Russia Orders ‘Nuclear Strike’

On US-Israeli Attempt To Bomb Iran

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (Traducción al Español abajo)

Russian Military Analysts are reporting today that Prime Minister Putin ordered an ‘immediate’ retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States after American and Israeli warplanes neared the Iranian border to attack Iran’s Russian built Bushehr nuclear plant.

These reports state that the failed assassination of France’s President Sarkozy (and which we had previously reported on in our report titled “French Leader Sarkozy Targeted By Assassins In Israel, 2 Dead”) was intended to be blamed on radical elements of Iranian supported Lebanonese Hezbollah thus justifying the attack.

As American and Israeli war commanders are scheduled to meet this week, Western and Iranian propaganda media sources are denying this attack, and as we can read as reported by the Jerusalem Post News Service:

“Oil rose for a third straight session on Tuesday to more than $138 a barrel, following rumors of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which was later denied, Reuters reported. “This is just a rumor. No attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities has taken place,” a senior Iranian nuclear official said.

Israeli and American military spokesmen also denied the rumors, according to Bloomberg.”

These reports, however, state that Iranian air defenses were quick to engage a flight of US armed surveillance drones ahead of the main American-Israeli strike force, but after President Putin’s warning was issued were ordered to ‘cease their attack runs’.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, though not mentioning this latest escalation in tensions, was quick to issue a warning to the American’s, and as we can read as reported by the Islamic Republic News Agency:

“Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said here Tuesday that the White House rulers are now the most hated rulers and policy makers on earth.

“The world domineering powers’ rulers, i.e. the White House officials, have now turned into the most resented rulers and policy makers worldwide and the `death to the USA’ slogan, which was once coined and chanted by the Iranian nation, has now spread to other nations too,” said the Supreme Leader.”

The United Nations Nuclear Chief ElBaradei had previously warned the Western powers that he would ‘resign’ his post upon their attacking the Iranian Nation as, in his words; such an attack would turn the entire Middle East into a ‘fireball’.

It is not known for how long, or even if, President Putin’s threat to the Western powers would hold at abeyance another Global War from being started by the West, but what is known is that with the greater parts of their crop lands either submerged in waters or devastated by drought, and with catastrophic fuel prices decimating their already doomed economies, these once great powers might not have any further options left to maintain their rule over the World.

To the ability of Russia and China to thwart the goals of the West their only remains the possibility of Total Global Nuclear War of the likes not seen since our most ancient past.

http://ww.whatdoesitmean.com

Sarkozy en Israël : la thèse du suicide s’éffondre

La dernière journée de la visite de Nicolas Sarkozy en Israël s’est achevée dans un vent de panique mardi.

Le porte-parole des services de sécurité de l’aéroport Ben-Gourion, Shlomi Sagi, a indiqué qu’un agent de police s’était suicidé alors que le Nicolas Sarkozy s’apprêtait à monter dans son avion. Un autre porte-parole, Micky Rosenfeld, a dans un premier temps du démentir les affirmations d’un officier qui faisait état d’une tentative d’assassinat. Hier soir à 23h, le commandant de police du secteur, Nissim Mor, a précisé qu’il ne s’agissait que d’une « tentative de suicide ». Pourtant, des images de la télévision israélienne montraient bel et bien en boucle les images du corps d’un homme recouvert d’un drap sur le tarmac.

Dans la nuit, les autorités israéliennes ont donné l’identité de l’homme décédé dans des cironstances peu claire. Il s’agit d’un Druze de 32 ans, Raed Ghanen, originaire de Beit Dajan, une localité du nord d’Israël.

La famille de ce garde-frontière israélien refusait mercredi de croire à la thèse officielle du suicide, selon les médias israéliens.

“Il n’avait aucune raison d’attenter à sa vie, il s’agit peut-être d’un accident, ou il a été tué par un autre garde israélien pour une raison qui nous échappe“, ont-il déclaré.

Son père Assad a pour sa part raconté que son fils avait quitté mardi matin son domicile pour rejoindre son unité et avait le moral.

“Il avait une famille, une maison, des amis, et des projets pour l’avenir, et il n’avait aucune raison de se suicider“, a encore précisé le père.

Son frère a indiqué qu’un représentant de la police était venu informer la famille qu’une enquête avait été ouverte sur les circonstances de la mort de son frère.

La famille a engagé un avocat afin d’obtenir une enquête “complète et détaillée” ainsi que l’accès aux vidéos enregistrées par les caméras de surveillance de l’aéroport Ben Gourion.

Développement à 14h30 :

Selon la Zavtra, quotidien russe, le Service fédéral de sécurité de la Fédération Russe (FSB) aurait fait un rapport au Premier Ministre Poutine et au Président Medvedev aujourd’hui indiquant que le président français Nicolas Sarkozy aurait « échappé de peu » à une tentative d’assassinat au cours de son départ de l’aéroport Ben-Gourion après une attaque qui aurait laissé un agent de sécurité français et un policier israélien morts.

Le quotidien moscovite indique également que, selon les analystes du FSB, la version officielle qui défend la thèse du suicide ne servirait qu’à masquer une « réalité évidente ». Il ajoute encore que cette tentative d’assassinat aurait été planifiée par des intégristes religieux après que, lors de son discours devant la Knesset, le président Sarkozy ait indiqué que Jérusalem devait être divisée.

Transmis par Marubarraza

Développement à 15h30 :

Selon un article d’Haaretz mis en ligne en début d’après-midi, le tireur décédé, se serait situé sur un des toits de l’aéroport, armé d’un fusil d’assaut M-16 (la version des autorités israéliennes affirment qu’il se serait suicidé à l’aide d’une arme de poing depuis sa guérite de garde-frontière).

Le célèbre journaliste israélien Barry Chamish, qui avait enquêté sur l’assassinat d’Ythzak Rabbin, ne croit pas un instant à la version du suicide. Lire son article : SURVIVORS OF FAILED ASSASSINATION PLOT?

Développement à 22h45 :

Le président français Nicolas Sarkozy, qui est pourtant perçu comme un ami du sionisme, s’est rendu à la Knesset où il a indiqué dans son discours que les Israéliens devaient accepter que Jérusalem soit la capitale des deux Etats, et qu’il fallait stopper d’urgence les colonisation, lever les postes de contrôles en Cisjordanie et mettre fin au blocus de Gaza. (…) Un président étranger ne s’est jamais permis une déclaration aussi radicale à la Knesset (…) Sarkozy à ensuite rencontré le président Abbas pour lui dire que « la création d’un état palestinien viable, démocratique et moderne est une priorité pour la France » (…) On imagine assez aisément comment ces propos ont du rendre furieux les « sionistes conservateurs » en Israël (…)

Le camp des « sionistes réalistes » a fini par accepter que l’actuel plan des « sionistes conservateur » est ruineux pour l’État Hébreu (…) Les « sionistes conservateurs » sont toujours sur la voie d’un nettoyage ethnique des Palestiniens et du projet d’un Grand Israël (…)

Les « sionistes réalistes », semblent avoir contrecarré une tentative d’assassinat sur Sarkozy par les « conservateurs ». Une tentative qui, en cas de succès, aurait mis en cause le Hamas. (…)

La thèse des autorités (suicide) est ridicule. On se demande bien pourquoi un policier serait monté sur le toit avec un M-16 munit d’une lunette de tir pour mettre fin à ses jours.

Source : Xymphora

http://mecanopolis.wordpress.com

Iran warns of ‘tragedy’ if US attacks

TEHRAN: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned the United States on Wednesday it would face a “tragedy” if it attacked the Islamic Republic.

“We advise US officials to be careful not to face another tragedy,” Mohammad Hejazi, a senior commander of the elite Guards, was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency. “Our last word is that if you want to move towards Iran, make sure you bring walking sticks and artificial legs because if you came you will not have any legs to return on,” he said. Hejazi’s comments followed market talk of a military strike against the country’s nuclear sites.

The standoff between the West and Tehran has sparked fears of a military confrontation that would disrupt oil supplies. Last week a report said Israel had practiced for a possible strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Washington says it is focusing on diplomatic pressure to thwart Iranian nuclear work it suspects is aimed at making bombs but has not ruled out military action if that were to fail.

A senior Iranian official on Tuesday denied market rumours of an Israeli attack on one of Iran’s nuclear facilities, which Tehran says are part of a peaceful drive to generate electricity. The New York Times last week quoted US officials as saying Israel had carried out a large military exercise, apparently a rehearsal for a potential bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Many analysts say Iran’s nuclear sites are too numerous, distant and fortified for Israel to take on alone.

They say the US could unleash vastly superior firepower if it attacked Iran but that Tehran could strike back against its forces in Iraq and disrupt oil supplies vital to the world economy. Also on Wednesday, speaker of Iran’s parliament hit out at the European Union for imposing new sanctions despite diplomatic efforts to end the dispute.

The 27-nation EU on Monday agreed new punitive measures targeting businesses and individuals the West says are linked to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic programmes, ten days after world powers offered incentives to Tehran in a bid to resolve the row. “If you want to negotiate with Iran on the proposed package, why are you following the path of confrontation … ,” speaker Ali Larijani, Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator, said.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana handed Iran an offer on June 14 of economic and other benefits proposed by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, Germany and France to try to convince it to halt uranium enrichment. Iran has repeatedly ruled out suspending enrichment, which can have both civilian and military uses. Their refusal to do so has drawn three rounds of limited UN sanctions since 2006.

Iran has put forward its own package of proposals aimed at resolving the row, but diplomats say it ignores global concern about its enrichment programme. reuters

Link

Iran War Resolution May Be Passed Next Week

by Eric Garris

Introduced less than a month ago, Resolution 362, also known as the Iran War Resolution, could be passed by the House as early as next week.

The bill is the chief legislative priority of AIPAC. On its Web site, AIPAC endorses the resolutions as a way to ”Stop Iran’s Nuclear Program” and tells readers to lobby Congress to pass the bill. In the Senate, a sister resolution, Resolution 580, has gained co-sponsors with similar speed. The Senate measure was introduced by Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh on June 2. It has since gained 19 co-sponsors.

The bill’s key section “demands that the president initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program.”

“Imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran” can be read to mean that the president should initiate a naval blockade of Iran. A unilateral naval blockade without UN sanction is an act of war.

Resolution 362 has already gained 170 co-sponsors, or nearly 40 percent of the House. It has been referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which has 49 members, 24 of whom, including the ranking Republican, are co-sponsors. The Iran Nuclear Watch Web site writes, “According to the House leadership, this resolution is going to ‘pass like a hot knife through butter’ before the end of June on what is called suspension – meaning no amendments can be introduced during the 20-minute maximum debate. It also means it is assumed the bill will pass by a 2/3 majority and is non-controversial.”

Our national legislators deem it non-controversial to recommend to a president known for his recklessness and bad judgment that he consider engaging in an act of war against Iran. Those of you who consider this issue controversial can go to the Just Foreign Policy Web site and tell your representative to oppose this resolution.

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2008/06/23/iran-war-resolution-may-be-passed-next-week/

HOW IRAN WOULD RETALIATE IF IT COMES TO WAR

~ or ~

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID USA

I forget the participants on the panel and the title of the segment on PBS Newshour - it was Friday night - but somebody said, that his interpretation of the latest comments out of the White House was, that they wouldn’t interfere with an Israeli attack on Iran, but would not actively participate (although (there is the), “still on the table” nonsense). It sounds to me like somebody with brains finally had his/her say.

The entire thing is ludicrous - Russia, China and other heavy hitters have so many investments in Iran, that they couldn’t sit on the sidelines. Besides, the US military is stretched so thin, that it would be a rout, if, say, half a million Iranian regular troops swooped into Iraq. I don’t know why America(ns) have their heads in the clouds - why they think, that their weapons are better in the field - their assault rifles are consistently proven unreliable - most of the world uses AKs and apparently they perform better in all climates and regional conditions. Side arms are pretty much the same the world over, when it comes to efficiency and reliability. Tanks are tanks, the Russian tanks are just as good, according to what I have read.

The Arabs are “pissed” and the American troops are tired, demoralized, unthinking robots - and - the Iraqis, after more than 5 years of having their country destroyed, their family members killed, tortured and raped …. well, who do you think the Iraqi defense forces are going to side with, save segments of the Sunnis, who have collaborated with the enemy (USA)? I don’t know why USA Inc. had to demonize the once most secular country in the Middle East? Why not just make kissie face with Saddam, like they did before, and ask him to kindly not trade oil for Euros but use Dollars. Bombard him with trade and make luxury goods available to Iraqis - make them dumb, fat and lazy like the Americans. Or, alternatively, like an old friend jokingly said during the propaganda run up to the attack: have big transports dump every luxury item any Iraqi could ever dream of from washers, dryers, TVs, computers, etc., etc., all over Iraq and make the Iraqis love America (we already controlled their air space anyway). I can guarantee, that it would never come close to one trillion dollars. Sanctions have NEVER worked anywhere - it only kills the innocent. History backs this up in abundance.

Air power - cool, the US Air Force now consists of mostly 40+ year old fighter and bomber jets, which they work on around the clock to keep flying - chewing gum, rubber bands, glue and plastic padding - their Black Hawks keep falling out of the sky and crashing because of sand, heat and age. WHICH really doesn’t matter in the first place, because Iran has new systems, acquired from China and Russia, which jams all electronic signals and transmissions in Iranian airspace. These US attackers would fly blind - no radio, no radar and they could not hone in on any targets - all electronics would be blocked ~ back to the old maps and compass! They would be lumbering ducks and sitting targets for all the new missile systems Iran has acquired - the very latest out of Russia and China with incredible ranges and precision.

Ahh - the US Navy ….. in the Gulf, the Mediterranean and the Straits - they would be scrap metal at the ocean bottom within 20 minutes - leaking radioactivity all over those bodies of water - what the hell is the US thinking? Or rather America Inc.!

I simply cannot see any of America’s “friends and allies” in the region not screaming bloody murder - these greedy, crooked and self-appointed/anointed little princelings, emirs and other tin pot dictators, sitting on the spigots of lakes of oil. US aggression has caused such radicalization among even the Muslim in the streets, that these little grubby merchant princelings would have to flee their kingdoms and emirates, if they weren’t murdered first by the people they had used, abused and brutalized from the time oil was discovered and they decided they were kings, emirs and whatever else they anointed themselves. If the peoples of that region saw their fellow Muslims kick some serious butt and throw the Americans out of Iraq. It would be a blood bath, the likes of which this country has never before seen. Did anybody pay any notice? There are no safe routes in and out of Iraq? Both the highway from the Green Zone to the airport and the highway from Kuwait to Baghdad are called variations of “Death Highway”.

In my estimation the more radical Muslims would throw out their oppressive regimes and make all of the middle East into “Islamic States”. Iran winning would spark the flame, which is currently only smoldering.

Stupid, stupid, stupid America!

Hanna Jaeckel

479 Woodside Ave.

Bridgeport, CT 06606

http://rense.com/general82/stup.htm

French Leader Sarkozy Targeted By Assassins

In Israel, 2 Dead

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (Traducción al Español abajo)

The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) is reporting to Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev today that France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy ‘narrowly escaped’ an assassination attempt during his departure from Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport [top photo left] in an attack which left one French Security Officer and one Israeli policeman dead.

To the ‘sanitized’ Western propaganda reports being given to their peoples on this attempt against the French President’s life we can read as reported by Israel’s Ynet News Service:

“The incident caused a scare during the ceremony, prompting body guards to rush VIPs away from the area. The armored cars of President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were rushed to the ceremony site, and the two were taken away from the area.

Meanwhile, the French president was taken into his airplane, which was waiting on the runway, by his own bodyguards. After the circumstances of the incident became clear, the bodyguards allowed Peres and Olmert to board the plane and bid Sarkozy farewell.”

Russian Security Analysts are also stating that this ‘first version’ of the Western propaganda media reports, that an Israeli Border Policeman ‘committed suicide’ during President Sarkozy’s farewell ceremony, is ‘ludicrous’ to explain away this assassination attempt as only the most vetted Israeli policeman are allowed near foreign heads of state by Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (Mossad).

These reports further point out that Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert had just this past week extended the term of Mossad director Meir Dagan’s for another year due to Dagan’s ‘extreme’ anger towards the French Leader for his Nations mending relations with both Lebanon and Syria, both of which were former protectorates of Colonial France.

Israeli right wing extremist ‘anger’ against President Sarkozy turned to ‘hatred’, these reports continue, after Sarkozy’s earlier address to Israel’s Knesset stating that Jerusalem must be divided, and as we can read as reported by the Washington Post News Service:

“French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the Israeli parliament Monday that there could be no Middle East peace unless Israel drops its refusal to cede sovereignty over parts of Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinians, challenging one of Israel’s most emotionally held positions.”

Further fueling Israel’s anger against President Sarkozy was his demand for the Israelis to immediately halt their building of settlements on Palestinian land and France’s latest rush to provide its Arab Allies with nuclear power, including United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Morocco.

Russian Military Analysts point out that the right wing factions of the Israeli government would feel ‘fully justified’ in the killing of President Sarkozy as he is himself of Jewish background (and had lost 57 family members to the German Nazis) and under Israel’s laws is a citizen of Israel, and by his negotiation with Israel’s enemies in the Arab World also under these laws, is a traitor.

It should be further noted that Israel’s fanatic right wing forces have used assassinations in the past to protect their homeland, including the 1995 killing of Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by the orthodox Jew Yigal Amir for Rabin having negotiated the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians.

© June 24, 2008 EU and US all rights reserved.

[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.]

Translation to Spanish by: Sister Maru Barraza, Mazatlán, Mexico

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1111.htm

Israel ‘Will Attack Iran’ Before New US President Sworn In,

John Bolton Predicts

John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, has predicted that Israel could attack Iran after the November presidential election but before George W Bush’s successor is sworn in.

by Toby Harnden in Washington

L’ombre de l’accord Sykes-Picot plane sur l’Asie du Sud-Ouest

In Espionage Trial of Ex-Aipac Employees, Appeals Court Sets High Bar for Prosecution

By Nathan Guttman

Washington — Two former American Israel Public Affairs Committee employees facing espionage charges won a procedural victory June 20, when a federal appeals court ruled against the prosecution’s request to lower the burden of proof in their upcoming trial.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., upheld the standard of proof set by a federal district court in the case of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who were indicted in 2005 for communicating classified information. The two former Aipac officials are accused of receiving classified information from Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin and passing it on to Israeli diplomats and journalists. A final trial date for the investigation, which became public in August 2004, has not yet been set.

In the earlier district court decision, Judge T.S. Ellis III ruled that in order to make the case that Rosen and Weissman had broken the law, the prosecution would need to prove a series of assumptions, among them: That the defendants knew the information they were relaying was classified national defense information, that they knew it was unlawful to disclose the information and that they “had a bad-faith reason to believe the disclosures could be used to the injury of the United States or to the aid of a foreign nation.” The district court also ruled that the prosecution would have to prove Rosen and Weissman intended to harm the United States or aid another nation by disclosing the information.

In March, the government appealed Ellis’s ruling, but this past week the appeals court knocked down the effort without explanation. The three-judge panel did, however, allow the government to proceed with another appeal relating to the use of classified information as evidence in the jury trial.

http://www.forward.com/articles/13629/

‘Ball of fire’ if Iran attacked: IAEA chief

DUBAI (AFP) — The UN atomic watchdog chief warned on Saturday that an attack on Iran over its controversial nuclear programme would turn the region into a fireball, as Tehran rejected any Israeli strike as “impossible.”

Mohamed ElBaradei also warned that he would not be able to continue in his role as International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general if the Islamic republic were attacked.

His stark comments came as Iran stressed yet again that it will not negotiate with world powers over its nuclear programme if it is required to suspend its controversial uranium enrichment.

“A military strike (against Iran) would in my opinion be worse than anything else … It would transform the Middle East region into a ball of fire,” ElBaradei said in an interview with Al-Arabiya television.

A report by the New York Times on Friday cited US officials as saying a major Israeli military exercise earlier this month seemed to be a practice for any potential strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In Athens, an official with the Greek air force’s central command confirmed the substance of the US media report, stating that it had taken part in “joint training exercises” with Israel off the Mediterranean island of Crete.

The manoeuvres, code-named “Glorious Spartan 08,” took place on May 28 and June 12, and consisted of aerial exercises and knowledge exchange, said the Greek source, who requested anonymity.

The goal was for more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighter jets to prepare for long-range strikes and demonstrate Israel’s serious concern over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Times reported.

ElBaradei said any attack would simply harden Iran’s position in its row with the West over its nuclear programme.

“A military strike would spark the launch of an emergency programme to make atomic weapons, with the support of all Iranians, including those living abroad,” he said.

He did not believe that there was an “imminent risk” of proliferation given the current status of Iran’s nuclear programme and made it clear he would “not have a place” as IAEA head in the event of a military strike.

The West fears that Tehran could use uranium enrichment to make an atomic bomb although Tehran insists it only wants nuclear technology for peaceful energy purposes.

ElBaradei’s comments come as Iran stressed on Saturday it will not negotiate with world powers over its nuclear programme if it is required to suspend its enrichment activities.

“Suspending uranium enrichment has no logic behind it and it is not acceptable and the continuation of negotiation will not be based on suspension,” Iranian government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters.

He responded to talk of a military strike by saying “such impudence and audacity to have an aggression against our national interest and integrity is an impossible action.”

For his part, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said Tehran would “continue uranium enrichment non-stop since this activity is under the 24 hour surveillance (of IAEA cameras).

“The request to stop uranium enrichment is an old issue and does not have any legal or technical foundation,” he added.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli parliament foreign affairs and defence commission chairman Tsahi Hanegbi said Saturday that Western diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear programme had failed.

“Next year and the year after that will be crucial. The world must must decide if it gives more time to diplomatic efforts, which currently do not seem very promising,” he told Israeli public radio.

“Western measures against Iran’s nuclear programme have failed.”

On June 6 an Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, Shaul Mofaz, warned that Iran would face attack if it pursues what he said was its nuclear weapons programme.

A week ago, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana presented a new offer to Mottaki on ending the six-year standoff over Iran’s nuclear drive, offering economic and trade incentives. Iran is still considering the plan.

It was made on behalf of Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Referring to that offer, Iranian negotiator Said Jalili said Tehran was prepared to discuss it and a set of Iranian proposals to solve the problems of the world.

But he reiterated that Iran “will not accept under duress any illegal demand aiming to deprive it of its right to pursue its peaceful nuclear activities.”

google News

Economic and Geopolitical Dangers for 2008 and 2009

By: Christopher_Laird

Over the years, I have used gold market behavior to track economic and political trends. The overall effect was a good take on gold markets and on currencies, which was the intent from the beginning.

We have some rather ominous conclusions about the Summer and Fall of 2008. They are economic as well as geopolitical. The actual gold focus becomes more of a point of reference, as it reacts to events that seem to be readying to occur. In addition, we foresee some rather scary trends for the entire world, going into 09. We are not going to cover all of this in this article, but to give a basic overview.

First of all, let’s list some of these dangers and danger periods that we foresee coming.

• The US and Israel are getting ready to do something about the newly militant Iran. The nuclear debate is only one dimension of that issue. Another is the threat that Iran is becoming too big a bully to the other more moderate Mid East nations, and not just Israel.

• There is a very large unease again building in the world financial markets. Not only is the credit crisis not really improving (new estimates out now that financial institutions are looking at $1.3 trillion of losses) but world financial markets are actually way down over the last year. Many Asian markets and also many US stocks are down 30% and more. A building unease is accumulating that can only lead to another real big world financial sell off, lasting probably up to a month, before any settling comes in after a month long bout of central bank firefighting efforts.

• Rising inflation is unsettling financial markets, as it is unsettling the US and EU central banks. A serious friction has developed that the ECB is not coordinating efforts with the US Fed, as the ECB fights inflation, and the Fed focuses on preventing a total world financial meltdown. So far, these efforts are rather contrary to each other. The dissention is unsettling financial markets.
• Intolerably high energy and food prices. Disastrous floods in the US Mid West grain belts are going to lead to a world food crisis in 09. We have only seen hints of this in 08. World inflation will be seriously increased in the entire world as a result. The Chinese are particularly vulnerable to this issue.

There are more dimensions to this but well stop there.

Outcomes

The results of these economic and political pressures are likely to be:

• A significant risk (well over 50%, meaning more likely than not) of serious world stock and financial problems over the Summer. This makes a much higher risk of a real world financial and stock meltdown exceeding a 20% drop going into the Fall.

• We have an expectation that Israel is going to act as soon as this Summer, but by Jan 09 roughly, to do something significant to stem the Iranian nuclear problem. Israel has repeatedly stated publicly in the past that they will never tolerate a radical Islamic nation to achieve the nuclear bomb. We believe them.

• Friction between the US Fed and the ECB over inflation policy destabilizes the markets and make a real financial panic much more likely. It is not clear the central banks will be able to pull off another ‘Bear Stearns’ type emergency bailout fast enough if there is a new huge financial meltdown emerging. So far, those efforts have succeeded in part, but all this means is one that more bullet has been dodged. How many times can they do that?

• A likelihood of political turmoil in many nations over the food situation. For example, Argentina is in the middle of an incredible battle between farmers and the government’s policies to tax/tariff agricultural exports. The months long battle between farmers and truckers who are paralyzing their economy and a totally unrelenting government may lead to a revolution there. Other nations such as Egypt, China, and India tried to reduce budget busting food and energy subsidies but had to pull back on subsidy reductions due to widespread riots.

• China is exhibit number one in vulnerability to a food and energy shortage. There is one thing above all that China fears, that is a big viral insurrection involving the 800 million disenfranchised rural peasants. The rising food and energy prices worldwide are hammering the world’s poorest, who already spend over 50% of their $2 a day income on food. The rising food and energy prices are causing worldwide riots as of now, in many disparate places, from the richer EU region, to poor Asia, to India, to South America. 09 does not look good in this respect.

• The prospects of the world having a record grain harvest in 2008 are rapidly diminishing. Although it’s stated that China may have record harvests this year, the US, the world’s biggest grain exporter, is seeing widespread damage to its grain crops. Without the US ability to continue huge grain exports into 09, the world will face new grain export restrictions by many other grain exporters. This will lead to a real world food crisis into 09. There is no bigger factor that will lead to world destabilization than food shortages.

• The commodity markets will continue to drive prices up, and big investment funds will continue to pump billions into these markets, making prices shoot higher. There will be a big controversy over financial gains in energy and food commodities into 09.

• A new US president will likely be tested by some military related threat. That is a typical cycle, and it’s coming in 09 as well.

Some serious doubts about the EU and the Euro

The list of dangers goes on, but we also see some risk that the Euro will lose credibility if there is continued strife over EU political organization. In addition, the weaker South EU nations are in a big controversy with the stronger North (Germany) over the direction of inflation fighting. The weaker EU economies cannot tolerate a strong Euro, while Germany staunchly resists inflationary policies. We foresee some kind of break between the two factions going into 09.

A very curious story came out this week about Germans shunning non German EU Euro notes, trading out the ones from the weaker southern nation EU mints, based on the two letter mint codes on the note serial numbers. That can lead to retaliation by the other country’s people, and is a very viral thing that could spread rapidly and severely harm the credibility of the Euro.

Crash risk in Summer/Fall 08

Overall, we believe that this Summer will lead to moderate market turmoil, followed by severe market turmoil in the Fall and Winter 08 as market sentiments deteriorate. It does not help that the Royal Bank of Scotland just issued a world market crash alert this week. Nor does it help that Morgan just put out a report that there is a big risk of a financial ‘catastrophic event’ due to the ECB fighting the Fed regarding interest rates and monetary policy…

“We see striking similarities between the transatlantic tensions that built up in the early 1990s and those that are accumulating again today. The outcome of the 1992 deadlock was a major currency crisis and a recession in Europe,” said a report by Morgan Stanley’s European experts…” –Morgan

By Christopher Laird

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article5140.html

Baracka Obama to Nuke Iran,

 Blames The Palestinians For The Conflict!

By Chris Hedges

The failure by Barack Obama to chart another course in the Middle East, to defy the Israel lobby and to denounce the Bush administration’s inexorable march toward a conflict with Iran is a failure to challenge the collective insanity that has gripped the political leadership in the United States and Israel.

Obama, in a miscalculation that will have grave consequences, has given his blessing to the widening circle of violence and abuse of the Palestinians by Israel and, most dangerously, to those in the Bush White House and Jerusalem now plotting a war against Iran. He illustrates how the lust for power is morally corrosive. And while he may win the White House, by the time he takes power he will be trapped in George Bush’s alternative reality.
More from Chris Hedges:

“Humanity Does Not Change”

There is nothing in human nature or human history to justify the idea that we are progressing morally as a species.

Read the introduction to Hedges’ new book “Collateral Damage”

We need to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to stay the hand of Israel, which is building more settlements—including a new plan to put 800 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem—and imposing draconian measures to physically break the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. We need, most of all, to prevent a war with Iran.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, in a letter to President Bush on May 8, threatened to open impeachment proceedings if Bush attacked Iran. The letter is a signal that planning for strikes on Iran is under way and pronounced.

“Our concerns in this area have been heightened by more recent events,” Conyers wrote. “The resignation in mid-March of Admiral William J. ‘Fox’ Fallon from the head of U.S. Central Command, which was reportedly linked to a magazine article that portrayed him as the only person who might stop your Administration from waging preemptive war against Iran, has renewed widespread concerns that your Administration is unilaterally planning for military action against that country. This is despite the fact that the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, a stark reversal of previous Administration assessments.”

The administration, in rhetoric that is eerily similar to that used to build the case for a war against Iraq, asserts that the Iranian Quds Force is arming anti-American groups in Iraq and providing them with high-tech roadside bombs and sophisticated rockets. It dismisses the National Intelligence Estimate conclusion that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program. The White House has not provided evidence to back up its claims. I suspect it never will. And when Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz tells the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth an attack on Iran is “unavoidable” if Tehran does not halt its alleged nuclear weapons program, what he is really telling us is we should prepare for war.

Conyers’ threat is too little too late, especially if the Bush White House, possibly assisted by Israel, launches airstrikes on some or all of 1,000 selected Iranian targets in the final weeks of the administration. But it is an effort. Conyers tried.

This is more than we can say for the presumptive Democratic nominee.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080608_the_iran_trap/

Obama went before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Wednesday and said he will stand with the right-wing Israeli government, even if this means backing an attack on Iran.

“As president I will use all elements of American power to pressure Iran,” he said. “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything.”

Obama went on to blame the Palestinians for the conflict, although the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed in 2007 was 40 to 1. This is an increase from 30 to 1 in 2006 and 4 to 1 in 2000-2005.

“I will bring to the White House an unshakable commitment to Israel’s security. That starts with ensuring Israel’s qualitative military advantage, …” Obama told AIPAC. “I will ensure Israel can defend itself from any threat, from Gaza to Tehran. …”

Obama spoke about Israelis whose houses were damaged by the crude rockets, most made out of old pipes, fired from Gaza on Israeli towns. He never mentioned the Israeli siege of Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, or that Israel was deploying fighter jets and helicopters to attack densely crowded refugee camps with missiles and iron fragmentation bombs or that it had cut off food and fuel. He ignored the steady expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. He called for Jerusalem to become the “undivided capital” of the Jewish state, erasing Arab East Jerusalem from the map in contravention of international law. East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are internationally recognized as occupied Palestinian territories, which Israel took over in 1967. Obama’s stance is the moral equivalent of assuring the Johannesburg government during the apartheid era that one would support their repressive efforts to punish the restive blacks in the townships.

The deterioration of the conflict in Israel, which would be accelerated by airstrikes on Iran and an ensuring regional war, will propel us into the Armageddon-type scenario in the Middle East relished by the lunatic fringes of the radical Christian right. And so, with Obama’s enthusiastic endorsement, we barrel toward a Dr. Strangelove self-immolation. No one will be able to say we did not go out with a spectacular show of firepower, gore and death. Our European and Middle Eastern allies, who are numb with consternation over our death spiral, are frantically trying to reach out to Tehran diplomatically.

The instant we attack Iran, oil prices will double, perhaps triple. This price increase will devastate the American economy. The ensuing retaliatory strikes by Iran on Israel, as well as on American military installations in Iraq, will leave hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead. The Shiites in the region, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, will see an attack on Iran as a war against Shiism. They will turn with rage and violence on us and our allies. Hezbollah will renew attacks on northern Israel. And the localized war in Iraq will become a long, messy and protracted regional war that, by the time it is done, will most likely end the American empire and leave in its wake mounds of corpses and smoldering ruins.

The Israeli leadership, like the Bush White House, is increasingly bellicose and threatening. The Israeli prime minister, after a 90-minute meeting with Bush in the White House on Wednesday, said the two leaders were of one mind. “We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat,” Ehud Olmert said. “I left with a lot less questions marks than I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it and intends to act on the matter before the end of his term in the White House.”

This time around, unlike about the war with Iraq, the Washington bureaucracy, loathed by the Bush White House, did not remain silent and complicit. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program released last Dec. 3 distinguished Iran’s enrichment of uranium at Natanz and Arak from its formal nuclear weapons program, which it said had halted in 2003 after the American invasion of Iraq. Adm. Fallon, who put his country and his integrity before his career, spoke out against a war with Iran, tried to stop it and lost his job as the head of CENTCOM. He has been replaced with Gen. David H. Petraeus, whose devotion to his career admits no such moral impediments.

“ … There is no greater threat to Israel or peace than Iran,” Obama assured AIPAC. “This audience is made up of both Republicans and Democrats. And the enemies of Israel should have no doubt that regardless of party, Americans stand shoulder to shoulder in support of Israel’s security. … The Iran regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and … its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. … My goal will be to eliminate this threat.”

Barack Obama, when we need sane leadership the most, has proved feckless and weak. He, and the Democratic leadership, is as morally bankrupt as those preparing to ignite our funeral pyre in the Middle East.

Israel’s confrontation with Iran may begin with an invasion of Gaza

It’s been a year since Hamas asserted its rightful role as the democratically elected government in the Gaza Strip after corrupt Fatah forces there had unsuccessfully tried to usurp Hamas’s governance of the Palestinian enclave. Hamas’s victory in the January 2006 elections was not recognised by Israel or the US, the two nations on our planet that scream loudest about the necessity of democracy in the region. Instead, they ensured that the corrupt Fatah organisation under Abbas took control of Palestinian affairs, a move that, while successful in the West Bank, was unsuccessful in the Gaza.

Ever since Hamas took control of the Gaza, the Israelis have hounded the Gazan Palestinians, in many cases, literally to death through bombing and denial of basic health access. Hundreds of men, women and children have died through indiscriminate IDF helicopter gunship and strike fighter aircraft attacks on the densely populated Gaza Strip. Tens of thousands more are suffering through the lack fuel and other supplies. Scores have died through not being allowed to leave the Gaza for proper medical treatment. Homes have been demolished and much of what little productive land remains that is able to provide food has been bulldozed bare by the Israelis. All this has been in an effort to dislodge Hamas from their position of governance. In short, the Gazan people are being collectively punished for having had the temerity to exercise their democratic rights voting in a government that the Israel and the US do not accept.

In an effort to stem and deter the Israeli attacks on the Gazan people and their government, Palestinian fighters have launched crude and largely ineffective rockets against Israel, acts that Israel simply uses as an excuse for even more attacks against the Gazan people.

During the past year the Israelis have threatened to launch a full-on invasion of the Gaza to oust Hamas from power using Hamas’s futile rocket attacks against Israel as the casus belli for such an invasion. Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister has on countless occasions threatened such action but, as yet, has not carried it out despite Hamas and other Palestinian fighters continuing to launch their rockets against Israel.

Israel has always sought to justify anything they do militarily by telling the world that they are merely acting in response to acts committed against them by their Arab enemies. They rarely strike openly without trying to find some excuse to justify their crimes, even if it is one that they have had to invent for the purpose.

As the USS Liberty Affair and the Lavon Affair demonstrated in the past, the Israelis are not above committing crimes themselves and then deflecting blame for those crimes onto others in order to get other nations to help their fight wars with them or, better still, for them. Nor are the Israelis above getting non-Israeli Diaspora Jews that support the Zionist dream to work toward those ends. Jewish-American neoconservatives whose loyalties to Israel are stronger than their loyalties to the US together with their non-Jewish supporters have orchestrated and manipulated US governmental affairs over the last eight years in such a way as to benefit Israel. As a direct result of 9/11, a crime that is now increasingly being questioned with regard to who the true perpetrators were, the US is launching an all out propaganda war against Islam. It also provided the casus belli for an attack against the peoples of Afghanistan where Israel says its enemies hide, and it also provided the casus belli for the invasion and destruction of Iraq, a country led by Saddam Hussein who financially supported the Palestinian cause but had nothing to do with 9/11.

Iran is now the only nation left that is powerful enough to stand in the way of the Zionist’s dream of a Greater Israel that includes the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the Shebaa Farms and south Lebanon up to the Litani River. Without Iran to supply and support Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas the Israeli Zionists believe that their dream of a Greater Israel can be realised.

All they need is an excuse, a casus belli, to attack Iran but it is something that they cannot do alone; they need the US to do it for them. Hamas in the Gaza may just be the fuse they need to ignite their final confrontation against Iran. By attacking Hamas, Israel knows that Hezbollah will likely come to their aid by launching rockets against northern Israel. This, as in the last war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, will be the excuse the Israelis need to launch an all-out attack against and an invasion of Lebanon. The first sign of any Iranian weapons being used by Hezbollah against the Israelis will be all that is needed to launch a deadly aerial bombardment campaign against Iran designed to force capitulation and regime change.

The on-again-off-again threatened attack against Hamas in the Gaza that could well spark a confrontation between Israel and Iran, drawing in the US, is being threatened again.

The world should make no mistake about what is happening. Hamas and their hold on the Gaza are being used by the Israelis to provide the launch pad for their final confrontation with Iran.

http://lataan.blogspot.com/2008/06/its-all-matter-of-timing-for-israels.html

Canada’s growing support for Israel

Ron Csillag

For many Canadian Jews, the country’s prime minister has been more than just a breath of fresh air when it comes to support for Israel. They wonder whether Stephen Harper may be too good to be true.

TORONTO (JTA) — For many Canadian Jews, the country’s prime minister has been more than just a breath of fresh air when it comes to support for Israel. They wonder whether Stephen Harper may be too good to be true.

Elected with a minority Conservative government in January 2006, Harper has left an unmistakable record of solidly and unapologetically pro-Israel moves and statements, mostly to the delight of the country’s 370,000 Jews.

For example, at Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations marking Israel’s 60th birthday earlier this month, the 7,000 audience members thundered their approval when Harper declared Canada’s “unshakable support” for the Jewish state before adding, “Our government believes that those who threaten Israel also threaten Canada.”

For many Jewish observers, the warm words are a far cry from the tepid and sometimes hostile attitude of the Liberal Party, which governed Canada longer than any party and all but took the Jewish vote for granted.

Indeed, Canadian Jews have tended to vote Liberal. One informal study showed that during the 1970s, the years of Pierre Trudeau, they voted for the Liberals at a rate 20 percent higher than the national average.

The last survey of Jewish views, in 1987, found that among rabbis, Jewish academics and community leaders in Montreal and Toronto, 41 percent called themselves Liberals, 21 percent Conservatives and 15 percent aligned with the left-wing New Democratic Party.

For Rochelle Wilner, a former president of the right-leaning B’nai Brith Canada, the Conservative Tories’ pro-Israel stance has been refreshing.

“You have no idea,” she sighs, adding that the talk on the Jewish street “is definitely in support of Harper, his principles and policies.”

Wilner is running as a Conservative for a Toronto-area seat in Parliament in the next election, which is widely expected later this year or in early 2009. Currently there are no Jewish members in the Parliament in the governing party — a first since 1980.

At the United Nations, Harper’s government has continued a trend that began in the late stages of the previous Liberal government.

The Canada-Israel Committee reports that in the past three years, there have been 13 “constructive vote changes” — including shifts from a “yes” or “no” to abstentions — on issues related to Palestine and Israel.

In March, Canada provided the lone dissenting vote when the 47-seat U.N. Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly to condemn Israel for its armed incursions into the Gaza Strip.

In substance, Canada’s Middle East policy has not changed under the Conservatives. It still recognizes Israel’s “right to assure its own security,” and calls for the “creation of a sovereign, independent, viable, democratic and territorially contiguous Palestinian state as part of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace settlement.”

But like his fellow evangelical Protestants, Harper seems to be a genuine fan of Israel and Canadian Jewry. His championing of Israel “is personal and philosophical,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s Larry Zolf noted in a recent online column.

“He admires Israel’s toughness and military elan,” Zolf wrote.

As Wilner sees it, Harper’s support for Israel is a result of his living “by a code of ethics and principles. “

“He has a moral compass and he’s guided by that; I honestly think it’s that simple,” she said. “There’s nothing hidden. Often he has said he supports Israel because it’s the morally right thing to do.”

Even so, many opine that Harper and his Tories have left Canada open to accusations that its much-vaunted neutrality is gone.

“That Canadian attempt at even-handedness has utterly disappeared under Stephen Harper, who lavishly celebrated Israel’s 60th anniversary with promises of Canada’s ‘unshakeable’ support while utterly ignoring the fact that this is also an anniversary — although a very different one — for the Palestinians,” left-wing columnist Linda McQuaig wrote recently in the Toronto Star.

Harper’s seeming shift was most evident at the outset of Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon, when the prime minister said he supported Israel’s “right to defend itself” and described its military campaign in Lebanon as “measured.”

At a huge rally for Israel in Toronto that summer, well-known Jewish film producer Robert Lantos received a thunderous ovation when he thanked Harper for his government’s “principled support” and said he was doffing his “lifelong federal Liberal hat.”

Lantos was soon joined in the Tory fold by other high-profile Jewish Liberals, including Gerry Schwartz , the president of the Onex Corp., and his wife, Heather Reisman, the CEO of Indigo Books & Music.

In January, Canada provided Israel another boost when Ottawa announced it would boycott the follow-up to the 2001 anti-racism conference in South Africa. The Harper government assailed the Durban parley as a “gong show” and “a circus of intolerance” directed mainly at Israel.

The follow-up conference will take place in Geneva in April 2009.

But what do all these positions mean on the political battlefield?

“There’s been some shift” toward the Conservatives among Jews, “but it’s not as big as most people think,” says longtime Liberal pollster Martin Goldfarb. “Israel is not the only issue facing Jews. They are not a one-issue people.”

Indeed, while mainstream Canadian Jews tend to be very supportive of — and hawkish on — Israel, on domestic matters such as social policy, immigration, justice and anti-racism programs, they tend to be far more liberal, Goldfarb said.

Thus, many Jews in Canada, Goldfarb included, find themselves torn between the Conservatives’ support for Israel and the rest of their agenda.

“I like what Mr. Harper is doing with respect to his Middle East policy, but I am not yet prepared to vote for the Conservatives” because of a series of other issues that affect the middle class and lower middle class, he said.

As examples, Goldfarb cited tax policies, post-secondary education, crumbling cities, and health and child care.

McGill University sociologist Morton Weinfeld, Canada’s pre-eminent watcher of Jewish trends, agrees.

“Those Jews who see the security of Israel at the heart of their political agenda might tend to be more supportive of the Conservatives,” he said, noting that the trend is mirrored among the slight increase in support for Republicans among U.S. Jews, who still vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

“If the security of Israel is your No. 1 defining concern, then you’re less torn,” Weinfeld said. “But if it’s a concern along with other domestic concerns and you are a progressive supporter of Israel, then you are more torn.”

Apart from anecdotal evidence that many Jews “have been struck by the clarity of the Conservative government’s position on Israel,” Weinfeld says there is no hard data to show a large-scale rightward Jewish shift.

http://jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/print/20080528canada05272008.html

US/IRAN: Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan

WASHINGTON, Jun 6 (IPS) - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.

J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defence Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposal several weeks earlier “launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran”, citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack. Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make “a policy decision about how far the administration would go — what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks.”

The question of escalation posed by DoD officials involved not only the potential of the Mahdi Army in Iraq to attack, Carpenter said, but possible responses by Hezbollah and by Iran itself across the Middle East.

Carpenter suggested that DoD officials were shifting the debate on a limited strike from the Iraq-based rationale, which they were not contesting, to the much bigger issue of the threat of escalation to full-scale war with Iran, knowing that it would be politically easier to thwart the proposal on that basis.

The former State Department official said DoD “knew that it would be difficult to get interagency consensus on that question”.

The Joint Chiefs were fully supportive of the position taken by Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on the Cheney proposal, according to Carpenter. “It’s clear that the military leadership was being very conservative on this issue,” he said.

At least some DoD and military officials suggested that Iran had more and better options for hitting back at the United States than the United States had for hitting Iran, according to one former Bush administration insider.

Former Bush speechwriter and senior policy adviser Michael Gerson, who had left the administration in 2006, wrote a column in the Washington Post Jul. 20, 2007 in which he gave no hint of Cheney’s proposal, but referred to “options” for striking Iranian targets based on the Cheney line that Iran “smuggles in the advanced explosive devices that kill and maim American soldiers”.

Gerson cited two possibilities: “Engaging in hot pursuit against weapon supply lines over the Iranian border or striking explosives factories and staging areas within Iran.” But the Pentagon and the military leadership were opposing such options, he reported, because of the fear that Iran has “escalation dominance” in its conflict with the United States.

That meant, according to Gerson that, “in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs.”

Carpenter’s account of the Pentagon’s position on the Cheney proposal suggests, however, that civilian and military opponents were saying that Iran’s ability to escalate posed the question of whether the United States was going to go to a full-scale air war against Iran.

Pentagon civilian and military opposition to such a strategic attack on Iran had become well-known during 2007. But this is the first evidence from an insider that Cheney’s proposal was perceived as a ploy to provoke Iranian retaliation that could used to justify a strategic attack on Iran.

The option of attacking nuclear sites had been raised by President Bush with the Joint Chiefs at a meeting in “the tank” at the Pentagon on Dec. 13, 2006 and had been opposed by the Joint Chiefs, according a report by Time magazine’s Joe Klein last June. After he become head of the Central Command in March 2007, Adm. William Fallon also made his opposition to such a massive attack on Iran known to the White House, according Middle East specialist Hillary Mann, who had developed close working relationships with Pentagon officials when she worked on the National Security Council staff.

It appeared in early 2007, therefore, that a strike at Iran’s nuclear programme and military power had been blocked by opposition from the Pentagon. Cheney’s proposal for an attack on IRGC bases in June 2007, tied to the alleged Iranian role in providing both weapons — especially the highly lethal explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) — and training to Shiite militias appears to have been a strategy for getting around the firm resistance of military leaders to such an unprovoked attack.

Although the Pentagon bottled up the Cheney proposal in inter-agency discussions, Cheney had a strategic asset which could he could use to try to overcome that obstacle: his alliance with Gen. David Petraeus.

As IPS reported earlier this week, Cheney had already used Gen. David Petraeus’ takeover as the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq in early February 2007 to do an end run about the Washington national security bureaucracy to establish the propaganda line that Iran was manufacturing EFPs and shipping them to the Mahdi Army militiamen.

Petraeus was also a supporter of Cheney’s proposal for striking IRGC targets in Iran, going so far as to hint in an interview with Fox News last September that he had passed on to the White House his desire to do something about alleged Iranian assistance to Shiites that would require U.S. forces beyond his control.

At that point, Adm. Fallon was in a position to deter any effort to go around DoD and military opposition to such a strike because he controlled all military access to the region as a whole. But Fallon’s forced resignation in March and the subsequent promotion of Petraeus to become CENTCOM chief later this year gives Cheney a possible option to ignore the position of his opponents in Washington once more in the final months of the administration.

• Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

http://www.ipsnews.org/news.asp?idnews=42696

Separatism and Empire Building in the 21st Century

James Petras 

Throughout modern imperial history, ‘Divide and Conquer’ has been the essential ingredient in allowing relatively small and resource-poor European countries to conquer nations vastly larger in size and populations and richer in natural resources.

Introduction: The Historical Context

It is said that for every British officer in India, there were fifty Sikhs, Gurkhas, Muslims and Hindus in the British Colonial Army. The European conquest of Africa and Asia was directed by white officers, fought by black, brown and yellow soldiers so that white capital could exploit colored workers and peasants. Regional, ethnic, religious, clan, tribal, community, village and other differences were politicized and exploited allowing imperial armies to conquer warring peoples. In recent decades, the US empire builders have become the grand masters of ‘divide and conquer’ strategies throughout the world. By the 1970’s, the CIA made a turn from promoting the dubious virtues of capitalism and democracy, to linking up with, financing and directing, religious, ethnic and regional elites against national regimes, independent or hostile to US world empire building.

The key to US military empire building follows two principles: direct military invasions and fomenting separatist movements, which can lead to military confrontation.

Twenty-first century empire building has seen the extended practice of both principles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, China (Tibet), Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Somalia, Sudan, Burma and Palestine – any country in which the US cannot secure a stable client regime, it resorts to financing and promoting separatist organizations and leaders using ethnic, religious and regional pretexts.

Consistent with traditional empire building principles, Washington only supports separatists in countries that refuse to submit to imperial domination and opposes separatists who resist the empire and its allies. In other words, imperial ideologues are neither ‘hypocrites’ nor resort to ‘double standards’ (as they are accused by liberal critics) – they publicly uphold the ‘Empire first’ principle as their defining criteria for evaluating separatist movements and granting or denying support. In contrast, many seemingly progressive critics of empire make universal statements in favor of the ‘right to self-determination’ and even extend it to the most rancid, reactionary, imperial-sponsored ’separatist groups’ with catastrophic results. Independent nations and their people, who oppose US-backed separatists, are bombed to oblivion and charged with ‘war crimes’. People, who oppose the separatists and who reside in the ‘new state’, are killed or driven into exile. The ‘liberated people’ suffer from the tyranny and impoverishment induced by the US-backed separatists and many are forced to immigrate to other countries for economic survival.

Few if any of the progressive critics of the USSR and supporters of the separatist republics have ever publicly expressed second thoughts, let alone engaged in self-critical reflections, even in the face of decades long socio-economic and political catastrophes in the secessionist states. Yet it was and is the case that these self-same progressives today, who continue to preach high moral principles to those who question and reject some separatist movements because they originate and grow out of efforts to extend the US empire.

Washington’s success in co-opting so-called progressive liberals in support of separatist movements soon to be new imperial clients in recent decades is long and the consequences for human rights are ugly.

Most European and US progressives supported the following:

1. US-backed Bosnian fundamentalists, Croatian neo-fascists and Kosova-Albanian terrorists, leading to ethnic cleansing and the conversion of their once sovereign states into US military bases, client regimes and economic basket cases – totally destroying the multinational Yugoslavian welfare state.

2. The US funded and armed overseas Afghan Islamic fundamentalists who destroyed a secular, reformist, gender-equal Afghan regime, carrying out vast anti-feudal campaigns involving both men and women, a comprehensive agrarian reform and constructing extensive health and educational programs. As a result of US-Islamic tribal military successes, millions were killed, displaced and dispossessed and fanatical medieval anti-Communist tribal warlords destroyed the unity of the country.

3. The US invasion destroyed Iraq’s modern, secular, nationalist state and advanced socio-economic system. During the occupation, US backing of rival religious, tribal, clan and ethnic separatist movements and regimes led to the expulsion of over 90% of its modern scientific and professional class and the killing of over 1 million Iraqis…all in the name of ousting a repressive regime and above all in destroying a state opposed to Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

Clearly US military intervention promotes separatism as a means of establishing a regional ‘base of support’. Separatism facilitates setting up a minority puppet regime and works to counter neighboring countries opposed to the depredations of empire. In the case of Iraq, US-backed Kurdish separatism preceded the imperial campaign to isolate an adversary, create international coalitions to pressure and weaken the central government. Washington highlights regime atrocities as human rights cases to feed global propaganda campaigns. More recently this is evident in the US-financed ‘Tibetan’ theocratic protests at China.

Separatists are backed as potential terrorist shock troops in attacking strategic economic sectors and providing real or fabricated ‘intelligence’ as is the case in Iran among the Kurds and other ethnic minority groups.

Why Separatism?

Empire builders do not always resort to separatist groups, especially when they have clients at the national levels in control of the state. It is only when their power is limited to groups, territorially or ethnically concentrated, that the intelligence operatives resort to and promote ’separatist’ movements. US backed separatist movements follow a step-by-step process, beginning with calls for ‘greater autonomy’ and ‘decentralization’, essentially tactical moves to gain a local political power base, accumulate economic revenues, repress anti-separatist groups and local ethnic/religious, political minorities with ties to the central government (as in the oppression of the Christian communities in northern Iraq repressed by the Kurdish separatists for their long ties with the Central Baath Party or the Roma of Kosova expelled and killed by the Kosova Albanians because of their support of the Yugoslav federal system). The attempt to forcibly usurp local resources and the ousting of local allies of the central government results in confrontations and conflict with the legitimate power of the central government. It is at this point that external (imperial) support is crucial in mobilizing the mass media to denounce repression of ‘peaceful national movements’ merely ‘exercising their right to self-determination’. Once the imperial mass media propaganda machine touches the noble rhetoric of ’self-determination’ and ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ‘home rule’, the great majority of US and European funded NGO’s jump on board, selectively attacking the government’s effort to maintain a stable unified nation-state. In the name of ‘diversity’ and a ‘pluri-ethnic state’, the Western-bankrolled NGO’s provide a moralist ideological cover to the pro-imperialist separatists. When the separatists succeed and murder and ethnically cleanse the ethnic and religious minorities linked to the former central state, the NGO’s are remarkably silent or even complicit in justifying the massacres as ‘understandable over-reaction to previous repression’. The propaganda machine of the West, even gloats over the separatist state expulsion of hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities – as in the case of the Serbs and Roma from Kosova and the Krijina region of Croatia…with headlines blasting – “Serbs on the Run: Serves Them Right!’ followed by photos of NATO troops overseeing the ‘transfer’ of destitute families from their ancestral villages and towns to squalid camps in a bombed out Serbia. And the triumphant Western politicians mouthing pieties at the massacres of Serb civilians by the KLA, as when former German Foreign Minister “Joschka” Fischer (Green Party) mourned, “I understand your (the KLA’s) pain, but you shouldn’t throw grenades at (ethnic Serb) school children.”

The shift from ‘autonomy’ within a federal state to an ‘independent state’ is based on the aid channeled and administered by the imperial state to the ‘autonomous region’, thus strengthening its ‘de facto’ existence as a separate state. This has clearly occurred in the Kurdish run northern Iraq ‘no fly zone’ and now ‘autonomous region’ from 1991 to the present.

The same principle of self-determination demanded by the US and its separatist client is denied to ‘minorities’ within the realm. Instead, the US propaganda media refer to them as ‘agents’ or ‘trojan horses’ of the central government.

Strengthened by imperial ‘foreign aid’, and business links with US and EU MNCs, backed by local para-military and quasi-military police forces (as well as organized criminal gangs), the autonomous regime declares its ‘independence’. Shortly thereafter it is recognized by its imperial patrons. After ‘independence’, the separatist regime grants territorial concessions and building sites for US military bases. Investment privileges are granted to the imperial patron, severely compromising ‘national’ sovereignty.

The army of local and international NGO’s rarely raise any objections to this process of incorporating the separatist entity into the empire, even when the ‘liberated’ people object. In most cases the degree of ‘local governance’ and freedom of action of the ‘independent’ regime is less than it was when it was an autonomous or federal region in the previous unified nationalist state.

Not infrequently ’separatist’ regimes are part of irredentist movements linked to counterparts in other states. When cross national irredentist movements challenge neighboring states which are also targets of the US empire builders, they serve as launching pads for US low intensity military assaults and Special Forces terrorist activities.

For example, almost all of the Kurdish separatist organizations draw a map of ‘Greater Kurdistan’ which covers a third of Southeastern Turkey, Northern Iraq, a quarter of Iran, parts of Syria and wherever else they can find a Kurdish enclave. US commandos operate along side Kurdish separatists terrorizing Iranian villages (in the name of self-determination; Kurds with powerful US military backing have seized and govern Northern Iraq and provide mercenary Peshmerga troops to massacre Iraqi Arab civilian in cities and towns resisting the US occupation in Central, Western and Southern regions. They have engaged in the forced displacement of non-Kurds (including Arabs, Chaldean Christians, Turkman and others) from so-called Iraqi Kurdistan and the confiscation of their homes, businesses and farms. US-backed Kurdish separatists have created conflicts with the neighboring Turkish government, as Washington tries to retain its Kurdish clients for their utility in Iraq, Iran and Syria without alienating its strategic NATO client, Turkey. Nevertheless Turkish-Kurdish separatist activists in the PKK have lauded the US for, what they term, ‘progressive colonialism’ in effectively dismembering Iraq and forming the basis for a Kurdish state.

The US decision to collaborate with the Turkish military, or at least tolerate its military attacks on certain sectors of the Iraq-based Kurdish separatists, the PKK, is part of its global policy of prioritizing strategic imperial alliances and allies over and against any separatist movement which threatens them. Hence, while the US supports the Kosova separatists against Serbia, it opposes the separatists in Abkhazia fighting against its client in the Republic of Georgia. While the US supported Chechen separatist against the Moscow government, it opposes Basque and Catalan separatists in their struggle against Washington’s NATO ally, Spain. While Washington has been bankrolling the Bolivian separatists headed by the oligarchs of Santa Cruz against the central government in La Paz, it supports the Chilean government’s repression of the Mapuche Indian claims to land and resources in south-central Chile.

Clearly ’self-determination’ and ‘independence’ are not the universal defining principle in US foreign policy, nor has it ever been, as witness the US wars against Indian nations, secessionist southern slaveholders and yearly invasions of independent Latin American, Asian and African states. What guides US policy is the question of whether a separatist movement, its leaders and program furthers empire building or not? The inverse question however is infrequently raised by so-called progressives, leftists or self-described anti-imperialists: Does the separatist or independence movement weaken the empire and strengthen anti-imperialist forces or not? If we accept that the over-riding issue is defeating the multi-million killing machine called US imperialism, then it is legitimate to evaluate and support, as well as reject, some independence movements and not others. There is nothing ‘hypocritical’ or ‘inconvenient’ in raising higher principles in making these political choices. Clearly Hitler justified the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the name of defending Sudetenland separatists; just like a series of US Presidents have justified the partition of Iraq in the name of defending the Kurds, or Sunnis or Shia or whatever tribal leaders lend themselves to US empire building.

What defines anti-imperialist politics is not abstract principles about ’self-determination’ but defining exactly who is the ’self’ – in other words, what political forces linked to what international power configuration are making what political claim for what political purpose. If, as in Bolivia today, a rightwing racist, agro-business oligarchy seizes control of the most fertile and energy rich region, containing 75% of the country’s natural resources, in the name of ’self-determination’ and autonomy, expelling and brutalizing impoverished Indians in the process – on what basis can the left or anti-imperialist movement oppose it, if not because the class, race and national content of that claim is antithetical to an even more important principle – popular sovereignty based on the democratic principles of majority rule and equal access to public wealth?

Separatism in Latin America: Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador

In recent years the US backed candidates have won and lost national election in Latin America. Clearly the US has retained hegemony over the governing elites in Mexico, Colombia, Central America, Peru, Chile, Uruguay and some of the Caribbean island states. In states where the electorate has backed opponents of US dominance, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua, Washington’s influence is dependent on regional, provincial and locally elected officials. It is premature to state, as the Council for Foreign Relations claims, that ‘US hegemony in Latin America is a thing of the past.’ One only has to read the economic and political record of the close and growing military and economic ties between Washington and the Calderon regime in Mexico, the Garcia regime in Peru, Bachelet in Chile and Uribe in Colombia to register the fact that US hegemony still prevails in important regions of Latin America. If we look beyond the national governmental level, even in the non-hegemonized states, US influence still is a potent factor shaping the political behavior of powerful right-wing business, financial and regional political elites in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina. By the end of May 2008, US backed regionalist movements were on the offensive, establishing a de facto secessionist regime in Santa Cruz in Bolivia. In Argentina, the agro-business elite has organized a successful nationwide production and distribution lockout, backed by the big industrial, financial and commercial confederations, against an export tax promoted by the ‘center-left’ Kirchner government. In Colombia, the US is negotiating with the paramilitary President Uribe over the site of a military base on the frontier with Venezuela’s oil rich state of Zulia, which happens to be ruled by the only anti-Chavez governor in power, a strong promoter of ‘autonomy’ or secession. In Ecuador, the Mayor of Guayaquil, backed by the right wing mass media and the discredited traditional political parties have proposed ‘autonomy’ from the central government of President Rafael Correa. The process of imperial driven nation dismemberment is very uneven because of the different degrees of political power relations between the central government and the regional secessionists. The right wing secessionists in Bolivia have advanced the furthest – actually organizing and winning a referendum and declaring themselves an independent governing unit with the power to collect taxes, formulate foreign economic policy and create its own police force.

The success of the Santa Cruz secessionist is due to the political incapacity and total incompetence of the Evo Morales-Garcia Linera regime which promoted ‘autonomy’ for the scores of impoverished Indian ‘nations’ (or indianismo) and ended up laying the groundwork for the white racist oligarchs to seize the opportunity to establish their own ’separatist’ power base. As the separatist gained control over the local population, they intimidated the ‘indians’ and trade union supporters of the Morales regime, violently sabotaged the constitutional assembly, rejected the constitution, while constantly extracting concession for the flaccid and conciliatory central government of the Evo Morales. While the separatists trashed the constitution and used their control over the major means of production and exports to recruit five other provinces, forming a geographic arc of six provinces, and influence in two others in their drive to degrade the national government. The Morales-Garcia Linera ‘indianista’ regime, largely made up of mestizos formerly employed in NGOs funded from abroad, never used its formal constitutional power and monopoly of legitimate force to enforce constitutional order and outlaw and prosecute the secessionists’ violation of national integrity and rejection of the democratic order.

Morales never mobilized the country, the majority of popular organizations in civil society, or even called on the military to put down the secessionists. Instead he continued to make impotent appeals for ‘dialog’, for compromises in which his concessions to oligarch self-rule only confirmed their drive for regional power. As a case study of failed governance, in the face of a reactionary separatist threat to the nation, the Morales-Garcia Linera regime represents an abject failure to defend popular sovereignty and the integrity of the nation.

The lessons of failed governance in Bolivia stand as a grim reminder to Chavez in Venezuela and Correa in Ecuador: Unless they act with full force of the constitution to crush the embryonic separatist movements before they gain a power base, they will also face the break-up of their countries. The biggest threat is in Venezuela, where the US and Colombian militaries have built bases on the frontier bordering the Venezuelan state of Zulia, infiltrated commandos and paramilitary forces into the province, and see the takeover of the oil-rich province as a beach-head to deprive the central government of its vital oil revenues and destabilize the central government.

Several years into a Washington-backed and financed separatist movement in Bolivia, a few progressive academics and pundits have taken notice and published critical commentaries. Unfortunately these articles lack any explanatory context, and offer little understanding of how Latin American ’separatism’ fits into long-term, large-scale US empire building strategy over the past quarter of a century.

Today the US-promoted separatist movements in Latin American are actively being pursued in at least three Latin American counties. In Bolivia, the ‘media luna’ or ‘half-moon’ provinces of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija have successfully convoked provincial ‘referendums’ for ‘autonomy’ – code word for secession. On May 4, 2008 the separatists in Santa Cruz succeeded, securing a voter turnout of nearly 50% and winning 80% of the vote. On May 15, the right-wing big business political elite announced the formation of ministries of foreign trade and internal security, assuming the effective powers of a secession state. The US government led by Ambassador Goldberg, provided financial and political support for the right-wing secessionist ‘civic’ organizations through its $125 million dollar aid programs via AID, its tens of millions of dollar ‘anti-drug’ program, and through the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) funded pro-separatist NGOs. At meetings of the Organization of American States and other regional meetings the US refused to condemn the separatist movements.

Because of the total incompetence and lack of national political leadership of President Evo Morales and his Vice President Garcia Linera, the Bolivian State is splintering into a series of ‘autonomous’ cantons, as several other provincial governments seek to usurp political power and take over economic resources. From the very beginning, the Morales-Garcia regime signed off on a number of political pacts, adopted a whole series of policies and approved a number of concessions to the oligarchic elites in Santa Cruz, which enabled them to effectively re-build their natural political power base, sabotage an elected Constitutional Assembly and effectively undermine the authority of the central government. Right-wing success took less than 2 ½ years, which is especially amazing considering that in 2005, the country witnessed a major popular uprising which ousted a right-wing president, when millions of workers, miners, peasants and Indians dominated the streets. It is a tribute to the absolute misgovernment of the Morales-Garcia regime, that the country could move so quickly and decisively from a state of insurrectionary popular power to a fragmented and divided country in which a separatist agro-financial elite seizes control of 80% of the productive resources of the country…while the elected central government meekly protests.

The success of the secessionist regional ruling class in Bolivia has encouraged similar ‘autonomy movements’ in Ecuador and Venezuela, led by the mayor of Guayaquil (Ecuador) and Governor of Zulia (Venezuela). In other words, the US-engineered political debacle of the Morales-Garcia regime in Bolivia has led it to team up with oligarchs in Ecuador and Venezuela to repeat the Santa Cruz experience…in a process of “permanent counter-revolutionary separatism.”

Separatism and the Ex-USSR

The defeat of Communism in the USSR had little to do with the ‘arms race bankrupting the system’, as former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzyenski has claimed. Up to the end, living standards were relatively stable and welfare programs continued to operate at near optimal levels and scientific and cultural programs retained substantial state expenditures. The ruling elites who replaced the communist system did not respond to US propaganda about the virtues of ‘free markets and democracy’, as Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton claimed: The proof is evident in the political and economic systems, which they imposed upon taking power and which were neither democratic nor based on competitive markets. These new ethnic-based regimes resembled despotic, predatory, nepotistic monarhies handing over (’privatizing’) the public wealth accumulated over the previous 70 years of collective labor and public investment to a handful of oligarchs and foreign monopolies.

The principle ideological driving force for the current policy of ’separatism’ is ethnic identity politics, which is fostered and financed by US intelligence and propaganda agencies. Ethnic identity politics, which replaced communism, is based on vertical links between the elite and the masses. The new elites rule through clan-family-religious-gang based nepotism, funded and driven through pillage and privatization of public wealth created under Communism. Once in power, the new political elites ‘privatized’ public wealth into family riches and converted themselves and their cronies into an oligarchic ruling class. In most cases the ethnic ties between elites and subjects dissolved in the face of the decline of living standards, the deep class inequalities, the crooked vote counts and state repression.

In all of the ex-USSR states, the new ruling classes only claim to mass legitimacy was based on appeals to sharing a common ethnic identity. They trotted out medieval and royalist symbols from the remote past, dredging up absolutist monarchs, parasitical religious hierarchies, pre-capitalist war lords, bloody emperors and ‘national’ flags from the days of feudal landlords to forge a common history and identity with the ‘newly liberated’ masses. The repeated appeal to past reactionary symbols was entirely appropriate: The contemporary policies of despotism, pillage and personality cults resonated with past ‘historic’ warriors, feudal lords and practices.

As the new post-USSR despots lost their ethnic luster as a consequence of public disillusion with local and foreign predatory pillage of the national wealth, the leaders resorted to systematic force.

The principle success of the US strategy of promoting separatism was in destroying the USSR – not in promoting viable independent capitalist democracies. Washington succeeded in exacerbating ethnic conflicts between Russians and other nationalities, by encouraging local communist bosses to split from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and to form ‘independent states’ where the new rulers could share the booty of the local treasury with new Western partners. The US de-stabilization efforts in the Communist countries, especially after the 1970’s did not compete over living standards, greater industrial growth or over more generous welfare programs. Rather, Western propaganda focused on ethnic solidarity, the one issue that undercut class solidarity and loyalty to the communist state and ideology and strengthened pro-Western elites, especially among ‘public intellectuals’ and recycled Communist bosses-turned ‘nationalist saviors.’

The key point of Western strategy was to first and foremost break-up the USSR via separatist movements no matter if they were fanatical religious fundamentalists, gangster-politicians, Western-trained liberal economists or ambitious upwardly mobile warlords. All that mattered was that they carried the Western separatist banner of ’self-determination’. Subsequently, in the ‘post Soviet period’, the new pro-capitalist ruling elites were recruited to NATO and client state status.

Washington’s post-separatism politics followed a two-step process: In the first phase there was an undifferentiated support for anyone advocating the break-up of the USSR. In the second phase, the US sought to push the most pliable pro-NATO, free market liberals among the lot – the so-called ‘color revolutionaries’, in Georgia and the Ukraine. Separatism was seen as a preliminary step toward an ‘advanced’ stage of re-subordination to the US Empire. The notion of ‘independent states’ is virtually non-existent for US empire builders. At best it exists as a transitional stage from one power constellation to a new US-centered empire.

In the period following the break-up of the USSR, Washington’s subsequent attempts to recruit the new ruling elites to pro-capitalist, client-status was relatively successful. Some countries opened their economies to unregulated exploitation especially of energy resources. Others offered sites for military bases. In many cases local rulers sought to bargain among world powers while enhancing their own private fortune-through-pillage.

None of the ex-Soviet Republics evolved into secular independent democratic republics capable of recovering the living standards, which their people possessed during the Soviet times. Some rulers became theocratic despots where religious notables and dictators mutually supported each other. Others evolved into ugly family-based dictatorships. None of them retained the Soviet era social safety net or high quality educational systems. All the post-Soviet regimes magnified the social inequalities and multiplied the number of criminal-run enterprises. Violent crime grew geometrically increasing citizen insecurity.

The success of US-induced ’separatism’ did create, in most cases, enormous opportunities for Western and Asian pillage of raw materials, especially petroleum resources. The experience of ‘newly independent states’ was, at best, a transitory illusion, as the ruling elite either passed directly into the orbit of Western sphere of influence or became a ‘fig leaf’ for deep structural subordination to Western-dominated circuits of commodity exports and finance.

Out of the break-up of the USSR, Western states allied with those republics where it suited their interests. In some cases they signed agreements with rulers to establish military base lining the pockets of a dictator through loans. In other cases they secured privileged access to economic resources by forming joint ventures. In others they simply ignored a poorly endowed regime and let it wallow in misery and despotism.

Separatism: Eastern Europe, Balkans and the Baltic Countries

The most striking aspect of the break-up of the Soviet bloc was the rapidity and thoroughness with which the countries passed from the Warsaw Pact to NATO, from Soviet political rule to US/EU economic control over almost all of their major economic sectors. The conversion from one form of political economic and military subordination to another highlights the transitory nature of political independence, the superficiality of its operational meaning and the spectacular hypocrisy of the new ruling elite who blithely denounced ‘Soviet domination’ while turning over most economic sectors to Western capital, large tracts of territory for NATO bases and providing mercenary military battalions to fight in US imperial wars to a far greater degree than was ever the case during Soviet times.

Separatism in these areas was an ideology to weaken an adversarial hegemonic coalition, all the better to reincorporate its members in a more virulent and aggressive empire building coalition.

Yugoslavia and Kosova: Forced Separatism

The successful breakup of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact alliance encouraged the US and EU to destroy Yugoslavia, the last remaining independent country outside of US-EU control in West Europe. The break-up of Yugoslavia was initiated by Germany following its annexation and demolition of East Germany’s economy. Subsequently it expanded into the Slovenian and Croatian republics. The US, a relative latecomer in the carving up of the Balkans, targeted Bosnia, Macedonia and Kosova. While Germany expanded via economic conquest, the US, true to its militarist mission, resorted to war in alliance with recognized terrorist Kosova Albanian gangsters organized in the paramilitary KLA. Under the leadership of French Zionist Bernard Kouchner, the NATO forces facilitated the ethnic purging, assassination and disappearances of tens of thousands of Serbs, Roma and dissident non-separatist Kosova Albanians.

The destruction of Yugoslavia is complete: the remaining fractured and battered Serb Republic was now at the mercy of US and its European allies. By 2008 a EU-US backed pro-NATO coalition was elected and the last remnants of ‘Yugoslavia’ and its historical legacy of self-managed socialism was obliterated.

Consequences of ‘Separatism’ in USSR. East Europe and the Balkans

In every region where US sponsored and financed separatism succeeded, living standards plunged, massive pillage of public resources in the name of privatization took place, political corruption reached unprecedented levels. Anywhere between a quarter to a third of the population fled to Western Europe and North America because of hunger, personal insecurity (crime), unemployment and a dubious future.

Politically, gangsterism and extraordinary murder rates drove legitimate businesses to pay exorbitant extorsion payments, as a ‘new class’ of gangsters-turned-businessmen took over the economy and signed dubious investment agreements and joint ventures with EU, US and Asian MNCs.

Energy-rich ex-Soviet countries in south central Asia were ruled by opulent dictators who accumulated billion dollar fortunes in the course of demolishing egalitarian norms, extensive health, and scientific and cultural institutions. Religious institutions gained power over and against scientific and professional associations, reversing educational progress of the previous seventy years. The logic of separatism spread from the republics to the sub-national level as rival local war lords and ethnic chiefs attempted to carve out their ‘autonomous’ entity, leading to bloody wars, new rounds of ethnic purges and new refugees fleeing the contested areas.

The US promises of benefits via ’separatism’ made to the diverse populations were not in the least fulfilled. At best a small ruling elite and their cronies reaped enormous wealth, power and privilege at the expense of the great majority. Whatever the initial symbolic gratifications, which the underlying population may have experienced from their short-lived independence, new flag and restored religious power was eroded by the grinding poverty and violent internal power struggles that disrupted their lives. The truth of the matter is that millions of people fled from ‘their’ newly ‘independent’ states, preferring to become refugees and second-class citizens in foreign states.

Conclusion:

The major fallacy of seemingly progressive liberals and NGOs in their advocacy of ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ’self-determination’ is that these abstract concepts beg the fundamental concrete historical and substantive political question – to what classes, race, political blocs is power being transferred? For over a century in the US the banner of the racist right-wing Southern plantation owners ruling by force and terror over the majority of poor blacks was ‘States Rights’ – the supremacy of local law and order over the authority of the federal government and the national constitution. The fight between federal versus states rights was between a reactionary Southern oligarchy and a broader based progressive Northern urban coalition of workers and the middle class.

There is a fundamental need to demystify the notion of ‘autonomy’ by examining the classes which demand it, the consequences of devolving power in terms of the distribution of power, wealth and popular power and the external benefactors of a shift from the national state to regional local power elites.

Likewise, the mindless embrace by some libertarians of each and every claim for ’self-determination’ has led to some of the most heinous crimes of the 20-21st centuries – in many cases separatist movements have encouraged or been products of bloody imperialist wars, as was the case in the lead up to and following Nazi annexations, the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the savage Israeli invasion of Lebanon and breakup of Palestine.

To make sense of ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ’self-determination’ and to ensure that these devolutions of power move in progressive historic direction, it is essential to pose the prior questions: Do these political changes advance the power and control of the majority of workers and peasants over the means of production? Does it lead to greater popular power in the state and electoral process or does it strengthen demagogic clients advancing the interests of the empire, in which the breakup of an established state leads to the incorporation of the ethnic fragments into a vicious and destructive empire?.-

Link: petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1738&more=1&c=1

James Petras 

Throughout modern imperial history, ‘Divide and Conquer’ has been the essential ingredient in allowing relatively small and resource-poor European countries to conquer nations vastly larger in size and populations and richer in natural resources.

I

Introduction: The Historical Context

It is said that for every British officer in India, there were fifty Sikhs, Gurkhas, Muslims and Hindus in the British Colonial Army. The European conquest of Africa and Asia was directed by white officers, fought by black, brown and yellow soldiers so that white capital could exploit colored workers and peasants. Regional, ethnic, religious, clan, tribal, community, village and other differences were politicized and exploited allowing imperial armies to conquer warring peoples. In recent decades, the US empire builders have become the grand masters of ‘divide and conquer’ strategies throughout the world. By the 1970’s, the CIA made a turn from promoting the dubious virtues of capitalism and democracy, to linking up with, financing and directing, religious, ethnic and regional elites against national regimes, independent or hostile to US world empire building.

The key to US military empire building follows two principles: direct military invasions and fomenting separatist movements, which can lead to military confrontation.

Twenty-first century empire building has seen the extended practice of both principles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, China (Tibet), Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Somalia, Sudan, Burma and Palestine – any country in which the US cannot secure a stable client regime, it resorts to financing and promoting separatist organizations and leaders using ethnic, religious and regional pretexts.

Consistent with traditional empire building principles, Washington only supports separatists in countries that refuse to submit to imperial domination and opposes separatists who resist the empire and its allies. In other words, imperial ideologues are neither ‘hypocrites’ nor resort to ‘double standards’ (as they are accused by liberal critics) – they publicly uphold the ‘Empire first’ principle as their defining criteria for evaluating separatist movements and granting or denying support. In contrast, many seemingly progressive critics of empire make universal statements in favor of the ‘right to self-determination’ and even extend it to the most rancid, reactionary, imperial-sponsored ’separatist groups’ with catastrophic results. Independent nations and their people, who oppose US-backed separatists, are bombed to oblivion and charged with ‘war crimes’. People, who oppose the separatists and who reside in the ‘new state’, are killed or driven into exile. The ‘liberated people’ suffer from the tyranny and impoverishment induced by the US-backed separatists and many are forced to immigrate to other countries for economic survival.

Few if any of the progressive critics of the USSR and supporters of the separatist republics have ever publicly expressed second thoughts, let alone engaged in self-critical reflections, even in the face of decades long socio-economic and political catastrophes in the secessionist states. Yet it was and is the case that these self-same progressives today, who continue to preach high moral principles to those who question and reject some separatist movements because they originate and grow out of efforts to extend the US empire.

Washington’s success in co-opting so-called progressive liberals in support of separatist movements soon to be new imperial clients in recent decades is long and the consequences for human rights are ugly.

Most European and US progressives supported the following:

1. US-backed Bosnian fundamentalists, Croatian neo-fascists and Kosova-Albanian terrorists, leading to ethnic cleansing and the conversion of their once sovereign states into US military bases, client regimes and economic basket cases – totally destroying the multinational Yugoslavian welfare state.

2. The US funded and armed overseas Afghan Islamic fundamentalists who destroyed a secular, reformist, gender-equal Afghan regime, carrying out vast anti-feudal campaigns involving both men and women, a comprehensive agrarian reform and constructing extensive health and educational programs. As a result of US-Islamic tribal military successes, millions were killed, displaced and dispossessed and fanatical medieval anti-Communist tribal warlords destroyed the unity of the country.

3. The US invasion destroyed Iraq’s modern, secular, nationalist state and advanced socio-economic system. During the occupation, US backing of rival religious, tribal, clan and ethnic separatist movements and regimes led to the expulsion of over 90% of its modern scientific and professional class and the killing of over 1 million Iraqis…all in the name of ousting a repressive regime and above all in destroying a state opposed to Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

Clearly US military intervention promotes separatism as a means of establishing a regional ‘base of support’. Separatism facilitates setting up a minority puppet regime and works to counter neighboring countries opposed to the depredations of empire. In the case of Iraq, US-backed Kurdish separatism preceded the imperial campaign to isolate an adversary, create international coalitions to pressure and weaken the central government. Washington highlights regime atrocities as human rights cases to feed global propaganda campaigns. More recently this is evident in the US-financed ‘Tibetan’ theocratic protests at China.

Separatists are backed as potential terrorist shock troops in attacking strategic economic sectors and providing real or fabricated ‘intelligence’ as is the case in Iran among the Kurds and other ethnic minority groups.

Why Separatism?

Empire builders do not always resort to separatist groups, especially when they have clients at the national levels in control of the state. It is only when their power is limited to groups, territorially or ethnically concentrated, that the intelligence operatives resort to and promote ’separatist’ movements. US backed separatist movements follow a step-by-step process, beginning with calls for ‘greater autonomy’ and ‘decentralization’, essentially tactical moves to gain a local political power base, accumulate economic revenues, repress anti-separatist groups and local ethnic/religious, political minorities with ties to the central government (as in the oppression of the Christian communities in northern Iraq repressed by the Kurdish separatists for their long ties with the Central Baath Party or the Roma of Kosova expelled and killed by the Kosova Albanians because of their support of the Yugoslav federal system). The attempt to forcibly usurp local resources and the ousting of local allies of the central government results in confrontations and conflict with the legitimate power of the central government. It is at this point that external (imperial) support is crucial in mobilizing the mass media to denounce repression of ‘peaceful national movements’ merely ‘exercising their right to self-determination’. Once the imperial mass media propaganda machine touches the noble rhetoric of ’self-determination’ and ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ‘home rule’, the great majority of US and European funded NGO’s jump on board, selectively attacking the government’s effort to maintain a stable unified nation-state. In the name of ‘diversity’ and a ‘pluri-ethnic state’, the Western-bankrolled NGO’s provide a moralist ideological cover to the pro-imperialist separatists. When the separatists succeed and murder and ethnically cleanse the ethnic and religious minorities linked to the former central state, the NGO’s are remarkably silent or even complicit in justifying the massacres as ‘understandable over-reaction to previous repression’. The propaganda machine of the West, even gloats over the separatist state expulsion of hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities – as in the case of the Serbs and Roma from Kosova and the Krijina region of Croatia…with headlines blasting – “Serbs on the Run: Serves Them Right!’ followed by photos of NATO troops overseeing the ‘transfer’ of destitute families from their ancestral villages and towns to squalid camps in a bombed out Serbia. And the triumphant Western politicians mouthing pieties at the massacres of Serb civilians by the KLA, as when former German Foreign Minister “Joschka” Fischer (Green Party) mourned, “I understand your (the KLA’s) pain, but you shouldn’t throw grenades at (ethnic Serb) school children.”

The shift from ‘autonomy’ within a federal state to an ‘independent state’ is based on the aid channeled and administered by the imperial state to the ‘autonomous region’, thus strengthening its ‘de facto’ existence as a separate state. This has clearly occurred in the Kurdish run northern Iraq ‘no fly zone’ and now ‘autonomous region’ from 1991 to the present.

The same principle of self-determination demanded by the US and its separatist client is denied to ‘minorities’ within the realm. Instead, the US propaganda media refer to them as ‘agents’ or ‘trojan horses’ of the central government.

Strengthened by imperial ‘foreign aid’, and business links with US and EU MNCs, backed by local para-military and quasi-military police forces (as well as organized criminal gangs), the autonomous regime declares its ‘independence’. Shortly thereafter it is recognized by its imperial patrons. After ‘independence’, the separatist regime grants territorial concessions and building sites for US military bases. Investment privileges are granted to the imperial patron, severely compromising ‘national’ sovereignty.

The army of local and international NGO’s rarely raise any objections to this process of incorporating the separatist entity into the empire, even when the ‘liberated’ people object. In most cases the degree of ‘local governance’ and freedom of action of the ‘independent’ regime is less than it was when it was an autonomous or federal region in the previous unified nationalist state.

Not infrequently ’separatist’ regimes are part of irredentist movements linked to counterparts in other states. When cross national irredentist movements challenge neighboring states which are also targets of the US empire builders, they serve as launching pads for US low intensity military assaults and Special Forces terrorist activities.

For example, almost all of the Kurdish separatist organizations draw a map of ‘Greater Kurdistan’ which covers a third of Southeastern Turkey, Northern Iraq, a quarter of Iran, parts of Syria and wherever else they can find a Kurdish enclave. US commandos operate along side Kurdish separatists terrorizing Iranian villages (in the name of self-determination; Kurds with powerful US military backing have seized and govern Northern Iraq and provide mercenary Peshmerga troops to massacre Iraqi Arab civilian in cities and towns resisting the US occupation in Central, Western and Southern regions. They have engaged in the forced displacement of non-Kurds (including Arabs, Chaldean Christians, Turkman and others) from so-called Iraqi Kurdistan and the confiscation of their homes, businesses and farms. US-backed Kurdish separatists have created conflicts with the neighboring Turkish government, as Washington tries to retain its Kurdish clients for their utility in Iraq, Iran and Syria without alienating its strategic NATO client, Turkey. Nevertheless Turkish-Kurdish separatist activists in the PKK have lauded the US for, what they term, ‘progressive colonialism’ in effectively dismembering Iraq and forming the basis for a Kurdish state.

The US decision to collaborate with the Turkish military, or at least tolerate its military attacks on certain sectors of the Iraq-based Kurdish separatists, the PKK, is part of its global policy of prioritizing strategic imperial alliances and allies over and against any separatist movement which threatens them. Hence, while the US supports the Kosova separatists against Serbia, it opposes the separatists in Abkhazia fighting against its client in the Republic of Georgia. While the US supported Chechen separatist against the Moscow government, it opposes Basque and Catalan separatists in their struggle against Washington’s NATO ally, Spain. While Washington has been bankrolling the Bolivian separatists headed by the oligarchs of Santa Cruz against the central government in La Paz, it supports the Chilean government’s repression of the Mapuche Indian claims to land and resources in south-central Chile.

Clearly ’self-determination’ and ‘independence’ are not the universal defining principle in US foreign policy, nor has it ever been, as witness the US wars against Indian nations, secessionist southern slaveholders and yearly invasions of independent Latin American, Asian and African states. What guides US policy is the question of whether a separatist movement, its leaders and program furthers empire building or not? The inverse question however is infrequently raised by so-called progressives, leftists or self-described anti-imperialists: Does the separatist or independence movement weaken the empire and strengthen anti-imperialist forces or not? If we accept that the over-riding issue is defeating the multi-million killing machine called US imperialism, then it is legitimate to evaluate and support, as well as reject, some independence movements and not others. There is nothing ‘hypocritical’ or ‘inconvenient’ in raising higher principles in making these political choices. Clearly Hitler justified the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the name of defending Sudetenland separatists; just like a series of US Presidents have justified the partition of Iraq in the name of defending the Kurds, or Sunnis or Shia or whatever tribal leaders lend themselves to US empire building.

What defines anti-imperialist politics is not abstract principles about ’self-determination’ but defining exactly who is the ’self’ – in other words, what political forces linked to what international power configuration are making what political claim for what political purpose. If, as in Bolivia today, a rightwing racist, agro-business oligarchy seizes control of the most fertile and energy rich region, containing 75% of the country’s natural resources, in the name of ’self-determination’ and autonomy, expelling and brutalizing impoverished Indians in the process – on what basis can the left or anti-imperialist movement oppose it, if not because the class, race and national content of that claim is antithetical to an even more important principle – popular sovereignty based on the democratic principles of majority rule and equal access to public wealth?

Separatism in Latin America: Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador

In recent years the US backed candidates have won and lost national election in Latin America. Clearly the US has retained hegemony over the governing elites in Mexico, Colombia, Central America, Peru, Chile, Uruguay and some of the Caribbean island states. In states where the electorate has backed opponents of US dominance, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua, Washington’s influence is dependent on regional, provincial and locally elected officials. It is premature to state, as the Council for Foreign Relations claims, that ‘US hegemony in Latin America is a thing of the past.’ One only has to read the economic and political record of the close and growing military and economic ties between Washington and the Calderon regime in Mexico, the Garcia regime in Peru, Bachelet in Chile and Uribe in Colombia to register the fact that US hegemony still prevails in important regions of Latin America. If we look beyond the national governmental level, even in the non-hegemonized states, US influence still is a potent factor shaping the political behavior of powerful right-wing business, financial and regional political elites in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina. By the end of May 2008, US backed regionalist movements were on the offensive, establishing a de facto secessionist regime in Santa Cruz in Bolivia. In Argentina, the agro-business elite has organized a successful nationwide production and distribution lockout, backed by the big industrial, financial and commercial confederations, against an export tax promoted by the ‘center-left’ Kirchner government. In Colombia, the US is negotiating with the paramilitary President Uribe over the site of a military base on the frontier with Venezuela’s oil rich state of Zulia, which happens to be ruled by the only anti-Chavez governor in power, a strong promoter of ‘autonomy’ or secession. In Ecuador, the Mayor of Guayaquil, backed by the right wing mass media and the discredited traditional political parties have proposed ‘autonomy’ from the central government of President Rafael Correa. The process of imperial driven nation dismemberment is very uneven because of the different degrees of political power relations between the central government and the regional secessionists. The right wing secessionists in Bolivia have advanced the furthest – actually organizing and winning a referendum and declaring themselves an independent governing unit with the power to collect taxes, formulate foreign economic policy and create its own police force.

The success of the Santa Cruz secessionist is due to the political incapacity and total incompetence of the Evo Morales-Garcia Linera regime which promoted ‘autonomy’ for the scores of impoverished Indian ‘nations’ (or indianismo) and ended up laying the groundwork for the white racist oligarchs to seize the opportunity to establish their own ’separatist’ power base. As the separatist gained control over the local population, they intimidated the ‘indians’ and trade union supporters of the Morales regime, violently sabotaged the constitutional assembly, rejected the constitution, while constantly extracting concession for the flaccid and conciliatory central government of the Evo Morales. While the separatists trashed the constitution and used their control over the major means of production and exports to recruit five other provinces, forming a geographic arc of six provinces, and influence in two others in their drive to degrade the national government. The Morales-Garcia Linera ‘indianista’ regime, largely made up of mestizos formerly employed in NGOs funded from abroad, never used its formal constitutional power and monopoly of legitimate force to enforce constitutional order and outlaw and prosecute the secessionists’ violation of national integrity and rejection of the democratic order.

Morales never mobilized the country, the majority of popular organizations in civil society, or even called on the military to put down the secessionists. Instead he continued to make impotent appeals for ‘dialog’, for compromises in which his concessions to oligarch self-rule only confirmed their drive for regional power. As a case study of failed governance, in the face of a reactionary separatist threat to the nation, the Morales-Garcia Linera regime represents an abject failure to defend popular sovereignty and the integrity of the nation.

The lessons of failed governance in Bolivia stand as a grim reminder to Chavez in Venezuela and Correa in Ecuador: Unless they act with full force of the constitution to crush the embryonic separatist movements before they gain a power base, they will also face the break-up of their countries. The biggest threat is in Venezuela, where the US and Colombian militaries have built bases on the frontier bordering the Venezuelan state of Zulia, infiltrated commandos and paramilitary forces into the province, and see the takeover of the oil-rich province as a beach-head to deprive the central government of its vital oil revenues and destabilize the central government.

Several years into a Washington-backed and financed separatist movement in Bolivia, a few progressive academics and pundits have taken notice and published critical commentaries. Unfortunately these articles lack any explanatory context, and offer little understanding of how Latin American ’separatism’ fits into long-term, large-scale US empire building strategy over the past quarter of a century.

Today the US-promoted separatist movements in Latin American are actively being pursued in at least three Latin American counties. In Bolivia, the ‘media luna’ or ‘half-moon’ provinces of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija have successfully convoked provincial ‘referendums’ for ‘autonomy’ – code word for secession. On May 4, 2008 the separatists in Santa Cruz succeeded, securing a voter turnout of nearly 50% and winning 80% of the vote. On May 15, the right-wing big business political elite announced the formation of ministries of foreign trade and internal security, assuming the effective powers of a secession state. The US government led by Ambassador Goldberg, provided financial and political support for the right-wing secessionist ‘civic’ organizations through its $125 million dollar aid programs via AID, its tens of millions of dollar ‘anti-drug’ program, and through the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) funded pro-separatist NGOs. At meetings of the Organization of American States and other regional meetings the US refused to condemn the separatist movements.

Because of the total incompetence and lack of national political leadership of President Evo Morales and his Vice President Garcia Linera, the Bolivian State is splintering into a series of ‘autonomous’ cantons, as several other provincial governments seek to usurp political power and take over economic resources. From the very beginning, the Morales-Garcia regime signed off on a number of political pacts, adopted a whole series of policies and approved a number of concessions to the oligarchic elites in Santa Cruz, which enabled them to effectively re-build their natural political power base, sabotage an elected Constitutional Assembly and effectively undermine the authority of the central government. Right-wing success took less than 2 ½ years, which is especially amazing considering that in 2005, the country witnessed a major popular uprising which ousted a right-wing president, when millions of workers, miners, peasants and Indians dominated the streets. It is a tribute to the absolute misgovernment of the Morales-Garcia regime, that the country could move so quickly and decisively from a state of insurrectionary popular power to a fragmented and divided country in which a separatist agro-financial elite seizes control of 80% of the productive resources of the country…while the elected central government meekly protests.

The success of the secessionist regional ruling class in Bolivia has encouraged similar ‘autonomy movements’ in Ecuador and Venezuela, led by the mayor of Guayaquil (Ecuador) and Governor of Zulia (Venezuela). In other words, the US-engineered political debacle of the Morales-Garcia regime in Bolivia has led it to team up with oligarchs in Ecuador and Venezuela to repeat the Santa Cruz experience…in a process of “permanent counter-revolutionary separatism.”

Separatism and the Ex-USSR

The defeat of Communism in the USSR had little to do with the ‘arms race bankrupting the system’, as former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzyenski has claimed. Up to the end, living standards were relatively stable and welfare programs continued to operate at near optimal levels and scientific and cultural programs retained substantial state expenditures. The ruling elites who replaced the communist system did not respond to US propaganda about the virtues of ‘free markets and democracy’, as Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton claimed: The proof is evident in the political and economic systems, which they imposed upon taking power and which were neither democratic nor based on competitive markets. These new ethnic-based regimes resembled despotic, predatory, nepotistic monarhies handing over (’privatizing’) the public wealth accumulated over the previous 70 years of collective labor and public investment to a handful of oligarchs and foreign monopolies.

The principle ideological driving force for the current policy of ’separatism’ is ethnic identity politics, which is fostered and financed by US intelligence and propaganda agencies. Ethnic identity politics, which replaced communism, is based on vertical links between the elite and the masses. The new elites rule through clan-family-religious-gang based nepotism, funded and driven through pillage and privatization of public wealth created under Communism. Once in power, the new political elites ‘privatized’ public wealth into family riches and converted themselves and their cronies into an oligarchic ruling class. In most cases the ethnic ties between elites and subjects dissolved in the face of the decline of living standards, the deep class inequalities, the crooked vote counts and state repression.

In all of the ex-USSR states, the new ruling classes only claim to mass legitimacy was based on appeals to sharing a common ethnic identity. They trotted out medieval and royalist symbols from the remote past, dredging up absolutist monarchs, parasitical religious hierarchies, pre-capitalist war lords, bloody emperors and ‘national’ flags from the days of feudal landlords to forge a common history and identity with the ‘newly liberated’ masses. The repeated appeal to past reactionary symbols was entirely appropriate: The contemporary policies of despotism, pillage and personality cults resonated with past ‘historic’ warriors, feudal lords and practices.

As the new post-USSR despots lost their ethnic luster as a consequence of public disillusion with local and foreign predatory pillage of the national wealth, the leaders resorted to systematic force.

The principle success of the US strategy of promoting separatism was in destroying the USSR – not in promoting viable independent capitalist democracies. Washington succeeded in exacerbating ethnic conflicts between Russians and other nationalities, by encouraging local communist bosses to split from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and to form ‘independent states’ where the new rulers could share the booty of the local treasury with new Western partners. The US de-stabilization efforts in the Communist countries, especially after the 1970’s did not compete over living standards, greater industrial growth or over more generous welfare programs. Rather, Western propaganda focused on ethnic solidarity, the one issue that undercut class solidarity and loyalty to the communist state and ideology and strengthened pro-Western elites, especially among ‘public intellectuals’ and recycled Communist bosses-turned ‘nationalist saviors.’

The key point of Western strategy was to first and foremost break-up the USSR via separatist movements no matter if they were fanatical religious fundamentalists, gangster-politicians, Western-trained liberal economists or ambitious upwardly mobile warlords. All that mattered was that they carried the Western separatist banner of ’self-determination’. Subsequently, in the ‘post Soviet period’, the new pro-capitalist ruling elites were recruited to NATO and client state status.

Washington’s post-separatism politics followed a two-step process: In the first phase there was an undifferentiated support for anyone advocating the break-up of the USSR. In the second phase, the US sought to push the most pliable pro-NATO, free market liberals among the lot – the so-called ‘color revolutionaries’, in Georgia and the Ukraine. Separatism was seen as a preliminary step toward an ‘advanced’ stage of re-subordination to the US Empire. The notion of ‘independent states’ is virtually non-existent for US empire builders. At best it exists as a transitional stage from one power constellation to a new US-centered empire.

In the period following the break-up of the USSR, Washington’s subsequent attempts to recruit the new ruling elites to pro-capitalist, client-status was relatively successful. Some countries opened their economies to unregulated exploitation especially of energy resources. Others offered sites for military bases. In many cases local rulers sought to bargain among world powers while enhancing their own private fortune-through-pillage.

None of the ex-Soviet Republics evolved into secular independent democratic republics capable of recovering the living standards, which their people possessed during the Soviet times. Some rulers became theocratic despots where religious notables and dictators mutually supported each other. Others evolved into ugly family-based dictatorships. None of them retained the Soviet era social safety net or high quality educational systems. All the post-Soviet regimes magnified the social inequalities and multiplied the number of criminal-run enterprises. Violent crime grew geometrically increasing citizen insecurity.

The success of US-induced ’separatism’ did create, in most cases, enormous opportunities for Western and Asian pillage of raw materials, especially petroleum resources. The experience of ‘newly independent states’ was, at best, a transitory illusion, as the ruling elite either passed directly into the orbit of Western sphere of influence or became a ‘fig leaf’ for deep structural subordination to Western-dominated circuits of commodity exports and finance.

Out of the break-up of the USSR, Western states allied with those republics where it suited their interests. In some cases they signed agreements with rulers to establish military base lining the pockets of a dictator through loans. In other cases they secured privileged access to economic resources by forming joint ventures. In others they simply ignored a poorly endowed regime and let it wallow in misery and despotism.

Separatism: Eastern Europe, Balkans and the Baltic Countries

The most striking aspect of the break-up of the Soviet bloc was the rapidity and thoroughness with which the countries passed from the Warsaw Pact to NATO, from Soviet political rule to US/EU economic control over almost all of their major economic sectors. The conversion from one form of political economic and military subordination to another highlights the transitory nature of political independence, the superficiality of its operational meaning and the spectacular hypocrisy of the new ruling elite who blithely denounced ‘Soviet domination’ while turning over most economic sectors to Western capital, large tracts of territory for NATO bases and providing mercenary military battalions to fight in US imperial wars to a far greater degree than was ever the case during Soviet times.

Separatism in these areas was an ideology to weaken an adversarial hegemonic coalition, all the better to reincorporate its members in a more virulent and aggressive empire building coalition.

Yugoslavia and Kosova: Forced Separatism

The successful breakup of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact alliance encouraged the US and EU to destroy Yugoslavia, the last remaining independent country outside of US-EU control in West Europe. The break-up of Yugoslavia was initiated by Germany following its annexation and demolition of East Germany’s economy. Subsequently it expanded into the Slovenian and Croatian republics. The US, a relative latecomer in the carving up of the Balkans, targeted Bosnia, Macedonia and Kosova. While Germany expanded via economic conquest, the US, true to its militarist mission, resorted to war in alliance with recognized terrorist Kosova Albanian gangsters organized in the paramilitary KLA. Under the leadership of French Zionist Bernard Kouchner, the NATO forces facilitated the ethnic purging, assassination and disappearances of tens of thousands of Serbs, Roma and dissident non-separatist Kosova Albanians.

The destruction of Yugoslavia is complete: the remaining fractured and battered Serb Republic was now at the mercy of US and its European allies. By 2008 a EU-US backed pro-NATO coalition was elected and the last remnants of ‘Yugoslavia’ and its historical legacy of self-managed socialism was obliterated.

Consequences of ‘Separatism’ in USSR. East Europe and the Balkans

In every region where US sponsored and financed separatism succeeded, living standards plunged, massive pillage of public resources in the name of privatization took place, political corruption reached unprecedented levels. Anywhere between a quarter to a third of the population fled to Western Europe and North America because of hunger, personal insecurity (crime), unemployment and a dubious future.

Politically, gangsterism and extraordinary murder rates drove legitimate businesses to pay exorbitant extorsion payments, as a ‘new class’ of gangsters-turned-businessmen took over the economy and signed dubious investment agreements and joint ventures with EU, US and Asian MNCs.

Energy-rich ex-Soviet countries in south central Asia were ruled by opulent dictators who accumulated billion dollar fortunes in the course of demolishing egalitarian norms, extensive health, and scientific and cultural institutions. Religious institutions gained power over and against scientific and professional associations, reversing educational progress of the previous seventy years. The logic of separatism spread from the republics to the sub-national level as rival local war lords and ethnic chiefs attempted to carve out their ‘autonomous’ entity, leading to bloody wars, new rounds of ethnic purges and new refugees fleeing the contested areas.

The US promises of benefits via ’separatism’ made to the diverse populations were not in the least fulfilled. At best a small ruling elite and their cronies reaped enormous wealth, power and privilege at the expense of the great majority. Whatever the initial symbolic gratifications, which the underlying population may have experienced from their short-lived independence, new flag and restored religious power was eroded by the grinding poverty and violent internal power struggles that disrupted their lives. The truth of the matter is that millions of people fled from ‘their’ newly ‘independent’ states, preferring to become refugees and second-class citizens in foreign states.

Conclusion:

The major fallacy of seemingly progressive liberals and NGOs in their advocacy of ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ’self-determination’ is that these abstract concepts beg the fundamental concrete historical and substantive political question – to what classes, race, political blocs is power being transferred? For over a century in the US the banner of the racist right-wing Southern plantation owners ruling by force and terror over the majority of poor blacks was ‘States Rights’ – the supremacy of local law and order over the authority of the federal government and the national constitution. The fight between federal versus states rights was between a reactionary Southern oligarchy and a broader based progressive Northern urban coalition of workers and the middle class.

There is a fundamental need to demystify the notion of ‘autonomy’ by examining the classes which demand it, the consequences of devolving power in terms of the distribution of power, wealth and popular power and the external benefactors of a shift from the national state to regional local power elites.

Likewise, the mindless embrace by some libertarians of each and every claim for ’self-determination’ has led to some of the most heinous crimes of the 20-21st centuries – in many cases separatist movements have encouraged or been products of bloody imperialist wars, as was the case in the lead up to and following Nazi annexations, the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the savage Israeli invasion of Lebanon and breakup of Palestine.

To make sense of ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ’self-determination’ and to ensure that these devolutions of power move in progressive historic direction, it is essential to pose the prior questions: Do these political changes advance the power and control of the majority of workers and peasants over the means of production? Does it lead to greater popular power in the state and electoral process or does it strengthen demagogic clients advancing the interests of the empire, in which the breakup of an established state leads to the incorporation of the ethnic fragments into a vicious and destructive empire?.-

Link: petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1738&more=1&c=1

Iran mosque blast plotters admit Israeli, US links: report

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran’s chief prosecutor said bombers who caused a deadly blast at a mosque in Shiraz had confessed of links to Israel and the United States, the ISNA student news agency reported on Friday.

“Those responsible for the attack against the Shiraz mosque have confessed to having links to worldwide oppression, in particular the United States and Israel,” Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi was quoted by the agency as saying.

They also admitted carrying out “one or two minor operations,” the agency said, without providing further details except to say the group launched military operations a year ago.

The April 12 blast in the southern city left 13 people dead and more than 200 wounded. Authorities subsequently announced the arrest of 15 people.

Earlier Friday, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami said people had also plotted attacks in the holy city of Qom, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Tehran, and at a book fair held in the capital.

Iran has already accused Britain and the United States of training and financing those behind the bombing. In the past it has also blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan for launching attacks on border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations.

The strike in Shiraz was the first in decades in Iran’s Persian heartland. The normally placid city is not in a border zone, nor is it home to any significant ethnic or religious minority population.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080523/wl_mideast_afp/iranunrestusisraeltrial

Syria rejects linking Israel peace with cutting off Iran

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syria will not accept preconditions over its resumed peace talks with Israel and will not compromise its relations with other states, the government daily Tishrin said on Saturday, referring to Iran.

“Damascus rejects all preconditions concerning its relations with other countries and peoples,” it said after an Israeli call for Damascus to distance itself from Tehran, which has called for the destruction of the Jewish state.

“Damascus will make no compromise on these relations,” an editorial said.

Israel and Syria announced on Wednesday they had launched indirect peace talks, with Turkey acting as go-between, after an eight-year freeze.

Israel’s Housing Minister Zeev Boim said peace “can be reached with the Syrians only if they end all terror activities, including supporting and arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and giving up their strategic dependence on Iran.”

Israel regards Iran as its greatest strategic threat.

A three-decade alliance between Damascus and Tehran was bolstered in 2006, when they signed an agreement on military cooperation.

A first round of peace feelers between Syria and Israel last year ran up against Damascus’s objection to any explicit linkage between a peace deal and its support for Iran and Arab militant groups.

Last June, Syria’s ruling coalition, the National Progressive Front, accused Israel of trying to “impose conditions which have nothing to do with the principles of peace.”

Israel also wants Syria to stop supporting Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups. Damascus has repeatedly denied having links to such organisations.

Tishrin said on Saturday that adding non-negotiable conditions to the indirect talks would hamstring efforts to achieve peace.

“Syria is not concerned with Israeli (policy) but with peace and achieving it by the shortest route,” the editorial said.

Damascus says it has received Israeli commitments for a full withdrawal from the occupied-Golan Heights, the main sticking point in previous talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has carefully avoided mentioning the Golan but has drawn fire after hinting that Israel would have to pay a painful price for a peace accord.

The strategic Golan plateau was seized by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed in 1981 in a move never recognised internationally.

On Wednesday Boim, of Olmert’s centrist Kadima party, said he opposes “in principle any withdrawal from the Golan Heights.”

“Nevertheless we should hear exactly how and on what issues the negotiations are held,” he added.

Syria insists that any negotiations with Israel must be based exclusively on the principle of the exchange of land for peace.

The Golan, which rises from the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, is now home to some 20,000 Israeli settlers and key military installations.

In the past Damascus has insisted that the entire Golan Heights be returned, and also that it have access to the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main source of fresh water.

Link

The U.S. to preview its relation with Syria, and new information revealed on Aljazeera

Hariri was a Saudi nationality and never had a Lebanese nationality because the Saudi law prevents the citizens from obtaining double nationality…. I met him in house in Paris and he told me that being the Lebanese prime Minister cost me 1 milliard dollar.

Although Saudi Arabia keeps the same aggressive attitude on the Lebanese crisis as told here on Al-Akhbar saying that Saudi Arabia advised its Lebanese allies who are negotiating Qatar to maneuver and gain time ‘till the Saudi sick mind thinks of an alternative plan, but I have a reason to think that the Saudis are acting alone recently without an American or Israeli backup.

Just look at this report on the Qatari newspaper Al-Watan which explains that The U.S. is reviewing its plan and policies against Syria saying:

The U.S. policy of blockade, punishments and isolation of Syria brought negative results and were counterproductive, American policy advisors think that it is the time to negotiate with Syria…

I just read on an Arabic forum that Hezbollah is right now interested to find a solution for the Lebanses crisis than ever, to block the Saudi prince Bandar head of the Saudi national security and Bush’s close friend attempts to wage a sectarian tension between Lebanese factions.

Egyptian No1 writer Fahmi Hawaidi wrote a good article today called “An attempt to understand what happened in Lebanon“, with an excellent start:

What happened in Lebanon is bad, but the worst is how the Arabs approached the crisis on the both fronts; politically and the media….with the pro-government teams suddenly brought the question of Hezbollah communication network that exists for 20 year..and suspicious Americans military movement at the Lebanese shores .. These reasons pushed Hezbollah to engage in a preemptive attack…

Also in his weekly program on Aljazeera part-1, part-2, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal revealed few secrets about the assassinated Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in part-2 saying:

Hariri was a Saudi nationality and never had a Lebanese nationality because the Saudi law prevents the citizens from obtaining double nationality…. I met him in house in Paris and he told me that being the Lebanese prime Minister cost me 1 milliard dollar.

As for Azzaman report, quoting Syrian sources that Arab nationality arrested in Syria with connection to Mughniyah’s assassination, I said that before, he is a Saudi nationality.

http://www.roadstoiraq.com/2008/05/20/the-us-to-preview-its-relation-with-syria-and-new-information-revealed-on-aljazeera/

Iran busts CIA terror network

- The Intelligence Ministry on Saturday released details of the detection and dismantling of a terrorist network affiliated to the United States.

In a coordinated operation on May 7, Iranian intelligence agents arrested the terrorist network’s members, who were identified in Fars, Khuzestan, Gilan, West Azerbaijan, and Tehran provinces, the Intelligence Ministry announcement said.

The group’s plans were devised in the U.S., according to the announcement, which added that they had planned to carry out a number of acts such as bombing scientific, educational, and religious centers, shooting people, and making public places in various cities insecure.

One of the terrorists was killed in the operation, but the rest are in detention, the Intelligence Ministry said, adding that the group’s main objective was to create fear among the people.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency comprehensively supported the terrorist group by arming it, training its members, and sponsoring its inhumane activities in Iran, the Intelligence Ministry stated.

The terrorists had maps, films, pictures, and sketches of important and sensitive sites in various cities in their possession when they were arrested.

They also had a large number of weapons and ammunition and a great deal of highly explosive chemicals and cyanide.

The blast at a religious center in Shiraz last month was carried out by this group, and it also had plans to carry out similar attacks on the Tehran International Book Fair, the Russian Consulate in Gilan Province, oil pipelines in southern Iran, and other targets, the communiqué stated.

Thirteen people were killed and over 190 others wounded in a bombing carried out on April 12 at the Rahpuyan-e Vessal religious center, which is part of the Seyyed-ul-Shohada Mosque complex, located in a residential area of Shiraz.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=168823

Le blog Islamic-Intelligence derange Sarkosy

et son ami le general Algérien de la DST Tewfik

Une nouvelle fois et sans raison, la police me harcele sous pretexte d’une fiche ‘S’, fiche de surete, emise par la DST sur conseil de leur pantin algerien, le general de la DST Tewfik. Celui-ci et son chikour, le juif sioniste terroriste, operant pour le mossad en France, Sarkosy, font objet de plaintes, qui si elles aboutissent, meneront Sarkosy tout droit en prison a Madrid…

Mon passeport a ete declare vole par la DST en Mars 2005. Le but de la maneuvre etait de me faire faire arreter en Angleterre. Non seulement les anglais n’ont pas marche, mais ils ont bien compris que tout coup bas leur couterait cher.

Apparement, Squarcini cherche les embrouilles, je vais lui donner de quoi reflechir, pendant tres longtemps.

J’ai depose une plainte contre Alliot-Marie, Squarcini pour faux, usage de faux et recel, sachant que mes comptes en banques a l’etranger ont ete fermees, car selon Squarcini et ses chikours israeliens, je serai affilie aux ‘groupes radicaux islamiques’… Les preuves, il n’y en a pas une seule.

Une fiche ‘S’ signifie que vous etes sous controle judiciaire illegale, et il va falloir expliquer a un juge le pourquoi du comment Madame l’emirette du GSPC/AQMI… Si entre temps un mandat d’arret international n’arrive pas sur ton bureau…

Je vous annonce qu’une plainte a ete deposee contre l’ambassadeur des Etats-Unis a Paris et le chef du bureau de la CIA a Paris, Dick Holm entre 1990 et 1994 pour faux, usage de faux et recel dans le cadre d’une affaire melant terrorisme, pillage de l’Iraq.

Sarkosy et ses maitres sionistes sont dans notre collimateur depuis longtemps et les operations que nous menons genent au plus haut niveau du gouvernement francais, americains, israeliens et leurs pantins au Maghreb

Tout est lie … Sarkosy, tu es notre pantin !

La plainte contre toi et la DST ne sera jamais retiree, ne joue pas avec le feu, je t’ai humilie des dizaines de fois… Expliques donc pourquoi tu as falsifie mon passeport, c’est en lien direct avec ton appartenance au mossad… Personne n’a pu a ce jour remettre en cause les preuves que j’ai avancees…

A coup bas, je repond par des coups bas, si Allah swt me le permet…

A bon entendeur Salaam

Occident :

la stratégie de division vise le cœur du monde musulman

Les images désolantes nous parviennent du Liban, de l’Irak, de l’Afghanistan …. La violence secoue la terre de l’Islam à la faveur d’une stratégie occidentales paralysantes dont les dimensions demandent à être éclairées.

Trois points mérites d’être soulignés : les dernières années de la première décennie du 21eme siècle semble marqué par une vague sans précédent d’attaque médiatique contre l’islam : des caricatures aux pamphlets, des articles aux longs métrages, le musulman et ses convictions font l’objet d’une vaste attaque en règle qui a certes suscité des réactions indignées mais pas autant qu’il le faut pour extirper les racines du mal.

A ceci s’ajoute l’action militaire ou menace d’une telle action qui vise à la fois plusieurs pays musulmans avec pour conséquence le massacre, l’humiliation, le pillage des richesses. La troisième menace, sans doute plus primordiale que les deux premières, c’est de nature endogène. Ce sont des courants au sein même des sociétés musulmanes qui sous l’impulsion occidentale semblent se résigner de tourner leur armes contre leurs frères et à plonger leur état dans le désordre et la violence.

Quasi inexistant au cours des dernières décades, le meurtre de « musulman » par « musulman » provoque dans de nombreux pays comme l’Irak, la Palestine, l’Afghanistan, le Liban des séquelles difficilement réparables pour ne pas dire incurables ; La conséquence de cet état des choses, on l’aura deviné, c’est davantage d’instabilité, de trouble, d’insécurité au cœur des pays musulmans avec le risque potentiel d’anéantissement des valeurs islamiques. Des violences qui traversent la terre de l’Islam, un phénomène indésirable risque de naître : la perte d’identité religieuse. Héritier des colonialistes du XIXe siècle, les Etats-Unis d’Amérique tentent par tous les moyens de déclencher puis d’accélérer ce processus de dénaturation : le « soft power » et le « hard power » américains se sont mariés pour contre la vague d’éveille religieux qui a sillonné ces dernières années le monde de l’Islam. De toute évidence, le siècle prochain sera celui de l’Islam, ce qui met Washington et ses alliés devant un défi de taille : comment se comporter en face de cette réalité ?

La stratégie de sécurité nationale américaine ne fait aucun mystère la dessus : pour elle, « l’Islam est à la fois armé et politique ». Le document stratégique emploie le néologisme l’Islam « néo-orthodoxe ». ce document élaboré en 1998 par el Pentagone pendant trois ans est destiné à définir les politiques américaines pour les 25 années à venir. C’est un document qui explique en détail les objectifs américain au Moyen Orient et les obstacles auxquels ces objectifs se heurtent. Le Moyen Orient et ses pays musulmans sont désignés par le qualificatif « Hautement importants » pour plusieurs raisons :

1) c’est une région qui renferme le gros des réserves fossiles du monde qui sont vitales pour les Américains et leurs alliés. Le Moyen Orient est l’unique partie du monde où les Américains sont maintenus depuis un siècle une présence ininterrompue.
2) C’est une région où est né l’Islam politique avec ses risques d’instabilités pour l’Occident.
3) C’est une région propice à la résurgence des différends interethniques, inter religieux, inter tribaux non seulement entre les états différents qui la constituent mais aussi à l’échelle de chaque état.

Le document stratégique se charge aussi d’une clause consacré à la catégorisation des musulmans : ceux-ci se divisent, selon les auteurs américains, en moderniste, fondamentaliste, traditionaliste, sécularistes. La priorité va évidemment à l’aide aux modernistes ou réformistes qui pourront jouer le rôle de catalyseur du processus de dénaturation souhaitée. L’aide en question serait évidemment de nature financière, culturelle, médiatique. Le document conseille vivement de semer le discorde entre les fondamentaliste au lieu de les réprimer, d’assaillir les traditionaliste avec des écoles déviantes tel le soufisme, de déclencher le feu des hostilités entre les sécularistes et les fondamentalistes tout en assurant les premiers du soutien américain.

Ce projet qui prévoit la fin de l’Islam au Moyen Orient s’axe sur l’élimination de l’adversaire via la destruction, la décomposition de ses convictions, de son idéologie. Le grand cheval de bataille des Américains c’est-à-dire la lutte contre le prétendu terrorisme islamiste se comprend dans ce même sens. Au Moyen Orient les Etats-Unis cherchent à planter leur drapeau définitivement grâce à un remodelage géopolitique qui sache homogénéiser toutes les croyances et les faire aligner sur les intérêts américains . c’est l’islam en sa qualité de rite de mode vie et de croyance qui est dans le viseur.
En Palestine, les divergences entre le Hamas et le Fatah, au Liban les différences entre le 14 mars et le Hezbollah en Irak les violence inter chiites ou entre chiites et sunnites ne donnent qu’un avant goût des dessins diaboliques des stratèges américains . Reste à savoir comment les musulmans se comporteront pour neutraliser ces dessins. Seront-ils assez habiles à éviter les fissures , à colmater les brèches pour éviter que le bateau prenne l’eau ou seront-il assez naïfs pour le laisser couler ?

french.irib.ir

There is no civil war in Lebanon; there is a war against the resistance

By Nadia Hasan

What is going on today in Lebanon is just an extension of the situation in the entire region. The US and its western allies are trying to show everyone that religion is the main factor of this dispute and they are trying to cover the political motivations and especially economic interests involved in the whole process. There are two main positions in Lebanon today, on one hand a colonialist project supported by the US and its principle ally in the region, Israel, whose spokesman is the Lebanese Government itself, and on the other, a project of sovereignty conducted by the resistance movement. In fact, it is a war between those who are simply patriotic and external agents. That is why both camps are composed of several currents simultaneously; religious, sectarian, ideological, and so forth. It is important to note that Michiel Aoun, the nationalist QS (Qornet Shehwan) and the Communist parties are in line with Hezbollah?

The pro-imperialist western Lebanese government aims at pitting the National Army against the people and the resistance. Their goal is to hide behind the army because they lack popular support. It should be noted that the army establishment is still led by nationalists.

Prior to the Israeli invasion against Lebanon in 2006, there was a series of internal and external pressure to dismantle the legitimate movement of resistance in Lebanon, which is Hezbollah. This pressure increased after this group defeated the Israeli army and restored the hopes of other resistance movements in various parts of the Arab Homeland. This victory demonstrated without a doubt that resistance against globalism on the one hand, and guerrilla war on the other is still possible.

A few days ago, after the longest session in the history of the Lebanese parliament, the pro-western coalition voted to make the communication net of Hezbollah illegal, a communication system that was very effective against the Israeli army during the war last summer. This “Declaration of War” against the resistance is just another example of how the local puppets of the US and Israel are fighting against their own people, because through this action, the government is actually dismantling the main tool the resistance has to fight against the colonialist project in the region.

This is not a minor issue, it is the first time since the Taif Accords in 1989 that put an end to the civil war in the country and consecrated the legitimacy of the armed resistance of Hezbollah against Israel, that the government condemns a communication network which is part of the security apparatus of the movement and considers it an “illegal threat against the State”.

What the Lebanese Government is doing today is nothing less than the dirty work of Israel, just a few days after the US government declared once again that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, keeping it on the “Blacklist”.

The aim here can only be to give to the US the control of the Airport and all the communication systems within the country, with the result of undermining the legitimate resistance of the people against their main target, Israel. They do this by provoking internal fights, which are easy to add to the confusion of religious disputes, just in the way they already have been doing in Iraq and in Palestine. The main reason behind the firing of the leader of the airport is that he declared that al-Hariri secretly met Bandar, the Saudi Amir, in the Airport several days before the government decided to fire him. Bandar was the only Arab who was told by Bush when the invasion against Iraq would start.

The biggest threat for a colonialist project in the region, including both the Arab ruler regimes and the western supporters, are the people and their power of resistance. To undermine this power and to create a constant climate of internal tension is the goal of anyone who is against a unified Arab nationalistic movement in the Arab Homeland.

How we can explain other than in this way the several accusations of Iranian intromission in Lebanon, even asking for the expulsion of its Ambassador and to paralyze all the flights to and from Iran due the support of the Iranian government to Hezbollah, but not a single word has been uttered against the external intromission of the US in Iraq, not a word against the allowance of a third of Qatari land surrendered in order to house a US base, not a word against external forces, armed to the teeth under the false pretext of “safeguarding democracy”, ignoring the respect of Lebanese territoriality and considering as “terrorists” a large number of its population?

France, the “motherland” keeps an important military presence in the area, focused mainly upon imposing the achievement of the recuperation of the colonialist project and once again doing the dirty work of an entity that has been oppressing an entire people for more than 60 years.

A ministerial meeting will take place in Cairo, convened by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for what reason other than to condemn once again the right of people to resist the oppressor, as Hezbollah is doing successfully in Lebanon? Certainly these ministers will discuss ways to stop the “negative” influence that the supporters of resistance have inside the country.

Finally, it should be noted that Palestine is in the core of the conflict in Lebanon. The termination of resistance has never been devoted to ‘building’ and safeguarding Lebanon, but to protecting Israel and making it a ‘normal’ state in the Arab Homeland. But the first decision of the agents, if they succeed, will be the re-settlement of Palestinian refugees from Lebanon to…anywhere else but Palestine.

Nadia Hasan is a Palestinian activist who was born in Chile and who lives between various nations of South America and the Middle East. Her site is Palestina Resiste! and she dreams of the day when all Palestinians can exercise their Right of Return.

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Two Unnecessary World Wars Launched By A Small Cabal Of Morons That Ruled Britain.

 It was Churchill, not Hitler, who first targeted civilian populations in World War II

New Buchanan Book: Anglo-American Ascendancy Lost in Unnecessary Wars

By Paul Craig Roberts

In a new book that will infuriate the fake conservatives who inhabit the Republican Party, Patrick J. Buchanan documents how British self-righteousness, delusion, and hubris destroyed both the British Empire and Western ascendancy in two unnecessary wars launched by a small cabal of morons that ruled Britain Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War shows that the two world wars that destroyed European civilization began when England declared war on Germany, thus dragging in the Empire, Commonwealth, and United States. This was a strategic blunder unparalleled in history. Mighty Britain emerged from World War II as an American dependency.

Buchanan cites such British notables as F.J.P. Veale, B.H. Liddell Hart, and C.P. Snow to document that it was Winston Churchill who committed, in Veale’s words, “the first deliberate breach of the fundamental rule of civilized warfare that hostilities must only be waged against the enemy combatant forces.” It was Churchill, not Hitler, who first targeted civilian populations in World War II and caused the structure of civilized warfare to collapse in ruins.

The Americans quickly adopted Churchill’s criminal policy of attacking civilians, culminating in the outrageous use of nuclear weapons against two Japanese cities, the slaughter of Vietnamese civilians, and the ongoing slaughter of Afghan and Iraqi civilians.

A popular American myth is that “the greatest generation” saved the world from Nazi tyranny. As Buchanan points out, the fact of the matter is that the Normandy invasion in June 1944 played little, if any, role in Germany’s defeat. By the end of 1942 Hitler had lost World War II at Stalingrad, long before any American troops appeared on the scene. What the Normandy invasion achieved 18 months later was to keep the Red Army from over-running all of Europe.

Although Buchanan’s book is about how the British destroyed themselves, Buchanan is clearly thinking about America. In the closing pages Buchanan shows how the Bush Regime has broken from the sound policy of President Reagan and is replicating the British folly of self-destruction. “There is hardly a blunder of the British Empire we have not replicated,” laments Buchanan.

The distinct American hubris that we are “the indispensable nation” and the braggadocio that we are an “omnipower” has us overcommitted in alliances that we cannot fulfill. Despite 25 percent of the Iraqi population killed, injured or displaced, the “world’s only superpower” cannot even control Baghdad. To deal with the pointless war we started in Afghanistan, we have had to sucker our NATO allies into a conflict that is no concern of theirs. Militarily overextended and with a faltering economy and collapsing currency, the cabal of morons that rules America still hopes to attack Iran, Syria, and to drive Hezbollah from Lebanon. American idiots in think tanks are busy at work drawing up plans about how the US is going to check China and prevent her emergence as a power beyond US control. The Republican presidential candidate has boasted that he will challenge Russia and bring Putin to heel.

Amazing. The world’s greatest debtor is going to take on the two powerful countries with the largest trade surpluses. According to the World Factbook, an annual publication of the CIA, Russia’s 2007 current account surplus is $465 billion and China’s is $363 billion. In contrast, the US current account deficit is $987 billion–an amount larger that the total deficits of all other countries in the world combined. The out-of-pocket and already incurred future cost of Bush’s wars of aggression is between $3 and $5 trillion, every dollar of which must be borrowed. That comes on top of the unfunded liabilities of the US government totaling $53 trillion. By any account the US is the world’s worst credit risk. The “mighty” US relies on foreigners to finance its consumption, its wars, and the daily operations of its government.

When Buchanan looks at the collection of idiots that comprise America’s ruling class, he despairs.

In truth, American power is already broken, and the country is already lost.

The country is lost, because the brownshirt Bush Regime has destroyed the US Constitution with the complicity of the opposition party and the federal courts. There is no organized power that can restore the Constitution or even much concern that it has been overthrown.

The country is broken, because American capitalists have moved offshore so many US manufacturing, engineering, and research jobs that US imports now exceed US industrial production. American dependency on imported manufactured goods, advanced technology goods, and energy is astounding.

Moreover, the dependency is escalating dramatically. In March 2002, prior to Bush’s decision to impose Israel’s will on the Middle East, oil was $25 a barrel. Today oil is $125 a barrel, a five-fold increase that has seen our oil import bill rise from $145 billion in 2006 to $456 billion presently, a $300 billion addition to a trade deficit that was already running $700-$800 billion annually.

There is no possibility of the US closing its trade deficit. The US is able to survive such enormous deficits only because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. This role for the dollar is nearing an end as the world looks for more stable stores of value. Although oil is still nominally priced in dollars, in reality it is being priced in euros as oil producers raise the dollar price with a view to keeping their oil revenues at a constant purchasing power in euros.

When the dollar loses its reserve currency role, foreign financing for US trade and budget deficits will evaporate. US living standards will collapse, and the indispensable omnipower will be just another washed up country.

For a world weary of “American exceptionalism,” this can’t happen too soon.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury

Four Days That Changed The Middle East

By Rami G. Khouri

“Daily Star ” — — Events in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon continue to move erratically, with simultaneous gestures of political compromise and armed clashes that have left 46 dead in the past week. The consequences of what has happened in the past week may portend an extraordinary but constructive new development: the possible emergence of the first American-Iranian joint political governance system in the Arab world. Maybe.

If Lebanon shifts from street clashes to the hoped-for political compromise through a renewed national dialogue process, it will have a national unity government whose two factions receive arms, training, funds and political support from both the United States and Iran. Should this happen, an unspoken American-Iranian political condominium in Lebanon could prove to be key to power-sharing and stability in other parts of the region, such as Palestine, Iraq and other hot spots. This would also mark a huge defeat for the United States and its failed diplomatic approach that seeks to confront, battle and crush the Islamist-nationalists throughout the region.

The brief, isolated, but intense clashes that occurred in the four days between Wednesday and Sunday threatened a total, Iraq-like collapse of Lebanon, with the Hizbullah-led alliance controlling power in the capital Beirut and other critical areas. The frantic pace of political and street action comprised and clarified four noteworthy developments, whose implications for the rest of the Middle East could be momentous:

1. When the government decided to challenge Hizbullah on Tuesday by announcing it was sacking the Shiite army general in charge of airport security and dismantling Hizbullah’s underground security telecommunications network, Hizbullah saw this as the first serious attempt by the government to try and disarm it. Hizbullah immediately challenged the government, warned it against these decisions, and made a show of force to protect its security and telecommunications system. When street clashes started in several parts of Beirut, the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hizbullah-led opposition alliance quickly and roundly asserted its dominance over the US- and Saudi-backed government alliance. Put to the test, the new balance of power in Lebanon affirmed itself on the street for the first time in less than 24 hours.

2. All the Lebanese parties repeatedly indicated a preference for political compromise over communal war, but also showed they were prepared to fight if forced to. The persistent negotiations via the mass media included critical agreements on naming the armed forces commander, General Michel Suleiman, as the new president, resuming the national dialogue, forming a government of national unity, and revising the electoral law before holding parliamentary elections next year. Negotiating offers came in sequence from Hizbullah secretary general and Shiite leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Future Movement head and Sunni leader Saad Hariri, Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, and the Shiite Amal movement of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hizbullah ally.

3. The newly vulnerable government effectively backed down Saturday and reversed its two decisions, as Hizbullah had demanded. The street balance of power was translated into a new political equation inside Lebanon. Hizbullah and its allies had achieved on the street that which they had been asking for politically: the capacity to veto government decisions that were seen as threatening Hizbullah’s security and resistance activities.

4. By immediately handing over to the armed forces those few buildings and strategic locations that they had taken over in Beirut, Hizbullah and its allies sent the signal that they did not want to rule the entire country, and that they trusted the army as a neutral arbiter between the warring Lebanese factions. Prime Minister Siniora sent the same message when he asked the armed forces and their commander, Suleiman, to decide on the fate of the two contested government security decisions that had sparked Hizbullah’s move into West Beirut. The armed forces emerged as the powerful political arbiter and peace-keeper, effectively forming a fourth branch of government, and the only one that is credible and effective in the eyes of the entire population.

All factions have agreed to get their gunmen off the streets and leave only the army and police as public security guardians. Now they are expected to follow up quickly by formally naming Suleiman as president (to which they have all agreed already), agreeing on a transitional national unity government of technocrats, and drawing up a new election law. The precise sequence of those events is one of the disputed points that must be agreed, but agreement may be easier now that the army has emerged as a pivotal arbiter and political actor.

The new domestic political balance of power in Lebanon will reflect millennia-old indigenous Middle Eastern traditions of different and often quarreling parties that live together peacefully after negotiating power relationships, rather than one party totally defeating and humiliating the other. Lebanon can only exist as a single country if its multi-ethnic and multi-religious population shares power. As the political leaders now seek to do this, they operate in a new context where the strongest group comprises Iranian- and Syrian-backed Islamist Shiites and their junior partners, Christian and Sunni Lebanese allies. They will share power in a national unity government with fellow Lebanese who are friends, allies, dependents and proxies of the United States and Saudi Arabia.

If a new Middle East truly is being born, this may well prove to be its nursery.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice-weekly by The Daily Star.

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US professor of international law to support Iran against Israel

A leading American professor of international law has voiced readiness to represent Iran in an international court on Israeli crimes.

“I am ready to represent Iran in an international tribunal for trying the Zionist regime on charges of genocide of Palestinians and the blockade in the Gaza Strip,” Francis Boyle, professor of law at the University of Illinois, told Fars News Agency.

According to the news agency, Boyle demanded his proposal to be submitted to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Professor Boyle accuses Israel of committing ‘Nuremberg offenses’ against the Palestinians.

Boyle has recently been calling for the impeachment of US President George W. Bush.

Boyle is author of Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations 1898-1921, and The Bosnian People Charge Genocide.

MK/DT

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=54883§ionid=351020101
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Boyle on Wikipedia

Francis Anthony Boyle (born 1950) is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School. He also received a Ph. D. in political science from Harvard University.

Between 1988 and 1992 Boyle was a member of the board of Amnesty International USA. Boyle also charged that Amnesty’s staff had been infiltrated by US and UK security services (see Covert Action interview below) a claim hotly disputed by many in the human-rights community.

From 1991 to 1993, Boyle was a legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization. Boyle is currently a member of the Nobel Peace Prize for Governor George H. Ryan Committee.

Professor Boyle has also made controversial comments about the Middle East, accusing Israel of committing “Nuremberg offenses” against the Palestinians, an allusion to the actions of Nazi Germany.

more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Boyle
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The Big Lie

Palestine, Palestinians and International Law

By Francis A. Boyle

I am not Arab. I am not Jewish. I am not Palestinian. I am not Israeli. I am Irish American. Our People have no proverbial “horse in this race.” What follows is to the best of my immediate recollection:

The Big Lie

Growing up in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s while strongly supporting the just struggle of African Americans for civil rights, I was brainwashed at school as well as by the mainstream news media and popular culture to be just as pro-Israel as everyone else in America. Then came the 1967 Middle East War. At that time, my assessment of the situation was that Israel had attacked these Arab countries first, stolen their lands, and then driven out their respective peoples from their homes. I then realized that everything I had been told about Israel was “The Big Lie.” Israel was Goliath, not David.

I resolved to study the Middle East in more detail in order to figure out what the Truth really was.

Of course by then I had already figured out that everything I was being told about the Vietnam War also constituted The Big Lie. The same was true for U.S. military intervention into Latin America after the Johnson administrations gratuitous invasion of the Dominican Republic. The same for the pie-in-the-sky “Camelot” peddled by the Kennedy administration after the Bay of Pigs invasion/fiasco and its self-induced Cuban Missile Crisis that was a near-miss for nuclear Armageddon. So I just added the Middle East to the list of international subjects that I needed to pay more attention to in my life.

Chicago

… By the end of Professor Binders course in the Winter of 1970, I had become convinced of three basic propositions: (1) that the world had inflicted a terrible injustice upon the Palestinian People in 1947-1948; (2) that there will be no peace in the Middle East until this injustice was somehow rectified; and (3) that the Palestinian People were entitled to an independent nation state of their own. I have publicly maintained these positions for the past three decades at great cost to myself.

In particular, I have been accused of being everything but a child molester because of my public support for the Palestinian People. I have seen every known principle of Academic Integrity and Academic Freedom violated in order to suppress the basic rights of the Palestinian People. In fact, there is no such thing as Academic Integrity and Academic Freedom in the United States of America when it comes to asserting the rights of the Palestinian People under international law.

… By comparison, Harvards Center for Middle East Studies was then basically operating as a front organization for the . and probably the Mossad as well. No point anyone wasting their time studying Middle East Politics at Harvard.

Nevertheless, I entered Harvard in September of 1971 in order to pursue a J.D. at the Harvard Law School and a . in Political Science at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Government. The latter was the same doctoral program that had produced Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, and numerous other Machiavellian war-mongers trained by Harvard to “manage” the U.S. global empire. In other words, Harvard trained me to be one of these American Imperial Managers: “There but for the Grace of God go I!”

For the next seven years at Harvard I was quite vocal in my support for the Palestinian People, including and especially their basic human rights, their right to self-determination, and their right to an independent nation state of their own. …

While in residence as an Associate at the Harvard Center for International Affairs (CFIA) from 1976-1978, I also came into contact with Walid Khalidi. I was present for the dramatic off-the-record confrontation between him and Shimon Peres at the standing CFIA Seminar on “American Foreign Policy” then conducted by Stanley Hoffmann at their old headquarters on 6 Divinity Avenue. Peres refused to budge even one inch no matter how flexible Khalidi was. A harbinger for the Middle East Peace Negotiations over a decade later.

As a most loyal and grateful Harvard alumnus (J.D. magna cum laude, A.M., Ph.D.), I must nevertheless state that it is shameful and shameless that Harvard never granted a tenured full professorship to Walid Khalidi because he is a Palestinian despite the fact that he is universally recognized as one of the worlds foremost experts on the Middle East. This gets back to my previous observation that there is no point studying Middle East Politics at Harvard. ..

 
http://www.counterpunch.org/boylebiglie.html

War With Iran Might Be Closer Than You Think

There is considerable speculation and buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Qods-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi militants. The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near Tehran. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the only senior official urging delay in taking any offensive action. The decision to go ahead with plans to attack Iran is the direct result of concerns being expressed over the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, where Iranian ally Hezbollah appears to have gained the upper hand against government forces and might be able to dominate the fractious political situation. The White House contacted the Iranian government directly yesterday through a channel provided by the leadership of the Kurdish region in Iraq, which has traditionally had close ties to Tehran. The US demanded that Iran admit that it has been interfering in Iraq and also commit itself to taking steps to end the support of various militant groups. There was also a warning about interfering in Lebanon. The Iranian government reportedly responded quickly, restating its position that it would not discuss the matter until the US ceases its own meddling employing Iranian dissident groups. The perceived Iranian intransigence coupled with the Lebanese situation convinced the White House that some sort of unambiguous signal has to be sent to the Iranian leadership, presumably in the form of cruise missiles. It is to be presumed that the attack will be as “pinpoint” and limited as possible, intended to target only al-Qods and avoid civilian casualties. The decision to proceed with plans for an attack is not final. The President will still have to give the order to launch after all preparations are made.

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Breaking News: Iran rejects nuclear inspections unless Israel also submits to international safeguards

ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
AP News

An Iranian envoy said Monday his government will not submit to extensive nuclear inspections while Israel stays outside the global treaty to curb the spread of atomic weapons.

“The existing double standard shall not be tolerated anymore by non-nuclear-weapon states,” Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh told a meeting of the 190 countries that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Nuclear safeguards are far from universal, he said, adding that more than 30 countries are still without a comprehensive safeguard agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure full cooperation with that U.N. body.

“Israel, with huge nuclear weapons activities, has not concluded” such an agreement or submitted its facilities to the IAEA’s safeguards, Soltanieh said.

Israel, which does not discuss whether it has atomic weapons, did not sign the nonproliferation treaty, which requires all signatories except the major powers to refrain from obtaining nuclear arms. India and Pakistan, which have developed nuclear weapons, also are not signatories.

Iran did sign the treaty and is under U.N. Security Council sanctions meant to pressure the Tehran government into allowing inspections that will ensure it isn’t developing nuclear weapons. Iran insists its atomic program is peaceful, with the sole goal of using reactors to generate electricity.

A U.S. envoy accused Iran of “provocative and destabilizing activities” and said its leaders were responsible for leading the country into the sanctions imposed by the Security Council.

“The path of defiance is also the path of isolation, of continuing and additional sanctions and of further stunted economic opportunities for a proud and sophisticated people already suffering from economic turmoil and mismanagement by its regime’s leaders,” said Christopher A. Ford, U.S. special representative for nuclear nonproliferation.

Ford said Iran joined North Korea and Syria in weakening the nonproliferation treaty.

“This treaty regime faces today the most serious tests it has ever faced: the ongoing nuclear weapons proliferation challenges presented by Iran, by North Korea and now by Syria,” Ford said.

Ford cited U.S. intelligence that North Korea was helping Syria in “secretly constructing a nuclear reactor that we believe was not intended for peaceful purposes.” Syria denied last week that it was working on an undeclared reactor, which purportedly was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike last September.

Soltanieh said nuclear-armed powers like the United States, Britain and France are practicing “nuclear apartheid” by denying or restricting peaceful atomic technology to countries like Iran.

“Access of developing countries to peaceful nuclear materials and technologies has been continuously denied to the extent that they have had no choice than to acquire their requirements for peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including for medical and industrial applications, from open markets,” Soltanieh said.

This usually means the material is more expensive, poorer quality and less safe, he said.

Source: AP News
 

Israel, aligned with US for Iran war

Israel has tacitly aligned itself with Washington, raising the specter of a war on Iran even if it has to go ‘alone with the problem’.

In a Friday interview with the Yediot Aharonot, senior Israeli minister Ehud Barak made his newest accusations against Iran, claiming that Tehran is attempting to develop a nuclear bomb in two years.

“It’s possible that it may take another two years, maybe four …it’s all the same if international pressure and other possibilities don’t stop the process,” claimed the official.

Barak then threatened Iran, suggesting that Israel is fully prepared to launch a military attack on Tehran but refrained to elaborate on the subject.

“Israel is the strongest country in the entire region, even at a range of 1,500 kilometers,” Barak continued. Israel is ‘prepared to be alone with the problem’.

His comments follow a burst of media speculation that the Tuesday entry of a second US aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf, in what the Pentagon had termed a ‘reminder’ of US power, was a tacit declaration of war on Iran.

Israel has been preparing for war for several months now. It recently launched a five-day preparation operation to ‘test emergency response’ against what it calls ‘raining missiles’ from countries like Iran and Syria.

This is while the Islamic Republic has never waged war on any other country and comments used by Israeli officials to demonize Tehran have been clearly manipulated to their benefit and according to Iran have been ‘taken out of context’.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=54039§ionid=351020101

Have Mossad death squads been activated in the USA?

List of Suicides by whistle blowers or those that knew things

Numerous cases of females in Iraq are not included.

1 DC Madame….: had clients with the Pentagon and Govt
I heard her with my own ears tell Alex Jones
that if she is ever found dead, it wasn’t suicide and that she would never do that:

LISTEN to Deborah Palfrey, the so-called D.C. Madam,
who tells Alex Jones she would never commit suicide!

Link to download the mp3 here, look for “Click Here To Download”

http://myfreefilehosting.com/f/31b808f62a_0.87MB

Debra Jean Palfrey was murdered.

2 Lt. Col. Marshall A. Gutierrez Iraqi/Kuwait procurement officer: http://iraq.pigstye.net/article.php/GutierrezMarshallA

3 Abdulrahman,US citizen, contractor whistle-blower: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20071108005625&newsLang=en

4 Charles D. Riechers - Air Force- Ret. d: 10/07 suicide Boeing Tanker Deal: Still no autopsy report:
http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=9396

5 Col. Theodore S. Westhusing
General Dave Petraeus: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/77313 /

6 Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil (re Westhusing letter to Maj. Gen. Fil on May 28, 2005),: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_S._Westhusing

7 Darleen Druyun , http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1004/100104g1.htm

8 Brandy Britton who worked for the DC madam : http://www.examiner.com/a-714063~Accused_D_CmadamBritton_worked_for_her.html

9 Clifford Baxter, Enron executive: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/01/25/enron.suicide/index.html

10. David Kelly, British Weapons Expert on WMDs : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly

11. James Hatfield, wrote book on George Bush and his crimes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hatfield

12 Gary Webb, a prize-winning American investigative journalist, on Iran Contra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb

13 Margie Schoedinger (1965?-2003) was an American woman who filed a civil suit against former Texas governor and current U.S. President George W. Bush in 2002, alleging that Bush had sexually assaulted her.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margie_Schoedinger

list compiled at:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3232050

Condition of Riad Hamad’s Body Contrary to Suicide

http://www.infowars.com/?p=1651