Welcome the New Cold War Just Like the Old Cold War

Americans focus on Iraq while the old perils only get worse. Unbeknownst to most the arms race is heating up again. Meanwhile the potential for conflict in the Baltics builds, a problem even becoming noticed by conservative think tanks who only now have begun waking up to the potential disaster brought on by neglect of this country's real interests and needs by the brainless Bush administration. By neglecting to build on the potential of Russian-American relations, perpetuating paranoia with continued NATO expansion, missile defense, and strategic superiority at all costs we bequeath our children a 1950s style future of Armageddon like endings.

World's Oldest Bowling Alley Discovered

In breaking news the RIA/Novosti news agency reports that evidence for the oldest boweling alley has been discovered in Egypt. This would tend to call into question the theory that the ancient Greeks were responsible put forth in this scholarly paper and illustrated as above.

Andrew Bacevich's Loss is America's Loss

Andrew Bacevich became a member of a club nobody ever wants to be in, a parent who lost a son to a senseless war. An important voice against the militarization of American society and a military scholar he has more weight than most in speaking out against the insanity that currently grips our society. TomDispatch has a great sample of his important writing and now a very poingnant and principaled discussion of the war and his son. He never loses sight of what really is at stake.

Levantine Craziness

If you aren't sure what the current crisis in Lebanon is about don't feel bad.If you depend on American MSM you've probably heard that Al-Qaeda has taken over parts of Lebanon with the nefarious help of Syria who some how with the help of Iran also make Iraq the hell on Earth that it currently is.

It seems that things are somewhat more complicated as indicated in the latest from Franklin Lamb in the past weeks Counter Punch. The ugly truth appears that the so-called Al-Qaeda group is an American funded organization. This is not surprising considering that Syria actually imprisoned the "head " of this group on terrorism charges for 3 or 4 years prior to him disapearring into Lebanon. The following is quite informative:

"To understand what is going on with Fatah al-Islam at Nahr el-Bared one would want a brief introduction to Lebanon's amazing, but shadowy 'Welch Club'.

The Club is named for its godfather, David Welch, assistant to Secretary of State Rice who is the point man for the Bush administration and is guided by Eliot Abrams.
Key Lebanese members of the Welch Club (aka: the 'Club') include:

The Lebanese civil war veteran, warlord, feudalist and mercurial Walid Jumblatt of the Druze party( the Progressive Socialist Party or PSP)

Another civil war veteran, warlord, terrorist (Served 11 years in prison for massacres committed against fellow Christians among others) Samir Geagea. Leader of the extremist Phalange party and its Lebanese Forces (LF) the group that conducted the Israel organized massacre at Sabra-Shatilla (although led by Elie Hobeika, once Geagea's mentor, Geagea did not take part in the Sept. 1982 slaughter of 1,700 Palestinian and Lebanese).

The billionaire, Saudi Sheikh and Club president Saad Hariri leader of the Sunni Future Movement (FM).

Over a year ago Hariri's Future Movement started setting up Sunni Islamist terrorist cells (the PSP and LF already had their own militia since the civil war and despite the Taif Accords requiring militia to disarm they are now rearmed and itching for action and trying hard to provoke Hezbollah).

The FM created Sunni Islamist 'terrorist' cells were to serve as a cover for (anti-Hezbollah) Welch Club projects. The plan was that actions of these cells, of which Fatah el-Islam is one, could be blamed on al Qaeda or Syria or anyone but the Club.

To staff the new militias, FM rounded up remnants of previous extremists in the Palestinian Refugee camps that had been subdued, marginalized and diminished during the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Each fighter got $700 per month, not bad in today's Lebanon.

The first Welch Club funded militia, set up by FM, is known locally as Jund-al-Sham (Soldiers of Sham, where "Sham" in Arabic denotes Syria, Lebanon, Palestine & Jordan) created in Ain-el-Hilwa Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon. This group is also referred to in the Camps as Jund-el-Sitt (Soldiers of the Sitt, where "Sitt" in Sidon, Ain-el-Hilwa and the outskirts pertain to Bahia Hariri, the sister of Rafiq Hariri, aunt of Saad, and Member of Parliament).

The second was Fateh-al-Islam (The name cleverly put together, joining Fateh as in Palestinian and the word Islam as in Qaeda). FM set this Club cell up in Nahr-al-Bared refugee camp north of Tripoli for geographical balance.

Fatah el-Islam had about 400 well paid fighters until three days ago. Today they may have more or fewer plus volunteers. The leaders were provided with ocean view luxury apartments in Tripoli where they stored arms and chilled when not in Nahr-al-Bared. Guess who owns the apartments?

According to members of both Fatah el-Islam and Jund-al-Sham their groups acted on the directive of the Club president, Saad Hariri.
So what went wrong? "Why the bank robbery" and the slaughter at Nahr el-Baled?

According to operatives of Fatah el-Islam, the Bush administration got cold feet with people like Seymour Hirsh snooping around and with the White House post-Iraq discipline in free fall. Moreover, Hezbollah intelligence knew all about the Clubs activities and was in a position to flip the two groups who were supposed to ignite a Sunni ­Shia civil war which Hezbollah vows to prevent.

Things started to go very wrong quickly for the Club last week.
FM "stopped" the payroll of Fateh el-Islam's account at the Hariri family owned back.

Fateh-al-Islam, tried to negotiate at least 'severance pay' with no luck and they felt betrayed. (Remember many of their fighters are easily frustrated teenagers and their pay supports their families). Militia members knocked off the bank which issued their worthless checks. They were doubly angry when they learned FM is claiming in the media a loss much greater than they actually snatched and that the Club is going to stiff the insurance company and actually make a huge profit.

Lebanon's Internal Security Forces (newly recruited to serve the bidding of the Club and the Future Movement) assaulted the apartments of Fatah-al-Islam Tripoli. They didn't have much luck and were forced to call in the Lebanese army.

Within the hour, Fatah-al-Islam retaliated against Lebanese Army posts, checkpoints and unarmed, off-duty Lebanese soldiers in civilian clothing and committed outrageous killings including severing at four heads.

Up to this point Fatah-al-Islam did not retaliate against the Internal Security forces in Tripoli because the ISF is pro-Hariri and some are friends and Fatah al-Islam still hoped to get paid by Hariri. Instead Fatah al Islam went after the Army.

The Seniora cabinet convenes and asks the Lebanese Army to enter the refugee camp and silence (in more ways than one) Fatah-al-Islam. Since entrance into the Camps is forbidden by the 1969 Arab league agreement, the Army refuses after realizing the extent of the conspiracy against it by the Welch Club. The army knows that entering a refugee camp in force will open a front against the Army in all twelve Palestinian refugee camps and tear the army apart along sectarian cracks.

The army feels set up by the Club's Internal Security Forces which did not coordinate with the Lebanese Army, as required by Lebanese law and did not even make them aware of the "inter family operation" the ISF carried out against Fatah-al-Islam safe houses in Tripoli.

Today, tensions are high between the Lebanese army and the Welch Club. Some mention the phrase 'army coup'.

The Club is trying to run Parliament and is prepared to go all the way not to 'lose' Lebanon. It still holds 70 seats in the house of parliament while the Hezbollah led opposition holds 58 seats. It has a dutiful PM in Fouad Siniora.

The club tried to seize control of the presidency and when it failed it marginalized it. Last year it tried to control of the Parliamentary Constitutional Committee, which audits the government's policies, laws and watch dogs their actions. When the Club failed to control it they simply abolished the Constitutional Committee. This key committee no longer exists in Lebanon's government.

The Welch Club's major error was when it attempted to influence the Lebanese Army into disarming the Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah. When the Army wisely refused, the Club coordinated with the Bush Administration to pressure Israel to dramatically intensify its retaliation to the capture of the two soldiers by Hezbollah and 'break the rules' regarding the historically more limited response and try to destroy Hezbollah during the July 2006 war.

The Welch Club now considers the Lebanese Army a serious problem. The Bush administration is trying to undermine and marginalize it to eliminate one of the last two obstacles to implementing Israel's agenda in Lebanon.
If the army is weakened, it can not protect _over 70% of the Christians in Lebanon who support General Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement. The F.P.M. is mainly constituted of well educated, middle class and unarmed Lebanese civilians. The only protection they have is the Lebanese Army which aids in maintaining their presence in the political scene. The other type of Christians in Lebanon is the minority, about 15% of Christians associated with Geagea's Lebanese Forces who are purely militia. If the Club can weaken the Army even more than it is, then this Phalange minority will be the only relatively strong force on the Christian scene and become the "army" of the Club.

Another reason the Club wants to weaken the Lebanese Army is that the Army is nationalistic and is a safety valve for Lebanon to ensure the Palestinian right of return to Palestine, Lebanese nationhood and the resistance culture led by Hezbollah, with which is has excellent relations.

For their part, the Welch Club wants to keep some Palestinians in Lebanon for cheap labor, ship others to countries willing to take them (and be paid handsomely to do so by American taxpayers) and allow at most a few thousand to return to Palestine to settle the 'right of return' issue while at the same time signing a May 17th 1983 type treaty with Israel with enriches the Club members and gives Israel Lebanon's water and much of Lebanon's sovereignty.

Long story short, Fatah el-Islam must be silenced at all costs. Their tale, if told, is poison for the Club and its sponsors. We will likely see their attempted destruction in the coming days.

Hezbollah is watching and supporting the Lebanese army."

If you see this on CNN I'll probably fall over from disbelief. This is only one place of many that can't be explained by our usual media sources. Watch this space for further details.

Darfur Weapons Oil and Indignation

It is sometimes difficult to unravel the complexities of world issues and living in a country that likes simple solutions to every problem does not help. A good example is the situation in Darfur. Probably the most coherent description that I've seen was published in Asia Times Online this past week. F. William Engdahl details how what is commonly described as a straight forward case of genocide actually involves Chevron (Condi's old employers), the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, shadowy arms dealers, and the corrupt despot of Chad who has now become a partner in the " war on terrorism".

I was especially intrigued by the role of Victor Bout, a Russian- Tajik arms dealer wanted by Interpol for money laundering but operating comfortably out of Florida and Texas. Interestingly he has made himself useful in Iraq to the Bush Administration as mentioned in this article.

Close But No Cigar

An article about an asteroid that passed within 6.5 lunar distances of Earth that was discovered a month ago.What will we discover next month, presuming there is a next month?

Fleurs de Mal

Its interesting to see how American wars in the last 50 years or so seem to eventually involve drugs in one form or another. The war in Iraq seems to be no exception. Patrick Coburn has an interesting article in CounterPunch
detailing a new and sinister aspect of the war.

"Farmers in southern Iraq have started to grow opium poppies in their fields for the first time, sparking fears that Iraq might become a serious drugs producer along the lines of Afghanistan.

Rice farmers along the Euphrates, to the west of the city of Diwaniya, south of Baghdad, have stopped cultivating rice, for which the area is famous, and are instead planting poppies, Iraqi sources familiar with the area have told The Independent.

The shift to opium cultivation is still in its early stages but there is little the Iraqi government can do about it because rival Shia militias and their surrogates in the security forces control Diwaniya and its neighbourhood. There have been bloody clashes between militiamen, police, Iraqi army and US forces in the city over the past two months.

The shift to opium production is taking place in the well-irrigated land west and south of Diwaniya around the towns of Ash Shamiyah, al Ghammas and Ash Shinafiyah. The farmers are said to be having problems in growing the poppies because of the intense heat and high humidity. It is too dangerous for foreign journalists to visit Diwaniya but the start of opium poppy cultivation is attested by two students from there and a source in Basra familiar with the Iraqi drugs trade.

Drug smugglers have for long used Iraq as a transit point for heroin, produced from opium in laboratories in Afghanistan, being sent through Iran to rich markets in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Saddam Hussein's security apparatus in Basra was reportedly heavily involved in the illicit trade. Opium poppies have hitherto not been grown in Iraq and the fact that they are being planted is a measure of the violence in southern Iraq. It is unlikely that the farmers' decision was spontaneous and the gangs financing them are said to be "well-equipped with good vehicles and weapons and are well-organised"."

George Bush is a God send for terrorists, criminals, arms dealers, and now opiate traffickers. An equal oppurtunity administration all around.

It May Need a Get Away Hole

The largest American Embassy ever,anywhere is taking shape in Baghdad. If anyone thought we would, out of the goodness of our American souls, just show up like a mysterious stranger in a western movie, free the good people, then vanish into the sunset only to do good deeds elsewhere, they should seriously look at this edifice of imperialism.
My favorite observation comes from Ed Pilkington of the Guardian who notes the following:

"Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Queen Mary, University of London, has just come back from a month spent in Iraq, largely in the Green Zone. He thinks the Americans are unlikely to pull out of Iraq fully until the end of the next presidency at the earliest, and so the new embassy will serve its purpose for several years to come.

"A fortress-style embassy, with a huge staff, will remain in Baghdad until helicopters come to airlift the last man and woman from the roof," he said, adding his own advice to the architects of the building: "Include a large roof."

Media Concentration

Russian reporters walked off the job due to preassure from the government to report the "right" news. Somehow I don't expect to see this becoming an international phenomena, least of all in the U.S.I mean will FOX employees or even news models at CNN ever leave due to news distortion or lies?

U.S. Military Energy Consumption

EnergyBulletin.net has a fascinating review of energy use by the Dept. of Defense. Among the nuggets was the fact that the military "only" accounts for 1% of American energy consumption, however this is still as much as 140 million Nigerians. Read on..

KAH BOOM KAH BOOM continued.....

The ongoing saga of catastrophism gets a new boost at the American Geophysical meeting this week when evidence suggesting a cataclysmic comet or asteroid collision 13000 years ago set fire to the Northern Hemisphere will be presented.

"This comet set off a shock wave that changed Earth profoundly,' said Arizona geophysicist Allen West. 'It was about 2km-3km in diameter and broke up just before impact, setting off a series of explosions, each the equivalent of an atomic bomb blast. The result would have been hell on Earth. Most of the northern hemisphere would have been left on fire.'

The theory is to be outlined at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico. A group of US scientists that include West will report that they have found a layer of microscopic diamonds at 26 different sites in Europe, Canada and America. These are the remains of a giant carbon-rich comet that crashed in pieces on our planet 12,900 years ago, they say. The huge pressures and heat triggered by the fragments crashing to Earth turned the comet's carbon into diamond dust. 'The shock waves and the heat would have been tremendous,' said West. 'It would have set fire to animals' fur and to the clothing worn by men and women. The searing heat would have also set fire to the grasslands of the northern hemisphere. Great grazing animals like the mammoth that had survived the original blast would later have died in their thousands from starvation. Only animals, including humans, that had a wide range of food would have survived the aftermath.'

The scientists point out that archaeological evidence shows that early Stone Age cultures clearly suffered serious setbacks at this time. In particular, American Stone Age hunters, descendants of the hunter-gatherers who had migrated to the continent from Asia, vanished around this time.

These people were some of the fiercest hunters on Earth, men and women who made magnificent stone spearheads which they used to hunt animals including the mammoth. Their disappearance at this time has been a cause of intense debate, with climate change being put forward as a key explanation. Now there is a new idea: the first Americans were killed by a comet.

It was not just America that bore the brunt of the comet crash. At this time, the Earth was emerging from the last Ice Age. The climate was slowly warming, though extensive ice fields still covered higher latitudes. The disintegrating comet would have plunged into these ice sheets, causing widespread melting. These waters would have poured into the Atlantic, disrupting its currents, including the Gulf stream. The long-term effect was a 1,000-year cold spell that hit Europe and Asia.

The comet theory, backed by observational evidence collected by the team, has excited considerable attention from other researchers, following publication of an outline report of the work in Nature

'The magnitude of this discovery is so important,' team member James Kennett, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, told the journal. 'It explains three of the highest-debated controversies of recent decades.'

These are the sudden disappearance of the first Stone Age people of America, the disappearance of mammoths throughout much of Europe and America and the sudden cooling of the planet, an event known as the Younger-Dryas period. Various theories have been put forward to explain these occurrences, but now scientists believe they have found a common cause in a comet crash. However, the idea is still controversial and the theory is bedevilled by problems in obtaining accurate dates for the different events."

Antarctic Melting

A recent report released by NASA refutes the often made argument that global warming does not affect Antarctica and thus doesn't exist.This report suggests an area the size of California underwent unprecedented melting during the Antarctic summer of 2005.While not enough to cause catastrophic ice sliding it tends to add credence to gradual acceleration of climate change, a concept opposed by neo-Luddites, oil companies, and the United States government.

Peace for a Piece

It would appear on the surface that the U.S. is moving towards a withdrawl from Iraq, the Democrats control the House and barely the Senate but moves to defund the war seem to be making progress. The ugly truth would suggest that the facts of "withdrawl" are more complex than the American people and their representitives would care to acknowledge.
The inconvienient fact is that there is no withdrawl strategy because there is no intent to leave. Evidence of this may be seen in the construction of American "megabases".These will require 35,000-50,000 personnel for an indefinite period of time. The bases themselves are located in proximity to refineries and oil fields interestingly. Neither party seems willing to address the real ulterior motives to this fiasco.

Peak Oil an Iranian View

Peak oil is one of those issues that no one wants to talk about because the ramifications are so overwhelming that it actually threatens an entire way of life. Byron King at EnergyBulletin.net has a great article by an Iranian energy expert that transcends national self interest and gives a coherent explanation of what to expect in the future. Its sobering and worth reading.

Spinning Syria

The amount of hypocrisy coming out the Bush administration regarding Syria is truly mind boggling. How a country can be condemned on one hand for supporting "terrorism" and on the other hand be a convenient resource for the provision of torturing services on demand is amazing. It helps if you have a compliant media that overlooks these and other apparent contradictions and creates a citizenry that's still more interested in what might have happened to Anna-Nicole Smith and Brittany's current state of consciousness. Jacob Hornberger puts well,

"But how does something like this happen? Doesn't it almost defy credulity? Why, here you have a regime that the president repeatedly condemns as a state sponsor of terrorism and with whom the U.S. government simply is not going to communicate. Meanwhile, CIA officials, somehow or other, cut a deal with Syrian officials to torture a citizen of Canada on behalf of the U.S. government."

The case of Maher Arar is particularly egregious. In case you hadn't heard he is a Canadian citizen kidnapped in the U.S. and sent to Syria for torture, eventually released,and returned to Canada where the government at least had the decency to apologize and also investigate the RCMP"s role in this sordid affair.Fat chance anything similar will ever occur in the U.S.

Foreign Intelligence Reports Suggest Iran Attack Near

Russian military sources report that American force levels near Iran are growing and that naval deployment is reaching levels not seen since the attack on Iraq.Ealier today I watched a so-called interview with a CNN news model and the current American commander in the Middle East, Admiral William Fallon, in which the news model demanded to know what the U.S. was "going to do" about Iran. To a casual observer it would appear that even a cursory discussion regarding the wisdom of such action was apparently unnecessary.

Dermockracy Russia and America

Old habits die hard and none are more evident than the American habit of either wanting to blame or save the Russians for or from the same problems that they themselves have. A good example would be the the recent concern for Russian democracy shown by this link that my friend Mark at Norwegianity felt compelled to bring to attention.

Now I would not deny that Vladimir Putin has consolidated and centralized power as much as possible, but criticism coming from a country where the ruling party has cleansed, purged, disenfranchised, gerrymandered, and otherwise screwed with the electoral process to the point that no country in their right mind would look to them for guidance rings more than a bit hollow.

One of the recurring themes of this intermittant excercise I call a blog is the bizzaro parallel universe quality of Russian-American relations. It is interesting to think that the largest and most dangerous nuclear powers in the world are both potential economic basket cases on any given day. I probably don't need to go into detail about America's amazing weakness in this area, however this article in the Exile shows an uncanny likeness to what Madeline Albright liked to call the world's "Indispensible Nation" and its citizens on the verge of insolvancy. Nukes apparently don't make the house payments. For further information I highly recommend americanempireproject.com to see what the future probably holds.

Russia America or Both

Uzbek Prison Conditions Improving with Organized Crime's Help

In what I gather would qualify as prison reform, an Uzbek prison warden hiding in Kazakhastan has been murdered on orders of organized crime. The warden, Alihaydar Kulumbetov, according to UZNEWS was known for torture and abuse of prisoners.

"Credit for this goes to the criminal underworld and the international community," Surat Ikramov said. He added that this may sound absurd, but even the criminal underworld is outraged with the level of abuses in Uzbekistan, and those tortures and harassment, which officers of prisons and colonies subject their charges to."

What War on Terrorism

The Bush administration's so-called war on terrorism suffered yet another credibility attack when Spain released their frusrations about having to deal with a recalcitrant U.S. during a trial against figures in one of the biggest terrorist attacks in Europe post 911.

"The al-Qaeda leader who created, trained and directed the terrorist cell that carried out the Madrid train bombings has been held in a CIA "ghost prison" for more than a year.

Spanish officials told The Times last night that they are furious to have been denied access to Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, a Syrian-born terrorist who has been part of the al-Qaeda leadership since the late 1980s.

"This is Spain's most wanted man in the terrorist world - it is galling to know that he is in the hands of an ally and they will not help us," a Spanish official said."

I think the petty political concerns of the current administration have hijacked legitimate security concerns that we all have and that we must stand up and speak out before it is too late.

If we don't allow our friends to help our enemies only benefit.

"Spanish intelligence agents were said to have been allowed to question inmates of Guantanamo Bay about Setmarian in 2002. But access to suspects in US custody was blocked after Spain withdrew its troops from Iraq following the Madrid bomb."

Russians to Monitor Human Rights in U.S.

Russia announced their intention to safeguard Human Rights in the U.S. and Europe today thus freeing up at least half the world and perhaps allowing democratic elections in a part of the world long deprived of such. The 2008 elections tenatively scheduled in the U.S. may take place if the right and left wings of the ruling junta can come to a non-binding agreement regarding the present attempt to take over the world.