Saturday, November 26, 2005

Some things you might have missed

Some things you might have missed:

  1. Nibras Kazimi drills serious holes in the credibility of one of the two main witnesses, a man called 'Hosam Taher Hosam', in the Mehlis report defaming Syria for the assassination of Hariri (the other main witness, Zuhir Ibn Mohamed Said Saddik, has already been completely discredited). Mehlis not only did a hack job on Syria, he did an obviously incompetent hack job on Syria. Are German prosecutors always this bad?

  2. Charlie Kimber, Simon Assaf and Kevin Ovenden completely decimate the latest attack by the extraordinarily embarrassing Norm Coleman on George Galloway (see also here and here). The people of Minnesota are going to have to start wearing paper bags over their heads saying "I didn't vote for him, it was Diebold."

  3. While people worry about an attack on Iran that is never going to happen (the United States would never attack a potential ally of Israel), the American ground war against Syria has already started, and Saudi Arabia is on deck.

  4. Even the ultra-ultra-ultra conservative Los Angeles Times is having trouble swallowing the official explanation of the Danziger Bridge incidents.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

NYT: spinning the Iraq war lies



A bit more on the theft of Iraqi oil wealth

A bit more on the theft of oil wealth from the Iraqi people:

  1. an article critical of production-sharing agreements by Daphne Eviatar of Newsweek; and

  2. Chalabi is in favor of them for Iraq (surprise, surprise), which probably explains why he is still hanging around in power in Iraq and why he is still alive.

Blair saves Al Jazeera


Optimism in Israeli politics

Ghassan Khatib has an optimistic view of Israeli politics. I don't get it. Israel now has a coalition government consisting of a bunch of right-wing crazies led by Sharon supported by a corrupted Labour Party, which claims to have no 'negotiating partner' and so has to impose its will on the Palestinians unilaterally. After the next elections, Israel will have a coalition government consisting of a bunch of right-wing crazies led by Sharon supported by a corrupted Labour Party, which will claim to have no 'negotiating partner' and so will have to impose its will on the Palestinians unilaterally. What's the diff? Sharon will have managed to squeeze out the most insane of the Likudniks, not because he doesn't agree with their ultimate goal of ethnically cleaning the Palestinians, but because he doesn't agree with their tactics. He's wanted to get rid of the albatross of Natanyahu - whose only real use is to go on speaking tours to raise money from North American and British Jews who want to quietly pay for the killing of Palestinians without having to take any moral responsibility - for years. Sharon, the master military planner, has correctly determined that the only politically possible way to eliminate the Palestinians is to slowly make life intolerable for them, with the construction of the Wall, service roads, checkpoints, and the unilateral seizing of land and water sources. The plan is that the Palestinians will eventually leave 'voluntarily', thus fitting into the Israeli creation myth that the original Palestinian inhabitants of what is now Israel left 'voluntarily'. It seems to me that the 'seismic shock' of the last few days is just a PR move to make the ethnic cleansing more tolerable to the rest of the world.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

The theft of Iraqi oil wealth

Based on an inappropriate contractual model imposed by the U. S. State Department, Iraq stands to lose, on the assumption of an oil price of $40 per barrel and from only the first 12 oilfields to be developed, between $74 billion and $194 billion over the lifetime of the proposed oil-development contracts. Oil company rates of return would range from 42% to 162%, rather than the usual industry minimum target of around a 12% return on investment. The type of contract is called a 'production sharing agreement', and is in use in no comparable oil fields (in fact such contracts are in use with respect to only 12% of world oil reserves, a number which is likely to decline as Russia stops using them). The paper "Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq's Oil Wealth" by Greg Muttitt describes all the gory details (see also here and here and here and here, and for Platform, the producer of the report, here), and proposes some logical alternatives for the government of Iraq to consider. The most sensible way by far is for the Iraqi government to develop its own oil industry, and ignore the parasite oil companies. We are seeing the beginnings of the Iraqi resistance. The huge danger, or course, is that the current Iraqi politicians will be bribed into signing long-term agreements which the Iraqi people will never be able to get out of.

Mrs John Paul II


Thursday, November 17, 2005

Dennis Prager, racist



Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Bomb trigger







Tuesday, November 15, 2005

The old reverso votefraud trick




Monday, November 14, 2005

The Jordan river of lies

There are all kinds of problems with the Official Story of the Jordanian bombings. I've mentioned some already, and here are some more:

  1. Pictures of the damage appear to show evidence of bombs placed in the ceiling. Since this would be inconsistent with the Official Story that the bombing was done by visitors from Iraq, who presumably had no privileged access to plant the bombs (how much do you tip the bellboy when he carries your explosives into the hotel, and how much does the concierge get when he sends out to find you the detonators you forgot back at your 'safe house'?), the Official Story had to be changed to deny that there were ceiling bombs. If it was a suicide bomb, why would the ceiling twelve feet above the floor be extensively damaged, but the wall directly adjacent to where the bomb is supposed to have gone off be completely unmarked?

  2. The Jordanians have supposedly found a witness, the wife of one of the suicide bombers. Unfortunately, the story as told by the Associated Press is incoherent (Muasher is Jordanian deputy premier Marwan Muasher):

    "Al-Rishawi was shown on state television wearing a white head scarf, a buttoned, body-length dark denim dress, and belts packed with TNT and ball bearings. Muasher told CNN the belts were captured with her.

    Al-Rishawi said she and her husband, Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari, 35, were wearing explosive-laden belts when they strolled into a Radisson ballroom where hundreds of guests, including children, were attending a Jordanian-Palestinian wedding reception.

    'My husband wore a belt and put one on me. He taught me how to use it, how to pull the (primer cord) and operate it,' she said, wringing her hands.

    'My husband detonated (his bomb). I tried to explode (my belt) but it wouldn't. I left, people fled running and I left running with them.'

    Muasher said al-Rishawi's husband noticed her struggle and pushed her out of the ballroom in order not to attract attention before blowing himself up."

    Pushing her out of the ballroom wouldn't attract attention? If she was already outside, how then did she run out with the people running from the bomb? Here is the same story from Aljazeera, quoting the wife:

    "'We went into the hotel. He [my husband] took a corner and I took another. There was a wedding in the hotel. There were women and children,' she said.
    'My husband detonated [his bomb] and I tried to explode my belt, but it wouldn't. People fled running and I left running with them.'"

    Did he push her out before he set off his bomb, or not? Why would he bother to do so? Why not just set off his bomb? Was he suddenly afraid that his wife might be killed in the explosion (that would be ironic, don't you think?).

  3. The Jordanian story of how they found her doesn't make sense either (from the same Associated Press story):

    "Al-Rishawi was arrested Sunday morning at a 'safe house' in the same Amman suburb where her husband and the other two bombers rented a furnished apartment, a top Jordanian security official said.

    Jordanian security was tipped off to her presence by al-Qaida in Iraq's claim of a female bomber, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists. The group apparently assumed she was killed in the blasts."

    How did the claim that there was a female bomber possibly provide enough information for them to find her in her 'safe house' unless they already knew where the 'safe house' was?

  4. Why would insurgents fighting the American occupation of Iraq decide to take a busman's holiday and blow themselves up in Jordan? Didn't they have enough to do in Iraq? Wouldn't their meager resources of available suicide bombers be better put to use in Iraq?

  5. Why would Sunni insurgents in Iraq head immediately to blow up a Sunni wedding reception in the hotel? Weren't there much better targets around? Speaking of better targets, how lucky do you have to be to kill a number of Palestinian officials, including the head of Palestinian intelligence, and take out the Chinese defense officials the Palestinians may have been planning to meet? For a bunch of bombers just arrived in town, they sure seemed to know where specific targets were located.

The witness, paraded theatrically with her supposed suicide belt, appears to represent a fear in Jordanian officials that no one was buying the Official Story. Flubbing the obvious cover-up is probably just going to make suspicions worse.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Mary Ferrell Foundation

There is a massive new website on the Kennedy assassination, with reliable stuff: the Mary Ferrell Foundation.

Black-ops in Turkish Kurdistan







Friday, November 11, 2005

Who died, and who didn't, in Jordan


Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Israel and the global right

There is a very important article in Counterpunch by Jeff Halper called "'What are You Doing? What Have You Become?': Israel as an Extension of American Empire". You should read the whole thing, but I want to focus on one aspect of it that we don't usually consider. Halper writes:

"One of the tragic developments related to this rightward shift of Israeli politics and social policies - even defining Israel's view of itself in the world - is its emergence as a center for the global right-wing, a constellation of nefarious ideologies, groups and forces that seek nothing less than American-Christian hegemony over the entire world. In a unique and, again, tragic confluence of historical processes, the rise of an aggressive neo-con ideology and militaristic foreign policy, centered in the US but not limited to it, coincides with the emergence of the Israeli rights and an expansionist Israel. 'Coincides' might understate the case: in fact, the rise of a religious right in the West owes much of its impetus to Zionism and Israel, while Israel is able to pursue its Occupation only because of its willingness to serve Western (mainly US) imperial interests including acting as a galvanizing center for global neo-con forces."

Halper considers a lot of details about the Jewish neocons and the Christian Zionists, all well worth reading, but the article gets very interesting when he considers the Israeli leadership role in world-wide, mainstream, right-wing politics. He writes:


Their worldview and agenda is summed up in what is called the 'Jerusalem Declaration.' It covers a range of issues of concern to the global right: But it also brings Israel into the center of the global right-wing agenda, suffusing it with Israeli claims and terms. Thus, Israel and its exclusive 'right' to the entire Land of Israel is inserted into the very center of the neo-con agenda."



People always ask why we pick on the Israelis so much, when Israel is such a small insignificant country. The reason is that the Israeli right, preoccupied with its imperialist plans, has made itself a world leader in the mainstream-but-extreme right in order to form the alliances it needs in order to carry out those plans. These nuts have not only destroyed their own country and its once promising socialist and fully democratic future, but are having a greatly disproportionate malign influence on the whole world. The American neocons are just the tip of the iceberg. The fact that the Christian Zionists support Israel isn't an accident; they were actively courted by the Israeli right. The fact that the neocons are all Jews isn't an accident; they are the agents of Israel working in the United States to follow a specific right-wing Israeli plan (specific enough to include the destruction of Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and, eventually, Egypt). You might even call it a conspiracy. What is even worse is that this Israeli imperialist ideology has been marketed by the Israeli right in a vile package of policies. It is not an accident that neocon American/Israeli imperialism is coupled with neocon every-man-for-himself economic policies. The packaged product marketed to the world-wide right ties support for Likudnik imperialist policies to support for American hegemony (for the American imperialists and their stooges like Britain), support for Ledeenesque total-war polices (for the international arms trade, in which the Israeli right is a big player), and support for rapacious capitalism (which all right-wingers like, but which is particularly appealing to Bush's Christian Zionist 'base'). The American Republican Party starts to look like the tail of the Likud dog. The Americans and their allies have bought the whole package. How much better would the world be if the Likud didn't have this disproportionate influence?

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Alito and the Democrat resurgence




Monday, November 07, 2005

Vive la revolution!

There are some riots in the poor banlieus of France, and the American right-wingers are falling all over themselves blaming it on the European welfare state, or Islamofascism, or the failure of Europe to confront the menace of terrorism. Doug Ireland (or here) explains what is really going on. It seems to me that the rioters, rather than demonstrating their failure to integrate into French society, are really showing just how well they have integrated. They are having their own little French Revolution. The French have shown over and over again that they don't accept any bullshit from their political 'leaders'. Whenever they are ignored - and the French system of very centralized government is prone to ignoring people - they take things into their own hands and destroy a little personal property, something that will always get the attention of the authorities. The current rioters are just following good old-fashioned French tradition, and it is refreshing to see people who still have enough energy to make their discontent known (I also note that they are another group of political radicals who are using cell phones to organize protest, something we are seeing over and over again). Rather than show a collapse of society, the demonstrations express a belief that positive change is possible if the politicians will only turn their minds to the problem. These days, we are much more likely to see the self-fulfilling 'nothing can be done' attitude of the herds of sheep who blandly accept everything that is done to them. Now that the discontented have gained some attention, the French will no doubt start to apply their considerable powers of social planning to the problems. There is a reason why France is the best place in the world to live for most people, and a reason why some people in France are always having to draw the attention of the authorities to the fact that they are not yet in the fortunate group. Vive la revolution!

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Republican thievery and Democrat hypocrisy








There's a certain refreshing honesty about just wanting to steal money.

Syria and the Gaddafi Gambit

The American trick used against countries it wants to destroy has been to put the leaders of such countries in an impossible position. In the case of Serbia, the clear message was that NATO would keep killing Serbian civilians until the Serbian leadership gave up (which it did). In Iraq, Saddam was offered two options: give up his weapons of mass destruction (which he couldn't do, as he didn't have any!); or completely disarm (leaving him at the mercy of the upcoming American attack, not to mention at the mercy of his neighbors). In the older case of Libya, Gaddafi was framed for Lockerbie, and thus Libya was permanently subject to international sanctions. Now we have the case of Syria, framed for the assassination of Hariri (the real reason, of course, isn't Hariri, but Israel), and forced to give up important members of the government, an option the Americans know will lead to some kind of power struggle and regime change by coup. How does Syria extricate itself from the American trap?

Libya is the only country that has thus far managed to solve the riddle. Gaddafi realized that the Americans were in a position where they were desperate for a 'win' in fighting the 'war on terror'. The sanctions were preventing the international development of Libyan oil fields, so there was also significant pressure from financiers and oil companies to have the sanctions lifted. Although Libya was almost certainly not responsible for Lockerbie, Gaddafi had the brilliant idea to take responsibility for it anyway, and offer to pay substantial reparations. Bush had to jump at this offer, and the sanctions were lifted (despite the fact Libya apparently hasn't even paid the reparations!).

There is a hint in the Gaddafi gambit in what Syria must do in order to avoid the neocon thrill at the thought of another 100,000 dead Arabs. Syria has to figure out a way to comply with the American demands on paper, while not succumbing to the neocon's intended regime change. If Syria can come up with a solution that looks good, Europe will play along, and the Americans won't be able to lead Syria into Bolton's trap of sanctions, allegations of 'violations', and the inevitable bombings to enforce the sanctions.

Patrick Seale writes (referring to Syrian President Assad):

"In their different ways, both the international community and his own public are urging him to act. They are encouraging him to carry out a 'corrective movement' against undisciplined barons of his regime, including men close to him, similar to the palace coup which brought his late father, Hafez Assad, to power in 1970. The choice before Assad is clear: either continue to claim that Syria is innocent of the murder of Hariri and that the charges in the Mehlis report are unsound and politically motivated or recognize that mistakes have been made and carry out a purge of the top security officials named in the report."

The trick would be to find just the right patsy, the figure or figures that could plausibly take the blame for Hariri and whose absence from the Syrian political scene would benefit the country (if he has the cojones, he might even go for the Big Kahuna, but that might be too risky and unnecessary). This is a tremendously cynical move, but, as none of these guys are saints, probably not that unjust. Once the right patsies are picked, Syria could then pull its 'Gaddafi Gambit' - take full legal if not moral responsibility for the assassination, and offer to pay reparations due to the 'unauthorized' actions of the few 'bad apples' who, just like the American torturers in Iraq, acted without legitimate government authority (ha!). Syria could then offer to try these 'bad apples' itself, or turn them over to an international court not controlled by the Americans. In one daring move, Assad could clean up an internal problem while getting the Israelamericans off his back.

Friday, November 04, 2005

The basis of Plamegate


Thursday, November 03, 2005

Unified Fleitz flu

Following up some recent postings:

  1. Juan Cole suggests that there might be a "Unified Field Theory of the Iraq War fraud" (see here).

  2. Frederick Fleitz was the original leaker of Plame's identity, and the dangerous information flowed through all of John Bolton, David Wurmser and John Hannah - it's like a pool shot that clears the table - before it got to Scooter (see here).

  3. "Spain's agriculture minister dismissed fears bird flu sparking a global epidemic among humans as 'science fiction', saying the virus currently only poses a threat to birds." (see here)

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Neocon history

There is a good article by Ehsan Ahrari in the Asia Times (why does the Asia Times have such a monopoly on good articles?; you'd never read something this good if you read American journalism for a million years), relying on James Mann's "The Rise and Fall of the Vulcans", on the history of the neocons:

"The real plan to invade Iraq was originally hatched in 1991, when then-president, George H W Bush, was at the helm. Libby was only one of its planners. The 'big enchiladas' were Cheney, who then served as secretary of defense, and Paul Wolfowitz, who served as under secretary of defense. Current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld became an active participant as someone who was then outside the government. Their plan to oust Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait was reportedly far riskier than the one promoted by then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell. Bush Senior apparently vetoed the Cheney et al's plan and gave a nod to Powell's.

The neo-conservative architects of the invasion of Iraq were 'deeply disappointed' when Bush Senior decided against the hot pursuit of the retreating Iraqi forces from Kuwait."


"As Mann points out, even though the initial military target of the US in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was Afghanistan, Wolfowitz (then deputy defense secretary) and Libby 'laid out the case for the invasion of Iraq just one week after the Twin Towers fell'.

Libby was also reportedly responsible for the first draft of Powell's now infamous presentation to the United Nations a month before the US invasion of Iraq."

There's a lot more, on how the neocons got away with it, and how their revenge-based ideology still infects American foreign policy (the loss of Libby has done nothing to change the neocon policy - Libby has been replaced by crazies who are even more hard-line - and the failure of the American left to realize how screwed it was by Fitzgerald - two years later, and he's still looking for clues, just like O. J. Simpson is still looking for whoever killed his wife - means that the neocons can continue to carry on their plans without any real opposition). The neocons intended to destroy Iraq years before September 11, years before anyone had ever spoken of al-Qaeda, and years before anyone had any concern whatsoever about the weapons of mass destruction supplied to Saddam largely by Americans like Rumsfeld (and subsequently destroyed). All their lies were simply ad hoc excuses to back up a ten-year old plan which had been thwarted by Presidents too smart to carry it out. Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Libby just bided their time during the Clinton interregnum, waiting for a
Bush stupid enough to go along with their insane ideas. The upshot is the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy, soon apparently to be repeated over and over again in places like Syria.