Retuters use "Titanic" film footage in Russian North Pole story
By Paul Walter(Paul Walter)
Reuters have admitted illustrating a story about the Russian North Pole undersea flag-placing with footage from the 1997 film "Titanic". A 13 year-old Finnish schoolboy spotted the similarity of the pictures. Whatever next?
Liberal Burblings - http://paulwalter.blogspot.com/

US rushes icebreaker to counter Ruskie threat to North Pole
By Actual News Geezer
News that the US government is rushing a Coast Guard icebreaker to the north to coutner Russia's claim to the North Pole will surely annoy Canadians. read more.
The News is NowPublic.com - NowPublic... - http://www.nowpublic.com

Reuters Sinking at the North Pole
By Ariel
News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic. The images were reproduced around the world ...
Simply Dumb - http://www.simplydumb.com

Russian North Pole submarine images are actually from the movie ...
Images presented by the Reuters news agency last Thursday, purporting to show the Finnish-built MIR-1 and MIR-2 submersibles during a recent Russian scientific expedition to the sea bed 4.3 kilometres below the Geographic North Pole, ...
Digg / World News / digg - http://digg.com/world_news

Will China Have Rights to the North Pole?
By yuri(yuri)
At the moment, the legal picture surrounding claims to the North Pole is unclear. Countries control 12 miles of their coastal seas; everything beyond that is considered open sea, available to everyone on an equal basis. ...
Russia Blog - http://www.russiablog.org/

U.S.-ARAB ALLIANCE AIMS TO DETER TERRORISM, IRAN PLAN SEEKS TO SECURE SUPPLIES OF ENERGY; ARMS ROLE CRITICIZED - JAY SOLOMON (WALL STREET JOURNAL, AUGUST 9): Iran has improved its strategic position through the effective use of charities, social-services networks and public diplomacy. "Iran trumps Washington in the use of soft power," says Emile El-Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at Washington's Henry L. Stimson Center.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1186624506...=googlenews_wsj
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THE GRAYING LADY: CUTS IN NEWSPAPERS' FOREIGN REPORTING WILL LEAVE THE WORLD WORSE OFF - ROSA BROOKS (LOS ANGELES TIMES, AUGUST 10): In this age of globalization, terrorism and war, we particularly need good reporting on the rest of the world. But as newspapers shed column inches and reporters, it's foreign news reporting that has suffered most. In these days of shrinking newspapers and shrinking global news coverage, the world, for most Americans, is in danger of becoming as flat as a postage stamp -- and almost as small.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...nion-commentary

IF YOU THINK THEY HATE US NOW: A REPUBLICAN VICTORY IN 2008 COULD SINK AMERICA'S REPUTATION IN THE WORLD EVEN LOWER - JOE CONASON (SALON, AUGUST 10): In his rhetoric, the president usually seeks to distinguish the religion of Islam, which he has honored in the White House on many occasions, from the murderous perversion of that faith. The Republicans most likely to win their party's presidential nomination constantly use language that is meant to inflame anger against Muslims for political advantage.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/...slam/print.html

WHEN HEDGE FUNDS MEET ISLAMIC FINANCE: U.S. FIRMS HIRE SCHOLARS TO HELP DESIGN PRODUCTS - JOANNA SLATER (WALL STREET JOURNAL, AUGUST 9): Islam prohibits all kinds of speculative behavior that is embedded in Wall Street's DNA. But Mr. Sheik Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo, a Massachusetts-born convert to Islam, is on a mission to meld centuries-old Islamic law with modern finance in the U.S.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118661926443492441.html
PAID SUBSCRIPTION
SEE ALSO
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2007...omms_we_ne.html (has mention of public diplomacy)

NO BETRAYALS EDITORIAL (WASHINGTON TIMES, AUGUST 10): It is too late for the estimated 250 Iraqi translators who have been murdered as "collaborators" since working with U.S. forces. It is not too late for thousands of others. Those who have partnered with British or American forces and thus risk kidnapping, torture or worse deserve a credible assurance of forthcoming visas, now, to relocate their families to the West once this war is over.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...mplate=printart

INSIDE IRAQ - WILLIAM KRISTOL (TIME, AUGUST 9): 'I spent a week in Iraq recently, and here's what impressed me most: the Americans. In particular, the quality and character of the American soldiers and Marines who are fighting there and trying to help rebuild the nation. I don't mean to slight, in some ethnocentric way, the steadfastness and courage of the Iraqi people. But it was meeting and watching the American soldiers at work that I found most interesting.' http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1651505,00.html

THE BAGHDAD FABULIST - CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 10): The Iraq war -- "George Bush's war," as even Hillary Clinton, along with countless others who had actually endorsed the war, now calls it -- has caused not only the sorrow and destruction that we read about every day. It has, most perniciously, caused invisible damage: It has perverted and corrupted the young soldiers who went to Iraq, and now return morally ruined.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0901900_pf.html

THE CULT OF PETRAEUS - JEFF HUBER (MILITARY.COM, AUGUST 7): As the U.S. four-star in charge of Iraq, Petraeus has shown a definite penchant for public relations.
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,145137,00.html

IRAQ REPORT HINTS: MORE TIME NEEDED - ASSOCIATED PRESS (NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 9): Anyone who still wonders what America's top two officials in Baghdad will report to Congress next month just hasn't been listening. The military and diplomatic public relations machines are running full bore. The message: ''Things are getting better, but we need more time.''
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-I...agewanted=print

STRATEGIC PATIENCE - AUSTIN BAY (WASHINGTON TIMES, AUGUST 10): Toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq created the opportunity for significant, positive, long-term change throughout the region. Now, the challenge is twofold: nurturing and supporting the incremental cultural, political and personal changes that make for societal change, and sustaining America's will to maintain that support. For the surge to really work, the effort must be sustained.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...mplate=printart

LOOKING FOR THE LEAST BAD IRAQ PLAN: THE U.S. FACES A "PORTFOLIO OF UNAPPEALING OPTIONS," A NEW STUDY CONCLUDES - KEVIN WHITELAW (U.S. WORLD & NEWS REPORT, AUGUST 8): Amid the sharpening debate over whether or not the United States should withdraw from Iraq, a new study by the respected Rand Corp. think tank sheds some light on why Bush administration officials have been defending their controversial "surge" plan so vociferously. Put simply, the other options are all worse.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070808/8iraq.htm
REPORT AT
http://rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG613.pdf

U.S. SEEKS U.N. HELP WITH TALKS ON IRAQ: AIM IS TO MUSTER REGIONAL SUPPORT - COLUM LYNCH AND ROBIN WRIGHT (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 10)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0902290_pf.html

THE SURGE'S NEW MATH: ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO BACK - WILLIAM S. LIND (COUNTERPUNCH, AUGUST 8): Despite political setbacks, American commanders are clinging to a hope that stability might be built from the bottom up -- with local groups joining or aiding U.S. efforts to root out extremists -- rather than from the top down, where national leaders have failed to act. That is what American commanders should do, because it is all they can do. But it is a step away from, not toward, a restored Iraqi state.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lind08092007.html

ANBAR 'TURNAROUND' UNDERCUTS WAR RATIONALE ? GARETH PORTER (ANTIWAR.COM, AUGUST 10): After five years of unsuccessful US military operations in Anbar, the US military's agreements with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar represents an acknowledgment that it was dependent on the very Sunni insurgents it once considered the enemy in Iraq to reduce al-Qaeda influence in the province.
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=11428

AMERICA'S ILLUSORY STRATEGY IN IRAQ - DAVID GARDNER (FINANCIAL TIMES, AUGUST 10): Having upturned the Sunni order in Iraq and the Arab world, and hugely enlarged the Shia Islamist power emanating from Iran, the US finds itself dependent on Tehran-aligned forces in Baghdad, yet unable to dismantle the Sunni jihadistan it has created in central and western Iraq. Ignoring its Iraqi allies, it is arming Sunni insurgents to fight al-Qaeda. And, by selling them arms rather than settling Palestine it is trying to put together an Arab Sunni alliance (Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) with Israel against Iran. All clear? How can anyone keep a straight face and call this a strategy?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a2347bd0-46a4-11dc...00779fd2ac.html

JUST ANOTHER VACATION FROM REALITY - EUGENE ROBINSON (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 10): What on earth would make Bush -- or the neocon ideologues who are his enablers -- believe that any nation would appreciate being invaded, occupied for years by tens of thousands of foreign troops and having a particular brand of Western democracy imposed at the point of a gun?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0901903_pf.html

WILL THE REAL COLIN POWELL STAND UP? THE WHITE HOUSE FEARS THAT THE FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE WILL FINALLY TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT PLANNING FOR THE IRAQ WAR - SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL (SALON, AUGUST 9)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/20...well/print.html

IN THE DEBATE OVER IRAN, MORE CALLS FOR A TOUGHER U.S. STANCE - ROBIN WRIGHT (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 9)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0802554_pf.html

"TO SET THE SHIP ON A BETTER COURSE, YOU HAVE TO BE READY TO SINK IT" - ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER (TMP CAFÉ, AUGUST 9): 'Here is my nightmare. The Cheneyites succeed in creating a situation in which Bush does decide to bomb Iran. Iran retaliates, as they openly threaten to do, with terrorist attacks against us on U.S. soil. That tilts the election. I can imagine a Karl Rove political calculation that would buttress a Cheney-Addington national security calculation, probably with Eliot Abrams' support.'
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/20...eady_to_sink_it

BANKROLLING IRAN: THE WORLD BANK'S LARGESS IS UNDERMINING THE U.N. AND THE WEST - MARK KIRK (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 10): While the World Bank is part of the U.N. family, the bank's board is disconnected from the policies of key U.N. agencies -- especially the Security Council and the IAEA. The success of this diplomacy will be enhanced if the United Nations and World Bank work together, particularly on Iran. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0901929_pf.html

PROMOTING DIVISIONS ACROSS THE MIDEAST - GEORGIE ANNE GEYER (CHICAGOTRIBUNE.COM, AUGUST 10): The United States is quickly moving to establish a major Arab-Persian confrontation across the Middle East -- from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, with their large underprivileged Shiite populations, to Sunni Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait, and against Iran itself and its "landsmen" in Lebanon's Hezbollah as well as other Shiite minorities.
www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0810geyeraug10,0,6556063.story

HURDLES FRUSTRATE EFFORT TO SHRINK GUANTÁNAMO - WILLIAM GLABERSON (NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 9): The administration has had a difficult time reducing the Guantanamo detention center's population. The effort has been hampered by a laundry list of diplomatic, legal and political challenges, including the unwillingness of some countries to accept detainees and concerns about human rights abuses in others, officials and critics of the administration say.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/washingt...agewanted=print

BONO, FOREIGN AID AND SKEPTICS - NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 9): Foreign aid can be cause for celebration, not embarrassment.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/opini...agewanted=print
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AMERICA, STOP WAVING THE NUCLEAR THREAT AT POTENTIAL ADVERSARIES: THE US SHOULD USE ITS NUCLEAR ARSENAL FOR DETERRENCE ONLY AND PRESERVE THE 'TABOO' ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS USE - JACK MENDELSOHN (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, AUGUST 10)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0810/p09s01-coop.html

MECHANISTIC DESTRUCTION: AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY AT POINT ZERO - GABRIEL KOLKO (ANTIWAR.COM, AUGUST 10): We are at point zero in the application of American power in the world: the U.S. cannot win its extremely expensive adventures nor will it abstain from policies which increasingly lead to disasters for the nations in which it intervenes and for itself as well.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/kolko.php?articleid=11426

What Unites Iraqis: Blocking Western Petroleum Companies From Seizing Control of Their Oil

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted August 9, 2007.

Despite the ethnic bloodshed in Iraq, majorities of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds are united in their disapproval of the proposed oil laws that Washington and Big Oil are pushing.

If passed, the Bush administration's long-sought "hydrocarbons framework" law would give Big Oil access to Iraq's vast energy reserves on the most advantageous terms and with virtually no regulation. Meanwhile, a parallel law carving up the country’s oil revenues threatens to set off a fresh wave of conflict in the shell-shocked country.

Subhi al-Badri, head of the Iraqi Federation of Union Councils, said last month that the "law is a bomb that may kill everyone." Iraq's oil "does not belong to any certain side," he said, "it belongs to all future generations." But Washington continues to push that bomb onto the Iraqi people, calling it a vital benchmark on the road to a fully sovereign Iraq. Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio accused his own party of "promoting" President Bush's effort to privatize Iraq's oil "under the guise of a reconciliation program."

As is the norm, nobody bothered to ask Iraqis what they thought of the controversy until recently, when a coalition of NGOs and other civil society groups commissioned a poll (PDF) to gauge Iraqis' reaction to the proposed legislation. It found that Iraqis from all ethnic and sectarian groups and across the political spectrum oppose the principles enshrined in the laws. Considering the multiethnic bloodbath we've witnessed over the past four years, it's an impressive display of Iraqi solidarity.

The package of oil laws represent one of the clearest examples of a dynamic that's fueled much of the country's political instability but is rarely discussed in the commercial media. While the war's advocates continue to sell the occupation of Iraq as part of a grand scheme to democratize the region, anything resembling true Iraqi democracy is in fact a tremendous threat to U.S. interests. The law, after all, was not designed with Iraqis' prosperity in mind; plans for throwing the country's oil sector open to (almost) unregulated foreign investment were hashed out by a State Department working group that included major players from the oil industry long before the planning for the invasion itself. These plans were discussed in the White House (under the guidance of Dick Cheney) before that -- even before the attacks of 9/11.

The framework law -- from what we know from a series of leaked drafts -- will hand over effective control of as much as 80 percent of the country's oil wealth to foreign firms with minimal state participation. According to an analysis by the oil watchdog group Platform, Iraq stands to lose tens of billions of dollars in potential revenues under the contract terms being considered.

The administration claims that offering such lucrative terms is necessary given the dire need for investment in Iraq's war-torn oil infrastructure, but those investments could just as easily be made out of Iraq's existing operating budget or financed through loans -- despite the chaos on the ground, Iraq's massive energy reserves would be more than enough collateral for even the strictest lenders.

So while most oil-producing states are moving toward more state control of their energy sectors -- according to the Washington Post, "about 77 percent of the world's 1.1 trillion barrels in proven oil reserves is controlled by governments that significantly restrict access to international companies" -- Iraqi lawmakers are under enormous pressure to go in the opposite direction. (See here for a detailed critique of the framework law.)

It should come as no surprise that Iraqis overwhelmingly reject this arrangement. According to the poll of 2,200 Iraqis released this week, almost two-thirds of Iraqis said they would prefer "Iraq's oil to be developed and produced by Iraqi state-owned companies" over foreign companies. Less than a third favored foreign control -- less than the number who expressed a "strong preference" for the sector to remain under state control.

The findings cut across the divisions that have haunted the post-war occupation: 52 percent of Kurds, 62 percent of Sunni Arabs and 66 percent of Shia Arabs favored state control. Significant majorities in every metropolitan area and every region of the divided country agreed.

Opposition to the privatization scheme that U.S. lawmakers have pushed for with such zeal is reflected, too, in the Iraqi parliament, where a growing number of lawmakers have come out in opposition to the oil laws.

So, too have many experts in the field, including some of the technocrats who originally drafted the laws. Tariq Shafiq, one of the co-authors of the original version of the legislation, told UPI's Ben Lando that "the version penned by oil experts has been compromised by politics," and that he "no longer wants it approved." Farouk al-Qassem, another expert who worked on the original draft, came out against it earlier. "I think really the majority of the oil technocrats are against it," Shafiq told Lando.

There's evidence to support that statement; last month, more than 100 Iraqi oil experts, economists and legal scholars criticized the proposed legislation and urged the Iraqi parliament to put it on hold.

The most vocal opposition to the oil framework has come from Iraq's influential oil workers' unions. Hassan Jumaa Awaad, president of the Iraqi Oil Workers union, called the proposed hydrocarbon laws "more political than economic" and "unbalanced and incoherent," and said they threatened "to set governorate against governorate and region against region." Iraq's oil unions have threatened to "mutiny" if the law is passed as drafted.

In favor of the laws are the multinational energy companies who stand to gain tens of billions more profits in Iraq than they could expect from any other major oil producer's reserves. They're supported by Iraqi separatists -- especially Shias in the South and Northern Kurds -- who want control over the country's oil to rest in the hands of the regional authorities they dominate. They include Iraq's prime minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, and its president, Jalal Talabani.

Faced with such broad and intense opposition to a set of laws that were effectively crafted in Washington, London and Houston, the Iraqi government and the U.S. authorities in Baghdad have kept Iraqis in the dark over the details of the proposed legislation, brought all manner of pressure on lawmakers and, when that failed, used heavy-handed coercion to move the legislation forward.

According to the poll released this week, more than three out of four Iraqis -- including nine of 10 Sunni Arabs -- say "the level of information provided by the Iraqi government on this law" was not adequate for them to "feel informed" about the issue. Only 4 percent of Iraqis feel they've been given "totally adequate" information about the oil law.

But enough people did learn of the law and specifically its call for the use of "Production Service Agreements" (PSAs) -- the onerous contract form favored by the United States and Big Oil -- to elicit outrage among the Iraqi people. The Iraqi regime responded by renaming the long-term contracts "Exploration and Risk Contracts" (ERCs). According to Hands Off Iraqi Oil, a coalition of civil society groups, ERCs are "the equivalent of PSAs under a different name."

It's not just Iraqi citizens who have been kept in the dark; Raed Jarrar, an Iraq analyst with the American Friends Service Committee (and my frequent writing partner), has called Iraqi lawmakers to get a reaction to the draft legislation, only to be asked if he would send them a copy to review. According to Greg Muttit, an analyst with Platform, by the time Iraq's parliamentarians saw their first draft of the oil law, it had already been reviewed and commented on by U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, who "arranged" for nine major oil companies, including Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips, to "comment on the draft."

The regime in Baghdad, under pressure from Washington, has responded to opposition to the law in a profoundly undemocratic fashion. In May, Hassan Al-Shammari, the head of Al-Fadhila bloc in the Iraqi parliament, told AlterNet: "We're afraid the U.S. will make us pass this new oil law through intimidation and threatening. We don't want it to pass, and we know it'll make things worse, but we're afraid to rise up and block it, because we don't want to be bombed and arrested the next day." Armed Iraqi troops have faced down peaceful strikes called by the unions and arrested labor leaders who oppose the legislation. Last week, the Iraqi oil ministry directed "its agencies and departments not to deal with the country's oil unions" at all.

At this point, progress on the oil laws is stalled in Baghdad. The Kurds this week passed their own legislation, setting up what has the potential to become a whole new front in Iraq's multifaceted civil conflict. Senior Kurdish officials -- most of whom are separatists -- have vowed to block any legislation that doesn't include extensive regional autonomy over oil contracting, an issue opposed by most Iraqis and a serious problem for Iraqi nationalists.

Ultimately, the turmoil around Iraq's oil is a result of commercial interests being placed before the interests of the Iraqi people by an administration that routinely privileges its "free-market" ideology over common sense. Historians will no doubt note the great irony of Iraq's proposed oil law: What is considered a prerequisite for stability in Washington in fact threatens to tear the country further apart.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/59318/?page=1

How the Democrats Blew It in Only Eight Months

Alexander Cockburn, The Nation

Thanks to the Democrats' inaction on Iraq and compliance with Bush on the FISA bill, Congress now has a "confidence" rating of 14 percent, the lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 1973 and five points lower than Republicans scored last year.

U.S. Could Trigger Deadly Middle East Arms Race

Meena Janardhan, IPS News

The United States' plan to sell arms to Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies to counter growing Iranian influence could trigger an arms race that could set off the whole Middle East.

<h3 class="entry-header">BREAKING: Citing Four-Day Old Surveillance Law, Bush Seeks Dismissal of Lawsuit Challenging NSA Spying </h3> By David Kravets August 09, 2007 | 3:11:11 PMCategories: NSA, Surveillance

Four days after President Bush signed controversial legislation legalizing some warrantless surveillance of Americans, the administration is citing the law in a surprise motion today urging a federal judge to dismisss a lawsuit challenging the NSA spy program.

The lawsuit was brought by lawyers defending Guantanamo Bay prisoners. The lawyers and others alleged the threat of surveillance is chilling their First Amendment rights of speech, and their clients' right to legal representation.

Justice Department lawyers are asking (.pdf) U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to toss the case, citing the new law -- which says warrantless surveillance can continue for up to a year so long as one person in the intercepted communications is reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States.

The motion is set to be heard in federal court in San Francisco this afternoon. THREAT LEVEL will be there.

The government said the new Protect America Act of 2007 requires the government to notify the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court "as soon as practicable" when somebody is being spied upon, but does not require its immediate authorization.

The government has maintained all along that electronic eavesdropping was legal, and said the newest legislation provides "an additional basis for dismissal."

The Center for Constitutional Rights, the plaintif in the lawsuit, is expected to argue today that the new law violates the Fourth Amendment's requirement that judges approve warrants for surveillance.

"Congress has ceded further power to an administration that has done nothing but abuse its power and betray the trust of the American people, center attorney Shayana Kadidal said. "Congress has given the president and attorney general virtually uncheckmed power to spy on international calls of Americans without any oversight or accountability from the courts."

Cindy Cohn, director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the latest legislation does not apply to another eavesdropping case in which her group accuses AT&T of cooperating with the National Security Agency to make all communications on AT&T networks available to the spy agency without warrants. That case will be argued before the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday.

"This new law does not apply to this dragnet style of eavesdropping, and if it did, it's not retroactive," Cohn said.


http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/c...g-four-day.html

Just Another Vacation From Reality
By Eugene Robinson
The Washington Post

Friday 10 August 2007

You might have thought that now isn't the most opportune time for the elected leaders of both the United States and Iraq to pack up and head to the beach, ranch or villa for a nice long vacation. Silly you.

You probably reasoned that with 162,000 U.S. troops sweltering in the war zone, with the Iraqi government fracturing along sectarian lines and with what is billed as a make-or-break report from the U.S. commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, due next month, maybe tradition ought to be ignored and the summer heat withstood just this once. You doubtless pointed out that no matter how uncomfortable triple-digit temperatures might be for the grandees of Washington and Baghdad, soldiers burdened with body armor and combat boots - and the constant threat of getting shot or blown up - have it a bit worse.

You were right, of course - it's unbelievable that the Iraqi parliament is taking a month-long vacation, that Congress has left for its traditional August recess and that George W. Bush is heading off to Kennebunkport and then to Texas. What you failed to take into account is that none of this really matters, because the war in Iraq is on autopilot.

If you listened to Bush at his news conference yesterday, you heard a man who's not about to let something as petty as objective reality change his mind - and who's not going to pay attention to what the Iraqi government or even his own government might say or do.

Reporters asked about Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's all-smiles visit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran. The White House has angrily accused Iran of fostering chaos in Iraq and supplying advanced explosives that are killing U.S. troops. But Maliki was quoted as telling his host that Iran played a "positive and constructive" role in Iraq.

Bush's response: "In his heart of hearts," Maliki didn't really believe what he had said.

Reporters asked about the failure of the Iraqi government to make any discernible progress toward political reconciliation. Actually, the "unity" government has been deserted by Sunni leaders who see Maliki as more interested in establishing a dominant position for the Shiite majority than in building a nation.

Bush's response: The three members of the Iraqi "presidency council" - a Kurd, a Shiite and a Sunni whose head-of-state duties are largely ceremonial - are still on speaking terms and are "trying to work through the distrust."

That makes sense only if he was using "distrust" as a euphemism for "hatred" or "civil war."

At least now maybe people will understand what I've been saying for months, which is that Bush doesn't care what anybody else thinks. He doesn't care that the Iraqi government has failed to meet its political benchmarks. He doesn't care that Maliki is getting so cozy with the mullahs in Tehran. He doesn't care that Republicans in Washington are getting so nervous about having to face an election with the war still raging and no end in sight.

Bush laid out his Iraq policy yesterday in plain language, with none of his recent gibberish about al-Qaeda in Pakistan being the same as al-Qaeda in Iraq, only different, but really the same, kind of. This time we heard the classic neocon analysis - the same grand vision that got us into this mess. If Bush hasn't changed his mind by now, he ain't gonna.

Bush said we have to stay in Iraq to "change the conditions that caused 19 kids to be lured onto airplanes to come and murder our citizens" - and that's the heart of the matter. Forget for a moment that Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. The neocon idea is that the only way to eliminate terrorism in the long term is to create democracies that will offer potential terrorists an alternative future of freedom, prosperity and hope.

No one can argue against the flowering of democracy, and the United States should help freedom bloom wherever it can. But what on earth would make Bush - or the neocon ideologues who are his enablers - believe that any nation would appreciate being invaded, occupied for years by tens of thousands of foreign troops and having a particular brand of Western democracy imposed at the point of a gun?

I can't answer that question. But if you think Bush is going to care what Petraeus's report says in September, get out of the sun immediately and drink lots of water. You're delirious.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081007E.shtml

Gaffney Plus Washington Times Equals Hilarity

I'm honestly not sure which is more hysterical: Frank Gaffney's most recent Washington Times column, which argues that the Russians laid claim to the North Pole in a cunning gambit to corner the U.S. into ratifying the Law of the Sea convention; or the Times' decision to print his ridiculous column even though it was published - verbatim - on another site the previous day.

I've held my fire since reports first emerged of a Russian submarine symbolically planting a titanium flag at the North Pole. I'm naturally interested in all things related to Russia and ocean law, but I kept quiet. After reading Gaffney's column - twice - I simply can't choke back the laughter.

Under the terms of the Law of the Sea, each State Party enjoys an Exclusive Economic Zone that extends 200 miles off of its coast. If a State Party's continental shelf extends beyond this area, it can claim exclusive rights there too.

Russia is essentially saying that the North Pole (specifically, the Lomonosov Ridge that cuts the Arctic circle in half) is part of its extended continental shelf. Other Arctic countries that have ratified the Law of the Sea can dispute this claim, as surely they will. None of this, by the way, is a surprise: when my colleagues and I were drafting our Law of the Sea fact sheet earlier this year, we suggested in an early draft that by refusing to ratify, the U.S. would miss out on "the great Arctic land grab" (the phrase was imprecise and alarmist, so we removed it from later versions).

As the State Department acknowledges, this is just one of many compelling reasons to ratify the treaty. According to the St. Petersburg Times, Senator Mel Martinez, Chairman of the Republican Party, has come on board, too.

But Frank Gaffney thinks this is just a secret ploy by the Russians:

Two deep-ocean submersibles were dispatched to the Arctic floor ostensibly for the purpose of laying claim to the Lomonosov Ridge - and, more importantly, to the potentially vast oil, gas and mineral resources that may lie within a zone 200 miles wide on either side of that underwater mountain range. This move may have been a grandmaster's feint, however, masking another purpose: blackmailing the United States into ratifying the defective Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).

Yes, according to Gaffney, extensive deposits of oil and gas are just decoys, distracting from the Russians' real and dastardly goal: to force the U.S. to ratify a treaty with which it already complies and that its President supports. This makes even less sense than Gaffney's America: World Police-like proposal that force (or the threat of force) be used to the protect deep seabed mining activities of U.S. firms as an alternative to the legal framework provided by the Law of the Sea.

Gaffney's column in the Times is entitled "Lost at Seize." He also wrote a column called "Russian L.O.S.T. and Found" that was published yesterday on renewamerica.us, a site that supports "the "Declarationist" ideals of Alan Keyes." Here's what he wrote on that site:

Two deep-ocean submersibles were dispatched to the Arctic floor ostensibly for the purpose of laying claim to the Lomonosov Ridge - and, more importantly, to the potentially vast oil, gas and mineral resources that may lie within a zone 200 miles wide on either side of that underwater mountain range. This move may have been a grandmaster's feint, however, masking another purpose: blackmailing the United States into ratifying the defective Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).

In case you're wondering, that wasn't a typo: the passages are identical. In fact, Gaffney's entire August 7 column in the Washington Times is a re-print of his August 6 column on renewamerica.us (precisely one word was changed). Apparently, the Washington Times is about as interested in obtaining original, exclusive submissions from its columnists as Gaffney is in...well...the facts.

-- Scott Paul

Note: This is not the first of Frank Gaffney's columns that the Washington Times has reprinted a day after it's gone up on renewamerica.us. STP

Another Note: I almost forgot the most hysterical part of this whole business. Opposite Gaffney's column, the Washington Times published a column on the Russian claim by Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, who writes:

"To stop the expansion, the U.S. should encourage its friends and allies - Canada, Denmark and Norway - to pursue their claims in the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. While the United Sates has not ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), other Arctic countries, including Norway and Denmark, have filed their own claims with the Commission, opposing Russian demands."

Keeps getting better and better. STP 05:56 PM |http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/

Military draft should be considered: US war czar
A top US military officer in charge of coordinating the US war effort in Iraq said Friday that it makes sense to consider a return of the draft to meet the US military's needs.

Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, who serves as White House deputy national security adviser, said the all-volunteer military is serving "exceedingly well" and the administration has not decided it needs to be replaced with a draft.

But in an interview with National Public Radio, he said, "I think it makes sense to certainly consider it, and I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table."

"But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another," he said.

The United States did away with the draft in 1973 near the end of the Vietnam War.

<h4 class="home_dig_blog_hed"> Inside the Data Mine</h4> The Bush administration’s domestic spying program has depended on the willing participation of America’s telecommunications giants, and all but one, Qwest, were willing to comply. Truthdig contributor Onnesha Roychoudhuri investigates the complex world of national security and regulation to find out whether Qwest’s extraordinary bad luck in recent years has been more than a coincidence—and what it means for what’s left of your privacy.

Neoconservatism: A Cancer on the Presidency
Posted by Taki Theodoracopulos on August 10, 2007 Poor President Bush. Hippias tried to betray Athens to Darius, but we Athenians took care of his plans in time. Bush failed to see the cancer on his presidency -- a severe case of hubris whose worst symptom is Iraq, a disease brought on by the Iagos with whom Bush surrounded himself. Hubris is an ancient illness, and Bush is not the first leader to suffer from it. [Read More]

This is an interesting commentary on the odd combination of a global market correction brought on by the collapse of part of the US financial sector (that related to the subprime lending market) and strident demands that China revalue its currency. A second posting, commenting on the Administration's response to cautionary remarks from China, follows.


Analysis
Uncle Sam, your banker will see you now
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Guest Writer


Aug 9, 2007, 00:46

Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for the Chinese government observed that China's considerable holdings of US dollars and Treasury bonds "contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency." [China threatens 'nuclear option' of dollar sales, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, London Telegraph, August 9, 2007]

Should the US proceed with sanctions intended to cause the Chinese currency to appreciate, "the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar."

If Western financial markets are sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the message, US interest rates will rise regardless of any further action by China. At this point, China does not need to sell a single bond. In an instant, China has made it clear that US interest rates depend on China, not on the Federal Reserve.

The precarious position of the US dollar as reserve currency has been thoroughly ignored and denied. The delusion that the US is "the world's sole superpower," whose currency is desirable regardless of its excess supply, reflects American hubris, not reality. This hubris is so extreme that only six weeks ago McKinsey Global Institute published a study that concluded that even a doubling of the US current account deficit to $1.6 trillion would pose no problem.

Strategic thinkers, if any remain who have not been purged by neocons, will quickly conclude that China's power over the value of the dollar and US interest rates also gives China power over US foreign policy. The US was able to attack Afghanistan and Iraq only because China provided the largest part of the financing for Bush's wars.

If China ceased to buy US Treasuries, Bush's wars would end. The savings rate of US consumers is essentially zero, and several million are afflicted with mortgages that they cannot afford. With Bush's budget in deficit and with no room in the US consumer's budget for a tax increase, Bush's wars can only be financed by foreigners.

No country on earth, except for Israel, supports the Bush regime's desire to attack Iran. It is China's decision whether it calls in the US ambassador, and delivers the message that there will be no attack on Iran or further war unless the US is prepared to buy back $900 billion in US Treasury bonds and other dollar assets.

The US, of course, has no foreign reserves with which to make the purchase. The impact of such a large sale on US interest rates would wreck the US economy and effectively end Bush's war-making capability. Moreover, other governments would likely follow the Chinese lead, as the main support for the US dollar has been China's willingness to accumulate them. If the largest holder dumped the dollar, other countries would dump dollars, too.

The value and purchasing power of the US dollar would fall. When hard-pressed Americans went to Wal-Mart to make their purchases, the new prices would make them think they had wandered into Nieman Marcus. Americans would not be able to maintain their current living standard.

Simultaneously, Americans would be hit either with tax increases in order to close a budget deficit that foreigners will no longer finance or with large cuts in income security programs. The only other source of budgetary finance would be for the government to print money to pay its bills. In this event, Americans would experience inflation in addition to higher prices from dollar devaluation.

This is a grim outlook. We got in this position because our leaders are ignorant fools. So are our economists, many of whom are paid shills for some interest group. So are our corporate leaders whose greed gave China power over the US by offshoring the US production of goods and services to China. It was the corporate fat cats who turned US Gross Domestic Product into Chinese imports, and it was the "free trade, free market economists" who egged it on.

How did a people as stupid as Americans get so full of hubris?
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow's Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
Email Online Journal Editor



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Second installment on the economic crisis catalyzed by our four national deficits: budget, trade, balance of payments, and economic prudence.

August 9, 2007

One Big Reason Markets are Plunging
China's Threat to the Dollar is Real

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Twenty-four hours after I reported China's announcement that China, not the Federal Reserve, controls US interest rates by its decision to purchase, hold, or dump US Treasury bonds, the news of the announcement appeared in sanitized and unthreatening form in a few US news sources.

The Washington Post found an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin to provide reassurances that it was "not really a credible threat" that China would intervene in currency or bond markets in any way that could hurt the dollar's value or raise US interest rates, because China would hurt its own pocketbook by such actions.

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, just back from Beijing, where he gave China orders to raise the value of the Chinese yuan "without delay," dismissed the Chinese announcement as "frankly absurd."

Both the professor and the Treasury Secretary are greatly mistaken.

First, understand that the announcement was not made by a minister or vice minister of the government. The Chinese government is inclined to have important announcements come from research organizations that work closely with the government. This announcement came from two such organizations. A high official of the Development Research Center, an organization with cabinet rank, let it be known that US financial stability was too dependent on China's financing of US red ink for the US to be giving China orders. An official at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences pointed out that the reserve currency status of the US dollar was dependent on China's good will as America's lender.

What the two officials said is completely true. It is something that some of us have known for a long time. What is different is that China publicly called attention to Washington's dependence on China's good will. By doing so, China signaled that it was not going to be bullied or pushed around.

The Chinese made no threats. To the contrary, one of the officials said, "China doesn't want any undesirable phenomenon in the global financial order." The Chinese message is different. The message is that Washington does not have hegemony over Chinese policy, and if matters go from push to shove, Washington can expect financial turmoil.

Paulson can talk tough, but the Treasury has no foreign currencies with which to redeem its debt. The way the Treasury pays off the bonds that come due is by selling new bonds, a hard sell in a falling market deserted by the largest buyer.

Paulson found solace in his observation that the large Chinese holdings of US Treasuries comprise only "one day's trading volume in Treasuries." This is a meaningless comparison. If the supply suddenly doubled, does Paulson think the price of Treasuries would not fall and the interest rate not rise? If Paulson believes that US interest rates are independent of China's purchases and holdings of Treasuries, Bush had better quickly find himself a new Treasury Secretary.

Now let's examine the University of Wisconsin economist's opinion that China cannot exercise its power because it would result in losses on its dollar holdings. It is true that if China were to bring any significant percentage of its holdings to market, or even cease to purchase new Treasury issues, the prices of bonds would decline, and China's remaining holdings would be worth less. The question, however, is whether this is of any consequence to China, and, if it is, whether this cost is greater or lesser than avoiding the cost that Washington is seeking to impose on China.

American economists make a mistake in their reasoning when they assume that China needs large reserves of foreign exchange. China does not need foreign exchange reserves for the usual reasons of supporting its currency's value and paying its trade bills. China does not allow its currency to be traded in currency markets. Indeed, there are not enough yuan available to trade. Speculators, betting on the eventual rise of the yuan's value, are trying to capture future gains by trading "virtual yuan." The other reason is that China does not have foreign trade deficits, and does not need reserves in other currencies with which to pay its bills. Indeed, if China had creditors, the creditors would be pleased to be paid in yuan as the currency is thought to be undervalued.

Despite China's support of the Treasury bond market, China's large holdings of dollar-denominated financial instruments have been depreciating for some time as the dollar declines against other traded currencies, because people and central banks in other countries are either reducing their dollar holdings or ceasing to add to them. China's dollar holdings reflect the creditor status China acquired when US corporations offshored their production to China. Reportedly, 70 per cent of the goods on Wal-Mart's shelves are made in China. China has gained technology and business knowhow from the US firms that have moved their plants to China. China has large coastal cities, choked with economic activity and traffic, that make America's large cities look like country towns. China has raised about 300 million of its population into higher living standards, and is now focusing on developing a massive internal market some 4 to 5 times more populous than America's.

The notion that China cannot exercise its power without losing its US markets is wrong. American consumers are as dependent on imports of manufactured goods from China as they are on imported oil. In addition, the profits of US brand name companies are dependent on the sale to Americans of the products that they make in China. The US cannot, in retaliation, block the import of goods and services from China without delivering a knock-out punch to US companies and US consumers. China has many markets and can afford to lose the US market easier than the US can afford to lose the American brand names on Wal-Mart's shelves that are made in China. Indeed, the US is even dependent on China for advanced technology products. If truth be known, so much US production has been moved to China that many items on which consumers depend are no longer produced in America.

Now let's consider the cost to China of dumping dollars or Treasuries compared to the cost that the US is trying to impose on China. If the latter is higher than the former, it pays China to exercise the "nuclear option" and dump the dollar.

The US wants China to revalue the yuan, that is, to make the dollar value of the yuan higher. Instead of a dollar being worth 8 yuan, for example, Washington wants the dollar to be worth only 5.5 yuan. Washington thinks that this would cause US exports to China to increase, as they would be cheaper for the Chinese, and for Chinese exports to the US to decline, as they would be more expensive. This would end, Washington thinks, the large trade deficit that the US has with China.

This way of thinking dates from pre-offshoring days. In former times, domestic and foreign-owned companies would compete for one another's markets, and a country with a lower valued currency might gain an advantage.

Today, however, about half of the so-called US imports from China are the offshored production of US companies for their American markets. The US companies produce in China, not because of the exchange rate, but because labor, regulatory, and harassment costs are so much lower in China. Moreover, many US firms have simply moved to China, and the cost of abandoning their new Chinese facilities and moving production back to the US would be very high.

When all these costs are considered, it is unclear how much China would have to revalue its currency in order to cancel its cost advantages and cause US firms to move enough of their production back to America to close the trade gap.

To understand the shortcomings of the statements by the Wisconsin professor and Treasury Secretary Paulson, consider that if China were to increase the value of the yuan by 30 percent, the value of China's dollar holdings would decline by 30 percent. It would have the same effect on China's pocketbook as dumping dollars and Treasuries in the markets.

Consider also, that as revaluation causes the yuan to move up in relation to the dollar (the reserve currency), it also causes the yuan to move up against every other traded currency. Thus, the Chinese cannot revalue as Paulson has ordered without making Chinese goods more expensive not merely to Americans but everywhere.

Compare this result with China dumping dollars. With the yuan pegged to the dollar, China can dump dollars without altering the exchange rate between the yuan and the dollar. As the dollar falls, the yuan falls with it. Goods and services produced in China do not become more expensive to Americans, and they become cheaper elsewhere. By dumping dollars, China expands its entry into other markets and accumulates more foreign currencies from trade surpluses.

Now consider the non-financial costs to China's self-image and rising prestige of permitting the US government to set the value of its currency. America's problems are of its own making, not China's. A rising power such as China is likely to prove a reluctant scapegoat for America's decades of abuse of its reserve currency status.

Economists and government officials believe that a rise in consumer prices by 30 per cent is good if it results from yuan revaluation, but that it would be terrible, even beyond the pale, if the same 30 percent rise in consumer prices resulted from a tariff put on goods made in China. The hard pressed American consumer would be hit equally hard either way. It is paradoxical that Washington is putting pressure on China to raise US consumer prices, while blaming China for harming Americans. As is usually the case, the harm we suffer is inflicted by Washington.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

Fighting the Democrats' Complicity with Bush By Francis A. Boyle The Democrats in Congress have taken no effective steps to stop, impede, or thwart the Bush Jr. administration's wars of aggression against Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or anywhere else, including their long-standing threatened war against Iran. To the contrary, the new Democrat-controlled Congress decisively facilitated these serial Nuremberg crimes against peace on May 24, 2007 by enacting a $95 billion supplemental appropriation to fund war operations through September 30, 2007.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18159.htm

The Grim Reaper Pays a Visit to Wall Street By Mike Whitney Alan Greenspan's low-interest, subprime, snake-oil Caravan took another spin down Wall Street today---ripping up pavement, knocking down power-poles and sending traders scampering for safety. When the dust finally settled, "Maestro's" wrecking ball had lopped another 387 points off the Dow Jones leaving markets reeling and investors cringing in fear.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18156.htm

Need help with a down payment? Ask the Army: Need a down payment for your home? Seed money to start a business? The Army wants to help - if you're willing to join up. Despite spending nearly $1 billion last year on recruiting bonuses and ads, Army leaders say an even bolder approach is needed to fill wartime ranks.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20205033/
America's Military Kids Are Latest Collateral Damag: The children of the troops serving in Iraq are experiencing significant collateral damage at home, according to two staggering new reports on the occurrence of child maltreatment, neglect, and abuse during combat-related deployments
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/080607_a.html
Goodbye Uncle Sam: What does it feel like to turn your back on your country? As increasing numbers of US military personnel head for Canada to escape service in Iraq and Afghanistan, three deserters explain what drove them to such drastic action
http://tinyurl.com/2cp5j7

Subprime: The Ugly American Hits Europe:

French bank BNP suspends subprime-linked funds. Europe's central bank responds; stocks tumble
http://tinyurl.com/2hj9xn



The "Plunge Protection Team" (PPT) Working Overtime to Save US Stock Market :

The PPT cannot afford to sit back and watch both the US housing market and the stock market sinking at the same time. That might spell the dreaded "R" word, - Recession.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article1771.html

http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/

<h3 class="entry-header">rocker vs Petraeus</h3> Everyone is getting ready for a Crocker-Petraeus report which will most likely highlight tactical military success, downplay the political fiasco, and argue for more time. The conventional reading of this (at least in DC) is probably that the military and political tracks are moving at different speeds along parallel tracks, with Petraeus making some progress on the military track and Crocker having less success on the political track. I think this misreads the relationship between the military and political tracks. The divergent trends on the two tracks is not a coincidence. No matter how close their reported working relationship, or their very real skills, Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus are actually working at cross-purposes. Petraeus's military 'successes' and local initiatives come at the expense of the national political track, not in support of it.

Crocker's job is to encourage political reconciliation at the national level, which has been the Bush administration's stated goal from the start and which was the declared goal of the 'surge'. The improved security environment was meant to provide breathing space for the political reconciliation, as we all remember. Crocker's diplomacy is therefore in principle aimed at fostering the evolution of an Iraqi state which is broadly inclusive of all of Iraq's ethnic and religious communities. Most of the benchmarks - a resolution of the deBaathification laws, the oil law, etc. - are ultimately steps towards achieving a political bargain minimally acceptable to the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds. The government, therefore, should reflect the ethnic realities of Iraq and include meaningful Sunni participation. The army and security forces should include Sunnis, and should not be in the hands of sectarian militias. And so on - in short, things which encourage the integration of the Sunnis (especially) into the state.

Petraeus's strategy thus far has been to work at the local level. His signature initiative to date, the arming and tactical alignment with Sunni tribes and former insurgents, largely ignores the Iraqi state. The Anbar Salvation Council and the other 'Awakenings", the "rent-a-shaykh" and "rent-a-fighter" policies, and so forth all take place not just at the local level but outside the institutions of the state. They may improve the local security situation but do not encourage the integration into an Iraqi state which most Sunnis - by all available evidence - still see as monopolized by the Shia and controlled by Iran. The former insurgents fighting alongside the Americans against al-Qaeda don't report to Nuri al-Maliki... they report to David Petraeus. Meanwhile, on the Shia side American forces strike the Sadrists, but don't seem to care much about SCIRI SIIC ISCI penetration of the Iraqi military or security forces - once again suggesting that national state institutions just don't enter into the equation.


Petraeus, Bush, and their defenders argue that the local initiatives might provide the foundations for a national reconciliation down the road. Perhaps. But for now it looks more like the local initiatives, which are providing the temporary 'successes' which will justify continuing the administration's course of action, aren't just not being matched by political progress but are actually undermining the national political process. They are organizing the Sunnis outside of the state rather than fostering integration. And by heightening Sunni military weight and political expectations, these policies likely encouraged the political trainwreck we saw over the last few weeks: Sunni leaders felt emboldened to demand more, while Shia leaders worried about making concessions to a group accumulating military and political power outside their control.

I understand why Petraeus has chosen this route. Iraqi political institutions and the Iraqi state are so far gone, and so implicated in one side of the sectarian conflict, that avoiding them and starting over at the local level probably made good pragmatic sense. And I understand that Petraeus felt an urgent need to demonstrate early success to maintain political support, and probably didn't feel that he had the luxury of a longer time-frame. And readers of this blog know that I'm certainly not opposed in principle to the US working with former Sunni insurgent groups, as long as their eyes are open about the real goals and strategies of those groups. But this is what I meant few weeks ago when I wrote about tactics working against the strategy.

When the Crocker-Petraeus report comes in, questions should be raised not only be about the reality of the military progress (though there are many questions there to be asked) or about the stalled political process (though those should definitely be pushed hard). I would like to see more fundamental questions raised than quibbling over how to evaluate progress in this city or that province. Does this military strategy lead to the political outcome to which we are publicly committed? If the goal is to create a functional, inclusive Iraqi state, then are these tactics furthering that goal or undermining it? Or has the US changed its goals without acknowledging the change, giving up on a multi-ethnic centralized state and paving the way to soft partition?

<h3 class="entry-header">Neoconservativism summed up in one sentence</h3> "I spent a week in Iraq recently, and here's what impressed me most: the Americans." - Bill Kristol.

<h3 class="post-title"> Reflections on the Damascus Conference: Part I </h3> Every once in a while, you will see something in English about the Iraqi armed resistance, of the nationalist, as opposed to the global-islamist persuasion, but it is a rare thing, as if this was something like spotting the ivory-billed woodpecker. There was a widely-remarked piece in the Guardian some weeks ago about a meeting in Damascus of representatives from major resistance groups for the purpose of forming a "Political Office" for the Iraqi resistance, and to organize a conference (the "Damascus Conference"). Then there were reports in Arabic media about the cancellation of the Damascus Conference shortly before it was to be held (on July 23), and the news of the cancellation was picked up in English but not widely. And that was that. Notice I have left out all the details, what the conference was supposed to be about, who was invited to attend, and so on. You'll see why.

Meanwhile there has been a lot of writing by people connected with the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance milieu (for a sketchy account of them, see my October 2006 post called "Meet the Resistance") trying to explain what was happening, who are the promoters of this and for what reasons, and what should be done next. (These are posted on a variety of websites including AlBasrah.net and Iraqipa.net, and as a matter of fact if you can locate the article you want and fire up the google automatic translator and click on Arabic to English, then paste the URL into the appropriate slot, sometimes you can get a pretty good overall idea what the writer is trying to say. Hopefully this will be an incentive to some to at least start by learning the Arabic alphabet, in order to be able to identify posted articles by author, so as to know what to click on. This will then become addictive, and you won't be able to resist the temptation to go further and try and unravel some of the inevitable machine-gibberish. You'll be literate in Arabic before you know it!).

Back to the issue at hand. I have myself been unable to get my arms about the whole body of recent writings on the Damascus Conference that wasn't, but again in the interests of trying to break the English-language ice, I would like to just outline three key issues or themes, from the point of view of the nationalist resistance:

(1) Liberation of Iraq by Iraqis acting independently, versus being coopted by foreign agendas.

(2) Leadership by the fighting, Iraq-based resistance, versus ceding control to certain intellectuals of the diaspora.

(3) Negotiation with the occupiers as a part of the struggle for complete liberation, versus premature negotiation which would amount to a sellout.


(1) The "foreign agendas" theme

The most blunt statement of this theme is in an Al-Quds al-Arabi piece by Awni al-Qalamji this morning, titled "The other side of the Damascus Conference". In it he lays out the case for thinking the whole "Political Office"/Damascus Conference idea was a creature of Syrian-Iranian strategizing. Syria and Iran have for some years been holding joint meetings to discuss the situation in Iraq and to develop a common strategy, he writes, and this common policy basically involves selling themselves (Syria and Iran, that is) as the make-or-break factor in any US attempt to extricate itself from its current untenable position. This doesn't mean an end of the occupation itself, which Syria and Iran both find to their liking, because it prevents any resurgence of Iraq as a regional threat to them. On the contrary, he says the the idea is that Syria and Iran would like to show they are in a position to help the US find a comfortable occupation-posture. Cancellation of the Damascus Conference, Qalamji says, was nothing more than a reflection of the fact that Syria and Iran thought it best to hold this prospect and this demonstration of clout in abeyance, so to speak, currently having other fish to fry on the regional-security front.

A more general statement of the "foreign agendas" warning can be found in an article written by a former Baath official by the name of Salah al-Mukhtar titled "The Baath and the Common Front: Initial basic observations". In contrast to the macro-political focus of Qalamji, Mukhtar's initial reactions to the cancellation of the Damascus Conference have to do with what you could call micro-political issues including the psychology or philosophy of keeping a broad front together without letting ideological differences get in the way, and so on. On the question of foreign agendas, he writes as follows:

The fundamental axiom, which needs to be emphasized above all others, is that those setting up and strengthening a common front have no interest in becoming a tool in the hand of any Arab power, or or any regional or foreign [power], no matter what the nature of that power, but only in strengthening the independence of the party and the resistance and the nationalist forces. ...The success of the Front in defeating the occupation is going to be dependent on its independence, and conditional on the preservation of a climate of rejection of any deal with the occupation of with any other party, and [dependent on] preventing the exploitation of the Front in the formation of regional or international deals, no matter what their nature, and no matter what our relationship with the parties in question.

to be continued

http://arablinks.blogspot.com/2007/08/refl...rence-part.html

INTERVIEW-Saudi media empire tries to counter opposition


By Andrew Hammond

RIYADH, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has extended its influence over pan-Arab media to try to counter opposition political movements that challenge the U.S.-allied monarchy, a Saudi media mogul said this week.

Using its oil wealth, Saudi Arabia has built up a vast media empire since the early 1990s that filters out criticism of Saudi domestic and foreign policy and floods Arab audiences with music videos, Hollywood films and soft-focus apolitical Islam.

"There is a feeling that Saudi Arabia is an important state that has to have a presence in the media and it must not leave to others what we see and read," said Dawood al-Shirian, Saudi Arabia manager of the Saudi-owned MBC television and radio network, defending Saudi influence.

"This (media influence) has played a role in opening up the Arab world and revealing the falseness of some ideologies such as Arab nationalism, the Left and political Islam," he added, listing populist political movements that the Saudi royals have long regarded as threats to their rule.

The Dubai-based MBC Group, set up in 1991, has six entertainment television channels, two radio channels, and in 2003 added news channel al-Arabiya. Saudi royals and business allies also own entertainment networks ART and Orbit, Lebanon's LBC International, the Rotana group and pan-Arab newspapers al-Hayat and Asharq al-Awsat.

In addition, state media in most Arab countries including Egypt avoid news that could offend the Saudi rulers.

Arab media have largely gone along with a Saudi media campaign against Iran over its growing influence in the Arab world, though many Arabs consider Israel more of a threat.

Saudi Arabia and the West suspect Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons -- which Israel is widely considered to possess -- and have seen Iranian influence spread in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

"Iran has done nothing for the Palestinians in 50 years. All it's done is slogans," said Shirian, a liberal who also writes a weekly column in the London-based al-Hayat.

But opposition groups across the Arab world have long accused Saudi Arabia itself of not using close ties to Washington and prestige as home to Islam's holiest sites to back the Palestinians' fight against Israeli occupation since 1967.

Qatar's Al-Jazeera, which most polls say is the most watched Arab news channel, remains the biggest media challenge to Saudi Arabia as well as pan-Arab daily newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi.



"LIBERAL ELITE"

Shirian is one of a group of Saudi liberals who fell foul of the authorities over their calls for political and social reforms after the Sept. 11 attacks, which focussed Western attention on Saudi Arabia's austere Wahhabi form of Islam.

Like many, he returned to the official fold, taking his current post last year as the government tried to co-opt intellectuals.

"Democracy can bring opportunists and others. Let society develop in the right way," Shirian said, criticising parliamentary systems in Egypt, Turkey and Kuwait. "Reform takes place in a Saudi context, i.e. 'don't push things'."

Saudi opposition figures say experiments such as Kuwait's parliament have at least entrenched the idea of accountability and helped discourage corruption. Analysts say the Saudi royals and political elite fear Islamists could gain in elections.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL09856399

The History Boys
In this deeply researched essay, written just before he died, David Halberstam debunks the Bush administration's wild distortion of history.

<h3 class="post-title"> DC Rumor Mill: “Allawi Political Coup in Full Swing” </h3>

So the folks in Stephen Hadley’s NSC outfit are allegedly putting out the word that Meghan “Wanna-Be Ms. Bell” O’Sullivan, the White House’s political envoy to Baghdad, has lined up the necessary support to unseat current Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who would ostensibly be replaced by the former PM Ayad Allawi.

Pie in the sky, says I.

These are the usual amateurish stunts that US diplomats and spooks resort to when trying to arm-twist a Middle Eastern ‘flunky’; Washington is panicked by the Sunni withdrawal from the government whilst their current policy can be summed up with “Give the Sunnis everything they want”—including arms and protection to former insurgents who’ve been killing Americans and Iraqis for the last five years. By spreading this rumor, the Americans would like to spook Maliki into giving the Sunnis all that they want too—their current demands being the Presidency, and the Oil, Defense and Finance ministries and the Intelligence Service, in addition to their current portfolios—and fall into line with policy.

Here’s a series of reality checks:

-No one can pull-off a military coup in Iraq.

-Parliament is out for another three weeks, so Maliki is not facing an immediate no-confidence vote.

-Adel Abdel-Mahdi, the current Vice-President, cannot deliver SCIRI’s parliamentary votes for the Allawi camp.

-The Sadrists won’t vote for Allawi.

-The Da’awa Party won’t follow former PM Ibrahim Jaafari if he moves against Maliki.

-Anyone seen as “Saudi Arabia’s guy”—as Allawi projects himself, although that may not really be the case as far as the Saudi leadership is concerned—is not likely to get Sistani & Co. to go along with this plan.

-The Iranians won’t let this happen, and they have far more political cards to play in Iraq than the Americans—and they can play those cards smarter than O’Sullivan.

-Why would the Kurds substitute their strong alliance with the Shiites, who are going to run the country for a very long time to come, in return for the fleeting favor of the defeated Sunnis (their rivals on Kirkuk) and a politician such as Allawi whose word really doesn’t go that far?

-Qasim Daoud, a favorite of the Emirati leadership and another PM candidate as far as the Americans are concerned, has too many corruption scandals hovering around his head.

-My sources tell me the following: one of the principal actors who was attempting to bring down Maliki has left Iraq for an extended vacation, telling anyone who’d listen that it can’t be done.

I’ll say it: the Americans are irrelevant to political events in Iraq. They may be arming the insurgents for the time being, but these murderers may have to be the ones who need to be airlifted out when the Americans eventually withdraw in order to dodge reprisals. It’s quite a prospect to consider: former insurgents being resettled in Minnesota.

The Americans may want to bend over backwards to appease the Sunni politicos, and the Saudi, Egyptian and Jordanian patrons who fund them, but that means very little in Baghdad’s intense political universe unless the Shiites play along, and why should they do so once everyone begins to realize that the Sunni insurgency is faltering?

In real terms, the power shift begun on April 9, 2003 has matured as the Shiite politicians began to mature; they’ve begun to play the game as it should be played by those who have the voters’ mandate to lead the political process.

Crocker and his crew may peddle the notion that Maliki is a lame duck, but all they’ll up with is lame government. A panicked gaggle of US diplomats is not a pretty sight either; they are becoming an added hindrance to forming a new, more agile cabinet. Spreading rumors at this junction, and threatening Maliki with something they can’t deliver, is an exercise in futility.

But they need not worry: the White House has consistently rewards congenital failures with promotions and Medals of Honor. Case in point: Ms. O’Sullivan, who has sold herself on the notion that she’s a latter-day Gertrude Bell. Ms. Bell was traversing the deserts alone, in 1904, to learn and report about the Middle East—a journey I’d think twice about nowadays even if I had GPS and a 4 x 4. O’Sullivan, who may be a sweetie for all I know, cannot claim such wisdom.

Leave politics to the Iraqis, and get on with the job of defeating terrorists. That is the fastest way to get the Sunnis to sober up and come to terms with their demographic numbers and their past and current shame as champions of a violent approach in dealing with their next-door neighbors. Consequent Sunni moderation will achieve two things: the Shiites will be less likely to seek Iran’s counsel and protection in preparation for the “worst case scenario” of a regional Sunni onslaught. The second consequence is an earlier, and more honorable, American withdrawal.

Doesn’t that sound better than these silly rumors being put out by the National Security Council?

And since we mentioned Allawi, one can’t ignore this snide story from IraqSlogger. Now just imagine many more poor parking wardens would get “swept along” if Allawi is back in power! Just for the record: Umm Hamza is considered a fine lady by many who know her, and I’m pretty sure she was just having a bad day.

One more thing: there's a vote at the UN today about expanding its assistance mission to Iraq, UNAMI, to include reconciliation efforts. So long, 'reconciliation'! Ashraf Qazi, the Secretary General's Special Representative for Iraq, has stocked his Amman office full of Palestinians and Iraqis who are hostile and resentful of the new Iraq. There's one worker there who uses her UN e-mail to send out anti-American literature. Her modified name is Shems al-Badri, but her first name, before the change, allegedly used to be "Ba'ath", as in Saddam's Ba'ath Party! posted by Nibras Kazimi نبراس الكاظمي at 12:23 AM

http://talismangate.blogspot.com/2007/08/d...al-coup-in.html

<h2 class="title"> Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life </h2> By davidswanson Created 2007-08-11 02:45 The Anti-Empire Report
By William Blum, www.killinghope.org [1]

Separation of oil and state
On several occasions I've been presented with the argument that contrary to widespread opinion in the anti-war movement and on the left, oil was not really a factor in the the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq. The argument's key, perhaps sole, point is that the oil companies did not push for the war.

Responding to only this particular point: firstly, the executives of multinational corporations are not in the habit of making public statements concerning vital issues of American foreign policy, either for or against. And we don't know what the oil company executives said in private to high Washington officials, although we do know that such executives have a lot more access to such officials than you or I, like at Cheney's secret gatherings. More importantly, we have to distinguish between oil as a fuel and oil as a political weapon.

A reading of the policy papers issued by the neo-conservatives since the demise of the Soviet Union makes it clear that these people will not tolerate any other country or group of countries challenging the global hegemony of the world's only superpower. A sample -- In 1992 they wrote: "We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."[1] And in 2002, in the White House "National Security Strategy" paper: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States. ... America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed. ... We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed. ... We cannot let our enemies strike first. ... To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."

As the world has been learning in great sorrow, the neo-conservative world-dominators are not just (policy) paper tigers.

Japan and the European Union easily fall into the categories of potential competitors or potential adversaries, economically speaking. They both are crucially dependent upon oil imports. To one extent or another so is most of the world. The Bush administration doesn't need the approval of the oil companies to pursue its grandiose agenda of world domination, using the vast Iraqi oil reserves as one more of its weapons.

For those who would like to believe that there's a limit to the neo-cons' imperial arrogance, that even the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Wolfowitz, Rice, and the rest of the gang would never treat Europe as anything like an enemy, I suggest a look at a recent article by the former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, which appeared in the Financial Times of London. In it, the Cheney intimate and current senior fellow at the neo-con citadel, American Enterprise Institute, berates British prime minister Gordon Brown for implying that the UK could have a "special relationship" with both the United States and the European Union (which Bolton refers to as "the European porridge"). Like a hurt lover, Bolton exclaims that Britain has been brought to "a clear decision point. ... What London needs to know is that its answer will have consequences." The article is entitled: "Britain Cannot Have Two Best Friends".

Bolton goes on to ask: "Why does a 'union' with a common foreign and security policy, and with the prospect of a real 'foreign minister' have two permanent seats on the UN Security Council and often as many as three non-permanent seats out of a total of 15 council members? France and Britain may not relish the prospect of giving up their unique status, but what is it that makes them different -- as members of the 'Union' -- from Luxembourg or Malta? One Union, one seat. Mr Brown cannot have it both ways (nor will President Nicolas Sarkozy)."

The Empire has not yet made Europe an ODE (Officially Designated Enemy) like Iran, but, Bolton declares, "If Mr Bush decides that the only way to stop Iran is to use military force, where will Mr Brown come down? Supporting the US or allowing Iran to goose-step towards nuclear weapons?"[2]

Washington's exquisite imperial mentality, its stated determination to "act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed", sees "potential adversaries" in China and Russia as well of course. The United States -- with hypocrisy breathtaking even for the Bush administration -- regularly castigates China for its expanding military budget; and tries to surround Russia with military bases, missile shields, and countries with ties to Washington and NATO.

Moreover, the United States has been competing with Russia for the vast oil and gas reserves of the land-locked Caspian Sea area since the 1990s. The building and protection of pipelines in Afghanistan was in all likelihood a major factor in the US invasion and occupation of that country. And in this case we know that the American oil company UNOCAL met with Taliban officials in Texas and in Afghanistan before 9-11 to discuss the pipelines.[3]

A license to lie that never expires
I touched upon this a year ago, but our much-esteemed leader and his equally-esteemed acolytes continue to use the same argument in order to deflect attention from their deformed child, the War On Terror -- the argument being that since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, US counterterrorism policy has worked. How do they know? Because there haven't been any terrorist attacks in the United States in the six years since that infamous day.

Right, but there weren't any terrorist attacks in the United States in the six years before Sept. 11, 2001 either, the last one being the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995, with no known connection to al Qaeda. The absence of terrorist attacks in the US appears to be the norm, with or without a War on Terror.

More significantly, in the six years since 9-11 the United States has been the target of terrorist attacks on scores of occasions, not even counting anything in Iraq or Afghanistan -- attacks on military, diplomatic, civilian, Christian, and other targets associated with the United States, in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific, more than a dozen times in Pakistan alone. The attacks include the October 2002 bombings of two nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, which killed more than 200 people, almost all of them Americans and citizens of their Australian and British war allies; the following year brought the heavy bombing of the US-managed Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, the site of diplomatic receptions and 4th of July celebrations held by the American Embassy; and other horrendous attacks in more recent years on US allies in Madrid and London because of the war.

When the Bush administration argues that the absence of terrorist attacks in the US since 9-11 means that its war on terrorism has created a safer world for Americans ... why do I doubt this?

The past is unpredictable
As the call for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq grows louder, those who support the war are rewriting history to paint a scary picture of what happened in Vietnam after the United States military left in March 1973.

They speak of invasions by the North Vietnamese communists, but fail to point out that a two-decades-long civil war had simply continued after the Americans left, minus a good deal of the horror which US bombs and chemical weapons had been causing.

They speak of the "bloodbath" that followed the American withdrawal, a term that implies killing of large numbers of civilians who didn't support the communists. But this never happened. If it had taken place the anti-communists in the United States who supported the war in Vietnam would have been more than happy to publicize a "commie bloodbath". It would have made big headlines all over the world. The fact that you can't find anything of the sort is indicative of the fact that nothing like a bloodbath took place. It would be difficult to otherwise disprove this negative.

"Some 600,000 Vietnamese drowned in the South China Sea attempting to escape."[4] Has anyone not confined to a right-wing happy farm ever heard of this before?

They mix Vietnam and Cambodia together in the same thought, leaving the impression that the horrors of Pol Pot included Vietnam. This is the conservative National Review Online: "Six weeks later, the last Americans lifted off in helicopters from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, leaving hundreds of panicked South Vietnamese immediately behind and an entire region to the mercy of the communists. The scene was similar in Phnom Penh [Cambodia]. The torture and murder spree that followed left millions of corpses."[5]

And here's dear old Fox News, July 26, reporters Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, with their guest, actor Jon Voight. Voight says "Right now, we're having a lot of people who don't know a whole lot of things crying for us pulling out of Iraq. This -- there was a bloodbath when we pulled out of Vietnam, 2.5 million people in Cambodia and Vietnam -- South Vietnam were slaughtered."

Alan Colmes' response, in its entirety: "Yes, sir." Hannity said nothing. The many devoted listeners of Fox News could only nod their heads sagely.

In actuality, instead of a bloodbath of those who had collaborated with the enemy, the Vietnamese sent them to "re-education" camps, a more civilized treatment than in post-World War Two Europe where many of those who had collaborated with the Germans were publicly paraded, shaven bald, humiliated in other ways, and/or hung from the nearest tree. But some conservatives today would have you believe that the Vietnamese camps were virtually little Auschwitzes.[6]

Has the conservative view of Vietnam post-US withdrawal already hardened into historical concrete? "The agreed-upon historical record", to use Gore Vidal's term?

The way of all flesh, the way of all wars
In 1967 and '68 I was writing a column of a type very similar to this report, only it wasn't online of course; it was for the Washington Free Press, part of the so-called "underground press". In looking over those old columns recently I found three items whose relevance has not been dimmed by time at all:

(1) [From the Washington Post, 1968]: "It has never been clearer that the Marines are fighting for their own pride, from their own