that despite those efforts, the city is still vulnerable to a widespread Taliban assault.
• Israel's former spy chief says Iran strike would be 'stupid'
  Israel's former intelligence chief has stated that the idea of bombing Iran's nuclear programme was "the stupidest thing I ever heard". Meir Dagan was known to be sceptical of the threat to use force to destroy Iran's nuclear programme Photo: AP By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent 5:27PM BST 08 May 2011 33 Comments Meir Dagan, who was head of Mossad until retiring in September, was speaking for the first time since leaving his job. He was known to be sceptical of the threat to use force to destroy Iran's nuclear programme, which Israel and the West fears is intended to make a nuclear weapon, but his decision to go public and the strength of the language he used came as a shock to the government. Speaking at a conference at the Hebrew University on Friday, he distinguished between Iran's civilian and covert military nuclear programme. Any attack on the former would be "patently illegal under international law", he said. But he added that the military nuclear programme was scattered across the country, unlike the Iraqi reactor struck by an Israeli air raid in 1981, which is often cited as a precedent for an attack on Iran. The difficulty would be completely destroying the programme, and what came next, he said. "It will be followed by a war with Iran," he said. "It is the kind of thing where we know how it starts, but not how it will end." [Iran] [Cyberwar]
• Doha: US shifting the goal posts in international negotiations
  May 5th, 2011 Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International United States Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk’s open admission recently that a Doha Round deal is unlikely to be reached this year, coming as it does on the heels of reports that the United States attempted to organize agreement in Geneva to suspend the Round, bodes poorly for the future health of the multilateral trade negotiation system. Yet in good measure, the United States has been the villain of the piece here, its penchant to indulgently re-frame, mid-stream, the terms of Doha’s already-unwieldy core bargain to suit domestic constituencies going to the heart of the problem. Ever since mid-2007, the Doha texts bear unmistakable American fingerprints that point to an effort to shift the goal posts within the negotiation. [Domestic] [Renege] [FTA] [China confrontation]
• While Bahrain demolishes mosques, U.S. stays silent
  By Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers MANAMA, Bahrain — In the ancient Bahraini village of Aali, where some graves date to 2000 B.C., the Amir Mohammed Braighi mosque had stood for more than 400 years — one of the handsomest Shiite Muslim mosques in this small island nation in the Persian Gulf. Today, only bulldozer tracks remain Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/08/113839/while-bahrain-demolishes-mosques.html#ixzz1LqBuv5ks [Double standards]
• National Interests of Russia in Information Confrontation
  06.05.2011 Nikolai Dimlevich, political scientist Analysis of international political and military situation and the information shows that in the modern world, several developed countries (USA, UK, France, Germany, India and China) are actively increasing their efforts to achieve global dominance in the information field, which leads to strengthening the entire spectrum of strategic threats for security of Russian Federation. The most active role in this process is played by the United States and its allies. According to the concept of "information superiority", reflected in the document about military strategy development of U.S. "One Perspective - 2020", the advantage in the information field is one of the key factors in the successful conduct of hostilities. To achieve the objectives of the concept, in 2009, the Ministry of cybersecurity was established, there was substantially increased the size of the financing of activities aimed at development of the system of information confrontation of the United States, the improvement of information weapons, forms, methods and ways of its application, as well as conducting offensive information and psychological operations (IPO) in various regions of the world. Such as: - a region called the "Greater Middle East", especially in Libya, with the active involvement the units of "psychological war" from the countries of Western Europe as well; - in Syria one can see the first phase of an IPO in order to change the existing regime in the country, the next ones are Iran, North Korea and Belarus. [Subcritical] [Cyberwar]
• Singapore opposition makes historic gains
  By Kevin Brown in Singapore Published: May 8 2011 05:22 | Last updated: May 8 2011 05:22 Singapore’s opposition parties made significant gains in the city-state’s most closely contested election since independence, but as expected failed to dent the long-serving People’s Action party’s huge parliamentary majority. After a nine-day campaign in which opposition hopes of a breakthrough had surged, the PAP took 81 of 87 elected seats, with six going to the Worker’s party, the largest of six opposition groups. With all but five seats contested, the combined vote for opposition parties rose to about 40 per cent, from a third at the last election in 2006, when opposition parties won only two seats. Singapore’s first-past-the-post voting system, under which overall results are not proportional to national voting patterns, ensured that most seats remained in the hands of the PAP, in power since independence in 1965. But the ruling party’s 60.1 per cent share of the vote was the lowest since independence. [Democracy]
• Libya: NATO Transitions To Terror Bombing Phase Of War
  By Rick Rozoff Global Research, May 3, 2011 Stop NATO On the evening of April 30 a Libyan government spokesman announced that an air strike by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had hit a target in Tripoli, killing leader Muammar Gaddafi's 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of the former's grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors. The attack followed by only a few hours a television address by Gaddafi in which he appealed to NATO nations for a ceasefire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country. His comments included the questions: “Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?" [Libya]
• Qatar's Western grip
  May 6, 2011 5:00 am The tiny Arab nation is quietly making a name for itself in international finance and politics. But is the sparsely populated country a secure bet for Wall Street and Washington? By Cyrus Sanati, contributor FORTUNE -- Qatar may not have the gleaming exterior of Dubai or the great oil wealth of Saudi Arabia, but the tiny Arab nation is quietly making a name for itself in the realms of international finance and politics. This year, in particular, seems to be Qatar's coming out party, now that its energy infrastructure is up and running, pumping billions of dollars into the state's coffers. But is the sparsely populated country a truly secure bet for Wall Street and Washington? Or will Qatar face the same financial and political temblors rocking its Arab neighbors? [ODI] [Client]
• Can we win in Afghanistan?
  By Peter Bergen,New America Foundation May 4, 2011 | The New Republic The death of Osama bin Laden will raise the inevitable question: What are we still doing in Afghanistan? The answer, of course, is that the mission in Afghanistan is about something bigger and more ambitious than eliminating Al Qaeda's leaders—most of whom, in any event, are probably living in Pakistan, as bin Laden was when the United States finally tracked him down. No, the mission in Afghanistan isn't about killing Al Qaeda members. It's about stabilizing the country so that it can never again serve as the hotbed of extremism that it was until 2001, with all of the attendant national security and human rights problems that resulted. [Pacification] [Fragmentation]
• Humanitarian Neo-colonialism: Framing Libya and Reframing War Creative Destruction Part III
  by F. William Engdahl Global Research, May 4, 2011 engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/ The most remarkable facet of NATO's war against Libya is the fact that "world opinion," that ever so nebulous thing, has accepted an act of overt military aggression against a sovereign country guilty of no violation of the UN Charter in an act of de facto neo-colonialism, a 'humanitarian' war in violation of basic precepts of the laws of nations. The world has accepted it without realizing the implications if the war against Gaddafi’s Libya is allowed to succeed in forced regime change. At issue is not whether or not Gaddafi is good or evil. At issue is the very concept of the civilized law of nations and of just or unjust wars. The Libya campaign represents the attempt to force application of a dangerous new concept into the norms of accepted international law. That concept is what is termed by its creators, “Responsibility to Protect.” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has stated that the justification for the use of force in Libya was based on humanitarian grounds, and referred to the principle known as Responsibility to Protect, “a new international security and human rights norm to address the international community’s failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”1 An American President, Barack Obama, has invoked this novel new concept as justification for what is de facto an unlawful US-led military war of aggression and acquisition.2 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as Presidential candidate in 2008 said about the concept: "In adopting the principle of the responsibilty to protect, the United Nations accepted the principle that mass atrocities that take place in one state are the concern of all states."3 Nice words and highly dangerous. According to White House insider reports, the key person driving Obama to move to military action in Libya, citing a nebulous "Responsibility to Protect" as the basis was Presidential Adviser, Samantha Power.4 In effect, via the instrument of a controlled NATO propaganda barrage, the US government with no verifiable proof claimed Gaddafi's air force slaughtered innocent civilians. That in turn has been the basis on which Amr Moussa and members of the Arab League bowed down before heavy Washington pressure to give Washington and London the quasi-legal fig leaf it needed. That unproven slaughter of allegedly innocent civilians was why a "humanitarian" war was necessary. On that basis, we might ask why not put a no-fly NATO bombardment operation as well on Bahrain, or Yemen, or Syria? Who decides the criteria in this new terrain of Responsibility to Protect? There has been no serious effort on the side of Washington or London or Paris to negotiate a ceasefire inside Libya, no effort to find a compromise as in other countries. This is the marvelous flexibility of the new doctrine of Responsibility to Protect. Washington gets to define who is responsible for what. National sovereignty becomes a relic. Back in 2004 George Soros authored a little-noted article in Foreign Policy magazine on the notion of national sovereignty. He wrote, "Sovereignty is an anachronistic concept originating in bygone times when society consisted of rulers and subjects, not citizens. It became the cornerstone of international relations with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648...Today, though not all nation-states are democratically accountable to their citizens, the principle of sovereignty stands in the way of outside intervention in the internal affairs of nation-states. But true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments. If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified." 5 Responsibility to Protect The coup represented by the NATO intervention into events in Libya has been years in assiduous preparation. The first to publicize the concept, “The Responsibility to Protect,” was Gareth Evans, a former Australian Foreign Minister and CEO of the International Crisis Group. In 2002, one year before the illegal US-UK aggression against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Evans published a seminal paper in Foreign Affairs, the elite foreign policy journal of the New York Council on Foreign Relations.6 [Humanitarian interventionism] [Imperialism]
• Regional Responses to Extra-Territoriality and Non-State Nuclear Actors: A Perspective From Southeast Asia
  Raymund Jose G. Quilop
  Raymund Jose G. Quilop, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines and Secretary of the Philippine Political Science Association, writes "In making Southeast Asian states more receptive to the practice of extraterritoriality particularly in regard to preventing non-state actors from having access to WMD, it would be helpful to fully utilize existing mechanisms for exchanging information including the numerous platforms that bring together leaders, foreign and defense officials as well as making existing treaties such as the SEANWFZ adapt to the changed regional environment where nuclear proliferation is no longer solely the result of state action but involves non-state actors too. Indeed, the complexity of the challenge of terrorism is eventually pushing governments to become more receptive to the idea of working together, not merely in having their efforts coordinated but in finding ways to collaborate with one another." [Extraterritoriality] [NSA]
• .Operation Geronimo: General distrust
  By Peter Spiegel and Farhan Bokhari Published: May 6 2011 22:13 | Last updated: May 6 2011 22:13 It was exactly what clandestine military raiders fear most. Labouring in unexpected heat and weighed down by the US Navy Seals and their equipment on board, one of the two Black Hawk helicopters that crossed into Pakistan on Sunday began to lose altitude with alarming rapidity as it approached its destination. The result was a “hard landing” – military-speak for a crash. [Osama] [AfPak] [Client]
• Pakistan angry at US Bin Laden raid
  Source: Global Times [07:41 May 07 2011] Comments By Huang Jingjing Tensions are continuing between Pakistan and the US resulting from the raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden Monday in a compound near the capital, Islamabad. About 1,500 Pakistani Islamists took to the streets near the Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, protesting against the killing of Bin Laden and saying that more figures like him would arise to wage holy war against the US, Reuters reported. "Jihad (holy war) against America will not stop with the death of Osama," said Fazal Mohammad Baraich, a cleric, amid protestors shouting "Down with America" and burning American flags.
• Singapore elections marked by online buzz of discontent
  In a country known for its censorship, the internet has become a focus for complaints about the long-time ruling party Share1530 Kate Hodal in Singapore guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 May 2011 12.34 BST Article history It is a dangerous act in a country where graffiti can fetch eight strokes of the cane, more dangerous still because it parodies the leader of the ruling Lee dynasty. With a few deft applications of spray paint, Skope One finishes a pig-head depiction of the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, with a Nazi-styled SS logo on the lapel and an Uncle Sam-inspired banner emblazoned "Lee Wants You". "We shouldn't be scared any more – it's about time something changed," says the 35-year-old artist, the founder of Singaporean graffiti. "We need to have this freedom of alternative speech." Singapore is known worldwide for censorship and corporal punishment. But in the runup to Saturday's parliamentary elections more people have started to speak out against the clan that has ruled Singapore for almost 50 years. Parallels with the Arab spring are striking, even if revolution is not just around the corner. [Succession]
• Probing Link to Bin Laden, U.S. Tells Pakistan to Name Agents
  By HELENE COOPER and ISMAIL KHAN Published: May 6, 2011 WASHINGTON — Pakistani officials say the Obama administration has demanded the identities of some of their top intelligence operatives as the United States tries to determine whether any of them had contact with Osama bin Laden or his agents in the years before the raid that led to his death early Monday morning in Pakistan. The officials provided new details of a tense discussion between Pakistani officials and an American envoy who traveled to Pakistan on Monday, as well as the growing suspicion among United States intelligence and diplomatic officials that someone in Pakistan’s secret intelligence agency knew of Bin Laden’s location, and helped shield him. [Osama] [Client]
• No resistance in "cold-blooded" U.S. raid: Pakistan officials
  By Kamran Haider and Augustine Anthony ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan | Thu May 5, 2011 8:18am EDT ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden and his comrades offered no resistance when killed by U.S. special forces in a Pakistani town, Pakistani security officials said on Thursday. U.S. accounts of what happened have changed throughout the week, and initial characterizations of a 40-minute gun battle have given way to officials being quoted as saying only one of the five people who were killed had been armed. The White House has cited the "fog of war" as a reason for initial misinformation on whether bin Laden -- who was shot in the head -- was armed when U.S. Navy SEALs raided his compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad early on Monday. Two senior Pakistani security officials, citing their investigation, said there was no firefight because the inhabitants never fired back. "The people inside the house were unarmed. There was no resistance," one of the officials said. "It was cold-blooded," said the second official when asked if there was any exchange of fire during the operation which, U.S. officials said lasted nearly 40 minutes. The officials declined to say how they got their information, but officials had earlier said wounded had been detained. Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the assault show three dead men -- not including bin Laden -- lying in pools of blood. No weapons could be seen in the closely cropped images. The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who was in the compound after the raid, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a T-shirt, blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths. ($1 = 84.750 Pakistani Rupees) (Editing by Chris Allbritton and Nick Macfie) [Osama]
• Election results 2011: Lib Dems suffer worst losses in a generation
  • Nick Clegg's party battered in council elections • Scottish National party makes major gains • Labour wins key councils and advances in Wales • Conservative vote holds firm Share34 Hélène Mulholland, political reporter guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 May 2011 08.47 BST Article history Nick Clegg, whose party has suffered its worst electoral results in a generation. Photograph: Murdo Macleod The Liberal Democrats have been left reeling after suffering their worst electoral drubbing in almost 30 years, sustaining heavy losses across northern England. The party was ejected from power in Sheffield – home to Nick Clegg's constituency – as its national share of votes plummeted to 15%.
• Osama bin Laden death: The conspiracy theories
  Patrick Kingsley and Sam Jones guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 May 2011 18.06 BST Article history Osama bin Laden's death has prompted a host of conspiracy theories. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA The decision not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden's corpse and the way the White House has changed its account of how he died has prompted an avalanche of conspiracy theories about his death. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these theories have proliferated across the web. Here are just a few. [Osama]
• Raid Account, Hastily Told, Proves Fluid
  By ELISABETH BUMILLER Published: May 5, 2011 WASHINGTON — On Monday, the Obama administration said that Osama bin Laden had been killed after a firefight with Navy Seal commandos, and that he had used his wife as a human shield. On Tuesday, the administration said that Bin Laden was not armed at all, and that his wife had not been a shield, but had rushed her husband’s assaulter and was shot in the leg. On Wednesday, the administration backtracked again. This time it downgraded its initial accounts of a firefight that raged throughout the raid to gunshots fired only at the beginning of the nearly 40-minute operation by Bin Laden’s courier, who was quickly dispatched by the commandos. What happened? In the view of officials from past and present presidencies, it was a classic collision of a White House desire to promote a stunning national security triumph — and feed a ravenous media — while collecting facts from a chaotic military operation on the other side of the world. At the same time, White House officials worked hard to use the facts of the raid to diminish Bin Laden’s legacy. “There has never been any intent to deceive or dramatize,” a military official said Thursday, asking that he not be named because of ground rules imposed by the Department of Defense. “Everything we put out we really believed to be true at the time.” [Osama] [Disinformation]
• CIA spied on bin Laden from safe house
  View Photo Gallery — ?The long-hunted al-Qaeda leader and chief architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States was killed by U.S. forces May 1 in a surgical raid. Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Greg Miller, Friday, May 6, 11:56 AM The CIA maintained a safe house in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad for a small team of spies who conducted extensive surveillance over a period of months on the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Special Operations forces this week, U.S. officials said. The secret CIA facility was used as a base of operations for one of the most delicate human intelligence gathering missions in recent CIA history, one that relied on Pakistani informants and other sources to help assemble a “pattern of life” portrait of the occupants and daily activities at the fortified compound where bin Laden was found, the officials said. .The on-the-ground surveillance work was part of an intelligence-gathering push mobilized after the discovery of the suspicious complex last August that involved virtually every category of collection in the U.S. arsenal, ranging from satellite imagery to eavesdropping efforts aimed at recording voices inside the compound. [Osama]
• Analysis: U.S. leverage to crimp Iranian oil exports fades
  SINGAPORE | Wed May 4, 2011 6:16am EDT SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The United States may have missed its moment to apply more political pressure on governments to stop buying Iranian crude as rising fuel prices make Washington wary about further interruptions to the global supply chain. U.S. leverage has waned after the civil war in Libya virtually halted the north African country's crude shipments, highlighting risks to Arab exports from unrest across the region. That has thrown oil markets off balance, sending Brent crude to a 32-month high above $127 a barrel in April and boosting American gasoline pump prices to near $4 a gallon. Asia's fastest-growing oil consumers, the main buyers from Iran, are more than ever prioritizing security of supply given that spare capacity is limited [Imperialism] [Unintended consequences] [Sanctions] [Iran] [Libya]
• SYRIA: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO "Humanitarian Intervention"
  by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, May 3, 2011 There is evidence of gross media manipulation and falsification from the outset of the protest movement in southern Syria on March 17th. The Western media has presented the events in Syria as part of the broader Arab pro-democracy protest movement, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia, to Egypt, and from Libya to Syria. Media coverage has focussed on the Syrian police and armed forces, which are accused of indiscriminately shooting and killing unarmed "pro-democracy" demonstrators. While these police shootings did indeed occur, what the media failed to mention is that among the demonstrators there were armed gunmen as well as snipers who were shooting at both the security forces and the protesters. The death figures presented in the reports are often unsubstantiated. Many of the reports are "according to witnesses". The images and video footages aired on Al Jazeera and CNN do not always correspond to the events which are being covered by the news reports. There is certainly cause for social unrest and mass protest in Syria: unemployment has increased in recent year, social conditions have deteriorated, particularly since the adoption in 2006 of sweeping economic reforms under IMF guidance. The IMF's "economic medicine" includes austerity measures, a freeze on wages, the deregulation of the financial system, trade reform and privatization. (See IMF Syrian Arab Republic — IMF Article IV Consultation Mission's Concluding Statement, http://www.imf.org/external/np/ms/2006/051406.htm, 2006) With a government dominated by the minority Alawite (an offshoot of Shia Islam), Syria is no "model society" with regard to civil rights and freedom of expression. It nonetheless constitutes the only (remaining) independent secular state in the Arab world. Its populist, anti-Imperialist and secular base is inherited from the dominant Baath party, which integrates Muslims, Christians and Druze. Moreover, in contrast to Egypt and Tunisia, in Syria there is considerable popular support for President Bashar Al Assad. The large rally in Damascus on March 29, "with tens of thousands of supporters" (Reuters) of President Al Assad is barely mentioned. Yet in an unusual twist, the images and video footage of several pro-government events were used by the Western media to convince international public opinion that the President was being confronted by mass anti-government rallies. [Subcritical war] [Media] [Syria] [Humanitarian intervention]
• Should bin Laden have been tried?
  Daniele Archibugi, 3 May 2011 Maybe there really was no choice. But we have lost something by not putting bin Laden on trial, and that is a particular view of what Justice is for About the authorDaniele Archibugi is a director at the Italian National Research Council (CNR), and professor of innovation, governance and public policy at Birkbeck College. No one particularly wants to criticise the way in which Osama Bin Laden was killed. Everybody is applauding the successful operation, and in New York, as well as in other American cities, ordinary people exalt with joy. The only compassionate words came from the politically least authoritative source, namely the Vatican: its spokesman declared: “A Christian never rejoices in the face of a man’s death”. I would rephrase the Vatican statement in a less religious and more legal language: “No human being should rejoice for the extra-judiciary killing of an accused”. There is no need to repeat that Bin Laden has earned the title of the most vicious criminal of the XXIst century. [Global insurgency] [Legality]
• Pak Generals afraid US may now raid nukes
  Josy Joseph, TNN | May 4, 2011, 02.23am IST NEW DELHI: A vast majority of Pakistan's military leadership is unhappy about the US operation that killed Osama bin Laden and fears that America will conduct similar raids in the future to target the country's nuclear arsenal. An assessment made by Indian agencies suggests that almost three-fourths of the Pakistani military brass is concerned about the way American helicopters crossed into Pakistani territory, carried out a surgical strike and left without informing either the Pakistani government or security establishment, Indian government sources said. The finding, shared with leaders of the Indian government, is significant because of the deep ties Pakistan military has had with its American counterparts – a partnership forged in the Cold War and strengthened during the fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan which enabled Islamabad to extract generous assistance from the US. "Only a minority (in the Pakistani military leadership) believes what the Americans have accomplished is admirable," a source said. According to this minority view, it was a necessary operation and US was well within its right to do it. "We know of such opinions, but over the coming days, this view could get further marginalized," the source said. Across the board, the Pakistani military leadership is worried about the repercussions of the American operation. [Seizure] [Nuclear weapons]
• PREDICTED IN MARCH 2010: Staging bin Laden's 'Death'
  by Enver Masud Global Research, May 2, 2011 The Wisdom Fund - 2010-03-25 It appears that we are being primed for the "death" of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Attorney General Eric Holder told a House panel this month [March 2010] that bin Laden "will never appear in an American courtroom." Others who have examined the evidence, and the "bin Laden tapes," have concluded that bin Laden is dead. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted that the US has had no reliable information on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden in years. But the US needs a neat ending to its war on Afghanistan. Staging bin Laden's death will be seen as a fitting end to this genocidal war for the control of energy resources. Of course it will have to be done so that visual identification is not possible. We suspect that when bin Laden is "killed," we'll just have to trust the folks that lied us into war to confirm they got him.
• Osama bin Laden’s Second Death
  by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, May 2, 2011 If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April fool’s joke this morning’s headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans. Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for a decade? If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to find him?
  No doubt President Obama is in desperate need of a victory. He committed the fool’s error or restarting the war in Afghanistan, and now after a decade of fighting the US faces stalemate, if not defeat. The wars of the Bush/Obama regimes have bankrupted the US, leaving huge deficits and a declining dollar in their wake. And re-election time is approaching. The various lies and deceptions, such as “weapons of mass destruction,” of the last several administrations had terrible consequences for the US and the world. But not all deceptions are the same. Remember, the entire reason for invading Afghanistan in the first place was to get bin Laden. Now that President Obama has declared bin Laden to have been shot in the head by US special forces operating in an independent country and buried at sea, there is no reason for continuing the war.
• Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?
  by David Ray Griffin Global Research, October 9, 2009 Is Osama bin Laden still alive? I have dealt with this question in a recent little book entitled Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? The present essay summarizes the main points of this book. Since the transference of power from the Bush administration to that of Barack Obama administration, the question of whether bin Laden is dead or alive has become more important.
• Bin Laden: If Ever We Wanted to Bring 'Em Back Alive
  By Russ Wellen, May 2, 2011 At Wired's Danger Room, David Axe and Noah Shactman wrote of Osama bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. Special Operations: "Depending on which version is true, Pakistan either had a direct role in the risky, bloody raid … or no role at all." More to the point: The crash occurred near the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbottabad, according to the report, highlighting Bin Laden's long-term proximity to Pakistan government forces — and thus the great extent of his local protection. In other words, the size of the compound alone meant its inhabitants must have been known to the Pakistani authorities, yet they weren't the source of the information leading to the attack on the compound.
• Jihadi Butch Cassidy
  May 3, 2011 · By John Feffer We have, once again, played right into Osama bin Laden's hands. This might seem like an odd assertion, since the al-Qaeda mastermind is finally dead at the hands of U.S. Special Forces, most heads of state have voiced their congratulations, and practically the entire U.S. citizenry is unified in celebration. But Osama bin Laden always understood that the weak use the weapons of the powerful against them, such as U.S. airplanes against U.S. skyscrapers. The weak also lull their opponents into thinking that they have won the war when in fact they have only triumphed in a skirmish. Martyrdom is the preeminent weapon of the weak, and bin Laden has long courted a martyr's death. He didn't want to end up like Saddam Hussein, who looked like a hunted animal when U.S. soldiers extracted him from his hiding hole. Bin Laden didn't want to go on trial and be executed like a common criminal. He wanted to go out in a blaze of gunfire, the jihadi version of Butch Cassidy. The U.S. government reports that bin Laden resisted arrest. No doubt it would have been extremely difficult to thwart his desire for martyrdom, bring him back alive, and pump him for information. Still, the value of subjecting bin Laden to the rule of law would have been incalculable. Instead, bin Laden will enter history as a legend not as a man. His quick burial at sea may well generate a wave of conspiracy theories, a "Deather" movement to parallel the Birthers. Prepare for three more decades of Osama sightings in the Muslim world that rival the once-strong U.S. tabloid obsession with Elvis.
• How to Restore Truth in Media Reporting? The media democracy movement
  by Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips Global Research, September 10, 2009 Project Censored The late New York University media scholar Neil Postman once said about America, “We are the best entertained least informed society in the world." From Jessica Simpson’s weight and Brangelina’s escapades, to Britney Spears’ sister and the Obama’s First Puppy, Americans are fed a steady “news” diet of useless information laden with personal anecdotes, scandals, and gossip. Since the middle of the 1980’s, Project Censored at Sonoma State University has annually researched this phenomenon making list of the most important censored news stories and the most insignificant. Topics and in-depth reports that matter little to anyone in any meaningful way are given massive amounts of media coverage in the corporate media. In recent years, this has only become more obvious. [Media]
• Libyan Scenario For Syria: Towards A US-NATO "Humanitarian Intervention" directed against Syria?
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, April 30, 2011 Stop NATO On April 29 the White House issued an executive order to enforce new and more stringent sanctions against Syria and appealed to European North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to follow suit. In a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives President Barack Obama wrote, "I have determined that the Government of Syria’s human rights abuses....constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and warrant the imposition of additional sanctions.” His order targeted among others Syrian President Bashar Assad's brother Mahir and cousin Atif Najib and also included - in an indication that broader objectives are also being pursued however tenuous, even farfetched, the link - the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, with the presidential demarche contending: "Despite the Government of Iran’s public rhetoric claiming revolutionary solidarity with people throughout the region, Iran’s actions in support of the Syrian regime place it in stark opposition to the will of the Syrian people."
• War-weariness in the United States
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 304, May 1, 2011 The United States is currently engaged in three wars in the Middle East - in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. The United States has bases all around the world, in more than 150 countries. It has tense relations currently with North Korea and Iran, and has never ruled out military action. The war in Afghanistan, when it began in 2002, had very strong support from U.S. public opinion, and indeed a great deal of support in other countries. The war in Iraq had almost as much support from U.S. public opinion when it began in 2003, but a lot less support in other countries. Now the United States is halfway into Libya. Less than half the U.S. public is supportive, and there is very much opposition in the rest of the world. [Militarisation]
• Unrest Around the Arab World Endangers Turkey’s Newfound Influence
  By ANTHONY SHADID BEIRUT, Lebanon — Turkey faces a growing challenge from the tumult sweeping the Arab world to its booming economic stake in the region, newfound political influence and longstanding policy of permitting no problems to fester along its borders. In a few short years, Turkey has emerged as the Middle East’s most dynamic power. But weeks of Turkish diplomacy in Libya collapsed Monday, and Turkey’s prime minister bluntly called for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to step down. A similar situation may await in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad has personally promised Turkish leaders to undertake reform while persisting with his crackdown. In neighboring Iraq, Turkey fears the inability of the government there to keep the country stable as the United States completes its military withdrawal. And Lebanon, where Turkey enjoys access to both Hezbollah and its foes, is now entering a fourth month without a government.
• Obama riding high as doubts start to spread
  Source: Global Times [02:42 May 05 2011] Comments Pakistani photographer Mazhar Khan displays his photographs of Osama bin Laden taken in Afghanistan, before giving a press conference in Islamabad on Wednesday. Photo: AFP By Liu Linlin The approval rating of US President Barack Obama rose more than 10 percent on Wednesday, amid contradicting details about the killing of Osama bin Laden that has drawn suspicion about the legitimacy of the operation. According to a nationwide survey by The New York Times and CBS News, 57 percent of the 532 US adults polled said they now approved of Obama's job performance, up from 46 percent last month.
• Osama bin Laden hideout 'worth far less than US claimed'
  Pakistan property experts say US government description of '$1m mansion' was way off the mark, as further exaggerations come to light Share674 Declan Walsh in Abbottabad guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 May 2011 14.35 BST Article history Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, described by US officials as being worth $1m. Local property experts estimate its value at a quarter of that sum. Photograph: Faisal Mahmood/Reuters Osama bin Laden's house, described by the US government as a $1m (£605,000) mansion, is in fact worth no more than $250,000 say property professionals in Abbottabad, the town where he was killed. The revelation is the latest of several erroneous descriptions about the nature of Bin Laden's hideout – and the manner of his death – which have dogged the White House in recent days. On Tuesday US officials retracted claims that Bin Laden was armed when killed, and that he had used one of his wives as a human shield. Descriptions of Bin Laden's hideout have also been prone to exaggeration. After Sunday night's dramatic raid by US Navy Seals, a senior Obama administration official told reporters that the property, an "extraordinarily unique compound" in an "affluent suburb", was valued at around $1m. But two property professionals in Abbottabad – a quiet, military-dominated town – said that much of that was incorrect. Based on the size of the plot and the house, which was built in 2005, and using recent property sales as a guide, they estimated that it would fetch no more than $250,000 on the current market. "Twenty million rupees, maximum," said property dealer Muhammad Anwar, a 22-year veteran of the local market, at his Abbottabad office. "No swimming pool. This is not a posh area. We call it a middling area." Asked about the American estimate, he chuckled. "Maybe that's the assessment from a satellite. But here on the ground, that's the price." [Intelligence] [Disinformation]
• Pass notes No 2,970: Geronimo
  Osama bin Laden was given a codename by US troops that has proved more than a little controversial Share79 guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 May 2011 19.59 BST Article history The Apache leader known as Geronimo. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Archive Photos Age: 181. And dead. Appearance: Not Bin Laden. As in? As in "Geronimo EKIA", the broadcast received by the White House confirming the death of Osama bin Laden. OK, so what does Geronimo IKEA mean? "EKIA" means Enemy Killed In Action. "IKEA" means Enemy Hard To Reassemble. Which was, coincidentally, also true. And the Geronimo part? Geronimo was Bin Laden's controversial codename. Why controversial? Because it's also the nickname of a Native American leader considered by many to have been a hero and a freedom fighter. The original Geronimo – whose Native American name was Goyathlay, meaning One Who Yawns – was a military leader during the Apache wars who led the Chiricahua Apache tribe in battle against an encroaching US government. Pssh. So? Why do people have a problem with that? Because, as Native American journalist Lise Balk King put it, "It equates being Native American with being hated, an enemy to the world, and someone to be hunted down and killed . . ." [Imperialism]
• The intriguing death of Osama bin Laden
  04.05.2011 M.K.Bhadrakumar (India), political scientist, columnist for The Asia Times Online, and The Hindu and Deccan Herald
  Think of the irony of it. Osama bin Laden was finally tracked down not in the lawless wilds of Afghanistan but in the teeming Pakistani city of Abbottabad, which is hardly 50 kilometers away as the crow flies from the headquarters of the military establishment in Rawalpindi. Abbottabad has been traditionally from the British times a city with a high concentration of serving and retired military people. A brigade of the Second Division of the Northern Army Corps of the Pakistani military is based there. Bin Laden’s massive two-storey bungalow with its 16-foot high walls in the posh residential district of Abbottabad within a few hundred meters of the cantonment bears all the hallmark of a “safe house” of the Pakistani intelligence.
  Make no mistake about it: The operation that killed bin Laden was a joint Pakistan-United States Special Forces operation. There is no conceivable way that the Americans could have got anywhere near that part of Pakistan on their own
• Pakistani officer's photos show blood, but not bin Laden
  By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan — Photos taken by a Pakistani security official inside Osama bin Laden's hideout provide the most graphic images — and perhaps the only ones that will ever be made public — of the chaos that engulfed the three-story house in the moments before a U.S. special forces team killed the terrorist leader with automatic weapons fire to the head. The photos don't include images of bin Laden, whose body had been hauled from the house and carried off by a U.S. helicopter perhaps as much as half hour before Pakistani troops arrived on the scene. But they do show the bodies of three other men sprawled on a blood-soaked floor and hint at the grisly nature of bin Laden's own wounds — one of the reasons the White House announced Wednesday that it wouldn't release photos taken of the dead bin Laden. In the Pakistani security official's images, blood oozes from the dead men's noses, ears and mouths. The pictures show no weapons, though what appears to be a plastic toy gun can be seen underneath one of the men, who's lying near what seem to be computer cords. The U.S. team reportedly carried off a computer, hard drives and other electronic equipment from the house. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/04/113699/pakistani-officers-photos-show.html#ixzz1LSWNR7Ax
• Was killing instead of capturing bin Laden the right call?
  By David Goldstein | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — As details surface about the mission earlier this week to find Osama bin Laden, one thing is clear: Capturing the long-sought terrorist mastermind alive might have been an option, but it wasn't a top priority. The Navy SEAL team that slipped into Pakistan and entered bin Laden's walled hideout put a bullet in his head and helicoptered away with his corpse. He was buried at sea. Experts were divided on whether that was the wiser course. The risks were high either way. "The costs of capturing bin Laden, as opposed to killing him, were pretty stark," said Seth Jones, a counterinsurgency and counterterrorism specialist who's advised the military on Afghanistan. "It creates almost a desperate push (by his followers) to get him free. Then what do you do with him? Who tries him? Where do you keep him? What sort of justice do you put him through? "It was probably wise to kill him right there." CIA Director Leon Panetta told NBC this week that the SEAL team was authorized to kill bin Laden but could have taken him alive if the opportunity arose. "But that opportunity never developed," he said. U.S. officials have said that bin Laden was unarmed but had resisted in some unspecified manner. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/04/113696/was-killing-instead-of-capturing.html#ixzz1LSYD6QQ1
• Account Tells of One-Sided Battle in Bin Laden Raid
  By MARK LANDLER and MARK MAZZETTI Published: May 4, 2011 WASHINGTON — President Obama decided Wednesday not to release graphic photographs of Osama bin Laden’s corpse, as new details emerged about the raid on Bin Laden’s fortified compound that differed from the administration’s initial account of the nearly 40-minute operation. Mr. Obama, after a brief but intense debate within his war council, concluded that making the images of Bin Laden public could incite violence against Americans and would do little to persuade skeptics that the founder of Al Qaeda had been killed, White House officials said. The new details suggested that the raid, though chaotic and bloody, was extremely one-sided, with a force of more than 20 Navy Seal members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden. Administration officials said that the only shots fired by those in the compound came at the beginning of the operation, when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding. After the Seal members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired upon again.
• White House goes silent on bin Laden raid
  By Anne E. Kornblut and Felicia Sonmez, Thursday, May 5, 1:26 PM President Obama ruled out publicly releasing photographs of the deceased Osama bin Laden on Wednesday, and White House officials said they would give no new details about the raid on his compound in Pakistan, an information clampdown that followed fitful attempts to craft a riveting narrative about the killing of al-Qaeda’s leader. Obama said his decision not to release the photos — described by others as extremely gory depictions of a bloodied bin Laden — was an effort to prevent a global backlash. .“It’s important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool,” Obama said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “That’s not who we are. We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.” The move appeared to contradict CIA Director Leon Panetta’s assertion Tuesday that the photos would eventually be made public, suggesting a split among the president’s top aides, and it drew swift criticism from some Republicans. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) called withholding the photographs a “mistake,” saying it will “unnecessarily prolong” questions about whether the al-Qaeda founder really died. Just days after one of the most heralded covert actions in U.S. history, the White House found itself struggling to tell the story of the dramatic raid and having to justify the legal basis for it.
• News agency releases graphic photos of raid
  By Paul Farhi, Thursday, May 5, 2:05 PM On a day when the White House declined to release photos of Osama bin Laden’s corpse, the Reuters news agency released a series of bloody pictures of the attack’s aftermath. Reuters said the images depict the deaths of three men who were with the al-Qaeda leader when he was killed in his Pakistani compound. Reuters said it bought the photos from an unidentified Pakistani security agent who had entered the house in Abbottabad an hour after U.S. commandos raided it. On Sunday, Navy SEALs shot bin Laden to death and took his body with them. .The Reuters photos show three apparently dead men lying in pools of blood. There are no weapons in evidence, but the pictures are so closely cropped that only a limited area is visible around the men’s bodies. The photos suggest the men were unarmed, but that can’t be known for sure from the images. It’s unclear whether the scene was tampered with before the photos were taken.
  In the Reuters photos, one of the dead men lies face-up in his own blood, his eyes half closed, with what appears to be a child’s neon-colored water pistol under his right shoulder. Reuters did not disclose what it paid for the photos.
• The Myth of Bin Laden The false story of his life meets the false story of his death.
  By William Saletan Posted Wednesday, May 4, 2011, at 7:58 AM ET First we hunt you down. Then we blow a hole in your face. Then we dump your body in the sea, where no one can find your grave. Then we destroy the last thing left of you: your reputation. This isn't cruelty. It's strategy. Al-Qaida's greatest strength—diffusion—is also its greatest weakness. It's a scattered network held together by the legend of Osama Bin Laden. We took his life. Now we're out to liquidate his legend.
  But the image of Bin Laden shooting at U.S. commandos from behind an innocent woman also turns out to be a myth.
  Carney is right. So are Brennan, Clinton, and Cameron. Bin Laden was a delusional mass murderer, and his narrative was false. But you can't debunk one false narrative with another. The firefight at Bin Laden's compound, it now appears, pitted two or three men against a dozen or more commandos. Bin Laden didn't engage in the firefight and used no human shield. He wasn't even armed. We shot him dead anyway. That's the truth. Deal with it.
• Critical But Difficult Questions for Afghanistan
  Posted: 05/ 3/11 10:17 AM ET React Important Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday morning on the matter of Afghanistan. Here are his prepared remarks: Mr. Chairman: Thank you for asking me to appear before this Committee, in this instance to discuss U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and, more specifically, what constitutes an acceptable end-state in that country and how the United States can best work to bring it about. As has been the case over the past eight years, my statement and testimony today reflect my personal views and not those of the Council on Foreign Relations, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. The questions that inform this hearing are at one and the same time critical yet difficult to answer. Indeed, I have come to think that just about anything associated with Afghanistan is difficult. I first visited that country as a researcher in the late 1970s in the months preceding the Soviet-engineered coup. [AfPak] [Cold War] [US global strategy] [Agency]
• Osama Bin Laden Dead: A Look At The Abbottabad Mansion Where The Al Qaeda Leader Was Killed
  (VIDEO, PHOTOS) The Huffington Post Cara Parks First Posted: 05/ 2/11 09:00 AM ET Updated: 05/ 2/11 05:26 PM ET Osama bin Laden was killed in his "mansion," according to the New York Times. Where did America's most wanted terrorist call home? The compound was located in the city of Abbottabad, Pakistan, about two hours outside of Islamabad. According to the Times, while comfortable in some respects, the residents did take security seriously:
• Osama bin Laden's last hours come into focus as White House revises its story
  While US officials amend narrative of raid, Abbottabad residents describe Bin Laden's 'mansion' and the brothers who built it Declan Walsh in Abbottabad The Guardian, Wednesday 4 May 2011 Article history Boys show off wreckage from one of the US helicopters. Bin Laden’s compound is in the background. Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP By the time Pakistani soldiers lifted the cordon around Osama bin Laden's house in the garrison town of Abbottabad, triggering a media stampede, the most obvious traces of its infamous resident had been effaced. The American soldiers who had swept in aboard four helicopters on Sunday night had scoured the three-storey building, taking away computer hard disks and a trove of documents – as well as Bin Laden's bloodied body, which was later buried at sea. The following day, Pakistani intelligence – angered at not having been informed of the raid, and embarrassed that it took place under their noses – made a second sweep. Tractors carted away furniture and other belongings. But it was impossible to erase every trace of the drama that ended the manhunt.
  Another shifting narrative concerned the property itself. Up close, Bin Laden's house, a tall, unlovely piece of architecture, towering over the policemen guarding the gate, was not quite the million dollar mansion described by officials. The walls were high, certainly, but not unusually so for north-western Pakistan, where privacy is jealously guarded. The paint was peeling, there was no air conditioning.
• Osama bin Laden's final moments: America changes its story
  The US has backtracked on claims that Osama bin Laden died in a firefight and used his wife as a human shield Share265 Ewen MacAskill in Washington guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 May 2011 23.36 BST Article history Counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan's revelations that Osama bin Laden died in a firefight have been undermined by White House spokesman Jay Carney's version of events. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP The account of what happened in Osama bin Laden's final hideaway was succinct and clear when Barack Obama delivered it on Sunday, but it has become more confused in the days since, with conflicting and inaccurate accounts from the White House. Bin Laden, according to a briefing on Monday, used his wife as a human shield and she was killed. By Tuesday, the White House reversed that: she had not been used as a human shield and she was not dead. The other point of discrepancy was the initial briefings that stated Bin Laden resisted and was killed in a "firefight", which suggests he had been armed. The White House insisted he had resisted, without saying how, but said he had no gun. Did the Obama administration deliberately suggest he had hidden behind his wife as part of an attempt to portray him as a cowardly figure? Did it want to suggest he was armed to avoid criticism that US forces shot dead an unarmed man? Was it just part of the fog of war, with a clear account only available when those engaged in the mission are fully debriefed?
• 'Obama watched bin Laden die on live video'
  President Obama was watching on a TV screen as a commando gunned down Osama bin Laden, according to a news report. Via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a U.S. Navy Seal, the leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye, dailymail.co.uk reported Tuesday. The Seal then carried out what is known in the military as a “double tap” ? shooting him again, probably in the chest, to make certain he was dead, the report said
• Bin Laden's daughter saw U.S. troops kill him, official says
  By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers ABBOTABAD, Pakistan — Osama bin Laden's young daughter has told Pakistani officials that she saw her father shot and killed by armed Americans when they raided a house here early Monday, an official with Pakistan's spy agency said Tuesday. The official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject, said the daughter, whom he described as being 12 or 13 years old, was one of eight or nine children in the house when a team of U.S. Navy SEALs stormed the complex by helicopter. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/03/113643/bin-ladens-daughter-saw-us-troops.html#ixzz1LMsJ1gNU
• Obama snapped watching Bin Laden's death
  AEST 00:00, Tue May 3 2011 7 images in this storyThe White House has released photos showing president Barack Obama watching US forces shoot dead Osama bin Laden during a raid in Pakistan. The president watched live footage of the raid on the Al Qaeda leader's compound during a meeting at the White House in Washington. Obama was joined by members of his national security team, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who covered her mouth in horror as the bloody battle played out.
• White House Corrects Bin Laden Narrative
  By MICHAEL D. SHEAR Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press In a briefing on Tuesday, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, corrected the official account of the raid on the Bin Laden compound.White House officials on Tuesday sought to correct the official account of the raid in Pakistan that ended in the killing of Osama bin Laden, saying that the Qaeda leader was not armed and that his wife was not killed. The new Defense Department narrative released by the White House, and read at a White House news briefing on Tuesday, said that one of Bin Laden’s wives was shot in the leg as she charged members of the commando team on the third floor of the compound. “In the room with Bin Laden, a woman – Bin Laden’s wife – rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed,” the brief statement said. “Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, read the narrative in an attempt to correct statements by administration officials who had suggested that Bin Laden was armed during the raid.
• Osama bin Laden ‘resisted’ assault but was unarmed, U.S. officials say
  View Photo Gallery — ?Al-Qaeda leader’s death comes nearly a decade after attacks on New York and the Pentagon. By William Branigin, Updated: Wednesday, May 4, 8:14 AM Osama bin Laden was not armed when he was shot during a U.S. commando raid early Monday on his fortress-like compound in Pakistan, U.S. officials said Tuesday, contradicting initial accounts of the top-secret operation. Officials also backed away further from initial suggestions that bin Laden and other men in the compound had used women as human shields as they battled the raiding force consisting of U.S. Navy SEALs. A closer look inside the compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was found and killed by an elite crew of American forces. ABC News obtained this exclusive video. (May 2) .In a White House news briefing, press secretary Jay Carney said bin Laden “resisted” when at least one member of the raiding party entered his third-floor room, but he declined to say how the long-hunted al-Qaeda leader had done so. A woman described as one of bin Laden’s wives “rushed the assaulter” and was shot and wounded in the leg, Carney said. Bin Laden was killed with shots to the head and chest, leaving him with gory wounds that have made U.S. officials reluctant to release a photograph of the body, Carney said. “It’s fair to say it’s a gruesome photograph,” he said, adding that “it could be inflammatory.”
• Recovery efforts could speed dollar’s decline
  By Neil Irwin, Wednesday, May 4, 3:35 AM The U.S. government has pulled out all the stops to try to get the economy back on track following the Great Recession: It is running a huge budget deficit, the financial sector has been bailed out, and the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates ultra-low. But these very efforts to get the economy going again create risks of their own. One of the biggest is that the value of the dollar could decline in ways that are abrupt and disruptive. May 2 (Bloomberg) -- Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank AS, talks about the outlook for the U.S. dollar and equity markets. .The dollar has already been drifting gradually downward as a result of large U.S. trade and budget deficits and the growing economic might of the rest of the world. It is down 36 percent against six other major currencies over the past decade — and was down even more before the 2008 financial crisis prompted fearful investors to plow money into dollars. The downward trend is likely to continue over the years as the other economies continue to catch up with the United States. The risk now is that large U.S. budget deficits, a lack of political consensus over how to reduce them and the Fed’s low interest rate policies will transform the slow decline into a precipitous fall. [Reserve] [Decline]
• Mourners vow revenge as Gaddafi’s son is buried
  By Simon Denyer, Published: May 3 TRIPOLI, Libya — Mourners vowed revenge as Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Arab was buried in the country’s capital Monday, with two of his brothers in attendance, after his death in a NATO airstrike that has raised questions about the alliance’s mission in Libya. About 2,000 Gaddafi supporters gathered for the funeral, chanting slogans in support of the regime. There was no sign of Gaddafi, who has appeared in public infrequently since NATO warplanes took over Libya’s skies in mid-March. .The chief mourners were Saif al-Arab’s higher-profile elder brothers Mohammed and Saif al-Islam. The latter was once seen as a reformist voice within the government and occasionally tipped as a possible successor to his father. Saif al-Arab’s coffin, covered in a wreath of flowers and draped in the green flag adopted by the regime since Gaddafi took over in a military coup in 1969, was carried through a throng of supporters, who chanted, “The people want revenge for the martyr” and “Revenge, revenge for you, Libya.” Soldiers, police officers and bodyguards struggled to corral the crowd as his body was taken to the Hani cemetery, a dusty plot of ground where his grandfather also lies, reportedly killed fighting Italy’s colonial invasion nearly a century ago.
• Shock and denial at news of killing
  By Michael Peel in Abu Dhabi Published: May 2 2011 19:10 | Last updated: May 2 2011 19:10 The killing of Osama bin Laden triggered shock, anger and sporadic delight in the Middle East on Monday, adding yet another political dimension to the revolutionary tumult sweeping the region. In Saudi Arabia , the land of his birth, the news sparked cheers, mourning, denial – and a stream of conspiracy theories. Analysts say that – while bin Laden’s death is a big boost domestically for the US – the knock-on effect on the Middle East will be more complex and may even include an increased threat of terrorist attacks by militant groups. [Global insurgency]
• Osama bin Laden: Dead, but how did he hide so long?
  Al-Qaida leader's death on its soil leaves Pakistan facing awkward questions Share446 Ewen MacAskill, Washington and Declan Walsh, Abbottabad The Guardian, Tuesday 3 May 2011 Article history A protest in Quetta after the killing of Osama Bin Laden Photograph: Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images The Obama administration is demanding an explanation from Pakistan on how Osama bin Laden was able to hide in the country for so long before he was killed by US special forces.
  The death of Bin Laden could also lead to a rethink of the scale of the US involvement in Afghanistan. [Imperialism] [Chutzpah] [Client] [Domestic]
• Death of Osama bin Laden: reaction
  • Osama bin Laden 'martyr' tape expected to surface • US weighing release of Bin Laden death evidence • White House says Bin Laden shot in chest and head • Pressure grows on Pakistan over al-Qaida hideout Richard Adams guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 May 2011 22.00 BST Article history Barack Obama along with members of the national security team in the Situation Room of the White House. Photograph: The White House/Getty Images 5pm ET / 10pm BST: This is continuing live coverage of the fallout from the killing of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden. Here is a summary of the latest events:
  • It prevented any grave site emerging as a shrine but muslim clerics have warned that the US decision to bury Bin Laden's body at sea may lead to reprisals. Some muslim scholars claimed it had breached sharia law and warned that it may provoke calls for revenge attacks against US targets while others used the sea burial question to doubt whether he was, in fact, dead at all, with doubts fuelled by the absence of photographs of his corpse.
• Gaddafi family deaths reinforce doubts about Nato's UN mandate
  Regime claims attack that killed son and three grandchildren was aimed at Libya's leader, as allies accused of overstepping UN security council resolution Share581 Julian Borger, Ian Traynor in Brussels, Ewen MacAskill in Washington guardian.co.uk, Sunday 1 May 2011 20.59 BST Article history The missile reportedly fired during a Nato air strike is seen in the Tripoli house of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Arab, who died in the attack. Photograph: Louafi Larbi/Reuters Nato is facing urgent questions about the legality of its air strike on a Gaddafi family compound at the weekend, which the Libyan government said had killed the leader's second youngest son, 29-year old Saif al-Arab, and three grandchildren under 12. The grandchildren were not named. The Libyan government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said Muammar Gaddafi and his wife, Safiya, had been in the building at the time, but had escaped injury. He said the aim of the attack was clear: to assassinate the Libyan leader. Nato swiftly scrambled to deny that it was targeting any individuals, insisting that it was only interested in attacking the military command structure.
• Osama bin Laden is dead, Obama announces
  Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind al-Qaida, is dead, President Obama announces from the White House Share13K Richard Adams in Washington and Declan Walsh in Islamabad guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 May 2011 04.00 BST Article history Osama bin Laden has been killed by US operatives in Pakistan, President Obama announced. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Osama bin Laden, the criminal mastermind behind al-Qaida and the world's most sought-after terrorist since the attacks of 11 September 2001, has been killed by a US operation, President Barack Obama has announced. In an address to the nation, President Obama said Bin Laden was killed in a "targeted operation" in Abbottabad, a highland town north of Islamabad, last night. The operation started with an intelligence lead last August, and culminated in an operation involving a "small team of Americans". "After a firefight they killed bin Laden." [Global insurgency] [Extraterritoriality] [Incompetence]
• Bin Laden killed in mansion outside Islamabad
  Source: Xinhua [11:23 May 02 2011] Comments Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed by US military assets in a mansion outside the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, CNN reported Sunday night. US media said bin Laden is dead, and President Barack Obama is to make a statement shortly. Media reports indicated US authorities now have the body of bin Laden, and confirms his death. Obama is to make a highly unusual statement about the issue.
• Bin Laden raid years in the making, minutes in execution
  By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — It took years for the U.S. military to track Osama bin Laden down, finding him not in a cave in the inaccessible tribal regions of Pakistan, but in a sumptuous luxury compound built just six years ago in the same city that is home to Pakistan's most prestigious military academy. The raid that killed him lasted just 40 minutes. U.S. officials briefing reporters here said the raid involved a helicopter assault on a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad by a small U.S. team. Bin Laden resisted the U.S. team and was shot in the head, they said. Also killed were bin Laden's most trusted courier and one of bin Laden's sons, as well as a woman one of the men tried to use as a human shield, they said. "Bin Laden was killed as our operators came into the compound," said one senior administration official, who like the others, spoke on condition they not be further identified because of the situation's sensitivity. Only U.S. personnel were involved in the raid, and Obama's decision to launch it wasn't shared with any other country, including Pakistan, whose most powerful intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, has long been suspected by U.S. officials of maintaining links to extremist groups close to al Qaida. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/02/113479/bin-laden-raid-years-in-the-making.html#ixzz1LBBT2Njv [Global insurgency] [Extraterritoriality] [Incompetence]
• Foreign embassies attacked in Tripoli after NATO airstrike that kills Gaddafi son, grandchildren
  By Simon Denyer, Monday, May 2, 7:46 AM TRIPOLI, Libya — The U.S., British and Italian embassies were attacked and burnt by mobs in the Libyan capital Sunday, hours after a NATO airstrike was reported to have killed one of Moammar Gaddafi’s sons and three of his grandchildren. Britain responded to the attack on its embassy and ambassador’s residence, which were gutted by fire, by expelling Libya’s ambassador to London. The United Nations announced that it had temporarily withdrawn its 12 international staff members from Tripoli and sent them to neighboring Tunisia after a mob entered its compound. The Libyan leader survived the strike, which also killed three of his grandchildren. NATO rebuffed Gaddafi’s calls for a cease-fire and negotiations. .Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said that only the commercial and consular department of the U.S. Embassy was attacked, but a former employee in Tripoli said the mob had caused extensive damage to buildings in the embassy compound and looted a warehouse.
• Bin Laden Is Dead, Obama Says
  By PETER BAKER, HELENE COOPER and MARK MAZZETTI Published: May 1, 2011 WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the most devastating attack on American soil in modern times and the most hunted man in the world, was killed in a firefight with United States forces in Pakistan on Sunday, President Obama announced. In a dramatic late-night appearance in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Obama declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that American military and C.I.A. operatives had finally cornered Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader who had eluded them for nearly a decade. American officials said Bin Laden resisted and was shot in the head. He was later buried at sea.
  The strike could exacerbate deep tensions with Pakistan, which has periodically bristled at American efforts even as Bin Laden evidently found safe refuge on its territory for nearly a decade. Since taking office, Mr. Obama has ordered significantly more unmanned drone strikes on suspected terrorist targets in Pakistan, stirring public anger and prompting the Pakistani government to protest.
• Afghans Fear West May See Death as the End
  By ALISSA J. RUBIN Published: May 2, 2011 KABUL, Afghanistan — In Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden was based for many years and where Al Qaeda helped to pay for and train insurgents, there was relief and uncertainty about how his death would play out in the fraught regional power politics now shaping the war. While senior political figures welcomed the news of his death, they cautioned that it did not necessarily translate into an immediate military victory over the Taliban, and urged the United States and NATO not to use it as a reason to withdraw.
• Son of Gaddafi killed in NATO strike: spokesman
  Source: Xinhua [11:22 May 01 2011] Comments This photo taken on May 1, 2011 shows the damage of the house of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi after an air raid during a tour organized by the Libyan government in the area of Gargur in Tripoli, Libya. Sayf al-Arab Kadhafi, embattled Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's youngest son, was killed in an airstrike on Saturday, a government spokesman said. Photo:Xinhua Saif al-Arab Gaddafi, youngest son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, was killed in NATO's strike against Gaddafi's house, said a spokesman of the Libyan government. The NATO attack against Gaddafi's house resulted in the deaths of Saif al-Arab Gaddafi, 29, youngest son of Gaddafi, and three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, said Mossa Ibrahim, the government spokesman.
• Is Donald Trump the most bizarre US presidential candidate ever?
  With incendiary comments on Iraq, Libya and Obama's birth, the property tycoon has livened up the Republicans' search for a 2012 candidate Share371 Comments (128) Paul Harris New York guardian.co.uk, Saturday 30 April 2011 23.30 BST Article history Donald Trump speaks to GOP women's groups at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas on 28 April. Photograph: David Becker/Getty Images The bright lights of the Las Vegas strip were an apt setting for the Donald Trump carnival roadshow to end up in last week. Amid the garish neon of the gigantic Treasure Island Casino, the business mogul-turned-reality TV star-turned-potential Republican presidential candidate made his latest stop. Speaking at an event called The Reagan Revolution: From Ronald to Donald, Trump made his pitch to an audience of Nevada Republican bigwigs and curious onlookers in one of the key early-voting states in the nomination process. In the casino's ballroom, which featured an ice statue of himself, Trump gave a virtuoso performance that was full of braggadocio and littered with expletives. "Our leaders are stupid, they are stupid people," he said, before referring to the Chinese government as "motherfuckers" against whom he'd raise trade tariffs.
• A new Silk Road beckons from Central Asia, igniting dreams in Kazakhstan
  Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Kathy Lally, Sunday, May 1, 6:44 AM ARAL, Kazakhstan — A thousand years after the Silk Road began disappearing into the wind-blown steppe, the people of Kazakhstan are awaiting a modern, paved, high-speed version carrying 21st-century jewels such as jobs, indoor plumbing and connections to the global economy. The new Silk Road is an ambitious $7 billion project to connect China with Western Europe along a 1,700-mile highway through Kazakhstan. Just as the ancient caravans transformed the world, bearing ideas and cultures along with their perfumes and spices, Kazakhstan is counting on the modern equivalent to stimulate economic growth that would have repercussions the world over, including in the United States. .“It’s not just pavement going from point A to B,” said Juan Miranda, director general of the Asian Development Bank’s Central and West Asia Department. “It’s a Silk Road, leading to the creation of an economic corridor and stability, and I hope the road will benefit far more than Kazakhstan.”
• April is deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since 2009
  By Aaron C. Davis, Sunday, May 1, 4:49 AM BAGHDAD — April was the deadliest month for U.S. military forces in Iraq in nearly a year and a half and the worst by far for American troops since they officially ended combat missions in the country last year, according to military and independent record keepers.
• The world according to Donald Trump: ‘So easy’
  By Dan Balz, Published: April 24 In his brief flirtation with a possible presidential campaign, Donald Trump has offered up a head-turning agenda to accompany his swaggering presidential style: a bellicose foreign policy and a domestic economic policy long on generalities and short on ideological certitude. The New York businessman has grabbed headlines with his provocative remarks on President Obama’s birthplace. He continues to question whether the president was born in Hawaii, despite ample evidence that he was. But what he has had to say about real issues deserves as much attention as his “birther” comments. [Militarisation] [Decline]
• Donald Trump’s circus act
  By Ruth Marcus, Published: April 27 There’s a reason presidents go gray. The job is difficult. The pressures are unrelenting. If you don’t realize this, you’re not qualified to be president. Or you’re Donald Trump, in which case you are also not qualified to be president. The self-proclaimed billionaire is fond of asserting how swiftly and simply he could solve problems that have bedeviled presidents for decades. As my colleague Dan Balz has noted, “Being Trump apparently means being able to say about nearly everything, ‘It’s so easy.’?” [Militarisation] [Decline]
• The Libyan War, American Power and the Decline of the Petrodollar System
  by Prof. Peter Dale Scott Global Research, April 29, 2011 The Asia-Pacific Journal The present NATO campaign against Gaddafi in Libya has given rise to great confusion, both among those waging this ineffective campaign, and among those observing it. Many whose opinions I normally respect see this as a necessary war against a villain – though some choose to see Gaddafi as the villain, and others point to Obama. My own take on this war, on the other hand, is that it is both ill-conceived and dangerous -- a threat to the interests of Libyans, Americans, the Middle East and conceivably the entire world. Beneath the professed concern about the safety of Libyan civilians lies a deeper concern that is barely acknowledged: the West’s defense of the present global petrodollar economy, now in decline.. The confusion in Washington, matched by the absence of discussion of an overriding strategic motive for American involvement, is symptomatic of the fact that the American century is ending, and ending in a way that is both predictable in the long run, and simultaneously erratic and out of control in its details. [Decline] [Strategic paralysis] [Reserve] [petrodollar]
• False pretense for war in Libya?
  By Alan J. Kuperman April 14, 2011 EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold. But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government. Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties. [Disinformation] [Humanitarian intervention] [Libya]
• 11 April 2011: World military spending reached $1.6 trillion in 2010, biggest increase in South America, fall in Europe according to new SIPRI data
  World military expenditure in 2010 is estimated to have been $1630 billion, an increase of 1.3 per cent in real terms.* The region with the largest increase in military spending was South America, with a 5.8 per cent increase, reaching a total of $63.3 billion, according to new data published today by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The comprehensive annual update of the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database is accessible from today at www.sipri.org. Read the press release in Swedish, French and Spanish and read the media background material here. ‘This continuing increase in South America is surprising given the lack of real military threats to most states and the existence of more pressing social needs’, states Carina Solmirano, Latin America Expert of the SIPRI Military Expenditure Project. Part of the explanation for this rise is to be found in the strong economic growth the region has experienced in recent years, while in other regions the effects of the global economic recession caused military spending to fall or at least rise more slowly in 2010. The United States still exceptional in military spending Although the rate of increase in US military spending slowed in 2010—to 2.8 per cent compared to an annual average increase of 7.4 per cent between 2001 and 2009, the global increase in 2010 is almost entirely down to the United States, which accounted for $19.6 billion of the $20.6 billion global increase. ‘The USA has increased its military spending by 81 per cent since 2001, and now accounts for 43 per cent of the global total, six times its nearest rival China. At 4.8 per cent of GDP, US military spending in 2010 represents the largest economic burden outside the Middle East’, states Dr Sam Perlo-Freeman, Head of the SIPRI Military Expenditure Project. [Military expenditure] [Militarisation]
• Bahrain: Western Complicity in Saudi-Backed War Crimes
  Civilian Killings, Disappearances, Torture, Chemical Warfare and Organ Theft... by Finian Cunningham Global Research, April 6, 2011 Claims of Civilian Killings, Disappearances, Torture, Chemical Warfare Agents and Organ Theft From Victims of State Violence When Saudi-led military forces intervened in Bahrain on March 14, it was declared by the Bahraini government and its allies among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates that the unprecedented move was a matter of urgency, needed to “restore order and stability” to the tiny Persian Gulf island kingdom. An arcane GCC defence pact was invoked – the Arabian Peninsula Shield – even though legal experts pointed out that such a provision was only applicable in the event of one of the six Gulf states coming under attack from an external enemy. Three weeks later, the real nature of the Saudi-led intervention is becoming brutally clear. It can now be seen as an invasion that has led to foreign occupation, lawlessness and several categories of crimes against humanity committed by the very forces purported to bring order. In one sense, the rhetorical justification for invoking the Peninsula Shield force, “to restore order and stability”, is literally correct. The aim was to restore the order and stability of the US-backed Al Khalifa Sunni dictatorship that had sat perilously on top of an oppressed Shia majority for decades. On February 14, the Shia majority (60-70 per cent of the indigenous population) along with disenfranchised Sunni and non-religionists from working class communities rose up in numbers that had never been seen before. Inspired by revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab region, Bahrain’s surging pro-democracy movement rocked the royal rulers. Bahrain’s indigenous population is estimated at 700,000. Official figures are hard to come by because of the demographic sensitivity of the island’s Sunni ruling elite. So when daily demonstrations of up 200,000-300,000 people were flooding main roads and highways, temporarily disabling government institutions and centres of commerce – and with crowds shouting with increasing boldness “Down, down [King] Hamad” – there was a palpable sense that the regime was facing a serious existential threat. No matter that the protest movement was based on peaceful civil disobedience, the threat to the status quo had reached an unbearable threshold, from the point of view of the regime and its regional and Western backers.
• Libya : Oil, Banks, the United Nations and America's Holy Crusade
  by Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research, April 5, 2011 "America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam." (President Barack Hussein Obama, Al-Azar University, Cairo, 4th June 2009.) George W. Bush embarked on the casual snuffing out of uncounted, unique, human lives in majority Muslim populations, chillingly called it a "Crusade." President Barack Hussein Nobel Obama did not go that far, he left that to the French Minister of the Interior, Claude Gueant who, on 21st March, praised President Nicholas Sarkozy for having: "headed the Crusade ..." For the "change we can believe in" President, reducing another ancient land of eye watering archeological gems, massive oil and water resources and a population of six million - little more than Scotland - it is, reportedly, a "turd sandwich." Humanity is not "at the crossroads." It is on the Cross, scourged, nailed (in all senses) and utterly inconsequential, in face of murdering, marauding, looting Empire. When President Obama: "updated the American people on the international effort we have led in Libya", on 29th March, he stated that: "we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world's many challenges" and referred to: "our interests ..." being: "at stake." Reluctance would be a first. America's bombing for "interests" would be an encylopaedia. Colonel Quaddafi, had, of course, stated the President: "denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world ..." busy man. Heaven forbid "NATO's" blitzkrieg should send the occasional shiver down a spine. However, interestingly, at the end of March, a Report was due to be presented by the UN Human Rights Council leading to a Resolution commending Libya's progress in a wide aspect of human rights. Numerous quotes from UN diplomatic delegations of many countries commented. Citations included: " ... achieving a high school enrolment rate and improvements in the education of women", Libya's: " ... serious commitment to, and interaction with, the Human Rights Council ... enhanced development of human rights ... while respecting cultural and religious traditions." Also mentioned was: " ... establishment of the national independent institution entrusted with promoting human rights, which had many of the competencies set out in the Paris Principles." The country had: "become party to many human rights conventions and had equipped itself with a number of institutions, national, governmental and non governmental tasked with promoting human rights ..." The country was commended: "for the progress made in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, namely universal primary education (and) firm commitment (to) health care." There was "praise" for "cooperation with international organizations in combating human trafficking and corruption .." and for cooperation with "the International Organization for Migration." "Progress in enjoyment of economic and social rights, including in the areas of education, health care, poverty reduction and social welfare" with "measures taken to promote transparency", were also cited. Malaysia: "Commended the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for being party to a significant number of international and regional human rights instruments." Promotion: "of the rights of persons with disabilities" and praise for "measures taken with regard to low income families", were cited. In May 2010, Libya had also been voted on to the UN Human Rights Council by a veritable landslide, 155 of 192 UN General Assembly votes. As noted previously (i) Libya comes top in Africa on the Human Development Index, which measures longevity (the longest) infant mortality (the lowest) education, health services, well being. (ii) [humanitarian intervention]
• Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
  By Joseph E. Stiglitz Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret. THE FAT AND THE FURIOUS The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says the author, but “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.” It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow [inequality]
• In Shift, Egypt Warms to Iran and Hamas, Israel’s Foes
  By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK CAIRO — Egypt is charting a new course in its foreign policy that has already begun shaking up the established order in the Middle East, planning to open the blockaded border with Gaza and normalizing relations with two of Israel and the West’s Islamist foes, Hamas and Iran. Egyptian officials, emboldened by the revolution and with an eye on coming elections, say that they are moving toward policies that more accurately reflect public opinion. In the process they are seeking to reclaim the influence over the region that waned as their country became a predictable ally of Washington and the Israelis in the years since the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. The first major display of this new tack was the deal Egypt brokered Wednesday to reconcile the secular Palestinian party Fatah with its rival Hamas. “We are opening a new page,” said Ambassador Menha Bakhoum, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry. “Egypt is resuming its role that was once abdicated.” [Realignment] [Decline] [Israel]
• US and Pakistan: allies with mutual disgust
  The Raymond Davis incident shows the fault lines in the US-Pakistan relationship. The real battle being fought between the two 'allies' is in Afghanistan – the battle for influence. By Walter Rodgers posted April 29, 2011 at 10:39 am EDT The bizarre case of Raymond Davis – the CIA contract employee who shot and killed two Pakistani men who were pursuing him on the streets of Lahore Jan. 27 – illustrates just how poisonous relations between the United States and Pakistan have become. The controversy over Mr. Davis’s role in Pakistan, his release, and Pakistan’s internal intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has spotlighted the already strained US-Pakistan relationship. But what’s ultimately being fought out is whose influence will reshape Afghanistan, especially after July, when the drawdown of US troops begins. The context of the Davis incident mimics the spy novels of John le Carré or Graham Greene. [Global insurgency] [AfPak] [Client]
• Britain’s Royal Wedding: A Big Day For The Global Oligarchy
  A Celebration of the Dictatorship of Global Capital over Democracy
  by Finian Cunningham Global Research, April 28, 2011 The British royal wedding can be seen as a modern-day repeat of the “bread and circuses” policy of ancient Rome. In the waning days of that empire, the rulers sought to distract the masses from their grinding misery and the unwieldy wealth and corruption of the elite by sporadically throwing scraps of bread to the hungry public while saturating them with spectacles of gore and bloodlust at the Colosseum. Today, the British public – grinding under massive austerity budget cuts, unemployment, poverty wages, social deprivations and crumbling services – are thrown scraps of feelgood comfort from the much-hyped wedding between Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton. William is the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and son of the heir apparent to the British throne, Prince Charles. Fawning media coverage will present it as a day of romance, nationhood, nostalgia and pride. Meanwhile, the spectacles of gore and bloodlust – admittedly despite much public opposition – are located thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East, Iraq, Central Asia, Afghanistan, where over a million civilians have been killed in British-backed “wars against terror” that have yet to be sated even after eight and 10 years of butchery, respectively; and now the latest spectacle opens in North Africa, Libya, where over the past six weeks Royal Air Force warplanes have been bombing and killing civilians in the name of “peace” and “humanitarian concern”. The day before the wedding, the British government announced that troops are to be dispatched to the borders of Libya to provide “humanitarian corridors” for displaced civilians – many of whom will have been displaced by RAF ground attack aircraft. Of course, the British Empire has long ago waned as a singular entity and its elite is not alone in lording over their masses. The same bread and circuses charade is being played out in varied ways by the other Western powers, the US, France, Germany, Italy, that comprise today’s global Empire of Capital.
• Think Again: Libya
  More than a month after the first bombs fell on Muammar al-Qaddafi's forces, the assumptions that led the United States into the war have mostly been proven wrong -- and a strategy to end it is still nowhere in sight. BY MICAH ZENKO | APRIL 28, 2011 "Allies Will Pick Up the Slack." Don't bet on it. When the United States and its allies went to war in Libya five and a half weeks ago, it wasn't supposed to be much of a war at all. U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to intervene was based on the assumption that nearby states more directly impacted by the state of affairs in Libya, such as Britain and France, would lead the charge. The United States, according to Obama, would lead with "days, not weeks" of military action, thus "shaping the conditions for the international community to act together." Many in Washington, though aware that the United States has unique capabilities essential to early stages of no-fly zone implementation, assumed it would be easy to pass the buck. As vocal intervention proponent Sen. Lindsay Graham would later concede, "When we call[ed] for a no-fly zone, we didn't mean our planes." [US global strategy] [Libya]
• Leading from behind
  Posted By Kori Schake Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - 10:59 AM Share Ryan Lizza has a lengthy and hilarious exposé in The New Yorker about foreign policy in the Obama administration. It sets out to be a portrait of nobly serious people bringing American national security into line with our diminished influence, "remaking" American foreign policy. The administration clearly thought it was a good-news story, since Secretary Clinton and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon went on the record. What makes the article so funny is the pompous self-regard of the administration officials and the complete lack of appreciation for how woefully inadequate their performance has been in meeting these challenges. [Strategic paralysis] [Decline]
• How the Arab Spring remade Obama’s foreign policy
  .by Ryan Lizza May 2, 2011 .Obama has said that his foreign-policy ideas defy traditional categories and ideologies. Barack Obama came to Washington just six years ago, having spent his professional life as a part-time lawyer, part-time law professor, and part-time state legislator in Illinois. As an undergraduate, he took courses in history and international relations, but neither his academic life nor his work in Springfield gave him an especially profound grasp of foreign affairs. As he coasted toward winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, in 2004, he began to reach out to a broad range of foreign-policy experts––politicians, diplomats, academics, and journalists. As a student during the Reagan years, Obama gravitated toward conventionally left-leaning positions. At Occidental, he demonstrated in favor of divesting from apartheid South Africa. At Columbia, he wrote a forgettable essay in Sundial, a campus publication, in favor of the nuclear-freeze movement. As a professor at the University of Chicago, he focussed on civil-rights law and race. And, as a candidate who emphasized his “story,” Obama argued that what he lacked in experience with foreign affairs he made up for with foreign travel: four years in Indonesia as a boy, and trips to Pakistan, India, Kenya, and Europe during and after college. But there was no mistaking the lightness of his résumé. Just a year before coming to Washington, State Senator Obama was not immersed in the dangers of nuclear Pakistan or an ascendant China; as a provincial legislator, he was investigating the dangers of a toy known as the Yo-Yo Water Ball. (He tried, unsuccessfully, to have it banned.) Obama had always read widely, and now he was determined to get a deeper education. He read popular books on foreign affairs by Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/02/110502fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1KyydGp4U [US global strategy] [Obama] [humanitarian interventionism] [Decline]
• Libya and the Imperial Re-Division of Africa
  The Imperialist Powers' Odyssey of “Return” into Africa by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research, April 26, 2011 PART I Plans to attack Libya have been longstanding. The imperial war machine of the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and their NATO allies is involved in a new military adventure that parallels the events that led to the wars against Yugoslavia and Iraq. The war machine has been mobilized under the cover of “humanitarian intervention.” In fact what the Pentagon and NATO have done is breach international law by intervening on the side of one of the combating parties in Libya in a civil war that they themselves have encouraged and fuelled. They have not protected civilians, but have launched a war against the Libyan regime in Tripoli and actively assisted the Benghazi-based Transitional Council in fighting the Libyan military. Before the rapprochement with Colonel Qaddafi, for years the U.S., Britain, France, and their allies worked to destabilize Libya. Confirmed by U.S. government sources, Washington attempted regime change in Tripoli several times.[1] According to General Wesley Clark, former NATO commander, the Pentagon had active plans for launching a war against Libya. The U.S. and its NATO allies are now embroiled in a new war that has the patented characteristics of the wars and invasions of Iraq and the former Yugoslavia. A large naval armada off the shores of Libya has been bombing Libya for weeks with the declared objective of ousting the Libyan regime. At the same time, Libyan internal divisions are being fuelled. Misinformation is systematically being spewed. Like Saddam Hussein before him, the U.S. and the E.U. have armed and helped Colonel Qaddafi. It is, therefore, important to hold the U.S. and the E.U. accountable for these weapon sales and the training of Libyan forces. Also, like in Iraq, another Arab dictator was befriended by the U.S., only to be subsequently betrayed. Prior to Iraq’s rapprochement with the U.S., at the outset of the Iraq-Iran War, Saddam Hussein was a Soviet ally and considered an enemy by Washington. The case of Colonel Qaddafi is in many regards similar. Ironically, Qaddafi had warned Arab leaders in 2008 at a meeting in Damascus under the auspices of the Arab League about regime change. He pointed to the U.S. government’s “bad habit” of betraying its Arab dictator friends: Why won’t the [U.N.] Security Council investigate the hanging of Saddam Hussein? How could the leader of an Arab League state be hanged? I am not talking about Saddam Hussein’s policies or our [meaning the other Arab leaders] animosity towards him. We all had our disagreements with him. We all disagree with one another. Nothing unites us except this hall. Why is there not an investigation about Saddam Hussein’s execution? An entire Arab government is killed and hung on the gallows – Why?! In the future it is going to be your turns too! [The rest of the Arab officials gathered start laughing] Indeed! America fought alongside Saddam Hussein against Khomeini [in the Iraq-Iran War]. He was their friend. Cheney was a friend of Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld, the [U.S.] defence secretary during the bombing of Iraq [in 2003], was a close friend of Saddam Hussein. At the end they sold him out. They hung him. Even you [the Arab leaders] who are the friends of America – no I will say we – we, the friends of America, America may approve of our hanging one day. [2] [Imperialism] [Renege] [Libya]
• Political policing in Britain ahead of the Big Day
  Guy Aitchison, 28 April 2011 About the authorGuy Aitchison is co-editor of openDemocracy's UK blog, OurKingdom, and a PhD student in politics at UCL. If anyone was in any doubt that we have a highly politicized, out-of-control police force in this country with scant regard for basic rights, the build up to the royal wedding will have provided a much-needed corrective. When it comes to our divinely ordained rulers, even the most minimal pretence at neutrality and respect for due process has been dropped and the attitudes and motivations of law enforcement laid bare. There is to be a strict zero tolerance policy towards republican thought crimes. Faced with tomorrow’s pompous medieval extravaganza, we must either wave our plastic Union Jack flags like the serfs that we are, or else keep quiet and hope we aren’t on the Met’s “political” hit-list. For weeks, senior officers have been boasting that anyone planning to voice dissent at tomorrow’s event will be treated as a criminal with sinister warnings that officers have been ordered to “shoot-to-kill” and the Queen’s Guard empowered to impale any threat with their bayonets. With the memories of Jean Charles de Menezes and Iain Tomlinson still fresh, such warnings sound more than a little ominous. The press have gleefully collaborated with the Met in their intimidation, uncritically reporting plans for “pre-emptive” strikes against anyone suspected of being inclined to violate the “sterile areas” 1.6 kilometres around the Palace of Westminster created under the totalitarian Serious Organised Crime and Police Act introduced by Labour. In all the frenzied reporting, the words “anarchists” and “criminals” are used interchangeably to denote anyone opposed to a hereditary head of state. Ahead of the happy couple’s big day, political opinions alone are enough to get you locked up. As one “police source” chillingly put it “the same faces often reappear at different protests and we will try and take a pre-emptive strike against them."
• Roundtable with Farah Pandith
  Sworn in 2009, Farah Pandith was appointed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the first ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities for the United States Department of State. Ms Pandith recently visited New Zealand to speak at the Auckland EthnicA Conference organised by Office of Ethnic Affairs. Asia:NZ Young leaders were given the opportunity to participate in a roundtable with Ms Pandith made possible by the US Embassy in New Zealand and facilitated by Asia:NZ trustee Ruth De Souza. [Global insurgency] [Softwar]
• Analysis: Petraeus' CIA move raises awkward questions
  Thu, Apr 28 2011By Phil Stewart and Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON | Thu Apr 28, 2011 5:02pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While political Washington is cheering General David Petraeus' nomination to head the CIA, the mood at the agency's headquarters and in Pakistan's intelligence service is less celebratory. Petraeus, the architect of the current U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, is expected as CIA director to embrace the campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, a nominally covert CIA operation that has fueled anti-American sentiment but put heavy pressure on militant safe havens. Continuing or stepping up drone attacks is likely to further strain relations between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) and, according to some experts, possibly exacerbate the awkward personal chemistry between Petraeus and top Pakistani officials. Petraeus, nominated by President Barack Obama on Thursday to replace CIA director Leon Panetta, has a reputation for brainpower and political savvy, which he used to help salvage the U.S. campaign in Iraq. The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee will soon begin the confirmation process for Petraeus, which is expected to proceed smoothly. Petraeus is not expected to take up his new post until September. But at the CIA, he will be confronted by unfamiliar issues that include cybersecurity, North Korea and Iran's nuclear programs, Latin American drug cartels and even climate change. Current and former U.S. national security officials also say there is concern among some veteran spies about Petraeus' advocacy of controversial military policies, particularly his expansion of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. [Militarisation]
• Libya War Is No Pentagon Lifeline
  By John Feffer, April 11, 2011 Originally published in Antiwar.com The United States is fighting another war--of unknown scope and length--in Libya. At a time of budget-cutting fever on Capitol Hill, the war represents a potential lifeline for the Pentagon. If you believe the Libya operation justifies current U.S. military spending levels--or even an increase--think again. According to government estimates, we'll spend about $1 billion on the Libyan intervention over the course of a full year of operations. That's a lot of money if applied to low-income housing or job retraining. But it's chump change for the Pentagon. President Barack Obama's proposed 2012 budget would give the Pentagon approximately $675 billion, including outlays for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The cost of the war in Libya, in other words, is basically a rounding error in Pentagon spending. Indeed, the Libya operation represents only a little more than 1 percent of what the Pentagon wastes in its budget, which is $70 billion a year according to a recent Government Accountability Office audit. Right or wrong, intervening in Libya won't break the bank. Yet the overall Pentagon budget threatens to do so, nationally and globally. According to the latest figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States was responsible for 94 percent of the global increase in military expenditures in 2010. Global spending on war, and the preparations for war, went up last year for the thirteenth year in row. The world now spends, by this conservative estimate, $1.63 trillion annually on the military. [Military expenditure]
• The Middle East: Allies in Disarray
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 303, April 15, 2011 For the last fifty years, United States policy in the Middle East has been built around its very close links with three countries: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. In 2011, it is at odds with all three, and in very fundamental ways. It is also in public discord with Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Brazil over its current policies in the region. It seems almost no one agrees with or follows the lead of the United States. One can hear the agonizing frustration of the president, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA, all of whom see a situation careening out of control. [UNUS] [Client] [Decline] [Israel]
• CRSO 2011 - Security Through Cooperation: Furthering Asia Pacific Multilateral Engagement
  The CRSO is directed to a broad regional audience encompassed by CSCAP itself. The CRSO mandate is to survey the most pressing current security issues of today and to put forward informed policy-relevant recommendations as to how Track One (official) and Track Two (unofficial) actors together can advance multilateral, regional security cooperation. Highlights from the CRSO 2011: •Tensions remain high after explosive bilateral disputes in the region in 2010. •The oceans have become the primary security theatre for the region. •Conventional military buildups continue and threaten to destabilise regional crisis points. •Conflicts in peripheral regions continue to spill across borders. •Human security remains under great stress. •Existing regional security institutions continue to under-perform.

• Libya and Korea: fatal cohesion of events (II)
  27.04.2011 Alexander Vorontsov Head Korea DepartmentInstitute for Oriental studies of the Russian Academy of Science Oleg Revenko Political analyst
  Creeping of instability and political revolts in the Arab East has given birth to expectations that the democratic wave will soon reach North Korea as well. Indeed: if there is no chance to change the political regime in North Korea by using military force so why not to choose less risky and not so expensive way do it – for example by providing “assistance” to the North Korean people who are yearning for democracy? This orientation prevails among the conservative part of the political establishment of South Korea. The administration of the president Lee Myung-bak, who came to power in February 2008, abandoned the earlier policy of the official Seoul aimed at convergence and reconciliation with North Korea and chose for extremely tough approach in relations between two Koreas, believes that the current regime in Pyongyang is falling into decay and soon will collapse either under pressure of domestic problems or thanks to the influence from abroad. The key task in relations with North Korea has reduced to speeding up of the process of decay in the North; Seoul dreamers believe that North Korea is a “ripe fruit”, which will soon fall to South Korea’s feet. [Collapse] [Takeover]
• Americas Panetta to head Pentagon, Petraeus to CIA
  Source: Global Times [02:27 April 28 2011] Comments President Barack Obama will nominate CIA director Leon Panetta as US defense secretary, reshuffling his national security team ahead of the 2012 presidential campaign. Obama will also tap General David Petraeus, the head of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, to replace Panetta as CIA director, and veteran diplomat Ryan Crocker as US ambassador to Afghanistan, US officials said. Lieutenant General John Allen, deputy commander of US Central Command, will be named as the new Afghanistan commander. The long-anticipated changes, which must be confirmed by the Senate, would place a long-standing Democratic Party figure at the helm of the Pentagon as Obama presses forward with politically delicate policies in Afghanistan and Libya. The current defense chief, Robert Gates, was appointed by former president George W. Bush, a Republican, and has proved to be an outspoken maverick on key issues under both administrations. Gates, himself a former CIA director, has long announced his departure from the Pentagon this year. Before word of the reshuffle broke, some Washington insiders suggested the White House would give a high-profile position to Petraeus to ensure he would not challenge Obama for the presidency next year.
• Petraeus would helm an increasingly militarized CIA
  Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe, Thursday, April 28, 12:45 PM Gen. David H. Petraeus has served as commander in two wars launched by the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. If confirmed as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Petraeus would effectively take command of a third — in Pakistan. Petraeus’s nomination comes at a time when the CIA functions, more than ever in its history, as an extension of the nation’s lethal military force. President Barack Obama plans to name CIA Director Leon Panetta to replace Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Gen. David Petraeus, now running the war in Afghanistan, would take the CIA job. (April 27) .CIA teams operate alongside U.S. special operations forces in conflict zones from Afghanistan to Yemen. The agency has also built up a substantial paramilitary capability of its own. But perhaps most significantly, the agency is in the midst of what amounts to a sustained bombing campaign over Pakistan using unmanned Predator and Reaper drones. Since Obama took office there have been at least 192 drone missile strikes, killing as many as 1,890 militants, suspected terrorists and civilians. Petraeus is seen as a staunch supporter of the drone campaign, even though it has so far failed to eliminate the al-Qaeda threat or turn the tide of the Afghan war. [Militarisation]
• Pakistan asks Afghanistan to distance itself from United States, Afghan officials say
  By Joshua Partlow, Thursday, April 28, 4:56 AM KABUL — When Pakistan’s prime minister visited Kabul this month, he spoke grandly to the public of an enduring friendship between neighbors and his country’s commitment to help Afghans in the grinding war with the Taliban. But in private meetings, Yousaf Raza Gillani and the leaders of Pakistan’s military and intelligence service offered a startling proposal for cooperation: The Afghan government should distance itself from the United States and seek new allies, particularly China, according to current and former Afghan officials with knowledge of the meeting. .Gillani read to President Hamid Karzai from a paper outlining Pakistan’s view that the U.S. military strategy had no prospect for success, that its troops antagonized the region and that the Afghan government should avoid any agreement that allows long-term U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, according to the Afghans.
• How effective are sanctions in ‘changing behavior’?
  By Glenn Kessler ((AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)) “What we have seen is that sanctions can put pressure on governments and regimes to change their behavior.” --White House spokesman Jay Carney, April 25, 2011 The Obama administration is strongly suggesting it will impose “targeted sanctions” on Syria in response to the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations. But Syria is already subject to a wide range of U.S. sanctions, and trade between the countries amounts to less than $1 billion a year. The administration apparently is hoping that a U.S. push will persuade Europeans allies—which have deeper ties to Damascus—to impose their own, more painful sanctions. The possible announcement of fresh sanctions also appears to be intended to signal resolve against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who the administration once had wooed as a possible partner in a comprehensive Middle East peace deal. Carney’s assertion raises a question: Do sanctions actually convince countries to change their behavior?
  Near-universal sanctions on North Korea also have not halted Pyongyang’s push to develop and test nuclear weapons. A 2005 financial crackdown on a Macao bank that handled assets for North Korea’s leadership apparently convinced North Korea to return to the negotiating table, but not before all of the illicit funds were returned. In many ways, in fact, it is not the sanctions themselves but the ending of sanctions that is perceived to have the greatest impact.
  Libya also was sanctioned after its involvement in terrorist acts, including the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and the lure of renewed international oil investment in 2003 — 15 years later -- helped convince Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to resolve outstanding claims in terrorism-related cases and to give up nascent weapons of mass destruction. But the deal made little change in the nature of Libya’s government, and now the regime faces a fresh set of sanctions as a result of its war with rebels. [Sanctions] [Inversion]
• Who's Who at The Royal Wedding... The Guest List: Who's In, Who's Out
  by Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research, April 28, 2011 "Out beyond ideas of right thinking and wrong thinking, there is a field, I'll meet you there." Rumi (1207-1273.) The Surviveable, the Bad and the Over the Top The wedding of the heir to the British throne, Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales, to his lady friend of eight years Catherine Elizabeth Middleton ("Kate") promises to be a modest affair, in these austere times, with nineteen hundred guests, a near unprecedented police presence, possibly a thousand members of the armed forces lining the route the couple will take to the ceremony, in the nine hundred years old, Westminster Abbey, on 29th April. Beneath streets decked with the Union flag (more frequently burned across the world for a couple of decades, than joyously hung) police are carrying out fingertip searches for explosive devices, lifting drain covers, then lying flat with their heads in the drains, to check. A thankless task. Buttons are removed from pedestrian crossings to check nothing is hidden in the wiring box, street furniture taken apart, monuments and statues scrutinized - and an estimated twenty million £s of taxpayers' money being burned up. Seventy to eighty "close protection teams" will be be on hand for heads of state (50) and VIPs at Friday's festivities, cost, so far, unknown.
• How Washington changed Obama
  By JUSTIN LOGAN | 4/27/11 5:23 PM EDT President Barack Obama’s nominations of Leon Panetta as defense secretary and Gen. David Petraeus as director of central intelligence demonstrate that the president has abandoned his pledge to change U.S. foreign policy. In fact, these nominations show that Washington has changed Obama far more than he has changed Washington. Obama long insisted that he wants to reorient America’s focus — moving it away from nation-building projects in the Islamic world and toward Asia. He also insists he wants to trim military spending. But if Petraeus heads CIA and Panetta becomes defense secretary, it’s unlikely either will happen. In fact, these nominations, combined with other evidence, strongly suggest that Obama views foreign policy primarily as an instrument of domestic politics — an opportunity to give soaring speeches about the grand sweep of history and his view of America’s role in it. As Zbigniew Brzezinski recently lamented to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, Obama “doesn’t strategize. He sermonizes.” Obama has shown little willingness to shake up the established order in Washington and inject new ideas. Before Obama named Panetta as CIA director, the former congressman from California had little experience on national security issues. This was part of a larger trend: Many of the president’s important foreign policy aides have scant training in foreign policy.
  To be fair to the foreign policy neophytes, the bona fide experts haven’t been much better. Former State Department Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter lamented in her departure speech that in U.S. foreign policy, men generally do the “high politics” of diplomacy and war, while women work on “low politics” like economic development and human rights. Slaughter also noted that female foreign policymakers often feel the need to “out-tough the tough guys.” Once out of government, Slaughter was at the forefront of the crowd urging the president to bomb Libya. [Obama] [Continuity] [Domestic]
• Financial Heist of the Century: Confiscating Libya's Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF)
  by Manlio Dinucci Global Research, April 24, 2011 The objective of the war against Libya is not just its oil reserves (now estimated at 60 billion barrels), which are the greatest in Africa and whose extraction costs are among the lowest in the world, nor the natural gas reserves of which are estimated at about 1,500 billion cubic meters. In the crosshairs of "willing" of the operation “Unified Protector” there are sovereign wealth funds, capital that the Libyan state has invested abroad. The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) manages sovereign wealth funds estimated at about $70 billion U.S., rising to more than $150 billion if you include foreign investments of the Central Bank and other bodies. But it might be more. Even if they are lower than those of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, Libyan sovereign wealth funds have been characterized by their rapid growth. When LIA was established in 2006, it had $40 billion at its disposal. In just five years, LIA has invested over one hundred companies in North Africa, Asia, Europe, the U.S. and South America: holding, banking, real estate, industries, oil companies and others. [Libya] [Imperialism] [Finance]
• France and Italy in call to close EU borders in wake of Arab
  protestsSarkozy and Berlusconi want passport-free travel within the EU suspended as north African migrants flee north Share491 Ian Traynor in Brussels and John Hooper in Rome guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 April 2011 20.55 BST Article history Sarkozy and Berlusconi are demanding European deportation pacts with the countries of revolutionary north Africa to send migrants home. Photograph: Alessandro Di Meo/EPA France and Italy have thrown down the gauntlet over Europe's system of passport-free travel, saying a crisis of immigration sparked by the Arab spring was calling into question the borderless regime enjoyed by more than 400 million people in 25 countries. Challenging one of the biggest achievements of European integration of recent decades, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi also launched a joint effort to stem immigration and demanded European deportation pacts with the countries of revolutionary north Africa to send new arrivals packing. [Migration] [Unintended consequences]
• Madame Nhu obituary
  Immensely powerful political figure in 1960s South Vietnam dubbed 'an oriental Lucrezia Borgia' Share71 Robert Templer guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 April 2011 18.57 BST Article history 'Power is wonderful. Total power is totally wonderful', was a favourite motto of Madame Nhu. Photograph: John Loengard/Time & Life Pictures Madame Nhu, who has died aged 87, was the archetypal "dragon lady" of Asian politics, a svelte and sinister woman who wielded immense power in the South Vietnamese regime of president Ngo Dinh Diem , her brother-in-law, until his assassination in 1963. She accumulated vast wealth and power, but was reviled for her puritanical social campaigns and her callous dismissal of Buddhist monks who burned themselves to death to protest against the brutal rule of Diem and her husband Ngo Dinh Nhu. "I would clap hands at seeing another monk barbecue show, for one cannot be responsible for the madness of others," she wrote in a letter to the New York Times. The world was stunned by photographs of monks sitting shrouded in flames; Madame Nhu simply offered to bring along some mustard for the next self-immolation. She later accused monks of lacking patriotism for setting themselves alight with imported petrol. [Client]
• Libya and Korea: fatal cohesion of events (I)
  26.04.2011 Alexander Vorontsov Head Korea DepartmentInstitute for Oriental studies of the Russian Academy of Science Oleg Revenko Political analyst Though geographically the revolution-ridden North Africa and North Eastern Asia are far from each other, many analysts draw parallels and even come up with forecasts about similar fates of the leaders of Jamahiriya and North Korea. The current events in Libya put the following question – Does a small country have the right to conduct its independent policy in the modern world, regardless of the approval of the global ruling class and without running a risk to be punished for that? [US global strategy] [Renege]
• What's Really Going on in Libya?
  By Alexander Cockburn It looks as though eastern Libya will slide into the Mediterranean under the sheer weight of western journalists assembled in Benghazi and Misrata. A tsunami of breathless reports suggests that Misrata is enduring travails not far short of the siege of Leningrad in World War 2. The reports have been seized on by Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy to raise the ante on Mission Odyssey Dawn. In their joint newspaper column published both sides of the Atlantic they now say that to leave Gaddafi in power would be an "unconscionable betrayal" and speak of Misrata as enduring “a medieval siege.” Not yet, surely. A medieval siege was something that usually lasted at least a year, in which the city’s inhabitants were reduced to eating rats, then each other, and the besiegers all succumbed to plague. Maybe it will turn out that way, with reporters eying each other from a gastronomic perspective and wiring Ferran Adria, seeking recipes for preparing Haunch of Hack sous vide.
• Libya: the view from the bunker
  Paul Rogers, 21 April 2011 Libya's war is being shaped by Tripoli's defiance, the rebels' endurance, and the western coalition's strains. In the mix, a Gaddafi regime faced with elimination is making larger plans. 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 28 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 state of the Libyan war after five weeks depends as much on the view from where you are as on the day it started. This is equally true of the Muammar Gaddafi regime, whose core personnel in the Bab al-Azizia bunker has survived the Nato aerial attacks - and in many ways done more. Indeed, it could well be feeling more confident now than on 19-20 March 2011 when the American and French bombardments began.
• Ahmadinejad grooms chief-of-staff to take over as Iran's president
  Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei is controversial figure at odds with religious leaders, according to leaked embassy cable Share638 Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 April 2011 15.32 BST Article history A close ally of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who favours cultural openness and opposes greater clerical involvement in politics, is being groomed as a possible successor to the Iranian president when he steps down in two years time. Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, Ahmadinejad's chief-of-staff, is positioning himself as a candidate who will champion a nationalist rather than a theological narrative of Iran.
• Unleashing an Economic Tsunami
  By Chrystia Freeland | Reuters NEW YORK — Economic policy isn’t just a domestic issue anymore. That is the conclusion we should draw from the market volatility this week, including the shift by Standard & Poor’s to a negative outlook for U.S. government debt, and the meeting last weekend of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. This is a familiar fact for smaller countries. The emerging market nations have long understood that judgments made on Wall Street or at the I.M.F. headquarters in Washington often had more power to shape their economic policy than the proposals of their own ministers of finance and central bankers. More recently, that is a lesson that fiscally weak Western countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal have been learning, too. Now, as the relative power of the United States in the global economy declines, it is a fact of life that Americans need to get used to, too. That is one of the important messages of the S.&P. decision at the beginning of this week to put the United States on a negative outlook — essentially a warning that the ratings agency is no longer certain the United States will maintain its AAA rating. [Decline] [Reserve]
• Privacy Protection and the Secret State's Surveillance Powers
  by Tom Burghardt Global Research, April 17, 2011 Call it another virtual "defense" of privacy rights by U.S. lawmakers. In the week of April 11, senators John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate, the "Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011," they claimed would "establish a framework to protect the personal information of all Americans." During a D.C. press conference, McCain told reporters that the proposed law would protect a "fundamental right of American citizens, that is the right to privacy." While Kerry and McCain correctly state that "The ease of gathering and compiling personal information on the Internet and off, both overtly and surreptitiously, is becoming increasingly efficient and effortless due to advances in technology which have provided information gatherers the ability to compile seamlessly highly detailed personal histories of individuals" (p. 4), there's one small catch. CNET's Declan McCullagh reported that the bill "doesn't apply to data mining, surveillance, or any other forms of activities that governments use to collect and collate Americans' personal information." While the measure would apply to "companies and some nonprofit groups," CNET disclosed that "federal, state, and local police agencies that have adopted high-tech surveillance technologies including cell phone tracking, GPS bugs, and requests to Internet companies for users' personal information--in many cases without obtaining a search warrant from a judge" would be exempt. [Surveillance]
• Egypt’s liberals are losing the battle
  By Gideon Rachman Published: April 25 2011 21:11 | Last updated: April 25 2011 21:11 All sorts of contending forces rub shoulders in Egypt these days. Last week, I found myself in the lobby of a Cairo hotel, chatting to a square-bearded, pot-bellied, fundamentalist preacher who is eager to see all women in Egypt wear the niqab – the all-encompassing veil that leaves only a slit for the eyes. Just behind him, French tourists ambled around in bathing suits. Then the hotel crooner began belting out “My Way”. I suggested we move to a quieter spot and the preacher agreed, pointing out that, as a Salafi, he objected to all forms of music – and not just Frank Sinatra. Eventually, after further discussion of the merits of hand-chopping and the possibility of a return to Islam as practised in the seventh century, the sheikh got into his car and drove back to his job as a computer technician. Egypt’s young liberal middle-classes are discovering that they were not the only forces set free by the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak. One leading liberal politician told me last week that he had been barely aware of Salafism until after the revolution. Suddenly, Salafi spokesmen are all over the media and are organising politically. By some reckonings they could get 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections planned for September. The Muslim Brotherhood, the more established and less fundamentalist Islamist organisation, is generally reckoned to be good for at least a third of the vote. Add in a couple of fringe Islamist parties and you could be looking at an Islamist majority in Egypt’s first parliament. “Entirely plausible,” says a western diplomat in Cairo, as he sips his coffee. The stakes in the coming elections are very high, since the new parliament will have the power to rewrite Egypt’s constitution and so shape the country for decades. But Egypt’s liberals face formidable odds. They are operating in a country where 40 per cent of the total population live on less than $2 a day. Some 30m Egyptians are illiterate. The Muslim Brotherhood is by far the most organised non-state organisation in the country, while the liberal forces are fragmented and disorganised. Realising this, most liberals opposed the constitutional changes that laid the groundwork for parliamentary and presidential elections this year, arguing that more time was needed to establish a proper constitutional order and to allow new political forces to organise. The Muslim Brotherhood, who know that they are well placed to profit from swift elections, campaigned for a Yes vote – and were delighted to see a 77 per cent vote in favour. The crushing defeat of the liberal camp in the referendum came as a bad shock to them, since it was the first political trial of strength between Islamists and liberals since the revolution. It should serve as a wake-up call, galvanising liberals to unify and organise. Unfortunately, much of the energy of liberal Egypt seems to be focused on pursuing the old regime rather than preparing for the future. Earlier this month crowds reoccupied Tahrir Square in central Cairo to demand that Mr Mubarak be put on trial. Now that the demand has been granted, corruption allegations are being pursued against businesses that did well under the old regime. Some liberals argue that the pursuit of justice and the exposure of the crimes of the old regime are crucial to the establishment of a new Egypt. They also fear that the “deep state” of the Mubarak era will re-emerge and thwart change, unless it is exposed and pursued through the courts. These are legitimate arguments. But an overconcentration on the past risks losing the future. The political dangers are heightened by a serious deterioration in the economy. Tourism is a crucial industry, but many tourists seem too frightened to go to Egypt at the moment. Visiting the Pyramids in Giza last week I virtually had the place to myself. A lot of foreign and domestic investment is also on hold. Inflation is running at 18 per cent and food price inflation is over 50 per cent. In an effort to maintain stability, the government is pouring money into subsidies for food and energy. But the budget deficit is now about 12 per cent of GDP and foreign reserves are falling, as the central bank struggles to support the currency. Some fear that Egypt is heading for a balance-of-payments crisis. An International Monetary Fund-style austerity regime in an already poor country will not be a great advert for the post-Mubarak order. Despite all this, there is still plenty of post-revolutionary euphoria in Cairo. People who demonstrated in Tahrir Square are still exhilarated by what has been achieved – and by a new sense of dignity and hope for the future. But the risks of political and economic chaos are rising. Egypt’s liberals need to organise fast in response and to prepare for elections. As for the west, it cannot afford to let the dramas in Libya, Syria and Yemen lead to the neglect of Egypt. For the fate of the Arab Spring still hangs most of all on what happens in the most populous and culturally powerful country in the Arab world. Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the frontrunners to be Egypt’s next president and a leading liberal voice, told me last week: “If we succeed here, then the march towards democracy in the Arab world is unstoppable.” On the other hand, if Egypt fails, then the blue skies and optimism of the Arab Spring may swiftly give way to something a lot stormier and darker . [Islamist] [US global strategy]
• Saudi money wins Obama's mind
  By M K Bhadrakumar /Asia Times Saturday, 04.23.2011, 02:49pm Twice during the past week senior United States officials have let it be known that the Barack Obama administration has chosen to adopt a highly selective approach to the ferment in the Middle East. The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton couched the message in appropriate diplomatic idiom in Washington last Tuesday in a speech at a gala dinner celebrating the U.S.-Islamic World Forum before an audience of dignitaries from the Middle East, including the foreign ministers of Qatar and Jordan and the secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Conference. Clinton acknowledged that the ''long Arab winter has begun to thaw'' and after many decades, a ''real opportunity for lasting change'' has appeared before the Arab people. It, in turn, raises ''significant questions'' but it is not for the U.S. to provide all the answers. ''In fact, here in Washington we're struggling to thrash out answers to our own difficult political and economic questions,'' she said. Following a long-winded appreciation of the "Arab revolt," Clinton hit the nail on its head: ''We understand that a one-sized-fits-all approach doesn't make sense in such a diverse region at such a fluid time. As I have said before, the United States has specific relationships with countries in the region. We have a decades-long friendship with Bahrain that we expect to continue long into the future … Going forward, the United States will be guided by careful consideration of all circumstances on the ground and by our consistent values and interests.'' [US global strategy] [Democracy]
• Libya Could Become Stalemate, Top U.S. Military Officer Says
  April 22, 2011 By ROD NORDLAND and STEVEN LEE MYERS http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/africa/23libya.html?partner=rss&emc=rss BENGHAZI, Libya — The top American military officer warned Friday that the conflict on the ground in Libya threatened to become a stalemate, but Obama administration and military officials said that neither the United States nor its allies planned to fundamentally alter the NATO-led air operations despite criticism that they were not doing enough. The officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that a month of airstrikes had destroyed 30 percent to 40 percent of the capabilities of the military forces loyal to Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but had not yet drastically tilted the conflict with opposition militias one way or another. He cited shifts in tactics by Libyan forces that made it difficult for NATO warplanes to distinguish them from the rebel fighters and civilians. “So it’s become a much more difficult fight, much more difficult targets,” Admiral Mullen said in Baghdad, where he visited American troops involved in another American war. “As I have observed in recent days, essentially it’s very much stalemate-like in the vicinity of Ajdabiya and Brega,” two contested cities east of the capital, Tripoli. His remarks were echoed by those of the most prominent American yet to visit the rebel strongholds in Libya: Senator John McCain. Appearing on Friday in Benghazi, he, too, used the word stalemate as he called on the United States to intensify its attacks on pro-Qaddafi forces, using aircraft like A-10 jets and AC-130 gunships that the White House and Pentagon have pulled from the fight, citing the threat from portable missiles on the ground and saying allied warplanes should take the lead. Mr. McCain, a strong advocate of intervention in Libya, called for the United States to recognize the rebels’ governing council as the country’s legitimate government, as France, Italy and Qatar have done, and provide it with money and arms on a scale similar to what the United States did in support of those who fought the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. “I have met these brave fighters, and they are not Al Qaeda,” said Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona. “They are Libyan patriots who want to liberate their nation.”
  In Benghazi, the rebels seemed buoyed by the news from the front and from Mr. McCain’s visit. He stopped briefly at the courthouse that has been the headquarters of the uprising’s leaders. Only a few dozen Libyans were there, and they chanted pro-American and anti-Qaddafi slogans. “This,” Mr. McCain said, “was one of the most exciting and inspiring days of my life.” [Incompetence] [Libya] [Islamist]
• Nation’s Mood at Lowest Level in Two Years, Poll Shows
  By JIM RUTENBERG and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN Americans are more pessimistic about the nation’s economic outlook and overall direction than they have been at any time since President Obama’s first two months in office, when the country was still officially ensnared in the Great Recession, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Amid rising gas prices, stubborn unemployment and a cacophonous debate in Washington over the federal government’s ability to meet its future obligations, the poll presents stark evidence that the slow, if unsteady, gains in public confidence earlier this year that a recovery was under way are now all but gone. Capturing what appears to be an abrupt change in attitude, the survey shows that the number of Americans who think the economy is getting worse has jumped 13 percentage points in just one month. Though there have been encouraging signs of renewed growth since last fall, many economists are having second thoughts, warning that the pace of expansion might not be fast enough to create significant numbers of new jobs. The dour public mood is dragging down ratings for both parties in Congress and for President Obama, the poll found.
  Given the choice of cutting military, Social Security or Medicare spending as a way to reduce the overall budget, 45 percent chose military cuts, compared with those to Social Security (17 percent) or Medicare (21 percent.) [Militarisation]
• Afghanistan's great escape: how 480 Taliban prisoners broke out of jail
  It may not have been Stalag Luft III, but the escape from Sarpoza prison in Kandahar was pretty ingenious Share141 Jon Boone in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 April 2011 19.38 BST Article history An Afghan police officer looks at the tunnel in Sarpoza prison, Kandahar, through which hundreds of Taliban fighters escaped. Photograph: Allauddin Khan/AP Kandahar's prison may not be Stalag Luft III but in terms of ingenuity, organisation and sheer cunning the successful break-out by at least 480 Taliban prisoners in the early hours of Monday morning rivals anything pulled off by British POWs in the infamous German prison camp.
  The display of the Taliban's strength comes after a conventional troop surge and a winter of intensive battering by special forces. Despite the killing and capturing of huge numbers of Taliban commanders, the movement flaunted its undimmed organisational powers, not least with a sophisticated media campaign which saw a press release in near flawless English being sent out to international media.
  But for the Taliban escapee enjoying freedom for the first time in three years, an experience he compared to the Islamic festival of Eid, there was a belief that the government would not recover from its display of ineptitude. "We had the full support of the people of Kandahar, who provided us with clothes and safe places to go," he said. "We have proved that whatever we want to do in Kandahar or anywhere else in the country, we can do it."
• Can BRICS soften dollar crisis?
  21.04.2011 Alexander Salitsky, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer IMEMO On April 10, in an interview with a CNN host and political observer Fareed Zakaria, the former secretary of state James Baker, when he was speaking about the current global changes, said the following: “The biggest challenge facing the U.S. isn’t turmoil in the Arab world. It’s our debt bomb”. He said that without a strong dollar the US will turn into the United States of Greece. I think we could go on with the list of the problems the US is not interested in such as human rights, democracy, freedom and other “fundamental” things. It also concerns terrorism to some extend. Lowering of US state treasury bills’ rating by S&P on Tuesday was a logical though a very belated decision. The additional issue of state treasury bills in autumn 2010 was a desperate measure of the Federal Reserve System following the lack of interest to the treasury bonds among investors. At the same time it might be a good advertisement for the agency and it will keep some influence in future considering that the changes in the entire system of estimates in the rapidly changing financial world are inevitable. There are three main options to strengthen dollar. The first one is the reduction of costs and the development of exports (a standard recommendation from the IMF). Also import substitution can be added to this. The second option is the weakening of currencies and economic positions of competitive countries. The third option the use of the resources from other countries to support dollar. [Reserve] [Decline]
• WikiLeaks: Secret Guantanamo files show U.S. disarray
  By Carol Rosenberg and Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Faced with the worst-ever single attack by foreigners on American soil, the U.S. military set up a human intelligence laboratory at Guantanamo that used interrogation and detention practices that they largely made up as they went along. The world may have thought the U.S. was detaining a band of international terrorists whose questioning would help the hunt for Osama Bin Laden or foil the next 9/11. But a collection of secret Bush-era intelligence documents not meant to surface for another 20 years shows that the military's efforts at Guantanamo often were much less effective than the government has acknowledged. Viewed as a whole, the secret intelligence summaries help explain why in May 2009 President Barack Obama, after ordering his own review of wartime intelligence, called America's experiment at Guantanamo "quite simply a mess."
  The documents also show that in the earliest years of the prison camps operation, the Pentagon permitted Chinese and Russian interrogators into the camps — information from those sessions are included in some captives' assessments — something American defense lawyers working free-of-charge for the foreign prisoners have alleged and protested for years. There's not a whiff in the documents that any of the work is leading the U.S. closer to capturing Bin Laden. In fact, the documents suggest a sort of mission creep beyond the post-9/11 goal of hunting down the al Qaida inner circle and sleeper cells. The file of one captive, now living in Ireland, shows he was sent to Guantanamo so that U.S. military intelligence could gather information on the secret service of Uzbekistan. A man from Bahrain is shipped to Guantanamo in June 2002, in part, for interrogation on "personalities in the Bahraini court."
  Among those men is a convicted war criminal — Guantanamo's lone lifer, Ali Hamza al Bahlul of Yemen — convicted not as a "Dirty 30," but for serving as Bin Laden's media secretary and an al Qaida filmmaker who fed the terror group's propaganda machine. [Global insurgency] [Incompetence] [War crimes] [Double standards] [Intelligence]
• Poll: Egyptians have unfavorable view of U.S., are divided on fundamentalists
  By Michael Birnbaum, Monday, April 25, 2:01 PM CAIRO – Egyptians are deeply skeptical about the United States and its role in their country, but they are also divided in their attitudes about Islamic fundamentalists, according a poll released Monday by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. Most Egyptians distrust the United States and want to renegotiate their peace treaty with Israel, the poll found. But only 31 percent say they sympathize with fundamentalists, while 30 percent say they sympathize with those who disagree with fundamentalists. An additional 26 percent said they had mixed views. .The poll is the first comprehensive look at attitudes of Egyptians since protests forced President Hosni Mubarak to end his 30-year reign in February. The numbers reveal a society that overwhelmingly agrees that Mubarak was bad for the country but is divided about what the future should look like. [Public opinion] [Anti-Americanism]
• Shameful U.S. inaction on Syria’s massacres
  By Editorial, Friday, April 22, 5:16 PM FOR THE PAST five weeks, growing numbers of Syrians have been gathering in cities and towns across the country to demand political freedom — and the security forces of dictator Bashar al-Assad have been responding by opening fire on them. According to Syrian human rights groups, more than 220 people had been killed by Friday. And Friday may have been the worst day yet: According to Western news organizations, which mostly have had to gather information from outside the country, at least 75 people were gunned down in places that included the suburbs of Damascus, the city of Homs and a village near the southern town of Daraa, where the protests began. Massacres on this scale usually prompt a strong response from Western democracies, as they should. Ambassadors are withdrawn; resolutions are introduced at the U.N. Security Council; international investigations are mounted and sanctions applied. In Syria’s case, none of this has happened. The Obama administration has denounced the violence — a presidential statement called Friday’s acts of repression “outrageous” — but otherwise remained passive. Even the ambassador it dispatched to Damascus during a congressional recess last year remains on post. .The administration has sat on its hands despite the fact that the Assad regime is one of the most implacable U.S. adversaries in the Middle East. It is Iran’s closest ally; it supplies Iranian weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip for use against Israel. Since 2003 it has helped thousands of jihadists from across the Arab world travel to Iraq to attack American soldiers. It sought to build a secret nuclear reactor with the help of North Korea and destabilized the pro-Western government of neighboring Lebanon by sponsoring a series of assassinations. [Camouflage] [Nationalism] [US global strategy]
• Afghan History: The Central Asian Grand Chessboard
  by Dean Henderson Global Research, April 20, 2011 Afghan History: Al Qaeda, The Taliban and the Texas Oil Giants Part II - by Dean Henderson - 2011-04-14 Afghan History Suppressed: Islamists, Heroin and the CIA Part I - by Dean Henderson - 2011-04-10
  Part III In 1997 Trilateral Commission founder Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of the Afghan mujahadeen, wrote a book titled, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geopolitical Imperatives. In the book Brzezinski - who sat on the board at BP Amoco - argues that the key to global power is control of Eurasia and that the “key to controlling Eurasia is controlling the Central Asian Republics”. Brzezinski’s plan called for ruling Central Asia via control of Uzbekistan - which borders Afghanistan to the north. In 1997 Enron attempted to negotiate a $2 billion deal with the Uzbek state-owned Neftegas with help from the Bush White House. [1] When that effort and other privatization attempts were rebuffed in 1998, CIA-backed Islamist attacks on Uzbekistan’s government were ratcheted up. In 1999 a series of explosions rocked the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. Islamic al-Qaeda-trained militants were to blame. The rebels - who called themselves the Islamic Party of Turkistan - attempted to assassinate socialist President Islam Karimov. They attacked the fertile Fergana Valley in an attempt to disrupt harvests and the Uzbek food supply. Karimov was also attacked by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Hizb-ut-Tahrir. After the “carpet of bombs” began raining down on neighboring Afghanistan in October 2001, Uzbekistan - along with neighbors Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – were coerced into accepting new US military bases. In 2005 Kyrgyzstan’s nationalist President Askar Akayev was deposed by Islamists in the Tulip Revolution. Within days Donald Rumsfeld was meeting with the new leaders. [2] Karimov had seen enough and ordered US troops out of Uzbekistan. The timing of both Brzezinski’s book and the Bush Jr. Administration “carpet of bombs” threat to the Taliban are instructive since both occurred prior to the 911 attacks, which provided the perfect pretext for the massive Central Asian intervention that Brzezinski, Bush and their City of London bosses were advocating. Dr. Johannes Koeppl - former German Defense Ministry official and adviser to NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner - explained of this rash of “coincidences” in November 2001, “The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberger Group, have prepared for and are now implementing open world dictatorship (which will be established) within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens.” [US global strategy]
• Dollar's Decline Speeds Up, With Risks for U.S.
  By TOM LAURICELLA The U.S. dollar's downward slide is accelerating as low interest rates, inflation concerns and the massive federal budget deficit undermine the currency. .With no relief in sight for the dollar on any of those fronts, the downward pressure on the dollar is widely expected to continue. The dollar fell nearly 1% against a broad basket of currencies this week, following a drop of similar size last week. The ICE U.S. Dollar Index closed at its lowest level since August 2008, before the financial crisis intensified. "The dollar just hasn't had anything positive going for it," said Alessio de Longis, who oversees the Oppenheimer Currency Opportunities Fund. The main driver for the dollar's decline is low interest rates in the U.S. compared with higher and rising rates abroad. Lower rates mean a lower return on cash—and the pressure from that factor could intensify next week when the Federal Reserve's rate-setting committee is expected to signal that U.S. short-term rates will likely remain near zero for many months to come. On Wednesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is scheduled to give the central bank's first-ever press conference following a policy-setting meeting. The dollar plunged to multiyear lows against most major currencies Thursday, as worries about the U.S. fiscal- and monetary-policy outlook made investors reluctant to hold the currency. Jon Hilsenrath and Michael Derby discuss. .But it is worry about the U.S. budget deficit that is intensifying the selloff. On Monday, investors were spooked by a warning from Standard & Poor's that it might take away the U.S. government's coveted AAA rating status amid concerns the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress might not be able to agree to significant reductions in the deficit. In addition, Chinese government officials have stepped up rhetoric hinting they might diversify their $3 trillion of currency reserves away from U.S. dollars. Such a shift would chip away at what has been a substantial source of dollar-buying in recent years. [Decline][Reserve] [China rising]
• US Weapons to Israel Are Disincentives to Peace
  by Josh Ruebner, April 23, 2011 Email This | Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum Israel may be forgiven for failing to realize the current fiscal woes of the United States. After all, U.S. military aid to Israel not only sailed unscathed through last week’s passage of the 2011 budget, but reached the record level of $3 billion. The United States additionally provided Israel $415 million for procurement, research and development of joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense projects, including $205 million to fund Israel’s newly-deployed Iron Dome system. This anti-missile battery already has altered significantly the strategic balance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when Israel successfully shot down incoming rockets fired from the Gaza Strip earlier this month. With the assured diplomatic backing of the United States to prevent Israel from being held accountable by the international community for its illegal blockade, Iron Dome will embolden Israel to tighten its siege and escalate its attacks on the occupied Gaza Strip by providing its citizens with additional protection against retaliatory fire. U.S. funding of Iron Dome is but one example of many of how U.S. weapons transfers to Israel privilege Israeli military dominance over Palestinian freedom and create perverse economic disincentives for Israel to defy U.S. policy goals such as halting Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land, ending its collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and negotiating in good faith a lasting peace agreement. [Client] [Israel]
• Obama ran against Bush, but now governs like him
  By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — He ran as the anti-Bush. Silver-tongued, not tongue-tied. A team player on the world stage, not a lone cowboy. A man who'd put a stop to reckless Bush policies at home and abroad. In short, Barack Obama represented Change. Well, that was then. Now, on one major policy after another, President Barack Obama seems to be morphing into George W. Bush. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/18/112346/obama-ran-against-bush-but-now.html#ixzz1JxB5yr1G [Obama] [Continuity] [Decline]
• Talks on U.S. Presence in Afghanistan After Pullout Unnerve Region
  By ROD NORDLAND Published: April 18, 2011 KABUL, Afghanistan — First, American officials were talking about July 2011 as the date to begin the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Then, the Americans and their NATO allies began to talk about transition, gradually handing over control of the war to the Afghans until finally pulling out in 2014. Now, however, the talk is all about what happens after 2014. Afghanistan and the United States are in the midst of negotiating what they are calling a Strategic Partnership Declaration for beyond 2014. Critics, including many of Afghanistan’s neighbors, call it the Permanent Bases Agreement — or, in a more cynical vein, Great Game 3.0, drawing a comparison with the ill-fated British and Russian rivalry in the region during the 19th and 20th centuries. [Imperialism] [Bases] [AfPak]
• U.S. secretly backed Syrian opposition groups, cables released by WikiLeaks show
  / AP - Syrian anti-government protesters march in Banias, Syria on Sunday. The Arabic banner at center reads: "All of us would die for our country.” Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Craig Whitlock, Sunday, April 17, 11:01 PM The State Department has secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country, according to previously undisclosed diplomatic cables. The London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria as part of a long-standing campaign to overthrow the country’s autocratic leader, Bashar al-Assad. Human rights groups say scores of people have been killed by Assad’s security forces since the demonstrations began March 18; Syria has blamed the violence on “armed gangs.” [Subversion]
• Gaddafi’s son: We will deal with terrorists first and then talk reform
  Simon Denyer/ THE WASHINGTON POST - Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the second son of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, talks to The Washington Post in an exclusive interview late on Saturday. In it, he said his government had done nothing wrong and would not back down against “terrorists.” Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Simon Denyer, Sunday, April 17, 9:13 PM TRIPOLI, Libya — Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the influential second son of Moammar Gaddafi who was once seen as the great hope for reform in Libya, is clear on two points: He and his government have done nothing wrong, and they are not going to back down.
  “Nobody in the Middle East, and especially in Libya, thought that one day President Obama will attack Libya or an Arabic country,” he said. “It was a big shock, a big shock for everybody, even for my father.” Saif Gaddafi’s international image has collapsed just as quickly. The Gaddafi scion, who was awarded a doctorate in governance and international relations at the London School of Economics in 2008, had many friends in the West before the crisis erupted in February [Renege] [Libya]
• The War on Soft Power
  Even the U.S. military doesn't want to cut the State Department and foreign aid budget. So why is Congress playing a dangerous game with America's global influence? BY JOSEPH S. NYE JR. | APRIL 12, 2011 Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama and Congress struggled until the 11th hour to agree on budget cuts that would avert a government shutdown. The United States' budget deficit is a serious problem, and there have been serious proposals to deal with it, such as those by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson Commission. But last week's efforts were not a serious solution. They were focused solely on the 12 percent of the budget that is non-military discretionary expenditure, rather than the big-ticket items of entitlements, military expenditure, and tax changes that increase revenue. Yet while last week's cuts failed to do much about the deficit, they could do serious damage to U.S. foreign policy. On Tuesday, the axe fell: The State Department and foreign operations budget was slashed by $8.5 billion -- a pittance when compared to military spending, but one that could put a serious dent in the United States' ability to positively influence events abroad. [Softpower] [Incompetence] [Militarisation]
• Libya: Gaddafi forces 'using cluster bombs in Misrata'
  Human Rights Watch say Gaddafi's army has fired the weapons, which cause massive damage and are banned in most states Share244 Harriet Sherwood in Tripoli guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 April 2011 22.22 BST Article history Heavy gunfire pockmarks houses in Misrata, Libya. Witnesses say Gaddafi's forces have fired cluster bombs into the city. Photograph: Phil Moore/AFP/Getty Images Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi have fired cluster bombs into residential areas of the besieged city of Misrata, according to witnesses. Human Rights Watch reported that four cluster bombs exploded in the city on Thursday and Friday, and two Libyan residents of Misrata told the Guardian that they suspected the munitions were being used. Cluster bombs, banned by most countries in the world, explode in midair, indiscriminately throwing out dozens of high-explosive bomblets which cause widespread damage and injuries over a large area. The submunitions often fail to explode on impact but detonate when stepped on or picked up. [War crimes] [Double standards]
• S.Korea-U.S. missile defense discussions underway
  Concerns remain over which country will lead the defense programs By Kwon Soon-hyuk South Korean and U.S. officials have said that discussions are underway between the two countries regarding missile defense. Seoul has drawn a line, saying the discussions are merely to discuss an effective, Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD), but there are concerns that this may be a step towards participation in a US-led ballistic missile defense (BMD) program. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, Bradley Roberts, said, “The United States is holding bilateral discussions with South Korea on the issue of cooperating on missile defense.” Roberts added, “With South Korea, we have engaged in bilateral missile-defense cooperation discussions and have recently signed a Terms of Reference and an agreement that will enable our two nations to carry out a requirements analysis so that South Korea can make informed decisions about the utility of any future BMD program.” In the same hearing, Missile Defense Agency Director Patrick O’Reilly said, “The United States is currently pursuing, researching or analyzing missile defense with over 20 nations, and South Korea is one of the countries with which the United States is cooperating.” When these comments were reported in the foreign press, the Ministry of Defense, too, said Friday that the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses and the U.S. Defense Department had signed Terms of Reference agreement in September of last year to conduct joint research on the construction and operation of an effective Korean missile defense system. It said working-level officials held their first planning and analysis working group (PAWG) meeting on Wednesday and Thursday in Washington. Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said they plan to meet three to four times a year, and that this did not mean Korea was participating in the US-led ballistic missile defense program. Such discussion did not even come up between officials, he said. However, for a Korean missile defense system to function properly, its early warning system and control system, such as early warning satellites watching for North Korean missile launches, would have to depend on the United States. Accordingly, there is concern that no matter what form it takes, the program will ultimately be linked to the US ballistic missile defense system, and that South Korea will participate in the system as a junior partner. The Korea Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) system is a missile defense system tailored to the Korean Peninsula to deal with North Korea’s short and medium range missile threat. Discussion of such a system began under the Roh Moo-hyun administration. The U.S. ballistic missile defense system (BMD) counters mostly threats to the U.S. homeland from long-range, high-altitude missiles, while the KAMD would defense against short-range, low-altitude missiles, with North Korea's 300-500km-range Scud B and C missiles in mind. The system would be built around missile defense command and control centers, Patriot 2 and 3 missiles and Aegis warships. [Missile defense] [US dominance]
• Obama must broker a new Mideast peace
  By Brent Scowcroft Published: April 13 2011 14:38 | Last updated: April 13 2011 14:58 The “Arab Spring” that is flowering in fits and starts in most countries of the Middle East has significantly altered the geopolitical situation in the region, and is likely to have a profound effect on American interests. No one knows how or when the region will settle down, and there is little that the US can do to help shape events directly. Even in Libya, the US and other countries have been reacting, admittedly in a direct manner, rather than shaping the outcome of the struggle between Muammer Gaddafi and his opponents. This is all for good reason. As a new Middle East has begun to be shaped by citizens in individual countries, one issue appears conspicuously unaffected, at least on the surface: the Arab-Israeli dispute over Palestine. Israelis and Palestinian leaders remain incapable or unwilling to talk seriously. It is wishful thinking that this situation can continue for long. [US global strategy][Israel]
• Vietnam to Iraq and AfPak: traps of history
  The United States's prolonged counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq raise strong echoes of Vietnam. But new studies suggest that the lessons of this half-century military arc need to be carefully drawn, says Mariano Aguirre. About the authorMariano Aguirre is managing director of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre (Noref) in Oslo. He is a fellow of the Transnational Institute, AmsterdamThere are remarkable continuities in the United States’s wartime policies since the 1960s. The context of the conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq have been very different, but successive leaders in Washington seem to operate on similar ideological assumptions and to repeat their mistakes. The costly wars of the post-9/11 decade have exposed both the United States’s loss of legitimacy as a superpower and the limits of its military might and economic prosperity. Some lessons of this history are revealed in a reading of four recent books They provide an opportunity to reflect on the state of American power in 2011 - when it is engaged in another military campaign in the Arab world, in Libya, albeit with far less complete exertion than before. The consensus The research in three of these works includes access to declassified information, notes from decision-makers and personal testimonies. The exception is Andrew J Bacevich’s Washington Rules: The Path to Permanent War (Metropolitan Books, 2010), which is a historical interpretation. Yet the subtitle of this book is a good starting-point for a larger survey, for it reveals a core theme of the history of these four decades: that the United States’s pursuit of global military domination has led it to wage disastrous wars that have accelerated the decline of the United States as a global power. [Decline] [Militarisation] [Imperialism] [Pacification]
• Germany Rebuffs U.S. Calls to Shut Iran Bank
  By DAVID CRAWFORD Germany is resisting international pressure to freeze the activities of an Iranian-owned bank based in Hamburg that U.S. officials say provides the financial lifeblood for some of Iran's blacklisted companies. U.S. and European Union officials in recent months have stepped up pressure on Germany to close down the European-Iranian Trade Bank AG—including a Feb. 2 letter from 11 U.S. senators to German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle that urged immediate action. The U.S. says the German-licensed bank, known as EIH Bank for its German initials, has become a major financial conduit for Iranian companies involved in weapons proliferation. Last September, it added EIH to its own blacklist of entities banned from the U.S. financial system. [Sanctions] [Dissension]
• Bring War Dollars Home by Closing Down Bases
  Christine Ahn and Sukjong Hong* | April 10, 2011 [Another version published in Foreign Policy in Focus, March 31, 2011] On the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. fighter planes took off to start yet another military action—this time, in Libya. A recent Gallup poll found that only 47 percent of Americans approved of military action in Libya, the lowest level of support for military intervention in 40 years. At the same time, U.S. President Barack Obama has sent Congress a budget that includes $1.2 trillion for military and security expenditures. Clearly, Americans are weary of war, especially during an economic crisis that has threatened jobs, health plans, and pensions most families need to survive. [Bases]
• Libyan rebel leader with U.S. ties feels abandoned
  By Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers BENGHAZI, Libya — Khalifa Hifter thought he'd be America's man in Libya. He'd spent the last 24 years living under what he calls U.S. government protection in suburban northern Virginia. Before he returned to Libya last month, State Department and CIA officials sought him out for meetings. He delivered to them wish lists of weapons and vehicles to bolster the fight against Moammar Gadhafi. To his frustration, however, U.S. officials haven't contacted him since. They've ignored his pleas for direct military support while the rebels steadily lose ground to Gadhafi's better-equipped forces. "The United States is a second home to me," Hifter said. "They should be cooperating with me to help the Libyan people." Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/12/112071/libyan-rebel-chief-with-us-ties.html#ixzz1JOHI8ou8 [Imperialism] [Diaspora]
• Rebel military commander wants to be America's man on the ground in Libya
  By Leila Fadel, Tuesday, April 12, 9:12 PM BENGHAZI, Libya — Khalifa Hiftar spent the past 24 years in the United States but returned abruptly to Libya last month to join the rebels fighting to topple Moammar Gaddafi. Now, as the newly installed field commander of the fledgling force, this ­67-year-old is trying to make fast improvements to fighters who need more training, more weapons and, he says, more support from the United States. “A lot of things are going to change,” Hiftar said, sitting behind a large wooden desk at the military command headquarters in this rebel stronghold, about 100 miles from the erratic front line where Gaddafi loyalists and rebel fighters move forward and back. “I will train them to follow orders and to be under control. The real battle will start when all our forces regroup.” The challenge is a difficult one. So, too, is Hiftar’s place among the rebels. Some say he is trying to take a leading role late in the game, after years out of the country. He is also vying with Abdul Fattah Younis, commander of the armed forces here, for leadership of the rebel military. Younis was Gaddafi’s interior minister and commander of the Libyan special forces, but broke ranks in February to join the rebels. [Imperialism] [Diaspora]
• CIA’s brain drain: Since 9/11, some top officials have moved to private sector
  Michael S. Williamson/ THE WASHINGTON POST - “I didn’t just want to go back to the agency [as a contractor] as so many people do,” said Mel Gamble. The 40-year CIA vet­eran worked for a Herndon-based defense contractor. Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy Julie Tate, Tuesday, April 12, 11:05 PM In the decade since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, private intelligence firms and security consultants have peeled away veterans from the top reaches of the CIA, hiring scores of longtime officers in large part to gain access to the burgeoning world of intelligence contracting. At least 91 of the agency’s upper-level managers have left for the private sector in the past 10 years, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. Several of the top positions have turned over multiple times in that period: In addition to three directors, the CIA has lost four of its deputy directors for operations, three directors of its counterterrorism center and all five of the division chiefs who were in place the day of the Sept. 11 attacks. [Privatisation]
• Possible Libya Stalemate Puts Stress on U.S. Policy
  By DAVID E. SANGER Published: April 11, 2011 WASHINGTON — Three weeks ago, President Obama ordered American troops into the first “humanitarian war” on his watch, vowing to stop the forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from massacring their own people. Mr. Obama’s hope was that a quick application of power from the air would tip the balance, and the Libyan rebels would do the rest. Related Truce Plan for Libya Is Rejected by Rebels (April 12, 2011) Italy Lashes Out at European Union Over Immigrants (April 12, 2011) Now with the Qaddafi forces weathering episodic attacks, and sometimes even gaining, the question in Washington has boiled down to this: Can Mr. Obama live with a stalemate? Asked on Monday whether the United States could accept a cease-fire proposed by the African Union that would effectively leave Colonel Qaddafi in control of part of the country, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hedged. First, she said, the Libyan government would have to allow food, water and electricity into cities it has cut off and allow in humanitarian assistance. Then, she added, “These terms are nonnegotiable.” But she immediately reiterated that ultimately nothing could be resolved without “the departure of Qaddafi from power, and from Libya.” The statement seemed to underscore the limbo the administration finds itself in, with the rebels unable to achieve regime change on their own, and Washington and its NATO allies hesitant to leap deeper into a civil war. [Strategic paralysis]
• Iraq Steps Back Onto the Regional Stage
  By TIM ARANGO Published: April 11, 2011 BAGHDAD — On Monday morning, the Iraqi foreign minister stood in a marble rotunda of Saddam Hussein’s old Republican Palace, once the heart of the American occupation, and noted that this was where the United States held sway when it “was trying to help us run our country.” How did that go? “Badly,” he said. Soon the palace will be the setting for an Arab League summit meeting — a showpiece for a country, once a regional pariah, that is now trying to assert itself on the stage of Middle East affairs at a time when its neighbors are in turmoil. [Decline]
• Niall Ferguson: 'The left love being provoked by me ... they think I'm a reactionary imperialist scumbag'
  The controversial historian on how political debate in England is trapped in the 80s, why Americans love him – and his refusal to forgive people who cross him
  Decca Aitkenhead The Guardian, Monday 11 April 2011 The first thing everyone always says about Niall Ferguson is that he's far too glamorous to be an academic. So the surprise, when we meet, is his miserable little office – a bleak sliver of the London School of Economics, surely nowhere near sumptuous enough for the dashing professor. Lined with rows of empty bookshelves, it looks semi-vacated – but that's because it sort of is. "I'll be out of here in July," Ferguson says quickly, with the air of a man for whom July cannot come soon enough. "This has been great fun, but . . . well, you know . . ." The historian has been living back in the UK for almost a year, the first time since leaving for the US in 2002, where he now teaches at Harvard. From the outside, it's looked like quite a successful stay; his Channel 4 series, Civilization, was broadly well-received, and the accompanying book is another dollop of vintage Ferguson history, devoted to the superiority of western civilisation. While here he's also been advising Michael Gove on the history curriculum in secondary schools, and now that the Tories, of whom he approves, are back in charge of the country, he must have found the political climate more to his tastes. But when I ask him for the single biggest change he's observed since leaving Britain, he replies with a kind of theatrical despair,
  Last year it emerged that his marriage had broken down, after Ferguson became involved with the Somali-born Dutch activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali .
• Ouattara forces kill, rape civilians
  Forces loyal to President-elect Alassane Ouattara killed hundreds of civilians, raped more than 20 alleged supporters of his rival Laurent Gbagbo, and burned at least 10 villages in Côte d'Ivoire’s far western region, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Sunday.
• Another side of Libya, where the war seems far away
  Nancy A. Youssef / MCT Osama al Fatiory, who'd been assisting McClatchy correspondent Nancy A. Youssef in Libya, climbs the ruins of the Temple of Zeus at Cyrene, Libya. The temple was built in the 5th Century B.C. by ancient Greek settlers and restored 2,000 years ago by Roman settlers. it's one of the sights one finds on the road leading to Egypt and is easily accessible to visitors who can climb on them as if they were monkey bars in a children's playground. | View larger image By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers CYRENE, Libya — To cover the war in liberated eastern Libya is to spend a lot of time speedily headed somewhere: fleeing the front line as soon as it's collapsed, moving toward a safe city, hurriedly going in and out of Egypt toward the news of the day. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/10/111920/another-side-of-libya-where-the.html#ixzz1JCacrfqh
• Qaddafi’s Handling of Media Shows Regime’s Flaws
  By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Published: April 10, 2011 TRIPOLI, Libya — Even the Qaddafi government escort could not contain his disbelief at the sloppiness of the fraud: bloodstains his colleagues had left on bedsheets in a damaged hospital room for more than a week as evidence of civilian casualties from Western airstrikes. Libyan government officials presented what they said were bloodstains left on bedsheets in a damaged hospital room after NATO airstrikes. “This is not even human blood!” the escort erupted to group of journalists, making a gesture with his hands like squeezing a tube. “I told them, ‘Nobody is going to believe this!’ ” he explained, as Elizabeth Palmer, a correspondent for CBS News, later recalled. His name was withheld for his protection. [Media]
• Another rebel setback as Gadhafi troops besiege Ajdabiya
  By Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers AJDABIYA, Libya — The front line for control of Libya moved to its easternmost point in three weeks on Saturday as forces loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi stormed this rebel-held town in a fleet of Toyota pickup trucks Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/09/111913/gadhafi-loyalists-besiege-ajdabiya.html#ixzz1J6TL2fUw
• Iraqis Protest U.S. After Comments From Gates
  Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times Thousands of supporters of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr burned American flags and effigies of soldiers in Baghdad on Saturday. By TIM ARANGO and KHALID D. ALI Published: April 9, 2011 BAGHDAD — A day after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested that American troops could remain here for years, tens of thousands of protesters allied with Moktada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American Shiite cleric, flooded the streets demanding an end to the American military presence.
• Why humanitarian wars can go so wrong
  By Gary J. Bass, Friday, April 8, 8:25 PM All wars are terrifying gambles, but the wars justified with moral claims of humanitarianism carry a distinctively harrowing set of risks and problems — above all, the challenge of preventing massive human catastrophes with limited means. In Libya, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Obama are already beginning to confront many of the classic dilemmas that bedeviled their predecessors facing massacres and genocide in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. [Humanitarian intervention]
• Cuba’s parliament chief denounces acquittal of ex-CIA agent in US as a ‘shameful farce’
  By Associated Press, Saturday, April 9, 3:22 PM HAVANA — A top Cuban official denounced on Saturday a Texas jury’s acquittal of a former CIA agent as a “shameful farce” that showed both the defendant and the U.S. government are liars. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Cuban Parliament Chief Ricardo Alarcon was highly critical of the federal judge presiding over the three-month trial, Kathleen Cardone, saying she did not allow jurors to see evidence that would have persuaded them to find Luis Posada Carriles guilty. “The stupid and shameful farce is over,” Alarcon said of the trial into allegations Posada lied during U.S. immigration hearings. “There were things the jury did not know ... particularly since the judge prohibited them from being told.” The Venezuelan government also condemned the verdict. The country’s foreign ministry issued a statement Friday calling the trial an act of “theater” staged by U.S. authorities “to continue protecting the terrorist.” [Terrorism] [Double standards]
• Cuban ex-CIA agent acquitted of charges alleging he lied during US immigration hearing
  By Associated Press, Friday, April 8, 9:06 PM EL PASO, Texas — An elderly Cuban former CIA operative accused of lying during a U.S. immigration hearing was acquitted on all charges Friday, with jurors taking just three hours to reach a verdict after enduring 13 weeks of often-delayed testimony. The abrupt decision ends four years of attempts by the U.S. government to convict 83-year-old Luis Posada Carriles and means he no longer has to face the prospect of spending the final years of his life in prison, at least in the United States. For decades, Posada worked to destabilize communist governments throughout Latin America and was often supported by Washington. He is Public Enemy No. 1 in his homeland, even considered ex-President Fidel Castro’s nemesis.
  Prosecutors alleged that he lied while under oath during those proceedings about how he made it into the country and by denying he masterminded a series of hotel bombings in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and wounded about 12 other people. Posada said in a 1998 interview with The New York Times that he planned the attacks, but later recanted that.
  . He helped the U.S. funnel support to Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the 1980s, and, in 2000, was arrested in Panama amid a plot to kill Castro during a summit there. He was pardoned by Panama’s president in 2004 and turned up in the U.S. the following March. Cuba and Venezuela would like to try Posada for the 1997 hotel bombings or the downing of the 1976 airliner, but a U.S. immigration judge has previously ruled that he can’t be sent to either country, for fear he could be tortured. He has escaped deportation elsewhere since no other country is willing to take him. [Terrorism] [Double standards]
• The Afghan Drug Trade and the Elephant in the Room
  by Jeremy R. Hammond April 9, 2011 Foreign Policy magazine this month features an article entitled “Think Again: The Afghan Drug Trade“, which is a decent overview of the opium problem – as far as it goes. Unsurprisingly, however, in doing so, it proverbially ignores the elephant in the room, and in doing so represents part of the problem rather than the solution. To its credit, the article begins by dispelling the myth that the drug trade in Afghanistan is virtually controlled by the Taliban, observing that “In the popular and American political imaginations, the Taliban are thought to be the big winners from this [Afghanistan's] near monopoly [on global opium production]“, but the truth is “The Taliban take 2 to 12 percent of a $4 billion industry”. This is rare candor for a mainstream publication – it’s more typical to see the U.S. media misleading the public on the role anti-government elements play in the drug trade (I discussed both these points in “New York Times Misleads on Taliban Role in Opium Trade“, Foreign Policy Journal, November 29, 2008). But the authors neglect to draw the corollary, rather leaving it up to readers to put two and two together and realize that this means that the lion’s share of the Afghan drug trade is under the control of elements friendly to the Afghan government and/or the foreign occupying forces. While one might just assume that the authors feel it isn’t necessary to explicitly mention this because FP’s readers are intelligent enough to figure that out for themselves, there is another more likely explanation for the omission. [Drugs] [Imperialism] [Double standards]
• APRIL 10, 2011 Think Again: The Afghan Drug Trade
  Why cracking down on Afghanistan's opium business won't help stop the Taliban -- or the United States' own drug problems. BY JONATHAN P. CAULKINS, JONATHAN D. KULICK, AND MARK A.R. KLEIMAN | APRIL 1, 2011 "The Afghan Drug Industry Mostly Benefits the Taliban." Far from it. Today, Afghanistan essentially holds a monopoly on heroin exports to the Old World. The country accounts for more than 90 percent of global production; although drug markets evolve over time, Afghanistan's production costs are so much lower than its would-be competitors' that it is a safe bet to assume the country will be the leader for at least five or 10 more years. In the popular and American political imaginations, the Taliban are thought to be the big winners from this near monopoly, and there is some truth to this. The "narcoterrorist" label is often misused, but the Taliban are the real deal. They really do use profits from the opium trade to finance terrorist attacks on civilian and military targets. Although the Taliban traffic only modest quantities entirely on their own, taxing other people's drug deals is an important source of revenue; no one knows how much the Taliban profit from the drug trade, but whether they do isn't up for serious debate. But just because the Taliban benefit from the heroin business doesn't mean the heroin business mostly benefits the Taliban. Consider the numbers (or at least the rough ones -- production figures fluctuate from year to year, conversion rates are crude estimates, and price data beyond the opium bazaars are sketchy). In a typical year, Afghan farmers sell about 7,000 tons of opium at $130 a kilogram to traffickers who convert that into 1,000 tons of heroin, worth perhaps $2,500 a kilogram in Afghanistan and $4,000 at wholesale in neighboring countries. That works out to roughly $900 million in annual revenues for the farmers, $1.6 billion for traffickers from operations within Afghanistan, and another $1.5 billion for those who smuggle heroin out of the country. (2010 was atypical; a poppy blight drove opium production down and prices up.) The Taliban's take is subject to debate, with responsible estimates varying from $70 million to $500 million -- but either way it's not a big slice of the pie. The Taliban take 2 to 12 percent of a $4 billion industry; farmers, traffickers, smugglers, and corrupt officials collectively earn much more [Drugs] [Media]
• Libya and Iraq: a long war’s risk
  Paul Rogers, 7 April 2011 Both the west and the Gaddafi regime are assessing the prospect of a military stalemate in Libya. In any extended campaign, United States-Israel cooperation could offer Tripoli an unexpected gift. 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 28 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 international conflict over Libya raises inevitable and uncomfortable echoes of the two major wars waged by the United States and some of its allies in the wider region since 9/11. The termination of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in April 2003 took place after three weeks of invasion and bombardment. The subsequent war lasted seven years, and even now Iraq is far from at peace. The extinction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after 9/11 took eight weeks, and the ensuing war there is soon to enter its second decade. In the third week of foreign intervention in the Libyan war, it seems probable that regime termination is the unspoken aim (even if this is not mandated by the United Nations Security Council resolution). It has not yet been achieved. How long will Libya’s war last, and will it begin to resemble Iraq and Afghanistan? It remains possible that the Muammar Gaddafi regime will suddenly collapse, and there is also a chance that some kind of negotiated compromise will prove feasible. Either outcome may be fervently hoped for. But to understand the likely consequences of this major Nato operation, it might be wiser to take a hard look at what is unfolding (see “Libya and a decade’s war”, 31 March 2011). [Imperialism]
• UN chief asks Congress to protect funding. Republicans less than thrilled.
  When the UN's Ban Ki-moon traveled to Washington on Thursday to make the case for continued strong financial support, he got stiff resistance from Republicans. By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer / April 7, 2011 Washington With UN-assisted operations taking place in Libya and Ivory Coast, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon may have thought he chose a good time to make the case for continued strong US financial support of the United Nations. .But when he made the trip from New York to Washington on Thursday, what the secretary-general got instead was a wall of Republican resistance – to funding US foreign-policy operations in general and the UN in particular. [UNUS] [Incompetence][Imperialism]
• In Yemen, Hardly a Revolution
  By ISA BLUMI Published: April 8, 2011 Times Topic: Yemen — Protests (2011)TO Yemenis, violence in the streets and threats of state collapse are nothing new. Despite reports portraying the protests in Yemen as something of a revolution, democratic change has little possibility of success. President Ali Abdullah Saleh is essentially a figurehead; whether he stays or goes, the regime of technocrats and thugs he represents is unlikely to fold under pressure. Since Mr. Saleh came to power in North Yemen in a 1978 coup, his regime has selectively used state violence to maintain its hold, often working through militias and other loyalists, including radical Sunni Muslims sympathetic to Al Qaeda. Predictably, the violence has come at great cost to a country struggling with high unemployment and widespread poverty. North Yemen and South Yemen were unified only in 1990, and quickly descended into a brief, bloody civil war in 1994, in which the north, aided by Saudi-financed Salafist groups, decimated the political order of the south, home to the country’s best-educated, most cosmopolitan citizens. [Unification] [Double standards]
• How to Pay No Taxes
  Eleven shelters, dodges, and rolls—all perfectly legal—used by America's wealthiest people By Jesse Drucker April 7, 2011, For the well-off, this could be the best tax day since the early 1930s: Top tax rates on ordinary income, dividends, estates, and gifts will remain at or near historically low levels for at least the next two years. That's thanks in part to legislation passed in December 2010 by the 111th Congress and signed by President Barack Obama. "This is clearly far and away the most generous tax situation that's existed," says Gregory D. Singer, a national managing director of the wealth management group at AllianceBernstein (AB) in New York. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." For the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income, the effective federal income tax rate—what they actually pay—fell from almost 30 percent in 1995 to just under 17 percent in 2007, according to the IRS. And for the approximately 1.4 million people who make up the top 1 percent of taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate dropped from 29 percent to 23 percent in 2008. It may seem too fantastic to be true, but the top 400 end up paying a lower rate than the next 1,399,600 or so.
• The Hidden Job Crisis for American Men
  Men are disappearing from the workplace in ways that don't always register on the official unemployment rate By Peter Coy The March jobs report released on Apr. 1 seemed like the best in years. Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis released a statement noting that the four-month drop in the jobless rate, to 8.8 percent from 9.8 percent, was "its largest decline since 1984." Behind the headlines, though, statistics on jobs are far less encouraging. Yes, job growth has picked up somewhat. Yet an equally important reason for the lower jobless rate is that many people, men in particular, have simply given up looking for work and are no longer counted among the unemployed. Some sit at home. Some have become homeless. Rather than paying taxes on labor income, they are drawing government benefits, or relying on family and friends for support. Economists are concerned that the recovery will extend an ominous trend of disengagement for male workers that stretches back six decades. The share of American men aged 16 to 64 who are employed has fallen in a sawtooth pattern, from nearly 85 percent in the early 1950s to less than 65 percent now. [Labour]
• Top 5 reasons we keep fighting all these wars
  Posted By Stephen M. Walt Monday, April 4, 2011 - 11:30 AM Share The United States started out as thirteen small and vulnerable colonies clinging to the east coast of North America. Over the next century, those original thirteen states expanded all the way across the continent, subjugating or exterminating the native population and wresting Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California from Mexico. It fought a bitter civil war, acquired a modest set of overseas colonies, and came late to both world wars. But since becoming a great power around 1900, it has fought nearly a dozen genuine wars and engaged in countless military interventions. Yet Americans think of themselves as a peace-loving people, and we certainly don't regard our country as a "warrior nation" or "garrison state." Teddy Roosevelt was probably the last U.S. president who seemed to view war as an activity to be welcomed (he once remarked that "a just war is far better for a man's soul than the most prosperous peace"), and subsequent presidents always portray themselves as going to war with great reluctance, and only as a last resort. In 2008, Americans elected Barack Obama in part because they thought he would be different than his predecessor on a host of issues, but especially in his approach to the use of armed force. [Imperialism] [Militarisation] [Continuity]
• WikiLeaks cables show U.S. took softer line toward Libya
  By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Dozens of confidential and secret cables sent in recent years by the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli to the State Department describe a softer and gentler Libya that Americans following the bloody crisis there now would have a hard time recognizing. Moammar Gadhafi's son Saif al Islam, who's become the most vehement defender of his father's vicious onslaughts against protesters that triggered the civil war, is portrayed as a human rights advocate and reformer on the losing end of a battle with his harder line brother, Muatassim, Moammar Gadhafi's national security adviser. Musa Kusa, the former foreign minister who recently defected to Britain, is called a "useful" and "powerful interlocutor" who seeks closer ties with the U.S. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/07/111761/wikileaks-cables-show-us-took.html#ixzz1IyQibcip [Imperialism] [Libya] [Client] [Strategic incoherence]
• France’s Role in Three Conflicts Displays a More Muscular Policy
  By STEVEN ERLANGER Published: April 5, 2011 PARIS — France on Tuesday found itself engaged in three shooting wars at once for the first time in memory, indicating a new muscularity in using power by the politically embattled French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Last week, a French flag was displayed on top of a destroyed tank in Ajdabiya, Libya, that had belonged to forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. French peacekeeping troops attacked the presidential palace in Ivory Coast in support of the United Nations overnight, while French planes were attacking the troops of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. French forces are also fighting alongside the United States in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. [Spin] [Imperialism]
• Why America no longer gets Asia
  March 29th, 2011 Author: Evan A. Feigenbaum, Council on Foreign Relations I have a new article out in The Washington Quarterly, with a slightly provocative title, ‘Why America No Longer Gets Asia.’ It’s a think piece. And so it probably won’t be 100 per cent persuasive to 100 per cent of its readers in 100 per cent of its aspects. But the article pulls together the strands of a lot of themes I’ve harped on in recent years, from speeches I was giving while at the State Department to a few years’ worth of articles and blogs. I also worked on an array of projects directly related to these themes while serving in the US government, especially during the period from 2003 to 2007 [Decline] [China rising]
• The Euro-US War on Libya: Official Lies and Misconceptions of Critics
  by James Petras and Robin E. Abaya Global Research, March 30, 2011 Many critics of the ongoing Euro-US wars in the Middle East and, now, North Africa, have based their arguments on clichés and generalizations devoid of fact. The most common line heard in regard to the current US-Euro war on Libya is that it’s “all about oil” – the goal is the seizure of Libya’s oil wells. On the other hand Euro –U.S, government spokespeople defend the war by claiming it’s “all about saving civilian lives in the face of genocide”, calling it “humanitarian intervention”. Following the lead of their imperial powers, most of what passes for the Left in the US and Europe, ranging from Social Democrats, Marxists, Trotskyists,Greens and other assorted progressives claim they see and support a revolutionary mass uprising of the Libyan people, and not a few have called for military intervention by the imperial powers, or the same thing, the UN, to help the “Libyan revolutionaries” defeat the Gaddafi dictatorship. These arguments are without foundation and belie the true nature of US-UK-French imperial power, expansionist militarism, as evidenced in all the ongoing wars over the past decade (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.). What is much more revealing about the militarist intervention in Libya is that the major countries, which refused to engage in the War, operate via a very different form of global expansion based on economic and market forces. China, India, Brazil, Russia, Turkey and Germany, the most dynamic capitalist countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East are fundamentally opposed to the self-styled “allied” military response against the Libyan government - because Gaddafi represents no threat to their security and they already have full access to the oil and a favorable investment climate. Besides, these economically dynamic countries see no prospect for a stable, progressive or democratic Libyan government emerging from the so-called ‘rebel’ leaders, who are disparate elites competing for power and Western favor. [Imperialism] [Libya]
• Sanctions in 72 hours: How the U.S. pulled off a major freeze of Libyan assets
  Gallery: Conflict and chaos in Libya:?As forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi continue attacks on rebels and international strikes begin, thousands of Libyans flee the fighting. By Robert O’Harrow Jr., James V. Grimaldi and Brady Dennis, Wednesday, March 23, 2:38 PM The Treasury Department team had been working nonstop on a plan to freeze Libyan assets in U.S. banks, hoping they might snare $100 million or more and prevent Moammar Gaddafi from tapping it as he unleashed deadly attacks against protesters who wanted him gone. Now, at 2:22 Friday afternoon, Feb. 25, an e-mail arrived from a Treasury official with startling news. Their $100 million estimate was off — orders of magnitude off. The e-mail said there was in “excess of $29.7 Billion — yes, that’s a B.” And most of the money was at one bank. It was a piece of extraordinary good fortune for the Obama administration at a crucial moment in the efforts to address the bizarre and deadly events unfolding in Libya. Never before had U.S. officials so quickly launched economic sanctions affecting so many assets of a targeted country. The frenetic 72 hours leading up to the Executive Order 13566 illustrate how a process of identifying and freezing assets — something that customarily has taken weeks or months — has become one of the first tactical tools to employ in the midst of fast-breaking crises. [Sanctions] [Legality] [Imperialism] [Libya]
• Reasons and False Pretexts: Why are They Making War on Libya?
  By DIANA JOHNSTONE Reason Number One: Regime change. This was announced as the real objective the moment French president Nicolas Sarkozy took the extraordinary step of recognizing the rebels in Benghazi as "the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people". This recognition was an extraordinary violation of all diplomatic practice and principles. It meant non-recognition of the existing Libyan government and its institutions, which, contrary to the magical notions surrounding the word "dictator", cannot be reduced to the personality of one strongman. A major European nation, France, swept aside all those institutions to proclaim that an obscure group of rebels in a traditionally rebellious part of Libya constituted the North African nation’s legitimate government. Since factually this was clearly not true, it could only be the proclamation of an objective to be reached by war. The French announcement was equivalent to a declaration of war against Libya, a war to defeat Qaddafi and put the mysterious rebels in power in his place. [Imperialism] [Libya] [Client]
• America Doesn't Matter Anymore
  By Peter Beinart,New America Foundation March 28, 2011 | The Daily Beast The White House’s humanitarian hawks don’t want a Srebrenica on their watch, but they know they need other countries to bear more of the load. Enter Nicolas Sarkozy.Some commentators love the Libya war; others hate it. But most agree that it's profoundly unnatural that we were pushed into it by… France. Welcome to the post-American world. In the age we're entering, most of the time, the choice will no longer be between humanitarian interventions controlled by the United States and humanitarian interventions where other nations take the lead. The choice will be between humanitarian interventions where other nations take the lead and no humanitarian interventions at all. [Decline] [Humanitarian interventionism]
• Libya: Is the West Playing into al-Qaeda's Hands?
  Islamists have had a marginal role in these revolutions – but that could be changing, writes Peter Bergen. By Peter Bergen, New America Foundation March 31, 2011 | The Telegraph (U.K.) As the fortunes of Colonel Gaddafi's forces and the Libyan rebels continue to see-saw, many commentators are calling for the West to arm the opposition forces. Yet the disclosure on Tuesday that US intelligence agencies have picked up "flickers" of an al-Qaeda presence among the rebels has set off a fierce debate within the Obama administration – and the wider coalition – about whether giving them weapons may inadvertently help the enemies of the West. Part of the problem, according to a senior US intelligence official, is that the American government is largely flying blind when it comes to the exact make-up of rebel forces. So how legitimate are the worries about al-Qaeda opportunistically inserting itself into the civil war? [Imperialism] [Strategic paralysis] [Double standards] [US global strategy]
• Is Obama's trickiest challenge from his own military?
  Posted By David Rothkopf Thursday, March 31, 2011 - 8:01 AM Share At a moment when the United States is involved in three wars and the world is afire with security challenges, it may well be that the trickiest conflict for Obama in 2011 is the one that is emerging between his own defense establishment and key members of his civilian national security team. The relations between the military and Obama have been professional but never warm. The firing of Stanley McChrystal illustrated this when the outspoken general's views were made public and were so harsh that they were deemed insubordinate. There has always been a degree of unease between General David Petraeus and some on Obama's team who view him as a potential political wildcard, someone Obama may need more as a validator of his policies than Petraeus "needs" Obama. While Secretary of Defense Gates has been, by any measure, one of Obama's two or three most effective and prominent aides, in recent months as his tenure draws to a close he has expressed views -- on issues from the lunacy of undertaking future ground wars in the Middle East to the difficulties of imposing a no-fly zone --that have created complications for the White House message machine. Certainly, the decision to intervene in Libya was one that many senior defense officials were more reluctant to undertake than were their civilian counterparts. [Pentagon] [Obama] [US global strategy]
• America's Planned Nuclear Attack on Libya
  by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
  Global Research, March 30, 2011 A war on Libya has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 20 years. Using nukes against Libya was first envisaged in 1997. On April 14th 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered a series of bombings directed against Libya under "Operation El Dorado Canyon", in reprisal for an alleged Libya sponsored terrorist bombing of a Berlin discotheque. The pretext was fabricated. During these air raids, which were condemned by both France and Italy, Qadhafi's residence was bombed killing his younger daughter. Barely acknowledged by the Western media, a planned attack on Libya using nuclear weapons, had been contemplated by the Clinton Administration in 1997, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The Department of Defense had developed a new generation of bunker buster tactical nuclear weapons for use in the Middle East and Central Asia: "Military officials and leaders of America's nuclear weapon laboratories [had] urged the US to develop a new generation of precision low-yield nuclear weapons... which could be used in conventional conflicts with third-world nations." (Federation of American Scientists, 2001, emphasis added) The B61-11 earth-penetrating weapon with a nuclear warhead had not been tested. It was part of the B61 series, coupled with a so-called "low yield" nuclear warhead. According to US military sources: "If used in North Korea, the radioactive fallout [of the B61-11] could drift over nearby countries such as Japan." (B61-11 Earth-Penetrating Weapon, Globalsecurity.org). The B61-11 earth-penetrating version of the B61 was configured initially to have a "low" 10 kiloton yield, 66.6 percent of a Hiroshima bomb, for post-Cold War battlefield operations in the Middle East and Central Asia. [Imperialism] [Libya] [Nuclear weapons]
• Key US lawmakers warn against arming Libyan opposition
  Source: Xinhua [02:48 April 04 2011] Comments Key US lawmakers on Sunday warned against arming Libyan opposition, saying the United States should leave this to other nations. In an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he didn't think it was currently necessary for the United States to arm rebels in Libya, arguing that leadership of the opposition group in Libya had yet to coalesce, and that the US might be better served to let other countries provide such assistance [Imperialism] [Strategic paralysis]
• Laurent Gbagbo's forces fired on by UN attack helicopters
  Four missiles reported to have been fired at a military base in Abidjan as UN seeks to stop weapons being used to hit civilians Share88 Selay Kouassi in Abidjan, Ed Pilkington in New York and David Smith in Johannesburg guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 April 2011 21.03 BST Article history Laurent Gbagbo’s forces in Abidjan have come under fire from UN attack helicopters. Photograph: Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/Getty UN helicopters have attacked President Laurent Gbagbo's forces in Ivory Coast, destroying their weapons at four places where they had been shelling civilians, a UN spokesman said. The helicopters fired four missiles at a Gbagbo military camp in the main city of Abidjan, witnesses told Reuters. "We saw two UN MI-24 helicopters fire missiles on the Akouedo military camp. There was a massive explosion and we can still see the smoke," one said. The camp is home to three battalions of the Ivorian army. Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the UN mission in Ivory Coast, said in an email: "We launched an operation to neutralise heavy weapons Gbagbo's special forces have been using against the civilian population for the last three months. We destroyed them in four locations." President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said that French troops had been authorised to participate in the UN attack after a request for help from the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. [Imperialism]
• UN Security Council March 17 Meeting to Authorize Bombing of Libya all Smoke and Mirrors
  von Ronda Hauben Part I Watching the meeting of the Security Council on the evening of March 17, one could only wonder in disbelief. (1) Here the 15 member states of the Security Council, by a vote of 10 in favor and none opposed, with five abstentions, passed Security Council Resolution 1973.(2) This resolution authorized a foreign military assault on a sovereign nation. The Security Council gave the ok to Western former colonial powers and the US to carry out a military campaign including bombing and missile strikes against another UN member nation. How did the members of the Council justify this authorization of an attack on Libya? The “pretext”, the term used by the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, 4 days later, was that the aggression was for “the protection of the civilians.” [Imperialism] [Libya]
• Interference in civil wars remains worrying global trend
  Source: Global Times [08:45 April 01 2011] Comments By Han Xudong The air raids by Western forces on Libya recently have worried some observers that the trend of external intervention in civil wars might continue. Interference of foreign powers in other countries' domestic conflicts for their own interests runs the risk of broadening and complicating the civil conflicts. Similar conflicts occurred during the Cold War, including interference in civil wars, proxy wars, wars between neighbors, and even the direct intervention of the great powers. The Korean War (1950-53) was a typical example. After the Cold War, the UN started to play a more prominent role. Resolution 794, passed by the UN Security Council in 1992, authorized UN peacekeepers to use force to protect humanitarian aid from warlords during the ongoing Somalian civil war. This was only the fourth time such a move had been authorized, following the UN mandate in Korea and the deployment of peacekeepers in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia. On March 17, UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 to impose no-fly zone in Lybia, causing the civil war to develop into a battle involving foreign military forces. The US often makes full use of UN resolutions to launch its armed intervention in other nations' civil wars. [Imperialism] [UNUS] [US China]
• Afghans Avenge Florida Koran Burning, Killing 12
  By ENAYAT NAJAFIZADA and ROD NORDLAND Published: April 1, 2011 MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — Stirred up by three angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, thousands of protesters on Friday overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said. The dead included at least seven United Nations workers — four Nepalese guards and three Europeans from Romania, Sweden and Norway — according to United Nations officials in New York. One was a woman. Early reports, later denied by Afghan officials, said that at least two of the dead had been beheaded. Five Afghans were also killed. [UNUS][Islam]
• Pastor Who Burned Koran Demands Retribution
  By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and DON VAN NATTA Jr. Published: April 1, 2011 GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Before a Koran was burned at his modest church here on March 20, the pastor Terry Jones held a self-styled mock trial of the holy book in which he presided from the pulpit as judge. The prosecutor was a Christian who had converted from Islam. An imam from Dallas defended the Koran. .Sitting in judgment was a jury of 12 members of Mr. Jones’s church, the Dove World Outreach Center. After listening to arguments from both sides, the jury pronounced the Koran guilty of five “crimes against humanity,” including the promotion of terrorist acts and “the death, rape and torture of people worldwide whose only crime is not being of the Islamic faith.” Punishment was determined by the results of an online poll. Besides burning, the options included shredding, drowning and facing a firing squad. Mr. Jones, a nondenominational evangelical pastor, said voters had chosen to set fire to the book, according to a video of the proceedings. [Islam]
• Obama Raises American Hypocrisy To A Higher Level
  The Bush/ Cheney/ Obama Wars of Naked Aggression by Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, March 29, 2011 Obama’s speech showed a person more capable of DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink than Big Brother and the denizens of George Orwell’s 1984. How does a person as totally absurd as Obama expect to be taken seriously? What does the world think? Obama has been using air strikes and drones against civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and probably Somalia. In his March 28 speech, Obama justified his air strikes against Libya on the grounds that the embattled ruler, Gadhafi, was using air strikes to put down a rebellion. Gadhafi has been a black hat for as long as I can remember. If we believe the adage that “where there is smoke there is fire,” Gadhafi is probably not a nice fellow. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that the current US president and the predecessor Bush/Cheney regime have murdered many times more people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than Gadhafi has murdered in Libya. [Imperialism] [Double standards]
• A Boom Behind Bars
  Private jail operators like the Corrections Corporation of America are making millions off the crackdown on illegal aliens Mexican detainees leave Harlingen, Tex., on their way to the border LM Otero/AP Photo By Graeme Wood March 21, 2011 Selvin Cardenas's three months in the U.S. immigrant detention system began in the usual way, with a knock at his door. At 5 a.m. on Apr. 21, 2009, three men in suits spotted him through the window of his Houston home. "We're here for you," one of them said. "You're Selvin Cardenas. Open up the door." [Human rights] [Migration] [Privatisation]
• War Is Illegal
  by David Swanson Global Research, March 14, 2011 warisacrime.org It's a simple point, but an important one, and one that gets overlooked. Whether or not you think a particular war is moral and good, the fact remains that war is illegal. Actual defense by a country when attacked is legal, but that only occurs once another country has actually attacked, and it must not be used as a loophole to excuse wider war that is not employed in actual defense. [Imperialism] [Legality] [Libya] [Double standards] [UNUS]
• The Return of Pan-Arabism Amidst Upheaval: An end to Balkanization?
  The Changing Winds in Iraq and the Growing Threat to Lebanon by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research, March 14, 2011 Protests and revolts have swept across the whole of Arabdom, from the Atlantic coastline of Morocco to the shores of the petro-sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf. In this regard, U.S. and E.U. double-standards are being applied to these events. There is a selective focus and condemnation by the White House and the European Union at play in regards to which Arab protests and protest leaders they support. Regardless of the direction of these revolts and protests and the reaction of outside players, a new dynamic is taking shape. Democracy has not yet emerged, what is beginning to emerge is a new wave of pan-Arabism. This re-invigorated pan-Arabism will prove a challenge to the ongoing efforts to further fragment and weaken the Arab World. The Categories of Protest and Revolt in The Arab World In regards to the mass protests and popular revolts, today the states of the Arab World can be categorized into five groupings or categories. These categories are the following: Group 1 - Arab countries that are in a state of civil war; Group 2 - Arab countries that have populations that have revolted; Group 3 - Arab countries where the people are currently protesting and are on the verge of revolt; Group 4 - Arab countries where the groundwork for revolts are taking shape; Group 5 - Arab countries where there are no revolts.
• Libya and the World Left
  Immanuel Wallerstein
  Commentary No. 301, Mar. 15, 2011 There is so much hypocrisy and so much confused analysis about what is going on in Libya that one hardly knows where to begin. The most neglected aspect of the situation is the deep division in the world left. Several left Latin American states, and most notably Venezuela, are fulsome in their support of Colonel Qaddafi. But the spokespersons of the world left in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and indeed North America, decidedly don't agree. Hugo Chavez's analysis seems to focus primarily, indeed exclusively, on the fact that the United States and western Europe have been issuing threats and condemnations of the Qaddafi regime. Qaddafi, Chavez, and some others insist that the western world wishes to invade Libya and "steal" Libya's oil. The whole analysis misses entirely what has been happening, and reflects badly on Chavez’s judgment - and indeed on his reputation with the rest of the world left. First of all, for the last decade and up to a few weeks ago, Qaddafi had nothing but good press in the western world. [Imperialism] [Libya]
• Hope for change as Burma’s new president prepares to take office
  March 8th, 2011 Author: Morten B. Pedersen, UNSW@ADFA After 22 years under direct military rule, Burma will soon have a new, hybrid government headed by former general and prime minister, now civilian president, U Thein Sein. This follows multi-party elections in November last year and the inauguration of a new constitution, which purports to establish a ‘discipline-flourishing democracy.’ The new system is neither democratic nor really civilian. Independent parties were never given a genuine chance to contest for power, and most of the key figures are retired military officers (and some active). This includes not only Thein Sein but also Vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo and a majority of the new cabinet line-up.
• Zakaria's World
  Are America's best days really behind us? BY JOSEPH S. NYE JR. | MARCH 8, 2011 Fareed Zakaria is one of our most perceptive analysts of America's role in the world, and I generally agree with him. But in the case of his new special essay for Time, "Are America's Best Days Behind Us?," I think he paints too gloomy a picture of American decline. [Decline]
• The Collapse of the Old Oil Order. How the Petroleum Age Will End
  by Prof Michael T. Klare Global Research, March 7, 2011 Tom Dispatch The price of gas at the pump is now averaging $3.65 a gallon in California and has already edged up to $4 in San Francisco and Chicago. Nationwide, it’s at $3.38, a 20-cent rise in the last week (six cents last Friday alone). Meanwhile, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke optimistically of the economy and dismissed the impact of soaring oil prices, spurred by turmoil in the Middle East. “The most likely outcome,” he said, “is that the recent rise in commodity prices will lead to, at most, a temporary and relatively modest increase in U.S. consumer price inflation.” Of course, let’s take it for granted that no one inside Washington’s Beltway has to fill his or her own car with gas. For them, pain at the pump may indeed feel “temporary and relatively modest.” Tell that, however, to the official 9% of unemployed Americans who still have to drive a car in what Bernanke and everyone else who isn’t suffering seems to agree is not a recession. (In 1940, the last year of the Great Depression, the unemployment rate was at 14.6% -- and in those days they still hadn’t stopped counting people too discouraged to look for work.) In that light, consider what’s already happening at the pump as the lifestyle equivalent of murder and now imagine that, by summer (if not significantly earlier), the price of a gallon of gas nationwide may, as just before the 2008 global economic meltdown, close in on the $4 a gallon mark and perhaps still be rising.
• Orwell 2011: Towards a Pervasive "Surveillance State" in America
  Biometrics, Facial Mapping, "Computer-Aided ID".... by Tom Burghardt
  Global Research, March 28, 2011 Not since AT&T whistleblower Marc Klein's 2006 revelations that U.S. telecommunications giants were secretly collaborating with the government to spy on Americans, has a story driven home the point that we are confronted by a daunting set of invisible enemies: the security and intelligence firms constellating the dark skies of the National Security State. As echoes from last month's disclosures by the cyber-guerrilla collective Anonymous continue to reverberate, leaked HBGary emails and documents are providing tantalizing insight into just how little daylight there is between private companies and the government. The latest front in the ongoing war against civil liberties and privacy rights is the Pentagon's interest in "persona management software." A euphemism for a suite of high-tech tools that equip an operative--military or corporate, take your pick--with multiple avatars or sock puppets, our latter day shadow warriors hope to achieve a leg up on their opponents in the "war of ideas" through stealthy propaganda campaigns rebranded as "information operations." A Pervasive Surveillance State The signs of a pervasive surveillance state are all around us. [Surveillance]
• Libya: a legitimate and necessary debate from an anti-imperialist perspective
  By Gilbert Achcar Friday, March 25, 2011 "The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was indeed a compromise with the imperialists, but it was a compromise which, under the circumstances, had to be made. ... To reject compromises 'on principle', to reject the permissibility of compromises in general, no matter of what kind, is childishness, which it is difficult even to consider seriously ... One must be able to analyze the situation and the concrete conditions of each compromise, or of each variety of compromise. One must learn to distinguish between a man who has given up his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to lessen the evil they can do and to facilitate their capture and execution, and a man who gives his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to share in the loot." Vladimir I. Lenin The interview I gave to my good friend Steve Shalom the day after the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1973 and which was published on ZNet on March 19 provoked a storm of discussions and statements of all kinds -- friendly, unfriendly, strongly supportive, mildly supportive, politely critical or frenziedly hostile -- far larger than anything I could have expected, all the larger because it was translated and circulated into several languages. If this is an indication of anything, it is that people felt there was a real issue at stake. So let's discuss it. [Imperialism] [Libya]
• Obama’s Unconstitutional War
  By unilaterally going to war against Libya, Obama is bringing America closer to the imperial presidency than Bush ever did. BY BRUCE ACKERMAN | MARCH 24, 2011 In taking the country into a war with Libya, Barack Obama's administration is breaking new ground in its construction of an imperial presidency -- an executive who increasingly acts independently of Congress at home and abroad. Obtaining a U.N. Security Council resolution has legitimated U.S. bombing raids under international law. But the U.N. Charter is not a substitute for the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress, not the president, the power "to declare war." [Imperialism] [Libya] [Legality]
• Libya: Largest Military Undertaking since the Invasion of Iraq. Towards a Protracted Military Operation
  by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, March 20, 2011 Outright lies by the international media: Bombs and missiles are presented as an instrument of peace and democratization... This is not a humanitarian operation. The war on Libya opens up a new regional war theater. There are three distinct war theaters in the Middle East Central Asian region. Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. What is unfolding is a fourth US-NATO War Theater in North Africa, with the risk of escalation. These four war theaters are functionally related, they are part of an integrated US-NATO military agenda. The bombing of Libya has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for several years as confirmed by former NATO commander General Wesley Clark. Operation Odyssey Dawn is acknowledged as the "biggest Western military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq began exactly eight years ago." (Russia: Stop 'indiscriminate' bombing of Libya - Taiwan News Online, March 19, 2011). This war is part of the battle for oil. Libya is among the World's largest oil economies with approximately 3.5% of global oil reserves, more than twice those of the US. The underlying objective is to gain control over Libya's oil and gas reserves under the disguise of a humanitarian intervention. [Imperialism]
• Truth, Propaganda and Media Manipulation
  by Global Research Global Research, March 31, 2011 Never before has it been so important to have independent, honest voices and sources of information. We are – as a society – inundated and overwhelmed with a flood of information from a wide array of sources, but these sources of information, by and large, serve the powerful interests and individuals that own them. The main sources of information, for both public and official consumption, include the mainstream media, alternative media, academia and think tanks. The mainstream media is the most obvious in its inherent bias and manipulation. The mainstream media is owned directly by large multinational corporations, and through their boards of directors are connected with a plethora of other major global corporations and elite interests. An example of these connections can be seen through the board of Time Warner. [Media] [NGO]

• War on Libya and Control of The Mediterranean
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, March 25, 2011 Stop NATO Libya is also one of only five of Africa's 54 countries that have not been integrated into, which is to say subordinated to, the new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). A year after assuming the post of president of the French Republic in 2007, and while his nation held the rotating European Union presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy invited the heads of state of the EU's 27 members and those of 17 non-EU Mediterranean countries to attend a conference in Paris to launch a Mediterranean Union. In the words of Britain's Daily Telegraph regarding the subsequent summit held for the purpose on July 13, 2008, "Sarkozy's big idea is to use imperial Rome's centre of the world as a unifying factor linking 44 countries that are home to 800 million people." Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, however, announced that his nation would boycott the gathering, denouncing the initiative as one aimed at dividing both Africa and the Arab world, and stating: "We shall have another Roman empire and imperialist design. There are imperialist maps and designs that we have already rolled up. We should not have them again." [1] The unprecedented summit was held with the intention of "shift[ing] Europe's strategic focus towards the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans." [2] Less than three years later Sarkozy's Mirage and Rafale warplanes were bombing Libyan government targets, initiating an ongoing war being waged by France, the United States, Britain and what the world news media refer to as an international coalition - 12 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the emirate of Qatar - to overthrow the Gaddafi government and implant a more pliant replacement. [Imperialism] [US global strategy]
• Who are the Libyan Freedom Fighters and Their Patrons?
  Peter Dale Scott's Libyan Notebook Updated March 27, 2011 Preface The world is facing a very unpredictable and potentially dangerous situation in North Africa and the Middle East. What began as a memorable, promising, relatively nonviolent achievement of New Politics - the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt - has morphed very swiftly into a recrudescence of old habits: America, already mired in two decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sporadic air attacks in Yemen and Somalia, now bombing yet another Third World Country, in this case Libya. USS Barry launches a Tomahawk missile in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn in the Mediterranean Sea, March 19, 2011. US government handout
  I wish to begin with two ill-understood topics: I. Who Are the Libyan Opposition, and II. Where Are the Libyan Rebel Arms Coming From? [Islam] [US global strategy]
• Rapist Turkey Shoot in Libya
  News flash: war is hell, even when it’s a humanitarian intervention. It’s pretty clear, listening to today’s NPR report on Libya, that the “no fly zone” is pretty much past the “protect civilian” stage and well into the “kill Libyan soldiers” phase. [Imperialism] [Media]
• The Libyan war: Unconstitutional and illegitimate
  The Anglo-French-American attack in North Africa is opposed by countries representing 40 percent of the human race By Michael Lind APThere is no doubt that U.S. participation in the Anglo-French-American attack on Libya is completely unconstitutional. As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, before becoming president Barack Obama, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former law professor, accurately described the limits of a president’s authority to initiate a war in cases where the U.S. has neither been attacked nor is in imminent danger of attack: [Imperialism] [Legality]
• FACT CHECK: Obama’s claim that US yields to NATO in Libya tangles with a more complex reality
  By Associated Press, Tuesday, March 29, 3:07 AM WASHINGTON — There may be less than meets the eye to President Barack Obama’s statements Monday night that NATO is taking over from the U.S. in Libya and that U.S. action is limited to defending people under attack there by Moammar Gadhafi’s forces.
  Presidents typically pick their fights according to the crisis and circumstances at hand, not any consistent doctrine about when to use force in one place and not another. They have been criticized for doing so — by Obama himself.
  In his pre-presidential book “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama said the U.S. will lack international legitimacy if it intervenes militarily “without a well-articulated strategy that the public supports and the world understands.” He questioned: “Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma? Why intervene in Bosnia and not Darfur?” Now, such questions are coming at him. [Obama] [US global strategy]
• PJ Crowley resigns over Bradley Manning remarks
  WikiLeaks disclosure of classified US files claims first Obama administration scalp as state department spokesman quits Share1106 Ed Pilkington in New York guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 March 2011 17.53 GMT Article history US state department spokesman PJ Crowley said in a seminar last week that Bradley Manning's treatment was 'ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid'. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images PJ Crowley, the official spokesman at the state department, has fallen on his sword after calling the treatment of Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the WikiLeaks files, "counterproductive and stupid". The resignation followed Crowley's remarks to an MIT seminar last week about Manning's treatment in military prison. Crowley had said: "What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defence." The remarks forced President Obama to address for the first time the issue of Manning's handling at Quantico marine base in Virginia. Obama defended the way Manning is being treated, saying he had been reassured by the Pentagon that his confinement was appropriate. In a resignation letter, Crowley said he took full responsibility for his remarks. Though he attacked the leaking of classified information, which he called "a serious crime under US law", he stood by his earlier criticism of the Pentagon. [Dissension] [Human rights] [US global strategy] [Pentagon]
• Gadhafi's forces roll east, build pressure on U.S. to step in
  By Nancy A Youssef and Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers BENGHAZI, Libya — Forces loyal to Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi advanced further eastward Sunday, moving into the coastal city of Brega and putting new pressure on the United States and its allies to either intervene militarily or risk seeing the anti-Gadhafi movement collapse. [Imperialism] [Legality]
• Iraq Then, Libya Now
  By ROSS DOUTHAT Published: March 13, 2011 Five years ago, in the darkest days of insurgent violence and Sunni-Shia strife, it seemed as if the Iraq war would shadow American foreign policy for decades, frightening a generation’s worth of statesmen away from using military force. Where there had once been a “Vietnam syndrome,” now there would be an “Iraq syndrome,” inspiring harrowing flashbacks to Baghdad and Falluja in any American politician contemplating an intervention overseas. But in today’s Washington, no such syndrome is in evidence. Indeed, it’s striking how quickly the bipartisan coalition that backed the Iraq invasion has reassembled itself to urge President Obama to use military force against Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi. The Iraq war became known as George W. Bush’s war after Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction didn’t turn up, because at that point no liberal wanted to take responsibility for the conflict. But the initial invasion was supported by Democrats as well as Republicans, liberal internationalists as well as neoconservatives — Hillary Clinton as well as John McCain, The New Republic as well as The Weekly Standard. Now a similar chorus is arguing that the United States should intervene directly in Libya’s civil war: with a no-flight zone, certainly, and perhaps with arms for the Libyan rebels and air strikes against Qaddafi’s military as well. As in 2002 and 2003, the case for intervention is being pushed by a broad cross-section of politicians and opinion-makers, from Bill Clinton to Bill Kristol, Fareed Zakaria to Newt Gingrich, John Kerry to Christopher Hitchens. [Imperialism] [US global strategy]
• Fiddling While Libya Burns
  By ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER Published: March 13, 2011 PRESIDENT Obama says the noose is tightening around Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. In fact, it is tightening around the Libyan rebels, as Colonel Qaddafi makes the most of the world’s dithering and steadily retakes rebel-held towns. The United States and Europe are temporizing on a no-flight zone while the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Gulf Cooperation Council and now the Arab League have all called on the United Nations Security Council to authorize one. Opponents of a no-flight zone have put forth five main arguments, none of which, on close examination, hold up. [Imperialism] [US global strategy] [Strategic paralysis]
• US approved $40 billion in 2009 private arms sales
  STEPHEN BRAUN The Associated Press Friday, March 11, 2011; 5:00 PM WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government approved $40 billion in worldwide private arms sales in 2009, including more than $7 billion to Mideast and North African nations that are struggling with political upheaval, the State Department reported. From 2008 to 2009, the U.S. authorized increasing sales of military shipments to the now-toppled Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak and the embattled kingdom of Bahrain. But the U.S. reduced its defense sales approvals in 2009 to Moammar Gadhafi's Libyan government, which is now under a blanket weapons ban imposed last month by the Obama administration. The $40 billion figure during the first year of the Obama administration reflects a rise in total approved arms sales over the final year of the Bush administration in 2008, when the State Department licensed $34.2 billion. [Arms sales] [Continuity]
• British special forces seize Iranian rockets in Afghanistan
  William Hague condemns Tehran's 'completely unacceptable' behaviour after rocket shipment to Taliban is intercepted
  Share364 Julian Borger and Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 March 2011 13.03 GMT Article history Afghan and American soldiers on patrol in Afghanistan. Photograph: Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images British special forces in Afghanistan have intercepted an Iranian shipment of rockets to the Taliban that would have allowed them to double the range of their attacks, western diplomats have said. The rockets were discovered after an intelligence tip-off on 5 February when British special forces and Afghan troops stopped a convoy in Nimruz province, in the south-west of Afghanistan bordering Iran and Pakistan, the officials said. A shoot-out involving the special forces left several Taliban fighters dead. [Chutzpah] [Arms sales]
• US claims to have driven Taliban out of Sangin
  US defence secretary Robert Gates praises marines for 'dramatic turnaround' after British forces pulled out Share51 Ewen MacAskill in Sangin guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 March 2011 17.01 GMT Article history US defence secretary Robert Gates speaking to men of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment at Sabit Qadam in Afghanistan's Helmand province. Photograph: Getty Images The US claims its marines have managed to subdue the notoriously violent Sangin district in Afghanistan within five months of their arrival, a goal that eluded British forces for four years. The Helmand hotspot, which turned into a death trap for British forces, was described on Tuesday by US defence secretary Robert Gates as perhaps the most dangerous place in the world. He praised the marines for bringing about "a dramatic turnaround" in such a short period. The marines, who took over from the British in October, say they adopted a different strategy from their predecessors, taking the fight to the Taliban, and have killed, captured or driven them out.
• From ‘End of History’ Author, a Look at the Beginning and Middle
  By NICHOLAS WADE Published: March 7, 2011 Human social behavior has an evolutionary basis. This was the thesis in Edward O. Wilson’s book “Sociobiology” that caused such a stir, even though most evolutionary biologists accept that at least some social behaviors, like altruism, could be favored by natural selection. In a book to be published in April, “The Origins of Political Order,” Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University presents a sweeping new overview of human social structures throughout history, taking over from where Dr. Wilson’s ambitious synthesis left off. Dr. Fukuyama, a political scientist, is concerned mostly with the cultural, not biological, aspects of human society. But he explicitly assumes that human social nature is universal and is built around certain evolved behaviors like favoring relatives, reciprocal altruism, creating and following rules, and a propensity for warfare.
• U.S., Europe considering naval operations to deliver humanitarian aid to Libya
  Gallery Egypt- and Tunisia-inspired protests spread through Middle East, North Africa By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 8, 2011; 11:39 PM The United States and its European allies are considering the use of naval assets to deliver humanitarian aid to Libya and to block arms shipments to the government of Moammar Gaddafi, even as they weigh the legality of imposing a no-fly zone without United Nations authorization, according to U.S. and European officials. NATO military officials began briefing governments Tuesday night on a range of options that will be presented to defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday. [Humanitarian interventionism]
• Republican urges Islam terror hearings amid 'McCarthyite' witch-hunt claims
  Peter King, chair of homeland security committee, wants to show 'extent of radicalisation within Muslim-American community' Share198 Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 March 2011 19.59 GMT Article history US congressman Peter King believes Muslim leaders should do more to help authorities prevent extremism. Photograph: Harry Hamburg/AP A New York Republican has pressed ahead with congressional hearings on the threat of homegrown Islamist terrorism , dismissing claims of a McCarthyite witch-hunt against America's Muslims. Peter King, who chairs the homeland security committee in the House of Representatives, said the hearings were essential to national security, and that Muslim leaders should do more to help authorities prevent extremist attacks. [Global insurgency]
• Discord Fills Washington on Possible Libya Intervention
  By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER Published: March 7, 2011 WASHINGTON — Nearly three weeks after Libya erupted in what may now turn into a protracted civil war, the politics of military intervention to speed the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi grow more complicated by the day — for both the White House and Republicans. President Obama, appearing Monday morning with Australia’s prime minister, tried to raise the pressure on Colonel Qaddafi further by talking about “a range of potential options, including potential military options” against the embattled Libyan leader. Despite Mr. Obama’s statement, interviews with military officials and other administration officials describe a number of risks, some tactical and others political, to American intervention in Libya. [Strategic paralysis]
• Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message
  By LAURIE GOODSTEIN Published: March 7, 2011 FORT WORTH — Brigitte Gabriel bounced to the stage at a Tea Party convention last fall. She greeted the crowd with a loud Texas “Yee-HAW,” then launched into the same gripping personal story she has told in hundreds of churches, synagogues and conference rooms across the United States: As a child growing up a Maronite Christian in war-torn southern Lebanon in the 1970s, Ms. Gabriel said, she had been left lying injured in rubble after Muslims mercilessly bombed her village. She found refuge in Israel and then moved to the United States, only to find that the Islamic radicals who had terrorized her in Lebanon, she said, were now bent on taking over America. “America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.” Through her books, media appearances and speeches, and her organization, ACT! for America, Ms. Gabriel has become one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within United States borders. [Global insurgency] [Client]
• NATO’s Inevitable War: The Flood of Lies regarding Libya
  by Fidel Castro Ruz Global Research, March 4, 2011 In contrast with what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia, Libya occupies the first spot on the Human Development Index for Africa and it has the highest life expectancy on the continent. Education and health receive special attention from the State. The cultural level of its population is without a doubt the highest. Its problems are of a different sort. The population wasn’t lacking food and essential social services. The country needed an abundant foreign labour force to carry out ambitious plans for production and social development. For that reason, it provided jobs for hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other countries. It had enormous incomes and reserves in convertible currencies deposited in the banks of the wealthy countries from which they acquired consumer goods and even sophisticated weapons that were supplied exactly by the same countries that today want to invade it in the name of human rights. The colossal campaign of lies, unleashed by the mass media, resulted in great confusion in world public opinion. Some time will go by before we can reconstruct what has really happened in Libya, and we can separate the true facts from the false ones that have been spread.
• Empires Apart: America and Russia from the Vikings to Iraq
  John Booth, 3 March 2011 Empires Apart: America and Russia from the Vikings to Iraq, by Brian Landers, Picnic, £15, April 2009. As events in North Africa, the Middle East and Asia are daily displaying, America’s global influence is rapidly waning, requiring its citizens and allies to seek a more refined and solid understanding of global reality. This is an apt time to return to Brian Landers’ Empires Apart, a hugely impressive comparative study of the imperial imperatives of America and Russia - one which stimulates reflective thoughts on other empires, not least our own here in Britain. [Imperialism] [Paradigm]
• Birds & Bombs: US Live-Fire Air Force/Navy Training in the Pacific Centers on No'os Island in the Northern Marianas
  Feb. 25, 2011:By the Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice -- On February 25 the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and units from the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) were scheduled to wrap up Cope North, an annual military exercise run in Guam that is designed to improve US-Japan joint air operations in the Pacific. According to a US military news release, the 2011 Cope North, which began February 13, was the largest "ever executed by Pacific Air Forces, with nearly 50 percent more sorties than last year's exercise." The U.S. has around 600 participants and the JASDF 300 participants involved in the exercise (700 personnel from both countries participated in the 2010 exercise). [Joint US military]
• U.S. And NATO Escalate World’s Deadliest War On Both Sides Of Afghan-Pakistani Border
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, March 1, 2011 The United States and its military allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have entered the third month of war in Afghanistan this year, which President Barack Obama in December of 2009 announced as the year in which American and other foreign occupation forces would be reduced preparatory to their full withdrawal. Within months of the U.S. head of state’s claim, the commander-in-chief had over 90,000 troops in the conquered country and currently there are 60,000 more from some fifty other nations serving in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The total number exceeds that of any foreign military force ever before stationed in Afghanistan. The presence of American and allied troops, beginning as it did on October 7, 2001, is the longest in the Asian nation’s history, with U.S. forces already in the country for several months longer than Soviet troops were stationed there from late 1979 until early 1989. Since Obama’s pledge that U.S. and NATO troop strength would be reduced this year – not a firm deadline but an evasion, a self-serving lie designed to take the sting out of the announcement of increased troop deployments, one the international community, self-styled and genuine, chose to take at face value – the world’s only ongoing war of occupation has stretched into not only the longest armed conflict in Afghanistan’s history but also in that of the U.S. [Imperialism] [AfPak] [Tribute]
• To Beat Foreign Copycats, Sell Services
  Don't compete with imitators by increasing production, argues Henry Chesbrough in his latest book. Instead, lure repeat customers with services By Vivek Wadhwa Small businesses in the U.S. that produce any kind of manufactured goods or technology products are at a significant disadvantage these days. The Internet has made it far too easy for competitors in such places as China, Bangladesh, and India to copy their ideas; relatively cheap labor allows them to produce at much lower cost. As a result, many American businesses find themselves in a state of profitless growth or headed toward insolvency. That's the unsettling wake-up call in "open innovation" father Henry Chesbrough's new book, Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era. [Services]
• For Money, For Oil? Why Wars Really Happen
  by David Swanson Global Research, March 1, 2011 warisacrime.org/ Many discussions of lies that launch wars quickly come around to the question "Well then why did they want the war?" There is usually more than one single motive involved, but the motives are not terribly hard to find. Unlike many soldiers who have been lied to, most of the key war deciders, the masters of war who determine whether or not wars happen, do not in any sense have noble motives for what they do. Though noble motives can be found in the reasoning of some of those involved, even in some of those at the highest levels of decision making, it is very doubtful that such noble intentions alone would ever generate wars. Economic and imperial motives have been offered by presidents and congress members for most of our major wars, but they have not been endlessly hyped and dramatized as have other alleged motivations. War with Japan was largely about the economic value of Asia, but fending off the evil Japanese emperor made a better poster. The Project for the New American Century, a think tank pushing for war on Iraq, made its motives clear a dozen years before it got its war — motives that included U.S. military dominance of the globe with more and larger bases in key regions of "American interest." That goal was not repeated as often or as shrilly as "WMD," "terrorism," "evildoer," or "spreading democracy." The most important motivations for wars are the least talked about, and the least important or completely fraudulent motivations are the most discussed. The important motivations, the things the war masters mostly discuss in private, include electoral calculations, control of natural resources, intimidation of other countries, domination of geographic regions, financial profits for friends and campaign funders, the opening up of consumer markets, and prospects for testing new weapons. [Imperialism]
• SAS and MI6 officers released by Libya's rebel commanders
  The group's capture is a major embarrassment to the British government and could potentially undermine the rebels' claims that the revolution has had solely domestic roots Martin Chulov in Benghazi The Guardian, Monday 7 March 2011 Article history The SAS and British intelligence agents have now left Benghazi, where rebels are mobilised. 'We don't want new enemies, but this is no way to make contact', the opposition has said. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP Libya's rebel commanders have freed two MI6 officers and six SAS soldiers captured by farm guards on Thursday morning, after the British government vouched for their identities. The group was immediately flown to the frigate HMS Cumberland, which remains stationed off the coast of Libya. Seven of the group had been inserted by helicopter into farmland near the rebel capital Benghazi on a mission to establish contact with anti-regime forces. The eight Britons had been detained and questioned since Thursday by rebel leaders who had suspected they were mercenaries. Challenged by guards at a wheat farm, they were forced to open bags containing weapons, reconnaissance equipment, and multiple passports, then herded into a dormitory before they were handed over to the rebels. William Hague confirmed the "diplomatic team" had left Libya after experiencing "difficulties". He said another team would be sent in after consultation with the opposition leadership. [Imperialism] [Bizarre]
• U.S. Weighs Options, on Air and Sea
  By THOM SHANKER Published: March 6, 2011 WASHINGTON — American military planners are sifting through a range of options as the United States, like other Western nations, weighs the response to the bloody Libyan military assaults on rebels trying to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Rebel commanders have begged for American strikes on troops and weapons that have turned on civilians and assaulted strongholds of the resistance. And on Sunday, three influential members of the United States Senate, from both parties, renewed the call for a no-flight zone to ground the Libyan Air Force and prevent it from attacking its people. They also pressed the Obama administration for a more aggressive response, including supplying intelligence, arms and training to the rebels. The defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, and top commanders have warned of political fallout if America again attacks a Muslim nation, even to support a popular revolt [Imperialism]
• Gaddafi forces repel Libyan opposition; loyalists escalate counterattack on rebel-held cities
  By Steve Hendrix , Anthony Faiola and Samuel Sockol Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, March 6, 2011; 11:13 PM RAS LANUF, LIBYA - Moammar Gaddafi's loyalists escalated a lethal counterattack on Sunday, heightening assaults on rebel-held cities near his western stronghold of Tripoli and pushing back opposition forces attempting to advance toward the capital. Gaddafi's expanding campaign - including a ground assault on Misurata, the nation's third-largest city - appeared to dash rebel hopes of putting a swift end to his 41-year-long rule. Though the opposition has claimed most of the eastern half of the country since Feb. 17, the display of the government's superior firepower had loyalists celebrating in the streets of Tripoli, with state television showing them unfurling the green flag of Gaddafi's Libya and firing machine guns into the air. The intensity of the government assault suggested the nation was plunging deeper into a bloody civil war, with a regrouping Gaddafi lashing out at his enemies. On Sunday, a ragtag band of rebels boldly advanced from this desert oil town 410 miles east of the capital toward Gaddafi's home town of Sirte, with their sights on Tripoli further down the road. But they returned in the late morning, shaken by what they described as a merciless surprise attack by government forces with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy artillery. Retreating rebels said they took significant casualties in the assault, interrupting a string of recent victories in the opposition's westward push toward Tripoli.
  "We got smashed. They are much armed," said Jamal el-Guradi, a U.S.-born baker of Libyan descent who came to fight with rebel forces. Fighters seeking to unseat Gaddafi managed to recover, however, and held regime forces to an apparent standstill by day's end. [Imperialism] [Diaspora]
• U.S. Updates the Brand It Promotes in Indonesia
  Kemal Jufri for The New York Times Many Indonesians have visited the American cultural center known as @america since it opened in December as an endeavor in public diplomacy. By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: March 5, 2011 JAKARTA, Indonesia — On the third floor of a shopping mall here, around the corner from a Gap Kids and a Wedgwood china outlet, a new tenant is busily promoting what is perhaps the world’s biggest brand: America. The tenant, called @america, represents the United States government’s first attempt at creating a full-fledged cultural center since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A high-tech, interactive operation heralded as the digital-age successor to the venerable American Cultural Center, it is also American public diplomacy’s latest effort to win over young foreigners, especially in Muslim countries. [Brand] [Image] [US global strategy]
• In brig, WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning ordered to sleep without clothing
  By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, March 5, 2011; 10:02 PM Military jailers are forcing Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old soldier accused of passing classified documents to WikiLeaks.org, to strip naked in his cell at night and sleep without clothing, a requirement his lawyer says was imposed after Manning made a "sarcastic quip" about his confinement. [Human rights]
• Che's companion on noted '52 motorcycle trip dies
  By PAUL HAVEN The Associated Press Saturday, March 5, 2011; 4:05 PM HAVANA -- Alberto Granado, who accompanied Ernesto 'Che' Guevara on a 1952 journey of discovery across Latin America that was immortalized in Guevara's memoir and on-screen in "The Motorcycle Diaries," died in Cuba on Saturday. He was 88. Granado, an Argentine who had lived in Cuba since 1961, died of natural causes Saturday morning, according to Cuban state-run television, which gave no other details. Granado and Guevara's road trip, begun on a broken-down motorcycle they dubbed La Poderosa, or "The Powerful," awoke in Guevara a social consciousness and political convictions that would help turn him into one of the most iconic revolutionaries of the 20th century. The two travelers both kept diaries that were used as background for the 2004 movie, produced by Robert Redford and directed by Walter Salles. Granado was born Aug. 8, 1922, in Cordoba, Argentina, and befriended Guevara as a child. As young medical students, the two witnessed deep poverty across the continent - principally Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela - and their stay at a Peruvian leper colony left a particularly deep impression. They parted ways in Venezuela, where Granado stayed on to work at a clinic treating leprosy patients. Guevara continued on to Miami, then returned to Buenos Aires to finish his studies. Guevara would later join Fidel and Raul Castro as they sailed from exile in Mexico to Cuba aboard a yacht called the Granma in 1956. Their small band of rebels ultimately toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year's Day 1959. Granado visited Cuba at Guevara's invitation in 1960 and moved to Havana the following year with his family, teaching biochemistry at Havana University. He had lived in Cuba ever since, maintaining a low profile. One of his sons, also called Alberto Granado, is head of Cuba's Africa House, a center in Havana that celebrates African culture. In his authoritative biography of Guevara, Jon Lee Anderson wrote that Granado was "barely five feet tall and had a huge beaked nose, but he sported a barrel chest and a footballer's sturdy bowed legs; he also possessed a good sense of humor and a taste for wine, girls, literature and rugby." According to Cuban television, Granado requested that his body be cremated and his ashes spread in Cuba, Argentina and Venezuela. Funeral arrangements were not announced. Guevara was captured and killed by soldiers in Bolivia in 1967 as he tried to foment revolution in the Andean nation.
• Gaddafi warns US of bloody war
  Source: Global Times [10:07 March 03 2011] Comments Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi speaks at a ceremony in Tripoli Wednesday to mark 34 years of "people power." Photo: AFP By Huang Jingjing Muammar Gaddafi warned Wednesday that an intervention by the US in Libya would trigger a bloody war. "Do they want us to become slaves once again like we were slaves to the Italians?" Reuters quoted the colonel as saying in a televised speech, referring to Libya's former colonial power. "There is a conspiracy to control Libyan oil and to control Libyan land, to colonize Libya once again. "We will never accept it. We will enter a bloody war, and thousands and thousands of Libyans will die if the US enters or NATO enters." Gaddafi's words came a day after the US dispatched two warships, the USS Kearsarge and the USS Ponce, and 400 Marines to the Mediterranean Sea near Libya. [Media]
• Despite reluctance, U.S. could be forced to act in Libya
  By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — While it's clearly reluctant to become militarily involved in Libya's burgeoning civil war, the Obama administration is coming under pressure to do just that. World oil prices are soaring, posing a threat to the U.S. economic recovery, and food and medicine shortages are looming in rebellious cities cordoned off by Moammar Gadhafi's forces. Top U.S. lawmakers, meanwhile, are calling for the imposition of a no-fly zone and even sending arms to the Libyan dictator's ragtag foes. [Imperialism] [Media]
• Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?
  Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times Some mayors are threatening mass teacher layoffs. In Providence, R.I., teachers, parents and union members rallied Wednesday outside City Hall and called on Mayor Angel Taveras to rescind the termination notices he sent to the city’s nearly 2,000 teachers. By TRIP GABRIEL The jabs Erin Parker has heard about her job have stunned her. Oh you pathetic teachers, read the online comments and placards of counterdemonstrators. You are glorified baby sitters who leave work at 3 p.m. You deserve minimum wage. “You feel punched in the stomach,” said Ms. Parker, a high school science teacher in Madison, Wis., where public employees’ two-week occupation of the State Capitol has stalled but not deterred the governor’s plan to try to strip them of bargaining rights. Ms. Parker, a second-year teacher making $36,000, fears that under the proposed legislation class sizes would rise and higher contributions to her benefits would knock her out of the middle class. [Decline] [Education]
• An Empire of Lies: The CIA and the Western Media
  By Jonathan Cook Global Research, February 28, 2011 Last week the Guardian, Britain’s main liberal newspaper, ran an exclusive report on the belated confessions of an Iraqi exile, Rafeed al-Janabi, codenamed “Curveball” by the CIA. Eight years ago, Janabi played a key behind-the-scenes role -- if an inadvertent one -- in making possible the US invasion of Iraq. His testimony bolstered claims by the Bush administration that Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, had developed an advanced programme producing weapons of mass destruction. Curveball’s account included the details of mobile biological weapons trucks presented by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, to the United Nations in early 2003. Powell’s apparently compelling case on WMD was used to justify the US attack on Iraq a few weeks later. Eight years on, Curveball revealed to the Guardian that he had fabricated the story of Saddam’s WMD back in 2000, shortly after his arrival in Germany seeking asylum. He told the paper he had lied to German intelligence in the hope his testimony might help topple Saddam, though it seems more likely he simply wanted to ensure his asylum case was taken more seriously. For the careful reader -- and I stress the word careful -- several disturbing facts emerged from the report. One was that the German authorities had quickly proven his account of Iraq’s WMD to be false. Both German and British intelligence had travelled to Dubai to meet Bassil Latif, his former boss at Iraq’s Military Industries Commission. Dr Latif had proven that Curveball’s claims could not be true. The German authorities quickly lost interest in Janabi and he was not interviewed again until late 2002, when it became more pressing for the US to make a convincing case for an attack on Iraq. Another interesting disclosure was that, despite the vital need to get straight all the facts about Curveball’s testimony -- given the stakes involved in launching a pre-emptive strike against another sovereign state -- the Americans never bothered to interview Curveball themselves. A third revelation was that the CIA’s head of operations in Europe, Tyler Drumheller, passed on warnings from German intelligence that they considered Curveball’s testimony to be highly dubious. The head of the CIA, George Tenet, simply ignored the advice. With Curveball’s admission in mind, as well as these other facts from the story, we can draw some obvious conclusions -- conclusions confirmed by subsequent developments. Lacking both grounds in international law and the backing of major allies, the Bush administration desperately needed Janabi’s story about WMD, however discredited it was, to justify its military plans for Iraq. The White House did not interview Curveball because they knew his account of Saddam’s WMD programme was made up. His story would unravel under scrutiny; better to leave Washington with the option of “plausible deniability”. Nonetheless, Janabi’s falsified account was vitally useful: for much of the American public, it added a veneer of credibility to the implausible case that Saddam was a danger to the world; it helped fortify wavering allies facing their own doubting publics; and it brought on board Colin Powell, a former general seen as the main voice of reason in the administration. In other words, Bush’s White House used Curveball to breathe life into its mythological story about Saddam’s threat to world peace. So how did the Guardian, a bastion of liberal journalism, present its exclusive on the most controversial episode in recent American foreign policy? Here is its headline: “How US was duped by Iraqi fantasist looking to topple Saddam”. Did the headline-writer misunderstand the story as written by the paper’s reporters? No, the headline neatly encapsulated its message. In the text, we are told Powell's presentation to the UN “revealed that the Bush administration's hawkish decisionmakers had swallowed” Curveball’s account. At another point, we are told Janabi “pulled off one of the greatest confidence tricks in the history of modern intelligence”. And that: “His critics -- who are many and powerful -- say the cost of his deception is too difficult to estimate.” In other words, the Guardian assumed, despite all the evidence uncovered in its own research, that Curveball misled the Bush administration into making a disastrous miscalculation. On this view, the White House was the real victim of Curveball’s lies, not the Iraqi people -- more than a million of whom are dead as a result of the invasion, according to the best available figures, and four million of whom have been forced into exile. There is nothing exceptional about this example. I chose it because it relates to an event of continuing and momentous significance. [Media] [Imperialism]
• The Wind of Change - in the Arab World and Beyond
  Immanuel Wallerstein
  Commentary No. 300, Mar. 1, 2011 Fifty-one years ago, on Feb. 3, 1960, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, Harold Macmillan, a Conservative, addressed the South African parliament, governed by the party that had constructed apartheid as its basis of government. He made what has come to be called the "wind of change" speech. It is worth recalling his words: "The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, the growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a political fact, and our national policies must take account of it." South Africa's Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, did not appreciate the talk and rejected its premises and its advice. The year 1960 has come to be called the Year of Africa, because 16 colonies become independent states that year. Macmillan's speech was in fact really addressing the issue of those states in the southern half of the continent that had significant groups of White settlers (and often great mineral resources), who resisted the very idea of universal suffrage in which Black Africans would constitute the overwhelming majority of the voters. Macmillan was scarcely a radical. He explained his reasoning in terms of winning over Asian and African populations to the Western side in the Cold War.
  There are two lessons we can draw from this. One is that winds of change are very strong and probably impossible to resist. The second is that once the winds sweep away the symbols of tyranny, it is not at all certain what will follow. Once the symbols fall, everyone retrospectively denounces them. But everyone also wants their own interests to be preserved in the new structures that emerge. The second Arab revolt that began in Tunisia and Egypt is now engulfing more and more countries, and no doubt some further symbols of tyranny will fall or will concede major modifications of their internal state structures. But who will then retain the power? Already in Tunisia and Egypt we see a situation in which the new prime ministers have been persons who were key figures in the previous regime. And the army in both countries seems to be telling protestors to stop protesting. In both countries, there are returnees from exile who are assuming posts and seeking to continue, even expand, ties with the very countries in western Europe and North America that had sustained the previous regimes. To be sure, the popular forces are fighting back, and just now have been able to force the resignation of the Tunisian prime minister. [US global strategy]
• Libya: Is Washington Pushing for Civil War to Justify a US-NATO Military Intervention?
  by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research, February 25, 2011 - 2011-02-24 Is Tripoli being set up for a civil war to justify U.S. and NATO military intervention in oil-rich Libya? Are the talks about sanctions a prelude to an Iraq-like intervention? Something is Rotten in the so-called “Jamahiriya” of Libya There is no question that Colonel Muammar Al-Gaddafi (Al-Qaddafi) is a dictator. He has been the dictator and so-called “qaid” of Libya for about 42 years. Yet, it appears that tensions are being ratcheted up and the flames of revolt are being fanned inside Libya. This includes earlier statements by the British Foreign Secretary William Hague that Colonel Qaddafi had fled Libya to Venezuela. [1] This statement served to electrify the revolt against Qaddafi and his regime in Libya. Although all three have dictatorship in common, Qaddafi’s Libya is quite different from Ben Ali’s Tunisia or Mubarak’s Egypt. The Libyan leadership is not outright subservient to the United States and the European Union. Unlike the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, the relationship that exists between Qaddafi and both the U.S. and E.U. is a modus vivendi. Simply put, Qaddafi is an independent Arab dictator and not a “managed dictator” like Ben Ali and Mubarak. In Tunisia and Egypt the status quo prevails, the military machine and neo-liberalism remain intact; this works for the interests of the United States and the European Union. In Libya, however, upsetting the established order is a U.S. and E.U. objective. The U.S. and the E.U. now seek to capitalize on the revolt against Qaddafi and his dictatorship with the hopes of building a far stronger position in Libya than ever before. Weapons are also being brought into Libya from its southern borders to promote revolt. The destabilization of Libya would also have significant implications for North Africa, West Africa, and global energy reserves. [Imperialism] [US global strategy] [Client]
• Warning Against Wars Like Iraq and Afghanistan
  By THOM SHANKER Published: February 25, 2011 WEST POINT, N.Y. — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the chances of carrying out a change of government in that fashion again were slim. “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates told an assembly of Army cadets here. [US global strategy] [Spin]
• The Security Budget vs. the Necessities of Americans. How does military spending impact Americans?
  by Kevin Zeese Global Research, February 22, 2011 President Obama and the Congress have taken 66% of discretionary spending in the federal budget off the table –the SecurityBudget – while proposing a freeze to the rest of the budget and deep cuts to some programs that provide necessities for the American people. His budget crystalizes a choice that U.S. presidents have been making since President Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex – investment in the military vs. investment in the civilian economy. The bloated and sacrosanct security budget – the military, domestic security and intelligence budgets –all saw rapid growth under President Bush when the DoD doubled its budget. Under President Obama the trendhas continuedwith record military, intelligence and domestic security budgets. [Militarisation]

• Military to investigate claim that psy-ops team was used to influence U.S. senators
  By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, February 24, 2011; 9:46 PM The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan intends to order an investigation into whether a three-star general responsible for training Afghan security forces inappropriately used members of a psychological operations team to influence visiting U.S. senators into providing more funding for the war. The U.S. command in Kabul issued a statement Thursday saying Gen. David H. Petraeus "is preparing to order an investigation to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding the issue." The investigation stems from an article published early Thursday on the Web site of Rolling Stone magazine alleging that Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, the head of the U.S. and NATO training operation for Afghan forces, used an "information operations" team to "manipulate visiting American senators" and other visitors, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen. [MISCOM]
• Innovation Policy
  By Michael Mandel, Progressive Policy Institute; Wharton’s Mack Center for Technological Innovation February 21, 2011 | In order to assess President Barack Obama’s innovation policy, I apply the test of the three R’s: Resources, regulation, and rhetoric. A viable innovation policy should provide enough financial resources for basic and applied research across a wide range of field. Regulators need to avoid imposing new rules on innovative and growing sectors, and adjust or repeal rules that are holding back change. And the President needs to use his formidable powers of persuasion to focus attention on those areas of innovation which offer the U.S the biggest bang for the buck. After all, innovation drives growth and jobs, especially for a leading-edge economy like the U.S. [Decline] [Innovation]
• David Cameron hits out at critics of Britain's arms trade
  Prime minister says expecting small countries such as Kuwait to manufacture all their defence weapons is at odds with reality Share521 Nicholas Watt in Kuwait guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 February 2011 14.27 GMT Article history David Cameron and former British prime minister Sir John Major meet with Kuwaiti prime minister, Nasser Mohammed al-Ahmed al-Sabah. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA Opponents of Britain's arms trade are "completely at odds with reality", David Cameron said, as he hit out critics of his three-day visit to the Gulf. In a staunch defence of Britain's arms exports, as he tours the region with a group of senior defence manufacturers, Cameron said it was wrong to leave small Gulf countries to fend for themselves. Speaking in Kuwait, which is marking the 20th anniversary of the expulsion of Saddam Hussein's forces, Cameron said: "The idea that we should expect small and democratic countries like Kuwait to be able to manufacture all their means of defence seems to me completely at odds with reality." [Arms sales] [Double standards]
• Obama has weak hand to play in Mideast
  By Daniel Dombey in Washington Published: February 20 2011 17:30 | Last updated: February 20 2011 17:30 For the first time since he left office two years ago, George W. Bush misses being in the White House. That is the word among Bush administration veterans in touch with their old chief, who say the former president would rather like to be in the Oval Office as his “freedom agenda” lets rip in the Middle East. Let us leave aside the questions of exactly how the 43rd president of the US would have handled the present upheavals, or the impact on the region of his eight invasion-prone years in office. The point is that, while Mr Bush may have relished the spectacle of people power sweeping through Arab streets, Barack Obama initially gave a different impression. During Mr Obama’s first two years, even as the president made tactfully phrased calls for the likes of Egypt to democratise, Washington scaled down practical support for such efforts, cutting funds and allowing Cairo a say in which NGOs received US grants. So when demonstrations began, the White House struggled to catch up, changing its message day by day until it eventually sided with the protesters against the government of Hosni Mubarak. Now, US officials suggest, the president has finally embraced his “inner Obama”, employing the language of Martin Luther King and saluting the “moral force” of the demonstrators across the region. The White House has also indulged in a little spinning, depicting the president as a decisive leader who broke with the status quo view of state department Arabists. Even some Republicans say Mr Obama is well placed to take advantage of the historic change in the region – partly because he is not Mr Bush, with the legacy of the Iraq war, but also because of his own background, including his oft-cited middle name, Hussein. But in truth Mr Obama has a relatively weak hand to play, for at least three reasons. First, he does not have much money with which to buy new friends. Hillary Clinton made this clear last week when she announced the US was “reprogramming” $150m in aid to Egypt to help the country’s transition to democracy. As the secretary of state signalled by her choice of verb, this is money Egypt was going to get anyway. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives and its eagerness to cut the state department budget also mean a new Marshall Plan for the Middle East is very definitely not on the cards. Second, there is the Middle East peace process, which is not much of a process and has not brought peace. Some top US diplomats are deeply concerned about where the US has found itself – vetoing a UN resolution on Israeli settlements last week – just at a time when Washington needs to build public support in the Arab world. But the White House has paid careful attention to the political downside of being seen to slap down Israel and Capitol Hill has weighed in with warnings against any UN action. Finally, and most obviously, the US depends on many of the regimes in place. It is easy for Mr Obama to denounce Iran for “pretending to celebrate what happened in Egypt [while] gunning down and beating people who were trying to express themselves peacefully” at home. But he is much more guarded when the discussion turns to US allies, such as Bahrain, the host of the US Fifth Fleet headquarters, or Yemen, whose co-operation the US needs to hunt down al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Bahrain’s strategic importance may have been slightly exaggerated. The Fifth Fleet spends almost all of its time at sea and US Central Command also has “forward head-quarters” in Qatar. But Saudi Arabia is far from enthusiastic about the possibility of another Shia-run state on its border, and the US needs the co-operation of other Gulf states to retain its military presence in the region. Right now the administration is sending senior officials by the military jet-load to pass on Mr Obama’s advice that autocrats need to “get out ahead of change”. And of course the US retains influence in the region. But, operating under such hefty constraints while events are moving so fast, means at times that Mr Obama has seemed almost as much a bystander as Mr Bush. .Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. You may [Strategic paralysis]
• Yugoslavs in the twenty-first century: ‘erased’ people
  Heather McRobie and Anes Makul, 17 February 2011
  Two decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Balkan countries have a complicated relationship with their Communist past. Two recent events in Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina highlight the complexities of regional identity, and the negative effects of compulsory ethnic identification.
  And yet, in cultural and social terms, Yugoslav identity is very much alive, and this gap is striking between the social and cultural spheres on the one hand and the political frameworks on the other. Allegiance to the defunct state never disappeared from the societies of the successor-states, and in the 2000s, as the Balkan countries proceeded along their various twin paths of post-conflict reconstruction and post-Communist transition to democracy, sympathy for Yugoslavia was a permanent feature of social discourse. Last year a poll by a Macedonian-based think tank, the Centre for Research and Policy Making, revealed that many if not most believed that life was better in the former Yugoslavia particularly in terms of issues such as job security and social cohesion. Further, the newest survey “Life in Transition” published and conducted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 2010, shows that more than 70 percent of participators in the survey in Bosnia-and-Herzegovina disagree with the statement that the economical and political situation is better today than around 1989. According to the same survey, more than 50 percent of people in Croatia think that the economical situation was better around the 1980s than today, and around 40 percent think that the political situation is better than today. The results in Serbia are quite similar as those in Bosnia. [Imperialism] [Fragmentation]
• Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war
  • Man codenamed Curveball 'invented' tales of bioweapons • Iraqi told lies to try to bring down Saddam Hussein regime • Fabrications used by US as justification for invasion Read the full story of how the US was duped Share13K Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd in Karlsruhe guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 February 2011 12.58 GMT Article history Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi: 'I had the chance to fabricate something ...' Link to this video The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war [WMD] [Intelligence]
• The sabotaging of Iran
  By Roula Khalaf and James Blitz in London, Daniel Dombey in Washington, Tobias Buck in Jerusalem and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran Published: February 11 2011 17:07 | Last updated: February 11 2011 17:07 Assassination: The wrecked car of Majid Shahriyari, killed in Tehran, November 2010 Majid Shahriyari became an Iranian martyr while he was driving to work on an autumn day in Tehran. As he made his way along Artesh Boulevard, an explosive device ripped through his car. The 45-year-old was a devout man: Iranians would describe him as a Hizbollahi, a person fiercely loyal to the country’s Islamic system and easily identified by his unshaven face and simple clothes. But Shahriyari also stood out for another reason. He was one of Iran’s leading atomic scientists, an expert on nuclear chain reactions. Iran has long maintained that its atomic programme is aimed at developing peaceful nuclear energy. But much of the outside world believes its true intention is to build a nuclear weapon. Either way, Shahriyari was indispensable. [Assassination] [Cyberwar]
• 'Tiger Mother' meets reality: Asian students struggle, too
  By Jennifer Oldham | The Hechinger Report PASADENA, Calif. — Angela Lo grew up in a strict household, under constant pressure to get grades good enough for admission to a top university. In stark contrast to stereotypes of Asian student success perpetuated in Amy Chua's new bestseller "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," Lo put off going to college and instead got a job. "I felt that by me not succeeding, I kind of let my parents down," said Lo, who at 30 still lives with her Chinese-American parents and works as a dishwasher. "As a kid, I felt like garbage . . . " She said she recently enrolled at Pasadena City College to get her parents off her back. Like Lo, about half the nation's Asian-American students enroll in community college, where they often struggle to pay for classes and scramble to find room in remedial courses. They get far less attention than overachievers like Chua's highly micromanaged daughters, whose rigid childhood is described in a book that's sparking debates about Asian-American student success. [Diaspora]
• Support Grows for Tiered Risk System at Airports
  Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times Transportation Safety Administration employees demonstrate a new body scanner in Arlington, Va. By SUSAN STELLIN Published: February 7, 2011 One reason airport security measures frustrate travelers is that screening procedures tend to treat all passengers the same: as potential terrorists. On a monitor, the scan highlights any areas that might be of concern. But in the wake of the furor last fall over pat-downs and body scanners, several industry organizations are working on proposals to overhaul security checkpoints to provide more or less scrutiny based on the risk profile of each traveler. While the proposals are in the early stages, they represent a growing consensus around a concept that has the support of John S. Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration: divide travelers into three groups — trusted, regular or risky — and apply different screening techniques based on what is known about the passengers. [Surveillance] [Global Insurgency]
• U.S.-Pakistan relations strained further with case of jailed diplomat
  By Karen DeYoung and Karin Brulliard Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, February 7, 2011; 8:45 PM The Obama administration has suspended all high-level dialogue with Pakistan, a key U.S. partner in the Afghanistan war, over the case of an American diplomat the Pakistanis have detained on possible murder charges, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.
• Cameron Criticizes ‘Multiculturalism’ in Britain
  Miguel Villagran/Getty Images By JOHN F. BURNS Published: February 5, 2011 LONDON — Faced with growing alarm about Islamic militants who have made Britain one of Europe’s most active bases for terrorist plots, Prime Minister David Cameron has mounted an attack on the country’s decades-old policy of “multiculturalism,” saying it has encouraged “segregated communities” where Islamic extremism can thrive. Speaking at a security conference in Munich on Saturday, Mr. Cameron condemned what he called the “hands-off tolerance” in Britain and other European nations that had encouraged Muslims and other immigrant groups “to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream.” He said that the policy had allowed Islamic militants leeway to radicalize young Muslims, some of whom went on to “the next level” by becoming terrorists, and that Europe could not defeat terrorism “simply by the actions we take outside our borders,” with military actions like the war in Afghanistan. [Global insurgency] [Multiculturalism]
• So Long, Stuart Levey
  To commemorate Stuart Levey’s resignation from Treasury, I send him off into the sunset with an affectionate slap on the rump in the Asia Times article, Good-bye Mr Insubordination. I’ve been an interested observer of Mr. Levey’s activities as Assistant Secretary of State for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence ever since the OTFI’s designation of Macau’s Banco Delta Asia as an institution “of money laundering concern” froze $25 million in North Korean deposits in 2005. After the North Koreans detonated their atomic bomb in October 2006, the U.S. State Department said it would “resolve” the issue so the denuclearization talks could resume. After Secretary of State Rice and Under Secretary Christopher Hill announced the agreement in February 2007, there was a concerted effort to sabotage the unfreezing of the BDA funds by John Bolton and hard-liners in the House of Representatives.
  There would be persuasive geopolitical reasons for doing so. The left-leaning regime of President Roh was an unwilling partner to American diplomacy, especially of the confrontational type traditionally espoused by the Bush administration. It was very likely that the conservative and actively pro-US Grand National Party would be in the saddle come December 2007. So killing or at the very least slowwalking the BDA affair pending a re-set in 2008 might have enjoyed the tacit approval and back channel encouragement of a broad range of executive and national security opinion in the Bush administration. [Toolkit] [Dissension]
• "War Without Borders": Washington Intensifies Push Into Central Asia
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, January 30, 2011 A recent editorial on the website of Voice of America reflected on last year being one in which the United States solidified relations with the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. One or more of the five nations border Afghanistan, Russia, China and Iran and several more than one of the latter. Kazakhstan, for example, adjoins China and Russia. The U.S. and Britain, with the support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, invaded Afghanistan and fanned out into Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in October of 2001, less than four months after Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to foster expanding economic, security, transportation and energy cooperation and integration in and through Central Asia. In 2005 India, Iran and Pakistan joined the SCO as observers and Afghan President Hamid Karzai has attended its last five annual heads of state summits. [1] Now the U.S. and the NATO have over 150,000 troops planted directly south of three Central Asian nations. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are also on the Caspian Sea, a reservoir of oil and natural gas whose dimensions have only been accurately determined in the past twenty years and where American companies are active in hydrocarbon projects. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Pentagon and its NATO allies deployed military forces to, in addition to Soviet-constructed air bases in Afghanistan, bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The first two countries border China. As of last March the U.S. military confirmed that a monthly average of 50,000 American and NATO troops passed through Kyrgyzstan's Transit Center at Manas as part of the war in Afghanistan. Also last year, U.S. officials mentioned building new military training centers in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Voice of America feature mentioned above cited a speech by U.S. Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert O. Blake, Jr., who two years ago succeeded Richard Boucher in that role. The State Department's Blake delivered a speech at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas entitled "The Obama Administration' s Priorities in South and Central Asia." Shorn of superfluous banter and obligatory diplomatese, his address accentuated American geopolitical designs in an area which Blake highlighted as being of vitally important interest to Washington: "Central Asia lies at a critical strategic crossroads, bordering Afghanistan, China, Russia and Iran, which is why the United States wants to continue to expand our engagement and our cooperation with this critical region." [2] In furtherance of U.S. designs in an area that not only abuts the four nations named, but if controlled by the U.S. would prevent regional cooperation between them except insofar as it is mediated by an outside power, Washington, Blake listed the three priorities for the region as being to: Support international efforts in Afghanistan Build a strategic partnership with India Develop more durable and stable relations with the Central Asian countries [US global strategy]
• The Second Arab Revolt: Winners and Losers
  ImmanuelWallerstein Commentary No. 298, Feb. 1, 2011 The Arab Revolt of 1916 was led by Sharif Hussein bin Ali for Arab independence from the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were evicted. The great revolt however was co-opted by the British and the French. After 1945, the various Arab states gradually became independent members of the United Nations. But in most cases their independences were co-opted by the United States as the successor to Great Britain as outside controller, with a minor continuing role of France in the Maghreb and Lebanon. The second Arab Revolt has been brewing for some years now. It got a substantial shot in the arm from the successful uprising of Tunisian youth this past month. When courageous young people risk their lives to rise up against a supercorrupt authoritarian regime and actually succeed in deposing the president, one has to applaud. Whatever happens next, it was a good moment for humanity. The question always is, what comes next?
  The great loser of the second Arab Revolt is clearly the United States. One can see it by the incredible vacillation of the U.S. government in the present moment. The United States (like every other major power in the world) places one criterion before all others - regimes friendly to it. Washington wants to be on the side of the winner, provided the winner is not hostile. What to do then in a situation like that of Egypt, which presently is a virtual client-state of the United States? The United States is reduced to calling publicly for more "democracy," no violence, and negotiations. Behind the scenes, they seem to have told the Egyptian army not to embarrass the United States by shooting too many people. But can Mubarak survive without shooting a lot of people? [Strategic paralysis]
• Obama Said to Fault Spy Agencies’ Mideast Forecasting
  By MARK MAZZETTI Published: February 4, 2011 WASHINGTON — President Obama has criticized American spy agencies over their performance in predicting and analyzing the spreading unrest in the Middle East, according to current and former American officials. The president was specifically critical of intelligence agencies for misjudging how quickly the unrest in Tunisia would lead to the downfall of the country’s authoritarian government, the officials said. [Intelligence] [US global strategy]
• Crisis in Egypt Tests U.S. Ties With Israel
  By HELENE COOPER and MARK LANDLER Published: February 4, 2011 WASHINGTON — The demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak’s government in Egypt are rocking the relationship between the United States and its most important Arab ally. But they are also rocking an even more fundamental relationship for the United States — its 60-year alliance with Israel. Obama administration officials have been on the telephone almost daily with their Israeli counterparts urging them to “please chill out,” in the words of one senior administration official, as President Obama has raced to respond to the rapidly unfolding events. But the crisis raises many questions about how the United States will navigate its relationship with Israel — in particular the balance between encouraging the development of a democratic government in Egypt and the desire in Washington not to risk a new government’s abandoning Mr. Mubarak’s benign posture toward Israel. [US global strategy] [Strategic paralysis] [Israel]
• Amid Arab protests, U.S. influence has waned
  By Liz Sly Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, February 4, 2011; 12:08 AM BAGHDAD - In days gone by, it was pretty much guaranteed that any demonstration in the Arab world would feature burning American flags and a blazing effigy or two of the U.S. president. At the pro-democracy demonstrations on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere, references to the United States have been conspicuously absent, a sign of what some analysts are already calling a "post-American Middle East" of diminished U.S. influence and far greater uncertainty about America's role. For just as burning flags are not part of the current repertoire, neither are demonstrators carrying around models of the Statue of Liberty, as Chinese activists brought to Tiananmen Square in 1989. Middle East activists say they avoid references to the United States as a political role model for fear of alienating potential supporters, said Toufan Faisal, a veteran democracy campaigner in Jordan who has been advising young protesters in the Jordanian capital, Amman. "I don't think America appeals to the younger generation," she said. "I'm cautious not to present them with the American example because there's a negative attitude to America, a disappointment." [Anti-Americanism]
• Sudden Split Recasts U.S. Foreign Policy
  By HELENE COOPER, MARK LANDLER and MARK MAZZETTI Published: February 2, 2011 WASHINGTON — After days of delicate public and private diplomacy, the United States openly broke with its most stalwart ally in the Arab world on Wednesday, as the Obama administration strongly condemned violence by allies of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt against protesters and called on him to speed up his exit from power. Egypt’s government hit back swiftly. The Foreign Ministry released a defiant statement saying the calls from “foreign parties” had been “rejected and aimed to incite the internal situation in Egypt.” And Egyptian officials reached out to reporters to make clear how angry they were at their onetime friend. [Strategic paralysis]
• Rumsfeld remains largely unapologetic in memoir
  By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, February 2, 2011; 10:24 PM Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that master of the tart zinger, now concedes he went too far with some. The man who more than any other in the Bush administration personified bravado and self-assuredness has come to regret saying "Stuff happens" about the early looting in postwar Iraq. He admits his quip about "old Europe" - meaning Germany and France - not supporting the use of force in Iraq was hardly deft diplomacy. As for declaring, as he did in the first days after the invasion of Iraq, "We know where they are," referring to suspected stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction - well, Rumsfeld would like to take that one back, too. But Rumsfeld still can't resist - in a memoir due out next week - taking a few pops at former secretaries of state Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice as well as at some lawmakers and journalists. He goes so far as to depict former president George W. Bush as presiding over a national security process that was marked by incoherent decision-making and policy drift, most damagingly on the war in Iraq.
  Providing pointed critiques of other former colleagues, Rumsfeld portrays Powell as reigning over a State Department reluctant to accept Bush's political direction and intent on taking anonymous swipes at the Pentagon in the media. He chides Rice, in her initial role as national security adviser, for often papering over differences rather than presenting Bush with clear choices in cases when the Pentagon and State Department disagreed. Later, after Rice succeeded Powell as secretary of state, Rumsfeld argues that she pushed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf too hard toward more democratic practices, wrongly put human rights ahead of important U.S. security interests in Uzbekistan, and fruitlessly pursued diplomatic engagement with Syria, Iran and North Korea. [Strategic incoherence] [Neocon] [US global policy]
• A Diplomatic Scramble as an Ally Is Pushed to the Exit
  Ed Ou for The New York Times An effigy of President Hosni Mubarak hung from a traffic light in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Tuesday. By MARK LANDLER, HELENE COOPER and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Published: February 1, 2011 WASHINGTON — Last Sunday at 2 p.m., a blue-and-white Air Force jet left Andrews Air Force Base bound for Cairo. On board was Frank G. Wisner, an adroit ex-diplomat whom President Obama had asked hours before to undertake a supremely delicate mission: nudging President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt out of power. What exactly Mr. Wisner would say was still in flux as he flew to Egypt, administration officials said Tuesday; he talked with senior officials in Washington several times during the nearly 14-hour flight. By the time Mr. Wisner met with the Egyptian leader on Tuesday, the diplomat knew what message he would deliver. And Mr. Mubarak had already lost the backing of his other crucial pillar of support: the Egyptian military, which declared it would not open fire on the demonstrators who were demanding his ouster. The story of how Mr. Mubarak, an Arab autocrat who only last month was the mainstay of America’s policy in a turbulent region, suddenly found himself pushed toward the exit is first and foremost a tale of the Arab street. [Strategic paralysis]
• Egypt crisis has far-reaching impact for U.S. in Middle East
  By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — The U.S. faces its most precarious moment in the Middle East in years, with the dangers to U.S. interests growing as a tense standoff drags on between tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's embattled regime, according to analysts and former officials. [Global insurgency]

• More Egyptian protesters demand that White House condemn Mubarak
  By Leila Fadel Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 30, 2011; 12:14 AM CAIRO - In a dusty alleyway in downtown Cairo, Gamal Mohammed Manshawi held out a dirty plastic bag Saturday afternoon. Inside were smashed gas canisters and the casings of rubber bullets that he said Egyptian police had fired at anti-government demonstrators. "You see," the 50-year-old lawyer said, displaying the items. On the bottom of each were the words "Made in the USA." "They are attacking us with American weapons," he yelled as men gathered around him. In the streets of Cairo, many protesters are now openly denouncing the United States for supporting President Hosni Mubarak, saying the price has been their freedom. They say the Obama administration has offered only tepid criticism of a regime that has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid. [Imperialism] [Global insurgency] [Client]
• Seizing a Moment, Al Jazeera Taps Arab Anger
  By ROBERT F. WORTH and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Published: January 27, 2011 The protests rocking the Arab world this week have one thread uniting them: Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel whose aggressive coverage has helped propel insurgent emotions from one capital to the next. Al Jazeera has been widely hailed for helping enable the revolt in Tunisia with its galvanizing early reports, even as Western-aligned political factions in Lebanon and the West Bank attacked and burned the channel’s offices and vans this week, accusing it of incitement against them. In many ways, it is Al Jazeera’s moment — not only because of the role it has played, but also because the channel has helped to shape a narrative of popular rage against oppressive American-backed Arab governments (and against Israel) ever since its founding 15 years ago. [Anti-Americanism]
• The Doomsday Project, Deep Events, and the Shrinking of American Democracy
  by Prof Peter Dale Scott Global Research, January 22, 2011 Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 4 No 2, January 24, 2011. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."-- Senator Frank Church (1975) In recent years I have become more and more concerned with the interactions between three important and alarming trends in recent American history. The first is America’s increasing militarization, and above all its inclination, even obsession, to involve itself in needless and pernicious wars. The second, closely related, is the progressive shrinking of public politics and the rule of law as they are subordinated, even domestically, to the requirements of covert U.S. operations abroad. The third, also closely related, is the important and increasingly deleterious impact on American history and the global extension of American power, of what I have called deep events. These events, like the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-in, or 9/11, which repeatedly involve law-breaking or violence, are mysterious to begin with, are embedded in ongoing covert processes, have consequences that enlarge covert government, and are subsequently covered up by systematic falsifications in media and internal government records. One factor linking Dallas, Watergate, and 9/11, has been the involvement in all three deep events of personnel involved in America’s highest-level emergency planning, known since the 1980s as Continuity of Government (COG) planning, or more colloquially as “the Doomsday Project.” The implementation of COG plans on 9/11, or what I call Doomsday Power, was the culmination of three decades of such planning, and has resulted in the permanent militarization of the domestic United States, and the imposition at home of institutions and processes designed for domination abroad. Writing about these deep events as they occurred over the decades, I have been interested in the interrelations among them. It is now possible to show how each was related both to those preceding it, and those which followed. I would like in this essay to go further and propose a framework to analyze the on-going forces underlying all of the most important deep events, and how they have contributed to the political ascendance of what used to be called the military-industrial complex. I hope to describe certain impersonal governing laws that determine the socio-dynamics of all large-scale societies (often called empires) that deploy their surplus of power to expand beyond their own borders and force their will on other peoples. This process of expansion generates predictable trends of behavior in the institutions of all such societies, and also in the individuals competing for advancement in those institutions. In America it has converted the military-industrial complex from a threat at the margins of the established civil order, to a pervasive force dominating that order. [Militarisation]
• Barack Obama: As Bad as Bush
  by Mike Whitney Global Research, January 22, 2011 His enemies call him a tyrant and a dictator, but he is neither. Hugo Chavez is a tireless champion of the poor and a committed Christian socialist. The only difference between Chavez's type of Christianity and Barack Obama's, is that Chavez walks the walk. For example, on Tuesday, Chavez used his powers under the new "enabling laws" to enact the "Law for Dignified Refuge" a presidential decree that mandates "dignified and humane" housing for all Venezuelans. The Venezuelan parliament approved the controversial (and temporary) enabling laws because the country faced an unprecedented housing crisis due to the massive floods in December.
• Barack Obama's state investment call 'at odds' with spending freeze plan
  President accused of 'contradictory pledges' in state of the union speech, which invokes 1960s space race Share11 Chris McGreal in Washington guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 January 2011 20.24 GMT Article history Politicians on both sides of America's political divide are questioning how Barack Obama plans to reconcile his commitment to freeze a large part of government spending for five years with his call in his state of the union speech for massive new state investment to stave off the economic threat from China. [Decline] [China rising]
• Obama faces tough choices as protests sweep Egypt
  By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Egypt's deepest political turmoil in years poses sudden and painful diplomatic choices for President Barack Obama, who wants to show solidarity with Egyptian protesters without undermining one of Washington's closest Arab allies. Unlike Tunisia, where protests earlier this month overthrew an autocratic ruler but where the U.S. wasn't as closely tied to the government, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has received decades of U.S. support and tens of billions in military and economic aid. Already, the protests in Cairo and other Egyptian cities, while primarily about internal changes, have taken on a patina of anti-Americanism. "It is a bit like Iran in the 1970s," said Bruce Jentleson, a Duke University professor who recently ended a stint on the State Department's policy planning staff. He was referring to the massive protests that in January 1979 brought down the Shah of Iran, who at the time was America's closest ally in the Middle East.
• Dealing With Assange and the Secrets He Spilled
  Artwork by Jenny Morgan (left) and Daniel Gordon (right)By BILL KELLER Published: January 26, 2011 This past June, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, phoned me and asked, mysteriously, whether I had any idea how to arrange a secure communication. Not really, I confessed. The Times doesn’t have encrypted phone lines, or a Cone of Silence. Well then, he said, he would try to speak circumspectly. In a roundabout way, he laid out an unusual proposition: an organization called WikiLeaks, a secretive cadre of antisecrecy vigilantes, had come into possession of a substantial amount of classified United States government communications. WikiLeaks’s leader, Julian Assange, an eccentric former computer hacker of Australian birth and no fixed residence, offered The Guardian half a million military dispatches from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. There might be more after that, including an immense bundle of confidential diplomatic cables. The Guardian suggested — to increase the impact as well as to share the labor of handling such a trove — that The New York Times be invited to share this exclusive bounty. The source agreed. Was I interested?
  I was interested. [WikiLeaks]
• Nestor D. Sanchez, 83; CIA official led Latin American division
  By T. Rees Shapiro Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 26, 2011; 11:27 PM Nestor D. Sanchez, 83, a retired CIA officer and Defense Department official whose early intelligence career involved clandestine operations in Latin America, died of congestive heart failure Jan. 18 at his home in Buckeystown, Md. Mr. Sanchez retired from the CIA in 1981 after three decades of service. Most of his time at the agency involved top-secret covert actions, including bloody 1954 coups in Guatemala and a 1960s plot to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Mr. Sanchez was also closely connected to former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, a onetime CIA paid informant. In his later career, Mr. Sanchez was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for Latin American affairs during the Reagan administration. He specialized in providing Central American countries with U.S. military aid and funding. At the time of his retirement, Mr. Sanchez was said by federal investigators to have been linked to illegal U.S. arms deals to the so-called "contras," anti-Sandinista rebels who were fighting the left-wing government in Nicaragua. In the ensuing scandal, which came to be known as the Iran-Contra affair, Mr. Sanchez said that he was aware of the arms shipments but that he didn't know their origin. He was never accused of wrongdoing. Mr. Sanchez joined the CIA in 1952. His first assignment for the agency was as a field intelligence officer during the Korean War, where he recruited defectors to infiltrate North Korea. A New Mexico native and fluent Spanish speaker, Mr. Sanchez was sent to Central America to help engineer the 1954 coup against the left-leaning Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman [Imperialism] [Subversion]
• Obama's State of the Union address: US must seize 'Sputnik moment'•
  Obama: 'This is our generation's Sputnik moment' • Appeals to Republicans for co-operation to 'win the future' • Warns rise of China is a threat to American influence Share48 Chris McGreal in Washington guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 January 2011 03.18 GMT Article history US President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 25, 2011 Photograph: Pool/Reuters Barack Obama has warned of the threat to American economic power and global influence by China's rise with an appeal for Republicans to abandon demands for massive budget cuts and back the biggest government investment programme since the 1960s space race. In an annual State of the Nation address, the president appealed for cooperation with Republicans "to win the future" by saying that the present generation faces what he called its "Sputnik moment" requiring government investment in research, infrastructure and education, paid for in part by eliminating subsidies to hugely profitable oil companies, to match that of the rising economic powers. "Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon. The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs. This is our generation's Sputnik moment," he told a changed Congress following the Republicans seizure of the House of Representatives in November's elections. [Decline]
• Cairo protesters in violent clashes with police
  Egyptian protesters call for end to Hosni Mubarak's rule and hail 'first day of revolution' Share445 Jack Shenker in Cairo The Guardian, Wednesday 26 January 2011 Article history Egyptian protesters confront police in Cairo Link to this video Egyptian police used teargas and rubber bullets and beat protesters in a bid to clear thousands of demonstrators from a central Cairo square late last night after people had taken to the streets earlier today demanding the end of President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule in mass demonstrations inspired by the toppling of the government in Tunisia. Cairo was the scene of violent clashes as thousands of protesters from separate demonstrations converged on Tahrir Square, the central plaza. Demonstrators waved Egyptian and Tunisian flags, hauled down a billboard for the ruling NDP party and chanted "depart Mubarak" at the 82-year-old leader, who will face elections later this year. One policeman died in the Cairo violence. Two protesters were killed in Suez, east of Cairo, as other demonstrations took place around the country. "This is the first day of the Egyptian revolution," said Karim Rizk, at one of the Cairo rallies.
• Obama’s Second State of the Union
  Published: January 25, 2011 .Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:
  This is our generation's Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven't seen since the height of the Space Race. And in a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We'll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology -– (applause) -- an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.
• Papers reveal how Palestinian leaders gave up fight over refugees
  • Negotiators agreed just 10,000 to return • PLO agreed Israel could be a 'Jewish state' • US suggested Palestinians live in Latin America Share739 Comments (308) Ian Black and Seumas Milne guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 January 2011 20.20 GMT Article history Palestinian refugees, who fled the besieged camp of Nahr al-Bared in north Lebanon. Photograph: Ramzi Haidar/Getty Palestinian negotiators privately agreed that only 10, 000 refugees and their families, out of a total refugee population exceeding 5 million, could return to Israel as part of a peace settlement, leaked confidential documents reveal. PLO leaders also accepted Israel's demand to define itself as an explicitly Jewish state, in sharp contrast to their public position. The latest disclosures from thousands of pages of secret Palestinian records of more than a decade of failed peace talks, obtained by al-Jazeera TV and shared exclusively with the Guardian, follow a day of shock and protests in the West Bank, where Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders angrily denounced the leaks as a "propaganda game". The documents have already become the focus of controversy among Israelis and Palestinians, revealing the scale of official Palestinian concessions rejected by Israel, but also throwing light on the huge imbalance of power in a peace process widely seen to have run into the sand
• Palestinians react angrily to al-Jazeera's 'Palestine Papers'
  By Janine Zacharia Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, January 24, 2011; 12:46 PM JERUSALEM - Palestinian Authority officials in the West Bank reacted angrily on Monday to the release of memos by al-Jazeera TV that revealed apparent concessions negotiators were willing to make to Israel in 2008. The discussions were kept confidential out of concern that media leaks of details from the talks would undermine the peace process. This Story Palestinians react angrily to al-Jazeera's 'Palestine Papers' Al-Jazeera releases papers claiming Palestinian concessions to Israel Among the revelations contained in the documents, which the station's Web site said number more than 1,600, were Palestinian negotiators' willingness to concede sections of East Jerusalem to Israeli control as part of a final peace deal. Minutes detailing the concession came from a meeting in Jerusalem in June 2008 between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators mediated by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Al-Jazeera's English-language Web site is calling the documents the Palestine Papers, and is posting them incrementally, WikiLeaks-style, over the next several days.
• Introducing The Palestine Papers
  Al Jazeera has obtained more than 1,600 internal documents from a decade of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Gregg Carlstrom Last Modified: 23 Jan 2011 15:32 GMT Email ArticlePrint ArticleShare ArticleSend Feedback Over the last several months, Al Jazeera has been given unhindered access to the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are nearly 1,700 files, thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence detailing the inner workings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. These documents – memos, e-mails, maps, minutes from private meetings, accounts of high level exchanges, strategy papers and even power point presentations – date from 1999 to 2010. The material is voluminous and detailed; it provides an unprecedented look inside the continuing negotiations involving high-level American, Israeli, and Palestinian Authority officials. Al Jazeera will release the documents between January 23-26th, 2011. They will reveal new details about: •the Palestinian Authority’s willingness to concede illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, and to be “creative” about the status of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount; •the compromises the Palestinian Authority was prepared to make on refugees and the right of return; •details of the PA’s security cooperation with Israel; •and private exchanges between Palestinian and American negotiators in late 2009, when the Goldstone Report was being discussed at the United Nations. Because of the sensitive nature of these documents, Al Jazeera will not reveal the source(s) or detail how they came into our possession. We have taken great care over an extended period of time to assure ourselves of their authenticity. We believe this material will prove to be of inestimable value to journalists, scholars, historians, policymakers and the general public. We know that some of what is presented here will prove controversial, but it is our intention to inform, not harm, to spark debate and reflection – not dampen it. Our readers and viewers will note that we have provided a comments section in which to express opinions. In keeping with our editorial policies, we reserve the right to excise comments that we deem inappropriate, but all civil voices will be heard, all opinions respected. We present these papers as a service to our viewers and readers as a reflection of our fundamental belief – that public debate and public policies grow, flourish and endure when given air and light.
• Broadband cable on its way to unplugged Cuba
  Fibre-optic cable laid from Venezuela brings the promise of speedy internet to one of the world's least connected countries Share56 Rory Carroll in Caracas guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 January 2011 20.18 GMT Article history Cubans look at computers in Havana. Soon they should be able to get speedy internet connections to go with them. Photograph: Ramon Espinosa/AP Cuba is set to join the high-speed broadband era with an undersea fibre-optic cable laid from Venezuela, bringing the promise of speedy internet to one of the world's least connected countries. A specialised ship sailed from Camuri beach, near the Venezuelan port of La Guaria, this weekend, trailing the cable from buoys on the start of a 1,000-mile journey across the Caribbean sea. Venezuelan and Cuban officials hailed the project as a blow to the United States' embargo on the island. It will make Cuba's connection speed 3,000 times faster and modernise its economy. "This means a giant step for the independence and sovereignty of our people," Rogelio Polanco, Cuba's ambassador to Caracas, said at a pomp-filled ceremony in tropical sunshine. The ship, Ile de Batz, owned by the French company Alcatel-Lucent, will lay the cable at depths of up to 5,800 metres and is expected to reach eastern Cuba by 8 February. Cuba's government said the cable should be in use by June or July. Cuba has some censorship restrictions but the impact could be profound. The country has just 14.2 internet users per 100 people, the western hemisphere's lowest ratio, with access largely restricted to government offices, universities, foreign companies and tourist hotels. The 50-year-old US embargo prevented Cuba tapping into Caribbean fibre-optic cables, forcing it to rely on a slow, expensive satellite link of just 379 megabits per second. [Sanctions] [ICT]
• America’s decline: A harbinger of conflict and rivalry
  January 22nd, 2011 Author: Yuhan Zhang, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Lin Shi, Columbia University Paul Kennedy was probably right: the US will go the way of all great powers — down. The individual dramas of the past decade — the September 2001 terrorist attacks, prolonged wars in the Middle East and the financial crisis — have delivered the world a message: US primacy is in decline. This does not necessarily mean that the US is in systemic decline, but it encompasses a trend that appears to be negative and perhaps alarming. Although the US still possesses incomparable military prowess and its economy remains the world’s largest, the once seemingly indomitable chasm that separated America from anyone else is narrowing. Thus, the global distribution of power is shifting, and the inevitable result will be a world that is less peaceful, liberal and prosperous, burdened by a dearth of effective conflict regulation. [Decline]
• Spotlight From Glenn Beck Brings a CUNY Professor Threats
  By BRIAN STELTER Published: January 21, 2011 On his daily radio and television shows, Glenn Beck has elevated once-obscure conservative thinkers onto best-seller lists. Recently, he has elevated a 78-year-old liberal academic to celebrity of a different sort, in a way that some say is endangering her life. On Jan. 5, 2010, Glenn Beck delivered one of several attacks on Richard Cloward, now deceased, and his wife and collaborator, Frances Fox Piven, who wrote about ending poverty. Frances Fox Piven, a City University of New York professor, has been a primary character in Mr. Beck’s warnings about a progressive take-down of America. Ms. Piven, Mr. Beck says, is responsible for a plan to “intentionally collapse our economic system.” Her name has become a kind of shorthand for “enemy” on Mr. Beck’s Fox News Channel program, which is watched by more than 2 million people, and on one of his Web sites, The Blaze. This week, Mr. Beck suggested on television that she was an enemy of the Constitution. Never mind that Ms. Piven’s radical plan to help poor people was published 45 years ago, when Mr. Beck was a toddler. Anonymous visitors to his Web site have called for her death, and some, she said, have contacted her directly via e-mail. In response, a liberal nonprofit group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote to the chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, on Thursday to ask him to put a stop to Mr. Beck’s “false accusations” about Ms. Piven. “Mr. Beck is putting Professor Piven in actual physical danger of a violent response,” the group wrote. Fox News disagrees. Joel Cheatwood, a senior vice president, said Friday that Mr. Beck would not be ordered to stop talking about Ms. Piven on television. He said Mr. Beck had quoted her accurately and had never threatened her. “ ‘The Glenn Beck Program,’ probably above and beyond any on television, has denounced violence repeatedly,” Mr. Cheatwood said. He said he had no knowledge of the threats against Ms. Piven, and noted that The Blaze was operated independently of Fox News. Ms. Piven said in an interview that she had informed local law enforcement authorities of the anonymous electronic threats. But she added, “I don’t want to give anybody the satisfaction of thinking they’ve got me trembling.” The interest in Ms. Piven is rooted in an article she wrote with her husband, Richard Cloward, in 1966. The article, “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty,” proposed that if people overwhelmed the welfare rolls, fiscal and political stress on the system could force reform and give rise to changes like a guaranteed income. By drawing attention to the topic, the proposal “had a big impact” even though it was not enacted, Ms. Piven said. “A lot of people got the money that they desperately needed to survive,” she said. In Mr. Beck’s telling on a Fox broadcast on Jan. 5, 2010, Ms. Piven and Mr. Cloward (who died in 2001) planned “to overwhelm the system and bring about the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with impossible demands and bring on economic collapse.” Mr. Beck observed that the number of welfare recipients soared in the years after the article, and said the article was like “economic sabotage.” [Neocon] [Bizarre]
• The Media in America: Selling Views, Calling it News
  by Prof. John Kozy Global Research, January 14, 2011 America's journalists are not "newshounds." They are nothing more than salesclerks, hocking the products their employers want to sell. The pretty faces that now function as most television news anchors are no different than the pretty models used to sell other products. The American "free" press is comprised of nothing more than a number of retail outlets which sell stories slanted to please their target audiences. As such, they exist merely to sell snake oil. Sometime in the 1960s, I took part in a university symposium along with three other faculty members—a political scientist, a historian, and a journalism professor. The topic was Freedom of the Press—Good or Bad. During the sixties, the Cold War was being fought mightily. The Soviet Union's news agencies, TASS and Pravda, were continually attacked by the American "free press" as untrustworthy. A common claim was that a controlled press could never be trusted while a free press could, and my three colleagues on the panel supported that view. I did too, but only partially. A controlled press, I argued, most certainly could not be trusted when reporting on governmental actions or policies, but I pointed out that much news is not affected by government, and I saw no reason to be suspicious of a controlled press' reporting on such matters. But I also argued that there was good reason to distrust the so called free press no matter what was being reported. My argument rested upon the observation that a controlled press, being funded by its controlling government, had no need to attract readers while the so called free press had to rely on readers to remain economically viable. The free press had to market its wares in the same way that any retail company must, and one way to do that was to slant the news in ways that made it attractive to the news organization's target groups which, in a sense, biased all the stories the free press reported. And although the free press claimed to maintain objectivity by balancing the presentation, using two people of divergent political views, I pointed out that it was easy to select the two people in ways that made it seem that one side always prevails, the result being that the media divided itself into ideological groups, not even to mention that large segment of the press openly termed sensational-tabloid. [Media]
• Preparing for War with Russia? Washington To Rearm Georgia For New Conflicts
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, January 15, 2011 Recent reports in the Russian news media have detailed plans by the U.S. to provide the Mikheil Saakashvili government in Georgia with tens of millions of dollars worth of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. The Russian government's Itar-Tass news agency and Voice of Russia have confirmed the arms package with officials from the Russian special services and the Joint Staff of the armed forces. An official from the second source responded to the proposed arms sale by stating: "We deeply regret that the reset of US-Russian relations declared by the administration of Barack Obama does not change anything in Washington's military support for the Georgian leadership, which began the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 and which is continuing to mastermind aggressive plans against the independent states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia." [1] The Georgian-South Ossetian-Russian war of 2008 was preceded by Georgian artillery barrages against the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali on August 1 which killed six people including a Russian peacekeeper stationed there. That attack occurred within hours of 1,000 U.S. Marines, airborne forces and other troops completing the two-week Immediate Response 2008 North Atlantic Treaty Organization Partnership for Peace exercise in Georgia. Six days afterward the Saakashvili regime launched an all-out assault against South Ossetia, timed to coincide with the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
• US federal deficit: how much does China own of America's debt?
  The US Federal Deficit is an indicator of America's reliance on China. Find out which countries are propping up the US economy • Get the data [Decline] [Statistics] [China rising]
• The Logic of Imperial Insanity and the Road to World War III
  By Andrew Gavin Marshall Global Research, January 14, 2011 Defining the Imperial Stratagem In the late 1990s Brzezinski wrote up the design for America’s imperial project in the 21st century in his book, “The Grand Chessboard.” He stated bluntly that, “it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America,” and then made clear the imperial nature of his strategy: To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.[1] He further explained that the Central Asian nations (or “Eurasian Balkans” as he refers to them): are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.[2] Brzezinski emphasizes “that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.”[3] Obama as a Rabid Imperialist Obama wasted no time in rapidly accelerating America’s imperial adventures. While dropping the term “War on Terror” from usage, the Pentagon adopted the term, “overseas contingency operations.”[4] This was to be the typical strategy of the Obama administration: change the appearance, not the substance. The name was changed, but the “War on Terror” remained, and not only that, it was rapidly accelerated to a level that would not have been possible if undertaken by the previous administration. The current expansion of American imperialism globally has been rapidly accelerated since Obama became President, and seems intent on starting and expanding wars all over the world. When Obama became President, America and its Western allies were engaged in a number of wars, occupations and covert destabilizations, from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, to the Congo, and Obama took office in the midst of Israel’s brutal assault against Gaza. From the beginning of his presidency, Obama immediately justified Israel’s vicious attack against innocent Palestinians, rapidly accelerated the war and occupation of Afghanistan, expanded the war into Pakistan, started a new war in Yemen, and supported a military coup in Honduras, which removed a popular democratic government in favour of a brutal dictatorship. Obama’s administration has expanded covert special operations throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa, and is paving the way for a war against Iran.[5] In fact, the Obama administration has expanded Special Operations forces into 75 countries around the world (compared with a height of 60 during the Bush regime). Among the many countries with expanded operations are Yemen, Colombia, the Philippines, Somalia, Pakistan, among many others.[6] Further, in recent months, the Obama administration has been saber rattling with North Korea, potentially starting a war on the Korean Peninsula. With the creation of the Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), American foreign policy on the continent has become increasingly militarized. [Imperialism] [US global strategy] [Thinktank]
• Hearts and minds lost in Iran over US renaming the Persian Gulf
  Afshin Shahi, 14 January 2011 The US Navy's decision to refer to the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” has added a new dimension to a decades old disagreement between Iran and some of the Arab states. About the authorAfshin Shahi is a doctoral candidate at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University The decision of the US Navy to rename the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” might seem to be a mere renaming of a waterway, but it will have serious implications for the American battle for the hearts and minds of Iranians. [Incompetence]
• U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead
  America's alarm about international rankings of students overlooks some critical components of our education system, Vivek Wadhwa says
  America has an inferiority complex about its education system. You hear the sirens every year, when the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) releases its annual test results. Finland, South Korea, and Singapore usually come out on top; we start blaming our K-12 teachers for not teaching enough mathematics and science; we begin worrying about the millions of engineers and scientists China and India graduate.
  The independence and social skills American children develop give them a huge advantage when they join the workforce. They learn to experiment, challenge norms, and take risks. They can think for themselves, and they can innovate. This is why America remains the world leader in innovation; why Chinese and Indians invest their life savings to send their children to expensive U.S. schools when they can. India and China are changing, and as the next generations of students become like American ones, they too are beginning to innovate. So far, their education systems have held them back [Decline]
• Study: Many college students not learning to think critically
  By Sara Rimer, The Hechinger Report | The Hechinger Report NEW YORK — An unprecedented study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of college found that large numbers didn't learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education. Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event, according to New York University sociologist Richard Arum, lead author of the study. The students, for example, couldn't determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many-college-students-not.html#ixzz1BMzuwnB8 [Decline]
• America: Paydown problems
  By James Politi Published: January 13 2011 22:15 | Last updated: January 13 2011 22:15 It was the most startling of warnings. If the US does not get its finances in order “we will have a European situation on our hands, and possibly worse”, claimed Paul Ryan, the new Republican chairman of the House of Representatives budget committee. The consequences of not tackling the country’s mounting debt burden would be dire, he last week told an audience of leading budget experts and economists at a gathering in Washington. “We will have the riots in the streets, we will have the defaults, we will have all of those ugliness problems,” he said, referring to “French kids lobbing Molotov cocktails at cars, burning down schools because the retirement age will be moved from 60 to 62”. As it stands today, the US borrows about 40 cents of every dollar it spends. Curbing the budget deficit has been the stated mission of Mr Ryan, a rising Republican star, for several years. But such calls for action have multiplied in Washington in recent months, igniting what some say is the fiercest debate over fiscal and budgetary policy in decades. The risks are big. If the government rushes into austerity, cutting too much and too quickly, it could stunt economic recovery. But if the political system cannot forge some kind of consensus on steps to restore US deficits to sustainable levels, the danger is potentially even greater: a sovereign debt crisis in the world’s largest economy. However avoiding that fate – and ushering in a new era of US fiscal responsibility – will require a level of political harmony that, in spite of a growing awareness of the problem, still seems elusive. [Decline]
• U.S. Develops New Reconnaissance Drones
  The U.S. has developed three new unmanned next-generation reconnaissance aircraft. A secret test flight of the newest drone, dubbed Global Observer, was completed at the Edwards Air Force Base. It can survey "an area larger than Afghanistan -- at a single glance... at a stratosphere-skimming 65,000 feet," the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The U.S. media and military cheered, calling it a weapon that will completely change the aspect of the battlefield. [Surveillance] [Military balance]
• What Julian Assange Is Doing Is Not So Terrible... ...But What We're Doing to Bradley Manning Is Terrible
  There seems to be an increasingly bright line in the foreign affairs realms of the blogosphere separating those who are concerned about the public relations and legal jihad against Julian Assange and the affliction of Bradley Manning, and those who mock, snort, and maintain the proper air of sniggering condescension and ostentatious outrage to please their bespoke sources at the State Department. On the left, there's an interesting recapitulation of the split between the opponents of the Iraq war and the liberal hawk supporters of the get-Saddam crusade.
  The treatment of Bradley Manning, which has introduced many on the left to the torment of solitary confinement, may present an opportunity for them to measure their own humanity. They might begin by asking themselves whether prison torture is wrong, and worthy of their attention and outrage, only when it is committed against people whose actions they admire [Human rights]
• Spinning Unemployment Figures in a Collapsing Empire
  By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, January 10, 2011 The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday that the economy gained only 103,000 new jobs in December--not enough to keep up with population growth--but the rate of unemployment (U.3) fell from 9.8% to 9.4%. If you are confused by the report, you are among the many. In truth, what fell was not the number of unemployed people but the number of unemployed people who are actively looking for work. Those who have become discouraged and have ceased looking for work are not considered to be in the work force and are not counted as unemployed in the U.3 measure. The unemployment rate fell because discouraged workers increased, not because employment rose. [Offshoring]
• Singapore Moves to Curb Popular News Website
  By REUTERS Published: January 12, 2011 SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore plans to impose restrictions on a liberal, popular news website ahead of general elections Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong may call this year. The Prime Minister's Office plans to designate "The Online Citizen" (www.onlinecitizen.com) as a "political association," which means the website is banned from accepting donations from abroad. [Media] [Human rights] [Cyberwar]
• Terror Accusations, but Perjury Charges
  By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. Published: January 9, 2011 HOUSTON — An elderly Cuban exile who once worked for the C.I.A. and has been linked to bombings in Havana and the downing of an airliner in the 1970s is scheduled to go on trial this week in a Texas courtroom — not on terrorism charges, but for perjury. Mr. Posada, a Cuban exile who worked for the C.I.A. and sought to push Fidel Castro from power in Cuba, is accused of lying to an immigration judge about his role in the bombings at Havana tourist spots in 1997. The exile, Luis Posada Carriles, who as a Central Intelligence Agency operative waged a violent campaign against Fidel Castro’s regime for decades, is accused of lying to an immigration judge about his role in the bombings at Havana tourist spots in 1997. He also faces several charges of immigration fraud and obstruction of a proceeding, stemming from lies he is accused of telling United States officials about how he entered the country in March 2005. But the trial that is scheduled to begin on Monday in federal court in El Paso will go far beyond questions of Mr. Posada’s mendacity under oath. For the first time, American prosecutors will present evidence in open court that Mr. Posada — a man originally trained in explosives by the C.I.A. — played a major role in carrying out bombings in Cuba.
  The trial will be closely watched by officials in Cuba and Venezuela and may be a turning point in relations between the United States and the leftist governments in those countries. [Terrorism] [Double standards]
• In WikiLeaks fight, U.S. journalists take a pass
  By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Not so long ago, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could count on American journalists to support his campaign to publish secret documents that banks and governments didn't want the world to see. But just three years after a major court confrontation that saw many of America's most important journalism organizations file briefs on WikiLeaks' behalf, much of the U.S. journalistic community has shunned Assange — even as reporters write scores, if not hundreds, of stories based on WikiLeaks' trove of leaked State Department cables. Some call him a traitor, responsible for what's arguably one of the biggest U.S. national security breaches ever [Media] [WikiLeaks] [Double standards]
• To foster high-achievers, think beyond the classroom
  By Robert J. Samuelson Monday, January 10, 2011 Almost everyone who worries about America's "competitiveness" in the world bemoans the sorry state of U.S. K-12 education. The Chinese and others do better. We need to catch up. From President Obama to CEOs, the refrain is to "fix the schools," almost as if it were an engineering problem. "The urgency for reform has never been greater," Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently wrote in The Post. The diagnosis spans the political spectrum. But what if it's not true? There are grounds for doubt. For starters, economic competitiveness depends on more than good schools, which are important but not decisive. To take an obvious example: The Japanese have high test scores, but Japan's economy languishes. Its export-led growth has foundered. Next - and as important - American schools are better than they're commonly portrayed. We now have a massive study of the reading abilities of 15-year-olds (roughly 10th-graders) in 65 systems worldwide showing that U.S. schools compare favorably with their foreign counterparts. The most pessimistic view of the study is that, on average, American schools do as good a job as schools in other wealthy nations. We're worse than some and better than others. The overall loss of economic competitiveness is likely modest and would be swamped by other factors (government policies, business management, exchange rates, the willingness to take risks). But a more detailed evaluation of the study - comparing similar students in different countries - suggests that U.S. schools still rank high in the world. The study, called the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), was conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. It covered the OECD's 34 mostly wealthy member nations (including the United States, most European countries and Japan) and 31 others. The test was scored on a zero to 1,000 scale, and the best-performing students were in Shanghai, China, (one testing area that's not a country), with an average score of 556. South Korea (539) and Finland (536) were next. The United States ranked 17th (500), slightly above the average (493) of the OECD's advanced countries. This was behind Japan (520) and Belgium(506), and just ahead of Germany (497), France (496) and Britain(494). [Education] [Decline]
• A new military paradigm
  Paul Rogers, 6 January 2011 A near-decade of global war since 9/11 highlights the urgent need for revision of Washington’s military-led global strategy. A fresh analysis offers the ingredients for change. 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 interlocking relationship between the United States's military-led strategy in its global conflict and the violent opposition to it from al-Qaida and related groups is a persistent theme of this series. This is again evident in a number of incidents at the start of 2011, in ways that reinforce the need for fresh ways of thinking about the endless war. The bombers who killed twenty-one worshippers and injured scores more at a Coptic church in Alexandria early on 1 January 2011 may not be directly connected to the al-Qaida movement. But there is evidence that they, like individuals and small groups responsible for comparable attacks elsewhere, do justify their actions by invoking the enduring narrative - strongly articulated by al-Qaida - that Islam is under siege from the west. [Militarisation] [Imperialism] [Global insurgency]
• Srebrenica: The Star Witness
  By Edward HermanPDF Version January 2011 Book by Germinal Civikov, translated from the German by John Laughland; Belgrade, Srebrenica Historical Project, 2010, 164 pp. This book is a devastating indictment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, or Tribunal), showing clearly that the ICTY "does not behave according to the traditions of the rule of law." It is a political rather than judicial institution and has played this political role well. It is not the first work to effectively assail the Tribunal—Laughland's own book Travesty (Pluto: 2006) and Michael Mandel's How America Gets Away With Murder (Pluto: 2004) are powerful critiques. But Civikov's book is unique in its intensive and very effective focus on a single witness, Drazen Erdemovic, and the ICTY's prosecutors and judges handling of that witness. Erdemovic was the prosecution's "star witness," the only one in the trials of various Serb military and political figures to have claimed actual participation in a massacre of Bosnian Muslim prisoners. It is therefore of great interest and importance that Civikov is able to show convincingly that this key witness was a charlatan, fraud, and mercenary, and that the ICTY's prosecutors and judges effectively conspired to allow this witness's extremely dubious and contradictory claims to be accepted without verification or honest challenge.
  One would love to know what the ICTY prosecutors and judges said behind the scenes in confronting Erdemovic's numbers, lines of authority, role, lies, and contradictions. Perhaps the ICTY insiders did discuss them, but they and the media have played dumb. A Wikileaks was, and still is today, desperately needed to deal with the Erdemovic/ICTY travesty—and in fact, a Wikileaks on the ICTY would wreak havoc in the trial of Karadzic and pursuit of Mladic. So will Civikov's Srebrenica: The Star Witness if it gets the exposure that it deserves. [Manipulation] [Media] [War crimes] [Double standards]
• Kosovo "Freedom Fighters" Financed by Organised Crime.
  by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, January 4, 2011 Author's note This article was published almost 12 years ago, at the height of the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia. Deafening silence of the Western corporate media. The links of the KLA to organizeed crime, which are now being revealed by the European Parliament's investigation were known and documented by Interpol and the US Congress prior to the onslaught of the 1999 war on Yugoslavia. The KLA insurgency was an initiative of NATO. The KLA killings were directed against Albanian, Serbian and Roma civilians.
• Think Again: American Decline
  This time it's for real. BY GIDEON RACHMAN | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011
  "We've Heard All This About American Decline Before." This time it's different. It's certainly true that America has been through cycles of declinism in the past. Campaigning for the presidency in 1960, John F. Kennedy complained, "American strength relative to that of the Soviet Union has been slipping, and communism has been advancing steadily in every area of the world." Ezra Vogel's Japan as Number One was published in 1979, heralding a decade of steadily rising paranoia about Japanese manufacturing techniques and trade policies. [Decline]
• Despite talk of cuts, Pentagon spending still going up
  Posted on Thursday, January 6, 2011 By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Amid growing calls for government spending cuts, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates unveiled Thursday a proposed five-year budget plan that would cut tens of thousands of troops from the Army and Marine Corps, eliminate two key weapons systems, and raise the cost of health insurance for some military retirees. The proposal still foresees military spending growing by three percent next year, to $553 billion, not including spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/06/106312/gates-budget-plan-would-shrink.html#ixzz1AKhXWVp5 [Military expenditure] [Pentagon]
• Why Washington Hates Hugo Chavez
  by Mike Whitney Global Research, January 2, 2011 In late November, Venezuela was hammered by torrential rains and flooding that left 35 people dead and roughly 130,000 homeless. If George Bush had been president, instead of Hugo Chavez, the displaced people would have been shunted off at gunpoint to makeshift prison camps--like the Superdome--as they were following Hurricane Katrina. But that's not the way Chavez works. The Venezuelan president quickly passed "enabling" laws which gave him special powers to provide emergency aid and housing to flood victims. Chavez then cleared out the presidential palace and turned it into living quarters for 60 people, which is the equivalent of turning the White House into a homeless shelter. The disaster victims are now being fed and taken care of by the state until they can get back on their feet and return to work. The details of Chavez's efforts have been largely omitted in the US media where he is regularly demonized as a "leftist strongman" or a dictator. The media refuses to acknowledge that Chavez has narrowed the income gap, eliminated illiteracy, provided health care for all Venezuelans, reduced inequality, and raised living standards across he board. While Bush and Obama were expanding their foreign wars and pushing through tax cuts for the rich, Chavez was busy improving the lives of the poor and needy while fending off the latest wave of US aggression. Washington despises Chavez because he is unwilling to hand over Venezuela's vast resources to corporate elites and bankers. That's why the Bush administration tried to depose Chavez in a failed coup attempt in 2002, and that's why the smooth-talking Obama continues to launch covert attacks on Chavez today. Washington wants regime change so it can install a puppet who will hand over Venezuela's reserves to big oil while making life hell for working people. [Imperialism]
• New Year To Mark Intensification Of West’s War In Afghanistan And Pakistan
  by Rick Rozoff Global Research, January 1, 2011 No stranger to armed conflicts over the past 70 years, the United States has completed its first decade of continuous warfare: 2001-2010. On January 1 the U.S. and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will enter not only a new year but a second decade of war in Afghanistan. The air and cruise missile attacks that commenced on October 7, 2001 and the insertion of U.S. and British ground troops that followed have been succeeded by a 48-nation, 152,000-troop occupation and counterinsurgency campaign that is also conducting almost daily deadly drone missile strikes and helicopter gunship raids into neighboring Pakistan. [US military]
• Islamic group is CIA front, ex-Turkish intel chief says
  By Jeff Stein A memoir by a top former Turkish intelligence official claims that a worldwide moderate Islamic movement based in Pennsylvania has been providing cover for the CIA since the mid-1990s. The memoir, roughly rendered in English as “Witness to Revolution and Near Anarchy,” by retired Turkish intelligence official Osman Nuri Gundes, says the religious-tolerance movement, led by an influential former Turkish imam by the name of Fethullah Gulen, has 600 schools and 4 million followers around the world. In the 1990s, Gundes alleges, the movement "sheltered 130 CIA agents" at its schools in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan alone, according to a report on his memoir Wednesday by the Paris-based Intelligence Online newsletter. The book has caused a sensation in Turkey since it was published last month. [Global insurgency] [US global strategy]
• Corporate America, paving a downward economic slide
  By Harold Meyerson Wednesday, January 5, 2011 The city on a hill and the last, best hope of mankind has entered a new period in its history. We are now America, the downwardly mobile. The problem isn't due to the recession. Would that it were. The decade just concluded is the first in which Americans, on average, have seen their incomes decline. Median household income increased by about $4,000 per decade in the 1980s and '90s: from $42,429 in 1980 to $46,049 in 1990 to $50,557 in 2000 (in 2007 dollars). In 2009, the most recent year for which we have figures, it had declined to $49,777 - but 2009, of course, was a year of deep recession. If we go back to the peak year of the last decade, 2007, we find that median household income was just $50,233- roughly $300 less than it had been in 2000. Until the housing and financial bubbles burst, of course, we enjoyed the illusion of prosperity through the days of wine and credit. Now we stand on unfamiliar terrain in which almost all the signs of long-term economic health point downward. Our private sector isn't creating jobs at a rate commensurate with our increasing population, much less at a level to significantly reduce unemployment. The share of our civilian population employed has dropped to 58.2 percent - the lowest level since the early '80s, when far fewer women had entered the workforce. The social pathologies long associated with the inner-city poor - single-parent households, births out of wedlock, drug and alcohol abuse - now stalk the white working class in rural and post-industrial regions far removed from big cities. The middle is falling. Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, has noted that as wages and employment levels have fallen for the Americans who have graduated high school but not college, their level of out-of-wedlock births (44 percent) has approached that of Americans who haven't completed high school (54 percent). Americans with college diplomas or more, by contrast, have a rate of just 6 percent. The great sociologist William Julius Wilson has long argued that the key to the unraveling of the lives of the African American poor was the decline in the number of "marriageable males" as work disappeared from the inner city. Much the same could now be said of working-class whites in neighborhoods that may not look like the ghettos of Cleveland or Detroit but in which productive economic activity is increasingly hard to find. This grim new reality has yet to inform our debate over how to come back from this mega-recession. Those who believe our downturn is cyclical argue that job-creating public spending can restore us to prosperity, while those who believe it's structural - that we have too many carpenters, say, and not enough nurses - believe that we should leave things be while American workers acquire new skills and enter different lines of work. But there's a third way to look at the recession: that it's institutional, that it's the consequence of the decisions by leading banks and corporations to stop investing in the job-creating enterprises that were the key to broadly shared prosperity. Our multinational companies still invest, of course - just not at home. A study by the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Council Foundation found that the share of the profits of U.S.-based multinationals that came from their foreign affiliates had increased from 17 percent in 1977 and 27 percent in 1994 to 48.6 percent in 2006. As the companies' revenue from abroad has increased, their dependence on American consumers has diminished. The equilibrium among production, wages and purchasing power - the equilibrium that Henry Ford famously recognized when he upped his workers' pay to an unheard-of $5 a day in 1913 so they could afford to buy the cars they made, the equilibrium that became the model for 20th-century American capitalism - has been shattered. Making and selling their goods abroad, U.S. multinationals can slash their workforces and reduce their wages at home while retaining their revenue and increasing their profits. And that's exactly what they've done. Our economic woes, then, are not simply cyclical or structural. They are also - chiefly - institutional, the consequence of U.S. corporate behavior that has plunged us into a downward cycle of underinvestment, underemployment and under-consumption. Our solutions must be similarly institutional, requiring, for starters, the seating of public and worker representatives on corporate boards. Short of that, there will be no real prospects for reversing America's downward mobility. meyersonh@washpost.com [Decline]
• Cuba to Launch New Economic Policy
  01.01.2011 Vladimir Nesterov, political scientist On January 1, 2011 Cubans will celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the revolution that opened the era of social justice in Latin America. Today's political dynamics across the continent – the radical reforms in Venezuela and Ecuador, the nationally oriented politics pursued by Argentine, Brazil, and several other countries – was made possible by the example of Cuba, the country which did not bow to the US pressure. Cuba's accomplishments are well-known. It clearly outpaced its neighbors in terms of the overall social progress. The UN recommended Cuba's approach to overcoming population illiteracy as a pattern for all developing countries. The Cuban healthcare system is in many respects comparable – and in some superior – to that of the of US. While even these days Obama is only struggling to open access to health insurance to millions of Americans who still lack it, in Cuba quality healthacre is available to everybody. Blockade and Crisis True, the living standards in Cuba are low. The problem was largely created by the US – half a century ago, on October 19, 1960, the US government confronted Cuba with a trade embargo which as of today happens to be the longest in world history. Paradoxically, the five decades of forced isolation showed that even in the globaliziation epoch a country with a relatively small economy can survive without ties to the world's largest. For a long time, the dominant view was that Cuba owed its viability entirely to the Soviet assistance. The notion evidently does not withstand the test of the empirical reality as the country continues to exist two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now it has new partners, the main ones being China and Venezuela. As for Cuba's foes, they had to realize how shortsightedly they had underestimated the Cuban leadership's popularity and ability to mobilize domestic resources. [Sanctions] [Imperialism]
• Towards a New Iron Curtain: The US-NATO Missile Shield Encircles Eurasia
  By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research, December 28, 2010 Western Europe through NATO and the E.U. forms the primary bridgehead of America into Eurasia. According to Brzezinski: “[NATO and the E.U. constitute] America’s most important global relationship. It is the springboard for U.S. global involvement, enabling America to play the decisive role of arbiter in Eurasia — the world’s central arena of power — and it creates a coalition that is globally dominant in all key dimensions of power and influence.” [1] The secondary bridgeheads of America into Eurasia are: (1) Japan and South Korea; (2) the Arabian Peninsula; and (3) the U.S. and NATO military forces in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. This is why the expansion of the U.S. missile shield from a U.S. project to a NATO project should come as no surprise. The globalization of NATO isd part of that process. The inclusion of the missile shield project under the helm of NATO was already in the pipeline in the 1990s. In fact, the statements that NATO just adopted the missile shield project in 2010 are bold faced lies. U.S. and NATO Missile Proliferation Records of active NATO missile system proliferation go all the way back to 2006 with the Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) program. Within NATO, the U.S., Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Czech Republic have been working together for years in establishing a missile shield system. While Israel, India, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, and Ukraine under its former Orangist government have all been partners. NATO even drafted a missile coordination policy in the same year as the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, 2003. The draft was ratified by NATO the next year, in 2004. France was also working on its own ballistic missile (SAMP-T) system, while the Dutch, Germans, and Americans were jointly developing the integrated Extended Air/Theater Missile systems through Project Optic Windmill. "The Ring of Fire" and the New Iron Curtain: The Three Theatres of the Inter-Continental Missile Shield Project The missile shield project is really a triad of three missile shields that form a global missile shield system surrounding Eurasia. The three theatre segments of the missile shield are based in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. East Asia includes both Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. Moreover, there are also overlapping zones that link the triad of missile shields. These are: (1) the Mediterranean, which links Europe and the Middle East; (2) the Indian Ocean, which links the Middle East and East Asia; and (3) North America. North America acts as the strategic depth of this weapons system and in reality is its command centre. The system is linked to North American missile defences over the U.S., Canada, and Greenland. North America also serves to augment the missile systems in both East Asia and Europe. While Iran has been cited as a justification for a missile shield in Europe, the location of military facilities in Greenland says something else. Geographically, Greenland is not a proper location to monitor any possible North Korean missile threat or located in the best place to monitor any possible Iranian missile threat. Greenland is ideal for monitoring Russian missiles that would travel over the Arctic Circle as the most logical route. The European missile project is primarily aimed at Russia, while the East Asian missile project is aimed primarily at China under the pretext of defence against North Korea. [Missile Defense]
• Detroit in ruins: the photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre
  In downtown Detroit, the streets are lined with abandoned hotels and swimming pools, ruined movie houses and schools, all evidence of the motor city's painful decline. The photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre capture what remains of a once-great city – and hint at the wider story of post-industrial America Share Sean O'Hagan The Observer, Sunday 2 January 2011 Article history The ruined Spanish-Gothic interior of the United Artists Theater in Detroit. The cinema was built in 1928 by C. Howard Crane, and finally closed in 1974. Photograph: Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre In December 2001, the old Highland Park police department in Detroit was temporarily disbanded. The building it vacated was abandoned with everything in it: furniture, uniforms, typewriters, crime files and even the countless mug-shots of criminals who had passed through there. Among the debris that photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre found there in 2005 was a scattering of stiff, rotting cardboard files each bearing a woman's name. [Decline]